No Witness But the Moon(32)

“I wonder who they’re from.” Joy bent down and fished out a tiny note card tucked inside the cellophane. She frowned. “It’s in Spanish.” She handed it to her father.

Mi amada. Eres siempre mi ángel.

“It says, ‘My beloved. You are always my angel,’” Vega translated.

“Wow,” said Joy. “Sounds like a love note. Did Lita have a boyfriend?”

“She never mentioned one.” Vega couldn’t recall anyone coming up to him at the funeral.

“Maybe one of her friends would know.”

“Martha Torres would have—before the Alzheimer’s did her in. She was my mother’s best friend. But I’m not even sure if she’s alive anymore.”

Vega began to tuck the note in a pocket of his jacket.

“Dad! What are you doing? That’s not your note.”

“What? You think Lita can read it? I don’t know who wrote this, Joy. For all I know, it could be someone with information about my mother’s murder. I’m not about to let it just rot at her grave.” Vega handed Joy the wreath. She laid it on the grave.

“Want to say a few words?” she asked her father. “Maybe explain why you’re stealing her love note?”

Vega shot Joy a dirty look. He was tired and spent. His daughter was shivering. “We’re here. She’s in our thoughts. That’s what matters.”

When they were back in the truck, Joy checked her watch and pretended not to.

“Got a date tonight?” asked Vega.

“I can cancel.”

“You don’t have to babysit me, you know.”

“I want to spend the afternoon with you.”

“In that case, can we make one stopover before we head back north?”

“You shouldn’t eat all that fried food either.”

“I’m not talking about the cuchifritos joint. I want to go to St. Raymond’s and visit Father Delgado.”

Joy looked surprised. “I thought you weren’t religious.”

“I’m not.”

On the drive over to the church, Vega told Joy what he’d found earlier going through the paperwork on his mother’s murder investigation.

“You’re not seriously thinking the man you shot had something to do with Lita’s death, are you?”

“It can’t hurt to talk to Father Delgado about it.”

“Look, Dad, I know you want to find some way to justify what you did—”

“I don’t need to justify it. I didn’t do anything wrong—”

“Honestly? You believe that?”

He didn’t answer. The car was warming up. Joy shrugged off her jacket. It caught on the neckline of her ribbed sweater beneath, revealing for just a moment the bare bronzed skin of her left shoulder. Vega saw something he didn’t expect to see when he glanced over. Something red. Bright red.

“What’s that?”

Joy pulled the neckline up quickly. “What?”

“On your shoulder. I saw something.”

“It’s nothing.”

Vega jerked the wheel toward the curb and double-parked alongside a row of cars. Drivers honked and gestured through their windows. Vega ignored them. He was a Bronx native. He was immune to expressions of frustration.

“Show me your shoulder.”

“No, Dad. Leave me alone.”

“I’m not moving until you show me your shoulder.”

She pulled the neckline down and up quickly. “There. Satisfied?”

On her left shoulder was a red rose tattoo about the size of a shot glass rim, permanently etched into her flawless skin. The skin he used to bathe when she was a baby. The skin he rubbed sunscreen on when she was a little girl so that she wouldn’t get cancer one day. And now she’d let some stranger stick a needle into it and inject permanent dye?

“You got a tattoo? When did you do that?”

“About a month ago.”

“Does Mom know?”

“I didn’t tell her until after I got it.”

Vega hit the steering wheel and cursed back at the drivers who were honking and giving him the finger. He was probably the only male of his generation who was uninked and he intended to stay that way. All his musician friends had tattoos. A lot of cops did, too. Dolan had a great big Harley-Davidson eagle tattoo on his forearm.

Not Vega. He was squeamish about needles. He had a piercing in his left ear that he got back in his early twenties when he still thought he was going to make it as a guitarist. He’d nearly fainted from that. But even if he weren’t squeamish, he didn’t want his daughter marking up her body that way. A tattoo felt incompatible with her intellect and ambitions. How could anyone take her seriously as a doctor with that thing on her shoulder? Maybe it was simple prejudice on Vega’s part. But he suspected a lot of other people felt the same way, if not about their own bodies, then certainly about their children’s.

“How could you do that, chispita? Without asking either of us?”

“I’m eighteen. It’s my body!”

“And you’re my daughter!”

She turned to him. The light had left her eyes. “Yes, I’m your daughter,” she said in a soft, steely voice. “The daughter you practically drove out of your house this morning. The daughter who’s trying to take care of you when everyone else has turned away. I never judged you for shooting an unarmed man. And yet you judge me for getting a tattoo?”