Mission Road (Tres Navarre #6)(38)

“How’d you get the key?”

The old man glanced toward his diner.

He reminded Maia of a geriatric leprechaun—small, wrinkled and nervous, thinning orange hair, ears and eyebrows and nose all a bit too pointy.

“I rent the property from Ana. I put the stuff in the back. Figured she would come get it eventually, you know? She never did.”

“What stuff?”

“Look, miss—Detective Kelsey’s already gonna kill me for talking to you. He came by, you know, after Ana . . .” He shook his head. “Damn. I can’t believe she got herself shot.”

“If you want to help her,” Maia said, “tell me what was wrong with the timing on the Franklin White murder.”

The old man winced. “Hell, I only told Ana because it was her mom, for Christ’s sake. It’s probably nothing.”

“You don’t believe that.”

“My waitress can’t cook. I got meat on the grill.”

“Mr. Flume—”

“All right, damn it. Etch and Lucia used to stop here before their shift. Every night, like clockwork. Etch parked his own car in the lot. Few minutes later, Lucia would bring the patrol unit around. Nine-thirty, every night, I’d give ’em both dinner on the house. Two cheeseburgers with rings. Lucia liked Big Red. Etch took a vanilla malt. They went on duty at ten.”

Maia fingered the paper-wrapped key.

She stared at the signs painted on the diner windows—FISH PLATTER, CLASSIC CAR FRIDAY. She imagined two uniformed officers sitting inside at the counter.

She had spent the last few hours at the San Antonio Express-News, buried in the news morgue, reading about the White family, Mission Road and any case involving Hernandez and DeLeon. What she’d learned had depressed the hell out of her, but it hadn’t made things any clearer.

“The 911 call about Franklin White’s body came in at just after ten,” she recalled. “The ME’s report placed the time of death at not very long before that.”

“That’s why Etch and Lucia asked me to talk to homicide for them. You look at their regular routine, they couldn’t have killed Frankie White. They would’ve been here eating dinner.”

“They were suspects? News reports said nothing about that.”

Flume shuffled from foot to foot. “Look . . . Etch and Lucia were frustrated about Frankie White, okay? This was their beat. Kid kept coming down here, picking up women at the bars. Later, those women turned up dead. How would you feel? Longer the detectives went without arresting him, the more Etch talked about intimidating Frankie. He knew Frankie’s car. He knew the bars Frankie liked. Sometimes Etch would follow Frankie around, to discourage him. Etch even told me . . . well, he said what he’d do if he ever caught Frankie on a dark street somewhere.”

“And when Frankie turned up dead,” Maia said, “Etch and Lucia were first at the scene.”

“They couldn’t have killed him,” Flume insisted. “Etch might’ve talked about it, but Lucia never would’ve let him. She was the most even-keeled person I ever met.”

“She killed a man once,” Maia recalled. “Right in your diner, wasn’t it?”

“That was different. Lives were at stake. She did what she had to—one clean shot. Calm and cool. But hitting Frankie White the way he was hit? I mean, no. No way. I told the homicide detectives Etch and Lucia were totally in the clear. I explained their routine.”

“But?”

Flume tugged at his apron. “I didn’t exactly swear that particular night was routine. They came in a little late.”

“Both of them?”

He nodded.

“Together?”

“Separate. Lucia beat Etch for once. She rushed in about nine-fifty, couldn’t believe Etch wasn’t here. When he did come in, Lucia looked at him real angry, asked him where he’d been. He just stared at me and said, ‘Mike, I got here the same time as usual tonight, right?’ ”

Maia cursed. “When did Hernandez come in exactly?”

“Ten o’clock. Maybe one, two minutes after.”

Maia stared across Presa Street, at the brown Acura waiting in the dark.

The fry cook followed her gaze. “Aw, hell. You got a police tail? You didn’t tell me that.”

Maia pulled the rubber band off the old man’s key, unfolded the piece of paper. “What am I going to unlock here, Mr. Flume?”

He shook his head. “Sorry, miss. My onion rings are burning.” Fear was building in his eyes.

The old cook hobbled back toward the diner, leaving Maia alone with the key and a two-line message:

342 West King’s Highway

Used to be Lucia’s.

MAIA DROVE SLOWLY, SETTING HER PACE to the Dvořák on the classical station.

She knew the best way to lose her tail wasn’t a high-speed chase. It was to bore him into a stupor.

She thought about Franklin White and the patrol nightstick that had killed him.

It was conceivable Franklin would’ve agreed to meet someone he knew well on the side of a rural road at night. Someone like Ralph Arguello. But it was also conceivable that he would pull over for a cop.

Kelsey had been on medical leave. Etch Hernandez and Lucia DeLeon had weak alibis for the murder time. But motive? The idea that Kelsey, even Kelsey, would kill because Frankie White had hurt his hands and endangered his job just didn’t sit right with Maia. Neither did the idea that either Etch or Lucia would kill because Frankie White was murdering women on their beat.