Mission Road (Tres Navarre #6)(44)

Mrs. Loomis studied me with concern.

“It’s okay,” I told her. “If I leave, will you two be all right?”

She glanced apprehensively at the meat cleaver in the corkboard. “Nothing I can’t clean up, dear. Just you be careful.”

She’d never called me “dear” before. I tried not to think of it as a bad sign—the sort of kindness you’d extend to the recently deceased.

I pointed a finger at Robert Johnson, who had reappeared on the table the instant the offending visitor departed. “You take better care of these people.”

The cat gave me a smug look. Translation: As long as the tea and milk keep coming, I’m good.

When I was at the door, Sam called: “Hey, Fred, be careful with that White family, okay? I’m pretty sure they got mafia connections.”

I promised I’d be careful. Then I went out to the backyard where the black limo was waiting.

“DON’T ASK,” MADELEINE SNARLED.

“I didn’t.”

She slumped in the back seat.

I’d expected her to ride up front now that Ralph was gone, but she’d climbed in back with me again. I guess she enjoyed torturing herself.

“I had a classmate in middle school.” She exhaled shakily. “She made some comments . . . a particular comment about my brother. I lost control.”

We drove past Alamo Plaza.

Shivering tourists were gathering for the evening ghost tour. Homeless men huddled like grubby gifts at the base of the forty-foot Christmas tree. Behind them, the old mission’s facade glowed white—a frozen chunk of 1836, melting and forlorn in the middle of downtown.

Madeleine turned toward me, her eyes hungry. “I wasn’t institutionalized. My dad’s lawyers had to pull strings to keep me out of juvenile detention. They got me into a residential therapy program. Stokes-McLean. Four years.”

Garlanded lampposts went by on Houston Street.

I knew something about Stokes-McLean. The facility was a former state sanitarium, a massive brick haunted-house-looking place not far from Mission San José. I’d seen what they did with problem kids—intense behavior modification sessions, usually six to nine weeks. I’d never known anybody who’d been sentenced to the program for four years.

“This was just before Frankie’s murder?” I asked.

She nodded.

“You were trying to defend him.”

She was silent through the next stoplight. “My dad promised me Frankie wasn’t doing anything wrong. Right up to the end . . . he told me to ignore anything I heard.”

“He also promised Frankie would stop hitting you.”

She looked down, scratched a fleck of blood off her knuckle. “Shut the f**k up. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Those bruises you sported in middle school weren’t from your classmates.”

“I shouldn’t have said anything to you. I shouldn’t even have tried.”

“What did Sam mean about your father being to blame?”

Before she could answer, or more likely hit me, the limo lurched to a stop.

In front of us, traffic had backed up behind a police barricade. Half a block ahead, Main Plaza was filled with people and the glow of luminarias.

Las Posadas.

I’d told Alex and Ralph to meet us in Main Plaza, figuring it would be deserted this time of night. I’d completely forgotten about the Christmas celebration.

Our driver apologized. He said this was as close as he could get us to our rendezvous point.

“Let us out here,” Madeleine ordered. “Circle the block. We’ll be back in five minutes.”

“And if we get spotted by the police?” I asked.

She glared at me. “Good point.” Then to the driver: “If we get spotted by the police, Mr. Navarre will be dead and I’ll be back in five minutes.”

THE SCENE IN THE PARK WAS surreal enough to curl Salvador Dali’s mustache.

Tourists mixed with candle-bearing pilgrims and carolers dressed like Hebrew shepherds. Children chased each other around the trees. Vendors worked the crowd with fajitas, atole and cerveza.

Through the middle of it all, Joseph and Mary led their donkey while mariachis sang at them in Spanish to go away; there was no posada. No room in the inn.

I couldn’t help thinking: This is San Antonio, man. We have three million hotel rooms.

At the edges of the park, a dozen cops stood on duty. None of them paid us any attention. A public Christmas celebration probably wasn’t the first place they expected dangerous fugitives.

Ralph and Alex were sitting on a park bench, watching the mariachis serenade the Blessed Couple.

Alex wore a navy blue suit and aviator’s shades that must’ve left him completely blind in the dark.

My skin crawled when I saw him. He looked so damn much like Frankie. Or maybe my skin crawled because I realized he was about my size, and the accountant’s clothes I was wearing might very well belong to him.

“You’re late,” he said.

“Any trouble?” Madeleine asked.

“With the getaway, no. With you supposed to be at your father’s party half an hour ago, yes.”

“He knows where I am.”

Alex snorted.

“What?” she demanded.