Rebel Island (Tres Navarre #7)(42)

“In November. He…talked to Señor Huff.”

“Why didn’t you mention this before?”

“It was not my place, señor. The man stayed for only a few hours. He asked questions and left. At the time, I did not think—”

“He talked to you?”

“Un poco. He asked how long we knew Señor Huff. He mentioned names I did not know, showed me photographs of some men and asked if I had seen them.”

“The drug bosses he was prosecuting?”

“No sé, señor. Perhaps.”

On the altar, a raindrop hit a candle and it fizzled out. In the old photograph, the faces of Jose, Imelda and their children flickered. I didn’t like Jose’s story about Peter Brazos. I especially didn’t like that Alex never mentioned the visit. He’d pretended to know nothing about Brazos or the murder of his family.

“Señor, I’m sorry you came here,” Jose said. “You and your wife.”

I tried for a reassuring smile. I’m not sure I pulled it off very well. “By tomorrow, the storm should pass. With any luck, a boat will come. We’ll all be able to leave.”

“Yes.”

“Alex wants to sell the hotel. What will you and Imelda do?”

He stared at me, as if the future tense meant nothing to him. “What can we do, señor? Mr. Huff gave us a home here. This is all we have.”

The contents of a room. A few photos and candles. A turquoise shawl and some Mexican blankets. All ruined by the rain.

“Six months ago, Calavera killed a woman and her two young daughters,” I said. “I don’t think he planned to do that. I think killing them shook him up so much that he started to think about retiring. Possibly even making amends.”

“Anyone who kills children, his soul is lost,” Jose said. “There are no amends.”

“We need to stay together,” I told him. “We’ll all sleep in the parlor.”

“I have to check the basement first. Mr. Huff…” He hesitated. “Mr. Huff said it was flooding.”

“Doesn’t it bother you that there’s a body down there?”

Jose gave me a look I couldn’t quite read. I thought he might be about to tell me something. Then he rose and left the room, leaving me alone with the rain and the scent of extinguished candles.

I had no luck finding Alex. Maybe because I was side-tracked.

Somehow I got turned around on the first floor, running into a dead end where Alex had closed off the collapsed room, then heading back.

Yes, it’s true. Despite being a former sleuth, my sense of direction is sadly lacking. Maia has a great deal of fun reminding me of this whenever we’re lost on the highway.

I found a bedroom door ajar and figured it would do no harm to knock.

No answer. Natural curiosity, I looked inside.

After getting used to wreckage and chaos, I was a little shocked to find a completely neat room. The bedspread was folded down. An old-fashioned brown leather suitcase sat on the chair. One navy blue suit and a dress shirt hung in the closet. On the dresser lay a leather notebook, a ballpoint pen and a box of .45 ammunition.

Benjamin Lindy’s room. Either that, or I had seriously misjudged the college guys.

Under normal circumstances, I would’ve backed out.

Well, okay. Perhaps not. But at least I would have hesitated, pondering whether or not I should invade Mr. Lindy’s privacy. As it was, I went right in and opened the notebook.

He was a lawyer, all right. Everything was documented—neatly organized, dated and labeled, even though it appeared to be a personal scrapbook. The first thing inside was a studio portrait of a woman in her early forties, a little older than me, maybe my brother’s age. She had short blond hair and green eyes. Her sharp nose and the determined angle of her jaw reminded me very much of Benjamin Lindy. She had his wry smile, too, though on a beautiful woman, the effect was quite different than on an old gentleman. Her name was printed at the bottom of the photo: Rachel Brazos. The date: Last Christmas.

The next page: a letter Rachel had written to her father. She asked whether the family ranch had gotten any rain. She invited her father to visit in Corpus Christi. She wrote about the tiles she had chosen for her kitchen remodeling, a play her two little girls had performed in school. She signed the note XOX, Rae. Nothing consequential. The letter was dated about a month before the photo was taken.

Some pictures of the two Brazos girls followed. Halloween. School picture day. I flipped through them quickly. They were painful to look at.

There were some news clippings about Rachel’s career at a local law firm. Following in her father’s footsteps. One article recounted a criminal case she’d worked in conjunction with the district attorney’s office. Apparently that’s how she’d met her future husband, Peter Brazos. Rachel’s successful legal career had been put on hold. Relatively late, she’d decided to become a wife and mother.

Like Maia. A little too much like Maia.

I kept turning pages. A few years farther back in time, one picture was labeled: Rachel Lindy, graduation, Texas A&M. Her hair was longer, swept over one shoulder. Her eyes gleamed with humor and confidence.

Next page: a poem by Rachel Lindy, clipped from a college anthology. The poem wasn’t very good. It described a storm. I didn’t want to read about storms.