Remembrance (The Mediator #7)(77)
“Well,” Jennifer said, looking truly regretful. “I do know where he is, but I’m afraid it won’t do you any good, Mrs. Baracus. Jim Delgado doesn’t work with horses anymore.”
“You know where he is?” Jesse couldn’t hide his surprise.
“Sure,” she said with a laugh. “Jimmy’s still right here in town. I see him all the time. But good luck trying to get him back into horse handling. He came into some money awhile ago, and now he owns his own business. Delgado Photography Studio. He specializes in children’s portraits.”
veinticuatro
If anyone at the school noticed that the wife of wealthy plastic surgeon Dr. Baracus looked a little tight-lipped as her husband hurried her back to their BMW, they didn’t mention it. They probably thought I was nauseous from having another bun in the oven.
To them, this must have been good news: Penelope Baracus was getting a potential baby sister! This meant more tuition money for them later down the line. Ka-ching!
But once we’d gotten safely in the parking lot and could no longer be overheard, I let loose. With word vomit, not actual vomit, since by then I’d found some chewable antacids in my bag—along with the various other items I’d shoved in there back at my apartment—and was concentrating on chomping them down, one by one. The chalky coating on my tongue kept me from tasting the bile that kept rising in the back of my throat.
“What the hell?” I didn’t say hell, though. If the tip jar from the office had been nearby, I’d have owed it five dollars. Well, more like fifty after my tirade. “He’s still in town. He didn’t go anywhere. He’s still right here in town.”
“Take it easy, Susannah,” Jesse said in his smooth, deep voice. “This is good news. It will only make it easier for the police to arrest him after Becca tells them what she knows.”
“The police?” I was shocked at his na?veté, though I suppose I shouldn’t have been. The police routinely got involved in his abuse cases at the hospital. As a medical practitioner, he was required to notify them, and they were required to respond. “Jesse, Becca could barely tell me what happened, and I’m hardly an authority figure. She found it easier to articulate that the guy had given her candy—candy—than that he’d molested her, which is completely normal for a survivor of abuse, but I honestly don’t see her being able to go to the cops about any of this soon. And even if she were to, there’s not a shred of evidence to connect Jimmy Delgado to Lucia’s murder. Becca didn’t actually see him kill her. And it’s not like Lucia can testify.”
“But Delgado threatened to kill Becca’s parents if she told anyone what he did to her.”
“Sure, he threatened to. He threatened to do a lot of things, but he never did any of them, except what he did to Lucia, which we can’t prove. Even the things he did to Becca are her word against his, and she’s a kid who, thanks to me, now thinks the ghost of her best friend’s been following her around for the past decade. If she opens up her mouth about that, no one’s going to believe anything else she says. I definitely screwed the pooch on that one.”
We’d gotten into the car, where I began pulling off my uncomfortable pumps, one by one, and hurling them to the floor. Jesse watched me with one eyebrow raised in amusement. “Screwed the pooch?”
“Yeah. It means messed up. It’s more polite than saying—well, you can figure it out.”
Now one corner of his mouth went up. “I think you’re being too hard on yourself.”
“Am I? If we’re to believe what that Dunleavy woman says, Delgado’s a respectable business owner. He’s got the money to hire a good defense attorney, one who’d rip Becca to shreds in five minutes on the stand, given her current state of mind. And what are the chances Becca’s parents are going to allow that to happen? Zip.”
Jesse’s half smile vanished. “But a photographer of children? You know what that means, Susannah.”
“Yeah. About that.” I pulled my phone from my bag and scrolled to the article about Lucia’s death. “Becca said he used to do lots of things for the school, not just work in the stables. Take another look at that photo of Lucia.”
Jesse took the phone from me and stared at the photo. “What am I supposed to be seeing?”
“The photo credit. The print’s really tiny, but as soon as I heard it, I knew the name sounded familiar.”
“ ‘Photo by James Delgado,’” he read aloud, then glanced at me. “Nombre de Dios.”
“Right? They probably thought they could save a few bucks by having their friendly amateur photographer-slash-handyman, Jimmy Delgado, do the school photos that year. All they’d have to pay was printing costs. It was right after Father Francisco started and the school was in all that financial trouble, as we know from our little tour.”
“No wonder Lucia looks so solemn,” Jesse said softly. “She knew Becca’s secret. And his.”
“Of course it doesn’t prove anything, either, but if he did murder her, wouldn’t the coroner have—?”
“You told me that Becca said Jimmy’s tall. A broken neck would look the same to a coroner who didn’t know to suspect foul play, whether she’d suffered a violent fall from a horse or been thrown to the ground by a tall man who wanted her dead.”