Mariachi Meddler Page 5

  “The other guy was married to a woman.”

  “Sometimes gays marry to throw everyone off guard.”

  “These murders could have started as robberies.”

  Phil pursed his lips. “I’m a waiter, so what do I know? Somebody else will have to worry about the world.” He stood as he collected my glass and the rag. “Let me make you another frappé. No extra charge.”

  Two murders in the middle of Vegas in two days. Violent robberies were unusual because most thieves preferred tamer methods of obtaining money such as overcharging customers or fudging numbers. These victims suggested a different type of crime.

  When I called Liliana on my way back to the hotel, a cheerful voice bubbled through the line. “Do you know what my brother did? Without telling us, he stopped in Hermosillo.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “Rolando decided to visit an old friend! He’d planned to stay for the afternoon, but they had so much fun catching up that he stayed for two days. I almost broke his neck when I saw him because I was so worried, but silly me! Here I am talking, talking. I’m sure you want to speak to Rolando yourself, but he’s taking a shower. Should I have him call you back?”

  “Thanks, but there’s nothing important. Tell him I’m glad he arrived without a problem.”

  I hung up before she asked anything else I didn’t want to answer.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  I couldn’t find any information about Chester Mathews, but the phone book gave me Leonard’s address and number, the same one that had been dialed from Rolando’s apartment. The jaunt to Henderson took forty minutes because roadwork had reduced eastbound traffic to a single lane. Normally I enjoyed driving around in the desert, but today I didn’t have time to appreciate landscape. I had to fly back to Orange County in the late afternoon.

  I didn’t have a map, but the attendant at the Shell station sent me in the basic direction of Portland Street, and an elderly couple out for a stroll gave me more specifics. The street was in a quiet neighborhood east of the town center and only a few blocks from the Interstate. The area was modest and pleasant, secure enough not to show off fancy balconies or gaily decorated walls. It didn’t look like the part of town where you’d inquire about a murder victim.

  The woman who answered the door was attractive despite the rings under her eyes. She wasn’t the kind of woman who would immediately catch your attention on a dance floor, but she was the kind you’d notice the second time around. Back on the Strip, her tattered blouse and frayed jean shorts would have suggested desperation. In Henderson the wardrobe suggested gardening or home repairs.

  “Mrs. Leonard, I know this is a bad time, but I wanted to offer condolences for the loss of your husband.” I held out my hand. “I’m Andy Veracruz.”

  “I’m sorry, but I’m not interested in donating money in my husband’s name, at least not at this time.”

  I didn’t blame her for being jaded, but a funeral chaser would have been wearing a suit instead of a polo shirt and rumpled shorts.

  “No, ma’am. I don’t represent any particular organization. I’m a musician from L.A., but I work in Vegas from time to time. Your husband was a fond acquaintance of mine, and since I was out of town, I just now found out about his death.”

  “I’m sorry if I seemed rude.” Her eyes glistened at the edges, but she’d had practice at holding back. “You knew Stephen because of the hotel.”

  I nodded, which I convinced myself was better than lying outright. “You’ve come a long way, then. Won’t you come in?”

  She led me to a small kitchen stuffed with spices, pots, pans, and decorative tiles in primary colors. In the middle was a table, and at her bidding I sat before her.

  “I’m not sure I’m coherent, but perhaps it is good for me to talk. You’ll have coffee? I have some ready.”

  I nodded. The coffee pot stood on the counter, half-full of stale coffee from early in the morning. “I can’t imagine the shock you’ve had.”

  As she shuddered, I could see emotion streak through her face like the aftershock of an earthquake. “It hasn’t sunk in yet. It can’t. The funeral is tomorrow.” She handed me a cup of coffee and placed a sugar bowl and creamer within reach. “Perhaps you will come?”

  “I’ll do my best, Mrs. Leonard.”

  “Call me Edith. Have you stayed at Hotel Farfalla often?”

  Earlier I’d strolled past Leonard’s hotel, which was catty-corner to Lorenzi Park. The pink stucco facade was dated but friendly. When I looked in, the lobby was crowded with tourists checking in and out— one result of being right off Highway 95.

  “I met Stephen at the park. We were both partial to the doughnut shop next door.”

  “Doughnuts! My husband would often bring home a box. He couldn’t resist freshly baked sweets. He promised me he would lose twenty pounds this year. I said it didn’t matter, that I loved him even if—”

  This time she did start to cry. I stretched my hand to pat her arm and for several full seconds listened to the sounds of loss.

  “I’m sorry to cry in front of you,” she finally said.

  “Crying is cathartic.”

  “You are very kind.”

  “You’ve had a shock. To lose a spouse to illness—even an auto- accident—that’s horrible enough. As humans, we manage. But to lose a loved one to random crime?”

  “To crime?”

  “There are so many vagabonds on the streets, looking for a little change—”

  “Stephen’s death had nothing to do with money. I can assure you of that.”

  “How could he have enemies?”

  Edith said nothing, so I waited. Part of her wanted to keep her husband’s memory pure—the rest of her needed an outlet. The outlet won.

  “He had a jealous lover. You know who I mean.”

  “Yiolanda.”

  Edith blinked yes.

  Yiolanda had no doubt created jealous lovers, but I couldn’t imagine Edith being one. “Surely you don’t think Yiolanda killed your husband?”

  Edith clenched her teeth. “Sully her hands? No. She hired a professional.”

  The widow had played to my worst fears. It was bad enough to have Noche Azul linked to one murder. Now it might be two. And why shouldn’t it be more than that? The money stolen from the restaurant wasn’t wardrobe money.

  “I guess the woman’s family is from around here,” I said.

  “Her rich-bitch mother is the major stockholder in The Florence Renaissance, that theme hotel at the bottom of the strip. That’s how Stephen met Yiolanda. She’d gone with her mother to a city planning meeting about increasing tourism. They probably plotted to ruin my husband together.”

  Edith knew the tale by heart. For years she’d been writing the story of her husband’s lover, the one she needed to hear so she wouldn’t go crazy.

  “I’d be surprised if Yiolanda resorted to murder,” I said gently, not sure whether I believed it or not.

  Edith crossed her arms in a stronghold. “She got tired of waiting to have him as her husband. Oh, she tried! But Stephen was only tempted by her body. She couldn’t touch his soul.”

  “I thought this Yiolanda was married.”

  “Yes. First to a stupid man who had no idea what he was getting into and second to the fantasy of stealing my husband, the father of my son. She was willing to do anything she could to achieve her dream, but still she failed. She destroyed him instead.”

  I pointed to my empty coffee cup. “Do you mind if I … ” I started to stand, but Edith took my cup, waved for me to sit down, and poured refills.

  “I knew she was dangerous from the beginning. We were already living in Vegas. Stephen was managing a hotel near Plaza Mall. When he came home from that planning meeting, he was a different person. She’d bewitched him.”

  “Surely they didn’t start seeing each other because of a brief meeting.”

  “That came later, after he and his brother bought a small hotel, and Yiolanda learned why
he’d re-named it Hotel Farfalla.”

  “Farfalla sounds Italian.”

  She nodded.

  “Some kind of flower?”

  “Butterfly. That’s what he called her, since she was always flitting about. Stupid man. He should have called her his moth. She followed him as a moth follows a light bulb, bumping into the hot glass until it burns out. Only he got burnt instead.”

  “I thought Yiolanda lived in L.A. How would she know about the hotel?”

  “Yiolanda has only been in California for the past few years. Before that she lived right downtown. She and Stephen got together whenever they could.” She shook her fist. “I could always tell when he’d been with her, never mind what time he got in. He’d come home with a damned glow.” Her anger choked her mid-thought. She caught herself and regained her momentum. “When she wouldn’t see him, he was horrible. Short-tempered with Theo, our son. Critical of his staff. He nearly hit me once, but he caught himself in time. Otherwise I’d have sent him to jail.”

  “You didn’t consider leaving him?”

  “Mr. Veracruz, please. What about our Theo? I would not let this woman win. Ever!” The small muscles in her shoulders twitched. “It’s bad enough that she ruined the family name. Not a month ago, she had the audacity to ask Stephen to lend her money. Needs to buy property, she says. Told him her life depended on it! Dramatic bitch.”

  “I thought you said her mother was wealthy.”

  “I never said she shared.”

  I drained the blue-gray coffee mug and pushed it towards the center of the table. “I’m sorry to hear all this, Mrs. Leonard. I didn’t realize Stephen’s murder had such implications.”

  She patted my hand. “I like you, Mr. Veracruz. You don’t pretend Yiolanda doesn’t exist, like Stephen’s other friends, and they are too dense to think of good lies. Tell me, is she beautiful?”

  “You’ve never seen her?”

  “Once. From a distance. I was afraid that if I got closer, I’d hit her so hard she’d wind up in the next county.”

  I paused. “She has big green eyes. I suppose some men are mesmerized by that.”

  “What else?”

  “She’s a common flirt. There’s nothing else.”

  When I got back to Squid Bay, I went straight to the beach. The sun was already low and the water felt cold, but my head was swimming with information I hadn’t anticipated. I tried to clear my head, but I kept thinking about Edith and her fatherless child.

  After I forced myself to plunge into the water, I swam crooked laps against the waves.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  When I got to Noche Azul, the tables were full and the crowd hummed with anticipation. Yiolanda was the first person to greet me. She hugged me from her perch at the bar stool, an extravagant reaction for a two-day absence. Through the thin brown dress, her nipples wiggled against my chest. “Finally! Where have you been?”

  When your employer knows that your parents are deceased, you have neither wife nor children, and your only other sibling was doing your work, you have to think creatively when you need an instant excuse. Yiolanda had caught me off guard; I couldn’t think fast enough. I hadn’t expected her to be at the restaurant, but I should have been more prepared.

  “I had to go out of town.”

  “They wouldn’t tell me where.”

  “Johnny, get me some water, won’t you?” The bartender poured me a glass of mineral water, room temperature. The evening was warm, but cold beverages lopped half a tone off my singing range. “Joey said he would play for me. Didn’t he show up?”

  “Of course.”

  She smiled coyly. I tried to imagine her red nails locking their way around a gun or her full, dark lips ordering a hit, but I couldn’t do it. Yiolanda was an expert at using nothing stronger than charm to get what she wanted, yet she’d been at the murder scenes of two victims and was the lover of a third. I could hardly blame coincidence.

  “Why have you been crying?” She’d used dark make-up to mask the effect, but her eyelids were swollen.

  “It’s nothing. Bad news from back home.”

  “Your mother?”

  “No, no. Just a friend.” She looked away, preferring to end the conversation if she couldn’t change the subject.

  I checked the dirt under my fingernails. “I hope you don’t mind that I sent in Joey to cover for me. He plays well enough, but he doesn’t have much time to practice.’

  “Joey was fine. He kept Pablo and Sergio laughing all night with his jokes. In between, they mostly played dance numbers.”

  When we had lively crowds, we concentrated on cumbias so that the audience—foreign or Hispanic—would start dancing. As long as the first couple was brave enough to come up to the small dance floor in front of the band, others would follow.

  “I’m out of jokes. I should have let Joey come back tonight.”

  “No!” Her force surprised her as much as it did me. She glanced around to see if someone had heard. When she put her hand on my shirtsleeve, I could feel the tip of each nail on my forearm right above the surface of the cloth. “I’m glad you’re here. I have felt very nervous.”

  She quivered as if she were prepared to duck under a chair, and her voice barely registered a whisper. Her usual fluid body movements made today’s seem stilted. It was a pretty good act.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked.

  Hernando and Sergio started plucking their strings so that I’d get the hint that it was time to be on stage.

  “I don’t know. I have a bad feeling.”

  I nodded silently. I had a bad feeling of my own, mainly that I’d wasted frequent flyer miles to travel to Vegas.

  “Last night two men came in together. I didn’t like how they looked at me.”

  The lie was shameless; Yiolanda liked the way all men looked at her. I took a step closer towards my friends, forcing my expression to stay neutral.

  “How did they look at you, Yiolanda?”

  Very hard.”

  “Like the two guys the other night?”

  “Harder.”

  From the stage, my companions plucked more loudly.

  I took a half step in their direction. “Had you ever seen them before?”

  “No. But they were Hispanic.” She paused. “They made me feel afraid.”

  Yiolanda was five and a half feet tall. Her slender arms showed no muscle, and I knew for a fact that she never went to a gym.

  “Why?”

  “I was afraid they’d come back.” Her top lip trembled.

  “You don’t have to feel that you’re in this alone. Everyone is here to help you. Dennis, Corinna, Tomás—”

  My companions gave up and started without me.

  “I don’t want them to know I’m afraid,” she whispered. “I wouldn’t want to start a panic.”

  Because the Noche Azul staff had worked so closely together for so long, information traveled as a bullet and the general mood shifted as a weather vane.

  “If the men come back, signal me. I’ll help you talk to them.”

  “You won’t mind?”

  “Of course not.”

  I climbed on stage and joined in on Maracumbé, one of my favorite songs, just as the trio hit the verse explaining that Maracumbé was out drinking because of the love he had for a woman. Suddenly the song had extra resonance. For once it didn't seem like an ironic exaggeration.

  If he were still alive, Stephen Leonard might have been thinking the very same thing.

  ***

  “What do you want to sing?” Pablo asked during a lull.

  “How about Corazón de roca?” I asked without thinking. “What key do I sing it in?”

  Pablo searched his memory. Heart of Stone. You sing it in F.”

  “Did Stefani dump you last night?” asked Sergio. “So far you’ve sung Por un amor, Amor perdido, and Dos amores.”

  Indeed, For a Love, Lost Love, and Two Loves were a cheerful collection of tunes for the love-struck.
<
br />   They assumed I’d asked for the night off to spend time with Stefani. The last thing I wanted was to do anything that might change their minds.

  “I think Stefani and I need a permanent break from one another.”

  “I thought you said maybe she was the one,” Pablo smiled.

  “Then I had time to think about it.”

  Sergio nodded. “Why limit yourself? Look over there!”

  A few feet from the stage, the table of four blondes suggested endless possibilities. The young women were giggling now, watching us to see if we were paying any attention. From the red in their cheeks, they were tourists who’d spent the day on the beach and would have sunburns by tomorrow.

  “In some ways being married is good,” observed Pablo.

  Sergio shook his head. “Name one!”

  “You sleep well most of the time.”

  Sergio laughed. “You want to sleep well? I guess, at your age—”

  From the cashier’s desk, Yiolanda waved to get my attention. Then she pointed to the two customers who had passed her on their path into the main dining hall.

  The men took a side table set for six people. They were unusually tall, but their straight black hair and brown skin yelled Hispanic. They both wore dress pants and dark silk shirts that were unbuttoned low enough to reveal their chests. One wore a silver cross, the other several gold chains. They were young—perhaps in their late twenties. They ignored the affable Dennis and took menus from him in silence as they tinkered with the exact positioning of their chairs.

  I acknowledged Yiolanda but stayed put as she and I observed the men from equidistant spots at opposite ends of the room. The men studied the surroundings without exchanging words. When Dennis returned to their table, they glanced at the menu before pointing to selections.

  Yiolanda motioned for me to join her, so I slipped over to the cashier’s desk between songs. She grabbed my arm and led me out to the street where no one could overhear us. “Those are the men who came last night!”

  “They don’t look dangerous. They look uncomfortable. Maybe their fancy shirts are sticking to them.”

  “By the time I got home last night, I was shaking.” She was shaking now too, but she was trying to mask it.