twenty-four
AS I DROVE DOWN THE SHADED STREETS OF FAIR Oaks, I tried to get my thoughts in order. I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw the dark sedan that had followed me since I got on McCullough still behind me. The police tail, no doubt. It should’ve bugged me, but it was actually a comfort. Things were coming together too fast for me to assimilate. The report that Espinoza’s friend’s sancha had faxed told me Johnstone had some high-dollar vodka, steak, potato, butter, sour cream, asparagus, and geranium pudding in his stomach contents. Geranium pudding? I’d called a chef friend of mine, who said that geranium desserts were a gourmet food. That fit for a rich man, I supposed.
Hey, Ricardo, what proof was in this pudding?
The cause of death was officially listed as massive loss of blood. Paul Johnstone suffered from ulcers, and one had burned a hole in his stomach, so he bled out internally. The medical examiner had made notations that it seemed the victim’s apparent recent vomiting (according to the widow) had exacerbated the situation and could have caused the hole in his stomach to split wider. There was no cause listed for the vomiting. His arteries were clogged but not enough to kill him. His liver was compromised but not enough to shut down completely. He’d had enough alcohol in his system to dull the pain of his bleeding ulcer and have him shrug it off as a bout of the flu.
The guy was a mess, but something told me it probably wasn’t an accident that he’d died that day. The problem was, that something was nowhere in print.
A Ricardo Montoya was listed as one of the paramedics who transported Johnstone.
So now I had more pieces, but they had yet to fit together. Ricardo had a secret, out-of-wedlock love child raised by the most famous man in San Antonio. He was a penniless paramedic who answered the call on a wealthy man who died. Not long after, he gave up one career and bought a business, with which he became a smashing success. Twenty-five years later, he was stabbed to death with a brush pick. The child he never claimed may run for political office.
I sighed. How did it all fit together?
I was going to have to go shake the Van Dykes’ tree and see what fell out.
I felt a bit claustrophic for a moment and wondered why. I glanced into the rearview mirror again and saw the sedan was riding a little close to my bumper. Jerky cops, what were they trying to do, intimidate me on the isolated stretch of two-lane road that fell off into ten-foot-deep ditches on either side? Before I knew it, the sedan pulled next to the truck on the left and swerved, banging into the front panel. I slammed on the brakes, countered the swerve, narrowly avoiding the ditch. The car sped ahead. Then a bubble-gum blue Miata appeared seemingly out of nowhere, buzzed past me, and chased the sedan.
Yipes. I guess Mario got over his hair after all.
Before I could get back on the road, another dark sedan (I could’ve sworn it was a Crown Victoria) zoomed past after the other two.
Now, maybe a bunch of people were running really late to work today and I just got in the way, but I doubted it. I flirted with the idea of going after Mario to stop him but realized we’d be going around in circles, as the bad guy after me would have found me and started chasing me again. Instead of going to Mario’s rescue, I dialed his cell phone.
“Hola!” I could hear the screech of tires.
“Mario, I thought you were supposed to be babysitting me?”
“You left me! You butchered my pelo bonito, and then you left me!”
“Yes, and now you’ve left me.”
Screech. “Dios mío! Es claro. Espera. Wait for me, Reyn. I’ll turn around. Ai-ee. Someone is after me now. A big black car!”
“Mario, that’s the police. Get out of their way, and let them catch the guy.”
“Hokay. I’ll be back to you in a few minutes.”
“No, Mario, that scared me nearly to death. I’m on my way home. I’ll meet you there.”
“Promise?”
“You’re breaking up, Mario. See you at home.”
I cut the connection just as the Van Dyke house rose above me, a pinky-peach stucco monolith on the hill, with a driveway that wound its way up ostentatiously, lined by atrociously expensive transplanted palm trees. Most of the estates in Fair Oaks went out of their way to blend in with the Hill Country scenery of craggy limestone, sprawling live oaks, and patches of cedar. This one looked out of place—as if it belonged in Miami, above the coast at Cabo San Lucas, along the French Riveria, not just off a two-lane road in a small, albeit wealthy, community just north of San Antonio with no water in sight. I stopped at the gate and pressed the intercom button. I hadn’t pondered how I was going to talk my way in. With my luck, I knew whatever plan I fashioned would come apart at the seams. I decided to put one together as I went along instead.
“Oh, you’re early,” a terribly affected female voice blared over the speakers. “I’ll buzz you in, dahling.”
“Thank you.”
Wow. That was easy. Wonder who I was supposed to be?
Dahling? Uh-oh. I remembered Trudy’s client in Terrell Hills and who her darling was. Mixing with the moneyed set without the convenience of hiding behind my blow-dryer was making me nervous. Maybe I should’ve had a plan.
The gates opened with the speed of a sloth, and I wound my way quickly up the limestone-studded driveway before she realized I wasn’t who she thought I was.
I passed a gardener planting gold columbine under the palm trees. I waved. Mouth open, he looked at me as if I were landing a spaceship on the property. Guess not too many of the Van Dykes’ guests acknowledged the help. As I parked, I saw another gardener up in a palm, trimming a loose frond. I decided not to call a greeting to him for fear he’d lose his grip on the trunk and fall to the ground in shock.
Sarah Johnstone Van Dyke must have been watching my approach, because she opened the door with practiced panache as I hit the top porch step. Porch really wasn’t a good description of what was an Entrance with a capital E. It was meant to impress. So was she. Sarah was a perfect high-society specimen with her just-past-shoulder-length, fourteen-karat blond hair straight side-parted and drawn back in the newest sleek look (à la Gwyneth Paltrow) held at the nape with a jeweled barrette. The style, which was calculated for a cosmopolitan image, set off a sharp-featured (almost ferretlike), approaching-fifty face that had been carefully preserved by a Dallas plastic surgeon. I wonder if they know plastic surgeons leave their mark as well as artists do if you know what to look for. I’d done the hair around enough of his faces to know one on sight. Her body was a petite model size two, including surgically enhanced breasts, dressed in a flowing floral print blouse with peasant sleeves, white linen capris, and rainbow-patten leather sandals straight out of last month’s Neiman Marcus catalogue.
She was so perfectly presented she could be mistaken for a mannequin, except for the eyes. Her green eyes glittered with cunning. Cunning isn’t necessarily smart—cunning is knowing how to manipulate people to get ahead, cunning is knowing how many lies to tell to get what you want, and cunning could be more dangerous than smart any day.
I guessed that her cunning was dulled by her immense wealth, and that was in my favor.
She introduced herself, for which I thanked God that she hadn’t embraced me in a steamy kiss. I would’ve been out of there without the information I sought, that was for sure.
“I am so honored to meet you,” I said, groveling. She preened for a moment.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” she gushed. “I think it will be such a tremendous article.”
Article? So I was a reporter. And she was welcoming, so it was going to be a feature. “It should be,” I hedged.
“This strategy should really work, slipping the fact that Mike is going to run for the state representative seat into an article about our home.”
Ah-ha. Did Ricardo know? Did he meet with Van Dyke to tell him to lay off the challenge against Jon? But why, then, would he have the twenty-five-year-old article about Johnstone’s death? He must have had something to blackmail Van Dyke with. But what? Maybe he’d known sweet Sarah had knocked him off with pudding and could prove it. But how? There was no trace of poison in his system, according to the autopsy. But then, coroners in the late seventies didn’t have the technology they did today…
“It will really turn the tables on the media, have them thinking they’ve uncovered some big secret, and they will be all over it like mud on a pig.”
Oops, she was showing her common roots? Was she a farm girl turned society matron? Sarah caught herself and smiled. “Instead of a simple declaration that’s turned into nothing but a sound bite at ten, Mike’s campaign will be off with a bang. CNN or Fox might even pick it up.”
“Hopefully.”
“My husband is down at the tennis courts. He practically lives in his tennis whites…”
Double ah-ha.
“So I’ll take you down there after we talk, and you can meet him.”
“Perfect.”
“Where’s your photographer?” She looked around.
“We come separately. I get the copy and scout things out for him and then make recommendations about what to shoot.”
“I see. What do you want to do first, look around or do the interview?”
“Let me get some background first, then I’ll look around, then we can talk some more.”
“That will suit,” she said expansively. “I’ve canceled my masseuse for today.”
“How fortunate.” I smiled. “Tell me, how long have you lived here?”
“Nearly twenty years. Right after we got married, we tried living at my estate in Terrell Hills, but it was difficult for Mike to make it his own. And it was difficult for me with all the memories.”
I nodded. “I understand completely. That was the home you lived in with your first husband, Paul Johnstone?”
She stepped back, surprised. “You’ve done your research, haven’t you?”
“That’s my job.”
Sarah seemed satisfied, but I would have to tread carefully from here on out. “Paul died in the house, and I couldn’t go into that room again without remembering how horrible it was that night.”
“What happened?”
“Paul had been complaining of stomach pains for weeks. His color was bad. I thought his ulcer was getting worse, and his food experiments weren’t helping matters.”
“What food experiments?”
“Somebody had talked him into this gourmet dessert discovery using everyday plants and flowers—so he had the gardeners bringing him geranium, rose petals, lavender—depending on what he talked the cook into making that night.”
“How did they taste?”
“Truly awful, like rancid lemons, most of them. I don’t know how he choked them down. Of course, he chased every bite with a mouthful of Absolut. I think I tried two, and that was it for me. I stuck with Godiva chocolates from then on.”
Had the gardener brought in a poisonous plant accidentally a time or two? Or was it on purpose? I racked my brain for plants my sister told her kids to stay away from when they had their poison plant drill at home (Pecan is very militaristic in her parenting)—azalea, poinsettia, oleander.
“So poor Mr. Johnstone just keeled over, and you called for an ambulance?”
“Why are you so interested in this?” She stepped back, suspicious. “I thought the article was about the house and the campaign.”
I leaned into her like I had a confession to make. “I’m sorry. I’m freelance for other publications, and I’ve been hired to do a big spread on the history of paramedics for Parade, you know, that insert that goes nationwide in newspapers on Sundays?”
She nodded eagerly, cunning glittering to attention in those green orbs.
“And I thought I might be able to put in a quotation from you. The editors might want a photo, too, since I’d guess that cameras love you.” I waved off the idea. “But never mind, I apologize for bringing it up.”
That did it. Her greed for publicity won out over suspicion. “No. I suppose I could help you. What did you need to know?”
“How were the paramedics who responded to Mr. Johnstone?”
“They were fabulous, so soothing in my time of need, I just couldn’t have gotten through the ordeal without them.” Me, me, me. Her husband might have died of medical neglect. She probably mobbed them before they could get to poor Paul.
“In fact, one of them was so considerate that I took care of him as a little thank-you.”
Uh-oh, here it came, she did the nasty with Ricardo, and they had a love child, and…what? The jealous ghost of Paul is the one who killed him? Mike Van Dyke finally found out and blew a fuse twenty years later? Maybe she and Ricardo had a long-standing affair, and he found out, but, geez, I couldn’t see Ricardo with this affected mannequin of a woman. Celine Villita was more like it, because she was human under her veneer. Sarah Johnstone Van Dyke’s only sign of humanity was selfishness.
I sucked in a deep breath and went for the details. “Took care of him?”
“Yes.” She was obviously proud of herself. “A, uh, friend, recommended that it might be a nice gesture to thank the paramedic with a monetary gift. Kind of like a tip.”
“A tip.”
“Well, maybe more than a tip, it was fifty thousand dollars.”
“Fifty thousand dollars?” I blurted, trying not to choke to death on my tongue.
“Oh, please don’t print that. You don’t think the man will get in trouble for accepting it, do you?”
“Not now.”
“What do you mean?”
“Not after all this time.”
“Oh, good.”
“You don’t happen to remember his name, do you?”
Sarah narrowed her eyes. “Why do you want to know that? It doesn’t seem like something you’d put in the article.”
“I might want to find him and talk to him,” I clarified by the seat of my pants. “For the article.”
“My husband said we shouldn’t have anything else to do with him.” She crossed her arms over her chest.
“What does your husband have to do with it?”
She realized her mistake too late. “He, uh, was the friend I was talking about. Mike helped me through that difficult time so well, that’s how we became so close and fell in love. Living through a hardship will do that, you know. Look at the movie Titanic.”
Yeah, murdering your husband so you could marry your “friend” was real hardship, all right. This was the scenario beginning to form in my mind. I seriously doubted that Mike encouraged his “friend” Sarah to gift Ricardo with such a large sum out of the goodness of his heart. Ricardo knew something and promised to keep it a secret with a sudden influx of cash that he turned into an empire. It took me a moment to come to grips with the fact that my longtime mentor could be so calculating and amoral, but I’d always known Ricardo to be opportunistic. I just didn’t know it was to this degree.
A deadly degree, apparently.
Sarah was watching me suspiciously.
“Oh, Titanic, I just love that movie,” I lied. The guardedness in her face cleared somewhat, and she picked up the movie and went on about it ad nauseam.
I nodded at times I hoped were appropriate and thought more about what her revelations meant. My instincts told me Sarah was in the dark about any murder. Yeah, she married the old codger for money and might have been doing a “friend” for fun, but I thought Mike was behind any nefarious dealings. To give Mike the benefit of the doubt, I could say that maybe he and Sarah were just caught fooling around by Ricardo, and that’s what the hush money was for. But $50,000 was a lot of money in the eighties (heck, I thought it was a lot of money now), and why would Ricardo be dead twenty-five years later if the secret he was protecting wasn’t against any law but a biblical one?
The political race and the apparent coincidence that Van Dyke chose to run against Villita’s (Ricardo’s) son bugged me.
I looked at Cinderella on my wrist and exclaimed at the time. “I guess we’d better get back to the original reason for my visit.”
Sarah nodded, only slightly disappointed to be derailed from describing Leonardo di Caprio.
“Does anyone know your husband plans to run for office?”
“I don’t see what this has to do with—”
I held up a hand. “I just need to know how big a revelation this will be. The bigger the story, the better placement in the magazine.”
“Oh, of course,” Sarah agreed. “The only person who knows is the chairman of the county’s Republican Party.”
Whose wife is the friend of the friend of Mama Tru’s. The friend who gets her hair done by Ricardo and must have told Ricardo that Van Dyke planned to run against Jon Villita. What did Ricardo do with that information?
“It’ll be a big surprise, then.”
“Oh, yes!” she breathed.
“Se?ora!?” A maid called out to us from one of the thousand glass doors along the back side of the house.
“What is it? Didn’t I tell you I wasn’t to be disturbed?”
The maid looked secretly pleased to have pissed on her patron’s parade. She hid it well, though. “But, Se?ora, there is someone at the gate who says she is a reporter.”
Uh-oh.
Sarah looked at me and blinked. The liar in me kicked in just in time. “Maybe the media’s found out about Mike’s run. Do you think?”
“It certainly is possible.” She was already calculating the degree of attention the media would be paying her. She was bursting with excitement and hid it poorly with a big sigh. “I suppose we’re about to be mobbed with cameras and reporters and live TV vans. I must go and deal with this. Why don’t you go down and talk to my husband, and I will join you as soon as I can?”
“Good idea.”
“I can get Isadora”—she waved toward the maid—
“to take you down there.”
“No, no need to take her from her work. I can find the tennis courts.” The hell I would. I was out of there. I had a feeling Mike Van Dyke knew exactly who I was and might make it a mission to see I never got out of there.
Sarah hustled off in her pencil-heeled sandals, and I looked for a way back to the driveway that would keep me hidden until she and the reporter got out of sight. I was picking my way through a patch of tropical bushes when a man with a machete jumped out from behind a hibiscus.
“Ack!” I screamed as my heinie got friendly with the pointed end of a bird-of-paradise leaf.
“I’m sorry.” The gardener I’d waved at earlier put down the machete and helped me out of the bird-of-paradise.
His face was weathered from being out in the sun for years, but it was warm and inviting.
“No, I should say I’m sorry, because I think I startled you earlier.”
“Oh, you did. We don’t get many folks up here who pay us any mind. Sometimes I go home wondering if I’m invisible.”
I shook my head. “Worked for the Van Dykes long?”
“Nearly thirty years. Mr. Johnstone was first class. Van Dyke, now, he’s been a Stalin since he moved from the cabana into the big house.”
“What do you mean?”
“He worked here, was one of my assistants.”
“He was? I heard Mr. Johnstone liked to use plants from his garden in his menus. Did Van Dyke happen to help compile the mixings for those gourmet desserts?”
The gardener wrinkled his already wrinkled brow. “You know, he did. He actually talked Mr. Johnstone into it.”
“Geranium isn’t poisonous, is it?”
“No, ma’am.” He warmed quickly to the subject of the garden. “You know, the only plant we had that was poisonous on the place back then was oleander. Another one of Mike’s projects. He talked Mr. Johnstone into planting a whole row of it along the back fence. Pretty blooms in the spring, but I’m not terribly fond of it myself. I’ve got grandkids. I know the sap of the leaves is bitter, and they wouldn’t eat much of it, but you don’t like to take chances with that kind of thing.”
“No, sir,” I agreed as my heart pounded in my chest.
“So the sap’s bitter, kind of like rotten lemons?”
“Yes, ma’am, just like that, but it would take more than a bite to kill you, and they say that the taste of the cardenolide glycoside toxin would stop anyone with sense, but…”He shrugged.
“Better safe than sorry,” I offered. He nodded. I held out my hand and thanked him for saving me from my leaf stabbing. He retrieved his machete and went back to work. I turned and had made my way through the grounds and almost to my truck, when I saw a flash of white out of the corner of my eye. I knew without looking that I should hurry.
“You!”
It was the same greeting I got from Short, Hairy, and Menacing, but I didn’t think Van Dyke was going to be quite as nice as the Illusions manager had been. I ran, leaped across the massive porch, and made it to my truck just as the front door opened. Sarah and the real reporter walked onto the porch. Mike Van Dyke collided with the reporter as I zoomed down the driveway, trying not to go up on two wheels as I skidded around the ridiculous hairpin turns.
As soon as I was out of the gate, I dialed my cell phone. I blew out a breath and started to think about how far I’d misjudged Ricardo’s character. I didn’t have long to come to grips with it, since Gerald answered on the second ring. “Hi, Boss.”
“Don’t call me that, Gerald.”
“Oh, okay,” he said, resigned. “I knew you’d want someone else for the job eventually.”
“No, that’s not what I mean.” I rolled my eyes skyward. “I mean, just don’t call me Boss. I can barely boss myself, much less anyone else.”
“Are you all right, Reyn?”
“I’m great. I just need some information from you about Ricardo. It goes back a ways.”
“I’ve got everything computerized, and here I sit. So go ahead and ask.”
“Can you find out how much money Ricardo used to set up his first salon?”
“Hold on,” Gerald said. I heard the computer keys tapping. “He set up an account in the Ricardo’s, Inc., name in 1979 with fifty thousand dollars.”
“Cash?”
“I don’t know, Reyn, that detail isn’t in here. But, you know, that would be a lot of cash for someone to have on hand. Unless an investor gave it to him that way, which would be a little fishy. I have to dig through some file boxes, but I’ll check for you. By the way, when you were at my house, do you remember seeing a set of keys to Ricardo’s house lying around anywhere?”
“Uh-oh, Gerald, you’re breaking up. I’ll call you back when I have a better signal.” I hung up. I kept an eye on the rearview mirror as I took an unusual route home. Celine Villita had threatened me, I was being followed, and Mike Van Dyke looked like he’d wanted to get his hands on me, and not for an autograph. For the first time since I’d started my crusade, I felt I was in too deep with no way out. That’s when I swallowed my pride and dialed a number I thought I’d never call.