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chapter Seventeen

Cruz was finishing a report on the latest homicide when his phone rang. He picked it up. “Montoya,” he said.

“Myers here,” said the caller.

“Is Meg okay?” Cruz asked, his stomach cramping up. It couldn’t be good that the detective was calling him again so soon after their last conversation.

“As far as I know,” he said. “Look, I’ve got a situation here that I need your help with.”

Cruz picked up his coffee cup and took a drink. “I’m listening.”

“I got a call from Debi Moulin. She said that she and her husband, Frank, had heard that you were asking questions about Troy Blakely. They have some information that you might find helpful.”

“So what is it?” Cruz asked.

“That’s the problem. They won’t tell me. Said they would only talk to you. In person.”

“Unless they’re willing to get on a plane and come to Chicago, I don’t see how that’s going to happen.”

“I told them that. I told them that you had no official capacity in this case. They said that they’d prayed about it and you were the one they could talk to. If you can be at their house at ten in the morning on Friday, they’ll talk with you.”

Cruz said a word that people who were prayerful didn’t generally approve of. Myers laughed.

He could get the time off. That wasn’t the problem. But to see Meg and know that she loved someone else, that was asking too much.

But it could put the threat to Meg to bed. And then he’d be able to stop worrying about her night and day.

Stop thinking about her.

Right. He needed to be satisfied with what he could get.

“Okay,” Cruz said. “I’ll be there.” He hung up, not having any idea that the man on the other end of the line was smiling.

He realized that while he’d been talking to Myers another call had come in to his voice mail. He listened to the message, feeling his heart rate accelerate when he heard Meg’s voice. Something to talk to you about. Not an emergency.

He hung up, feeling worse than ever.

It could only be one thing. She and Slater were getting married.

He didn’t call her back. He just couldn’t.

* * *

LESS THAN TWENTY-FOUR hours later, Cruz’s plane landed at the San Antonio airport. He rented a car and headed toward Haileyville. At five minutes before ten, he was knocking on the Moulins’ door.

Frank Moulin had salt-and-pepper hair and a belly. Cruz guessed him to be about sixty. Seconds later, when his wife joined him at the door, he realized that she was at least twenty years younger.

“I’m Cruz Montoya,” he said. “I understand you wanted to talk with me.”

They ushered him into their home. The rooms were small with dark paneling on the walls. The air conditioner was noisy, running on high. Frank sat in a big chair and Debi perched on the arm of the chair. Cruz sat on the sofa opposite them.

“We’re not sure we want to get involved,” Debi said. “But we’ve prayed and prayed and believe it’s the right thing to do.”

“You have information about Troy Blakely?”

She nodded. “We moved into the area seven years ago, after we got married. Second marriages for both of us,” she added. “When Gloria Blakely learned that, she opened up to me since she was on her second marriage, too.”

Debi stood up and started to pace around the room. “She was a real nice person. And she really loved Ted. But there was a sadness about her. One day, about three years ago, I saw a strange car over there. And I could hear some yelling but couldn’t make out what they were saying. After the car left, I went over and she was crying something awful. She said that her son had been to see her.”

Debi stopped in front of an old table, moved the lamp back a few inches, and straightened the shade. “I was surprised,” she said, her back to Cruz. “I’d never heard her mention a son before. She wouldn’t say much more but I got the impression that it had been some time since she’d seen the boy.”

She turned and looked at Cruz. “I got her settled down and thought that was the end of it. Then that night, I heard a terrible ruckus in the middle of the night. I got up, looked out and saw somebody with a baseball bat breaking all the windows in the Blakely house.”

She sat back down on the arm of her husband’s chair and he put his hand on her knee. “It was him,” she said. “It was the son. I saw him. I called the police.”

“Did they arrest him?” Cruz asked.

“He was gone before they got here,” she said. “When they questioned me, I told them that I’d heard the noise. I didn’t tell them what I saw.”

“Why not?” Cruz asked.

Frank Moulin sat forward in his chair. “Because I told her not to. My wife saw the man drive away. But she saw something else, too. Gloria Blakely was standing in the front door. She knew who had done the damage. But if she wasn’t going to tell the police then I didn’t think we should stick our noses into it and tell them anything, either. It was a family matter.”

“Did either of the Blakelys ever talk about it again?”

“No, and we didn’t bring it up,” Debi said. “But then Janice across the street said that you’d been here asking about them. I miss them. They were good neighbors. And I just thought it was time that somebody knew the truth.”

Cruz pulled out the picture of Troy Blakely. “Was this the man that you saw?”

Debi studied the picture. A minute passed. Finally she looked up. “Well, his hair was different, but I got a real good look at his face both times and I’m sure it is the same man.”

“One of your neighbors said that they thought the Blakelys might have lost a child, a little girl. Do you know anything about that?”

Debi shook her head. Frank stood up. “We’ve told you everything we know. Maybe something happened in Maiter. Ted Blakely told me once that Gloria had come from there.”

Maiter. Meg and Gloria Blakely had both lived there.

He left the Moulins and headed south. He thought about calling Myers but decided to wait until he knew something more concrete.

Maiter, Texas, wasn’t postcard-perfect but it had the makings of a nice community. There was a main street, with mostly full storefronts. A couple restaurants, a laundry, an attorney, chiropractor and two gas stations where gas was forty cents higher a gallon than in San Antonio.

He started in one of the restaurants. It had maroon carpet, green and maroon chairs, and noisy air-conditioning that didn’t seem to be working all that well. The menu was plastic, two-sided, and had at least fifty things on it, everything from spaghetti to shrimp dinners to burritos.

He ordered a hamburger and a cup of coffee and got busy checking out the possibilities. There was a table of gray-hairs, ladies in their late seventies to early eighties. They were in a corner and there was one empty chair. He wondered if it had recently just become available; they were at the age where funeral attendance became a regular event.

He figured at least a couple of them had lived in Maiter for their whole lives. When his burger arrived, he ate quickly. Then he took a final sip of coffee, threw a bill on the table to cover lunch and approached the women.

“Ladies, could I have a minute of your time?”

They sized him up. Several smiled.

“Yes,” said the woman at the end. She wore a pink button-down shirt with white slacks. She had white hair and not-very-white teeth.

“I’m trying to find an old friend. She lived here almost twenty years ago. Her name was Margaret Gunderson.”

Two of the women at the far end of the table exchanged glances. One, who had a butterfly tattoo on her upper arm, narrowed her eyes but she didn’t say anything.

Pink Shirt shook her head. “I don’t recall anyone by that name.”

The tattooed woman leaned forward. “Yes, you do, Angie. That was the girl who got in trouble at the Percy house.”

Others at the table nodded. “That’s right,” one said. “Such a sad situation.”

Trouble. Sad situation. What the hell?

He forced himself to appear relaxed. “I’m not sure I ever heard that story,” he said. “If it would help me find Margaret, I’d really appreciate hearing it.”

Now all eyes were on Tattoo Lady. She was evidently the team storyteller.

“Well, as I recall, it was the spring of ’95 or maybe even ’96. The Gundersons and the Percys were next-door neighbors, real good people. I think the husbands both worked over at the tire plant.” She took a deep breath. “Yes, that’s right, because the trouble continued over there.”

Cruz was lost and he wanted the details straight in his head. “What trouble?”

“I’m getting to that,” she said. “Margaret regularly babysat for the Percy children. She was a nice girl, very responsible.”

Now that made sense.

“The baby was almost two. Real sweet and so pretty.”

He nodded, hoping that she’d get to something soon that would help him.

Tattoo Lady took a sip of coffee. “Margaret made a mistake. That’s all there is to it. A terrible mistake.”

“What happened?” he asked, getting to the end of his patience.

“Why, she killed the baby.”