“Could be. I don’t know.”
“And then he didn’t come in Thursday or Friday?”
Gaby’s confident voice began to wobble. “That’s right.”
“Was that unusual?”
The girl looked pained, as if she had suddenly discovered a pebble in her bra.
“Ricardo often didn’t come in on Thursdays until late in the day.”
Lana nodded encouragingly. “Do you know why?”
“I think he might have had someone . . . special in his life.” The girl looked embarrassed. “Ricardo lived north of here, in Santa Cruz proper. But some Wednesdays, he’d leave the office going south. And the following Thursdays, he’d come in late, from the south too. I think he was staying over somewhere.”
“You watched his car?”
Gaby surprised Lana with a giggle, a tinkling glockenspiel of amusement. “Ricardo didn’t drive a car. He was against it.”
Lana was confused. “Did he use rideshares?”
“He biked. All the time.”
“Even to meetings?”
“Everywhere.”
“So even if he was meeting with a big donor . . .”
“He’d bike. He had two panniers—bike bags—that were strapped behind the seat. He used one for his laptop, and he carried a change of clothes in the other.” Gaby smiled at the appalled look on Lana’s face. “Some of our donors? They thought it was cute. Like he was really committed. And he was. To his bike.”
“He took good care of it, huh?”
“Have you ever known a guy who loved his truck? Always shining the chrome and rotating the tires and calling it baby?”
Lana gave Gaby a wan smile, along with a silent thanks to God that she had never been intimate with such a man.
“Ricardo was like that with his bike. He even had a drawing of it tattooed on his butt.” Gaby blushed. “I mean, that’s what I heard.”
“Sounds like quite an athlete.”
“Oh yeah. A health nut too. He refused to get a smartphone, said it rotted your brain. And he never took a sick day. Ever.”
Lana closed her eyes for a moment. She should have known it wasn’t a doctor. Just because she had cancer didn’t mean the whole world was ailing. She could see the letters DR curled on the inside of her eyelids, Ricardo and Diana, on Wednesday nights, rolling around on a bearskin rug in front of the fire at the Rhoads ranch house.
Lana pushed the image out of her mind and refocused on the young woman in front of her. Gaby looked at ease now, watching the tanned, toned gap between the delivery man’s T-shirt and his jeans. But Lana had caught a whiff of discomfort earlier. There was something Gaby didn’t want to talk about.
“So Ricardo often came in late on Thursdays,” Lana said, drawing Gaby’s attention reluctantly back to her. “But the week he was killed, he didn’t come in Thursday at all?”
“That’s . . . right.” Gaby’s face turned nervous again, like the conversation had careened into a ditch. There was something ugly there. Something about that Thursday, the day before Ricardo died.
“Surely the detectives asked about his absence,” Lana said.
“Yes.” Gaby was looking at her shoes now.
“What did you tell them?”
The girl traced a tiny circle in the sidewalk with the toe of her shoe.
“Victor told us to say he was out sick,” she mumbled.
“But Ricardo didn’t take sick days.”
“No.” Gaby’s voice was getting softer, as if she were trying to fade into the asphalt.
“Gaby. Just between us. What happened?”
Gaby looked miserable. She glanced around the sidewalk, but there was no one to overhear them, or to rescue her.
“There was a fight,” Gaby whispered. Her words were tumbling out quickly now. “That Thursday. The day after the meeting with the doughnuts. Ricardo and Victor were in the library. At first it was quiet, but then Victor started yelling. When Victor is passionate about something, he can get really intense. Not violent or anything . . .” Gaby shook her head. “But we could hear everything. It was awful.”
“What was he saying?”
“He was shouting about honor and betrayal and how Ricardo had taken advantage of him.”
“What happened after the argument?”
“Ricardo grabbed his panniers and stormed out. I—I never saw him again.”
Gaby raised her eyes to meet Lana’s. Tears were running down her cheeks, bringing wet streaks of mascara with them.
“Victor cared about Ricardo. I know he did. He called him hijo, his son. And for that to be the last time they spoke . . .” She broke down again.
Lana dug into her purse and extracted a set of tissues and a compact. She handed them to Gaby and waited, thinking, while the girl pulled herself back together.
She was finally getting somewhere. She knew where Ricardo had been: on Wednesday night, he stayed with Diana. Thursday, he broke the news to Victor about leaving the land trust to work with Hal on Verdadera Libertad. They argued. And then Ricardo went—where?
“Do you remember which direction Ricardo biked when he left? After that fight?”
Gaby still looked miserable. “South.”
South. Back to Diana. Lana tried to imagine how Ricardo must have felt that day. Did he bike to the ranch after the fight with Victor to seek comfort from Diana? Did he go there to tell her about the Verdadera Libertad project, only to be murdered by her the next day? Or was it possible Victor had been angry enough to kill Ricardo over his betrayal? Victor could have contacted Ricardo asking to meet at the land trust property by the slough that Friday, to talk things out, to reconcile. Ricardo wouldn’t have thought to be afraid, wouldn’t have necessarily told anyone or brought someone with him.
Her thoughts were broken by Gaby, pressing Lana’s compact back into her hand. When Lana looked up, Gaby’s face was back in order. She looked luminous, unbreakable, as confident as Lana felt unsure. Lana knew the look, knew its benefits, the way beauty could serve as armor.
Lana accepted her compact and the unused tissues with a nod. “You’ve given me a lot to think about, Gaby. And no need to mention our chat to anyone. Women like us have to stick together, right?”
For a moment, Lana saw a fault line open on Gaby’s face, a tiny frisson of worry rippling the perfectly smooth surface of her skin. Then the girl breathed out a small sigh. She turned away from Lana, toward the clump of workmen, stretching her back in a way that lengthened her hair and pushed her breasts toward the sun.
“Ms. Rubicon, I’ve already forgotten we spoke.”
Lana slid back into her car and checked her watch. There was just enough time to get home and lie down for a bit before Jack got back from school.
As she drove, her mind drifted. She imagined Ricardo biking down to the ranch to see Diana. It had to be at least fifteen miles. Biking. What was the appeal? Lana passed two women in tight floral unitards, pedaling hard on the shoulder of the highway, the ocean glittering off to their right. Sure, their calves looked phenomenal, but the idea of going head-to-head with automobile traffic terrified Lana. Not to mention the damage a helmet could do to your hair.