“Do you know if he owed money?”
Torres stroked his mustache and smiled. “Everybody down here owes money, carnal.”
“Yeah, but I’m talking big money. Enough to make him do something desperate like rob Ricardo Luis’s house.”
“Dunno.” Torres gestured to Vega with his soda can. “You’re the cop. Not me.”
“Father Delgado made Ponce out to be this great guy. Very loyal and family-oriented.”
“So’s the mafia.” Torres’s phone rang in his pocket. He checked the caller ID. “Listen, Jimmy—I gotta take this call. But if there’s something I can help you on with Ponce, just let me know. I’ll drive you to the church as soon as I get off the phone.”
Torres excused himself. Vega wandered up to the front of the laundromat in search of a garbage for his empty can.
“Here. I’ll take that,” said Carmela. Vega handed it to her. “The five cent deposits add up.”
“Sure thing.” Vega noticed that Carmela was reading a Spanish-language fan magazine with an inset picture of Ricardo Luis on the cover. Vega’s stomach turned flips just seeing that Mexican heartthrob grinning back at him. He turned away from the counter and his eye caught a security camera pointed at the front door. It was a standard-issue, hardwired camera, not unlike the ones Vega saw in all the bodegas. Not unlike the one in his mother’s building that hadn’t been working on the night she was murdered.
“You ever get any problems with those cameras?” Vega asked Carmela.
She looked up from her magazine. “Problems?”
“Yeah, you know. Loose wires? The thing doesn’t record? The DVD is just blank.”
“No,” she looked at him suspiciously.
“I’m not asking in order to rob the place. I’m thinking of purchasing one of those cameras for myself,” he lied. “I’ve heard the wires can get loose.”
“I don’t know. It never happened to me. Besides, a loose wire just means the thing’s not recording new stuff. It won’t make the DVD blank. Whatever was last recorded on it will still be there.”
“You’re sure about that?”
“Yes. Of course. That’s what happens when there’s a power failure and I don’t remember to change the battery backup.”
“Huh.” Vega thought back to Brennan’s notes. He hadn’t written that the security camera had failed to record the night’s events. He’d written that the DVD was blank. There was nothing on it.
Someone had replaced the used DVD on the night of his mother’s murder with a blank one. Someone with access to the security camera. Someone with an extra seventeen minutes of time before he dialed Father Delgado or 911.
Hector Ponce.
Chapter 14
The doorbell rang just as Adele was trying to zip up her blue silk dress, the one the saleswoman had referred to as “form-fitting.” Adele wondered what form she was referring to. She was already late for Ricardo Luis’s party. She didn’t need any further complications. She tugged on the zipper, raced down the stairs, and shooed Diablo back from the door. The frame was warped. The door gave way all at once.
Adele’s heart froze.
“Please excuse me, se?ora.”
Marcela Salinez was standing on Adele’s front porch in an oversized jacket with the hood bound so tight around her face that only her eyes and nose poked through.
“Marcela.” It took all of Adele’s energy just to say her name. Sweat gathered under the armpits of her shrink-wrapped dress. She blushed with a deep shame as if she had pulled the trigger last night. She opened the front door wider and hugged Marcela tightly. The coat was ice-cold to the touch and so soft; it felt like hugging snow. Marcela had obviously walked all the way from her house on the western edge of town.
“I am so sorry for your loss,” Adele said in Spanish. Her words sounded weak and pathetic the moment they left her lips.
“Thank you,” Marcela said woodenly. Adele beckoned her inside. She could feel Marcela’s eyes taking in the shimmery festiveness of her dress. “You are going out.” It sounded like an accusation.
“It’s just a business function for La Casa.”
“I really need to speak to you. Maybe just for a few minutes?”
“I’d love to, Marcela. Believe me, I would. But I can’t talk about the—situation.” Adele glanced up the stairs where Sophia was about to get into the shower. “She doesn’t know,” Adele whispered.
“I’m not here to talk about my father, se?ora.”