“Well, ma’am, what’s going on here?” the officer repeated. “Has this man been holding you? Has he hurt you?”
And there was a silence, while Honorata looked at the police officer, and Engracia looked at Honorata, and Jimbo looked down at the floor.
“No. He didn’t hurt me. He didn’t hold me. I just don’t want him in my house anymore.”
“Are you sure about what you’re saying? We can hold him. We’d like to ask all of you some questions.”
Honorata drew herself up—she was not much more than five feet tall—and she said firmly, “This is my home. I didn’t call you. I want this man to leave, and he’s ready to leave. I want you to leave too. I didn’t call the police. I don’t need you.”
The police officer turned around and looked at another man standing a few feet behind him. That man shrugged his shoulders and raised an eyebrow.
“Someone called us, ma’am. There was a 911 call from this address.”
Honorata did not answer.
“Ma’am, we understand these situations can be really complicated. But we want to be sure you’re safe. We don’t want something happening to you later. Do you understand?”
“I understand that this is my home, and I didn’t call the police, and I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“Nobody thinks you’ve done anything wrong, ma’am. We just want to make sure you’re safe.”
“I’m safe. But my daughter. She should’ve come home by now. I heard the school bus. Do you know where she is?”
Engracia felt Jimbo go rigid. He looked up, out the door. The police officer saw him look.
“Sir, what are you doing here? How do you know this woman?”
“We’re old friends,” said Jimbo quietly. “I was in Las Vegas, and I came to see her.”
The man standing at the edge of the yard, behind the police officer, came forward then. He said, “Mrs. Navarro, is that right?”
Honorata nodded yes.
“I’m Tom Darling. I’m a lieutenant in the Metro Police Department. We got a 911 call from this house a couple of hours ago, and we’ve been watching you pretty close. We have your daughter just on the next block. She’s fine. But we didn’t want her to come home until we knew that everything was okay here.”
Honorata nodded. “Thank you.”
“So, before we let anyone go, we’d like to talk with each of you. Just for a minute. One by one.”
Honorata turned and looked first at Engracia and then at Jimbo. Their eyes all caught, and their faces did not move. They stood silent and immobile, and an agreement was made.
“Okay. Would you like to come in?” Honorata asked.
34
When Coral and Tom talked a few days later about what had happened, he said that they had gotten lucky; the waiting had paid off. There was no doubt in his mind that there’d been a gun, that the man had been holding the two women; the whole thing could have ended in a very different way. But the gun got ditched somewhere. They patted him down; they searched the room where the three of them had been waiting. And what else could they do? The two women insisted there was no gun. Honorata Navarro wanted the police off her property.
Family fights were dangerous. Things could go any way at any time, and in ways a police officer couldn’t predict. James Wohlmann didn’t seem like too bad a guy—no record—but Honorata had taken a risk by letting him off, by not telling the police what happened. Not one of the three had been cooperative. Tom didn’t know what had gone down. But Coral was right. The man was Malaya’s father, and he hadn’t known she existed. It didn’t look like her parents had been married, though. There was no record of a marriage.
Another strange thing that stood out: the housekeeper hadn’t been working there very long. None of the three knew each other very well. And yet, the two others, they were protective of her. It was just a feeling, but he and the investigator had both picked it up: how Honorata and James had each been careful of the housekeeper.
By the time she and Tom spoke, Coral knew what had happened. She knew what Tom and his colleague had sensed, and why. Malaya had knocked on her door the next evening, and again a few days after that. So Coral knew what Honorata had told Malaya, and she knew why they were protective of the housekeeper. She also knew a little about why James Wohlmann had come to the door, though she didn’t know if there had been a gun. Malaya had not said anything about a gun.
When it was all over that day—after the police cruiser had escorted Mr. Wohlmann out of the neighborhood, after the SWAT team and two of the patrols had left, after the young officer had started to take down the canopy and smiled at Malaya when she jumped up to help—Coral had walked with Malaya down the cul-de-sac. Before they got to the end, Honorata had come out running, and she and Malaya had embraced. They were both crying, and Coral thought about how difficult the last year had been for them, about Malaya asking to spend the night after babysitting so she wouldn’t have to go home, about Honorata saying that American girls didn’t listen to their mothers. It wasn’t easy raising a teenager, and maybe it was harder for Honorata, who was mostly alone and who had grown up somewhere so different.
Coral said good-bye to Malaya and gave Honorata a hug, and then watched the two of them walk into their house. She had been going to offer Tom a drink, but when she turned to go back to her house, she saw the small form of the housekeeper, waiting at the bus stop on the road.
“Tom, I’ll call you this week. Okay?”
“Sure. Thanks, Coral. You really helped us out. No days off for the weary, huh?”
“Yeah. Give me a school music program any day of the week.”
“Yep. This is one peculiar town.”
“See ya, Tom.”
And Coral had grabbed her bag from the kitchen counter where she’d left it hours earlier, eased her car out of the garage, and driven over to where Engracia stood, looking, from behind, like an old woman.
“Hello?”
“Yes?” The housekeeper looked startled.
“My name’s Coral. I’m a friend of the Navarros. Malaya was just with me, while you were in the house?”
The woman looked about anxiously. The bus wasn’t coming. There was no one around.
“Listen, I don’t want to scare you. I just thought you might want a ride home.”
“No. No, gracias. I take the bus.”
“Please. You’ve got to be worn out. You don’t have to talk. I’ll just drive you wherever you want to go.”
The woman hesitated.
“Look, it’s after six o’clock. The busses don’t run very often now. You could be out here a long time.”
Engracia looked at Coral, pulled her thin sweater together at the front, and then said yes, she would be grateful for a ride.
But Coral hadn’t taken her home. The woman, who said her name was Engracia, asked to be taken to the Catholic church, St. Anne’s, on Maryland Parkway.