Red Man Down(15)

Sarah pushed end and listened as Cifuentes wound up the last of several chatty calls. Closing his phone, he told her Cecelia García Lopez was living in a house on Calle Aragon, ‘And she can talk to us if we go there right now.’

‘You certainly made out better than I did,’ Sarah said, getting her gear together. She told him how hard it had been to get an appointment for tomorrow at noon.

‘Was she hostile?’

‘Not exactly. Just kind of … disengaged, But you hit pay dirt, huh?’

He chuckled. ‘She said, “Get your handsome ass over here, baby, I give you the whole skee-nee.” Cecelia’s kind of a hoot. You’ll see.’

Kind of hot, you mean, Sarah thought when Cecelia answered her doorbell. She posed a full three seconds with her arms spread wide in the open door, making sure they got an eyeful of a voluptuous, vividly made-up woman in her early thirties, wearing a low-cut emerald-green top over jeans that did full justice to her curves.

Sarah had never felt the pull of Oscar’s fabled allure, and had a hard time understanding it. He was not as handsome as Ray Menendez, who lived a happy, blameless life with one girlfriend. Oscar was tall and wore his clothes well, but so did many other Hispanic young men in Tucson, without setting off earthquakes of yearning in female breasts all over town. Maybe it was that he really liked women and they responded to that. Whatever it was, Cecelia stood in her doorway clearly ready to prove it worked for her.

Her house was small and old but Oscar complimented her on the artful arrangement of brightly colored pots by the door.

‘Oh, honey,’ she said, ‘I keep my old casa up as nice as I can, but … it’s hard, I have to do everything myself. Papi used to help me but … you know we lost him last year?’

‘I was so sorry … I was there at the funeral but the crowds were so dense I never had a chance to say hello to you. Rightly so, of course; he was a fine man and it was a great loss.’

‘Yes … that’s very well said, my friend.’ She sighed, tossing back her great mane of hair. ‘And this is your partner? Come in, sweetie, this is your house.’

As Sarah took off her coat, Cecelia said, ‘Wow, a gun and handcuffs, you’re ready for a fight, huh? That’s what I should have done – be a cop. I could have used some of those weapons on that pond scum I married. But no, I had to go to beauty school, have the glamour. So now I work at Desert Cuts and listen all day while women have hysterics about hair and nails. Some glamour, huh? Here, sit down, the coffee’s ready.’

She poured it, black and aromatic, into handsome white porcelain cups, and gave them hand-embroidered linen napkins, flawlessly ironed. Eddie’s aunt was showing her style. Mostly for Oscar, Sarah figured. Let’s just hope she stays friendly after we start asking questions.

Questions were no problem, it turned out – Cecelia was happy to talk about Ed Lacey, her darling nephew. That sweet boy, she said, who always made everyone happy. But now in the end his life story had tragically begun to echo that of his Uncle Frank.

‘It does seem an odd coincidence,’ Sarah said. ‘Good, useful lives that both ended badly. Did you know Frank well?’

‘Of course I knew him. He was a saint, that man, and they adored each other.’ She batted her lovely dark eyes at Oscar. ‘Always the caretaker, Frank, remember?’

‘I remember you always said so.’ Oscar was walking some fine line here, trying to be the close friend Cecelia seemed to want him to be, while maintaining his non-involved stance for Sarah.

‘Yes, well, we all did. Because when Luz,’ she turned to Sarah, ‘Eddie’s mother? My second-oldest sister? When Morgan Lacey, her no-good Anglo husband disappeared, she took in a still more worthless loser for a boyfriend. And from that time on, Uncle Frank dropped by often, to keep an eye on Eddie, who wasn’t even in school yet and was being sorely neglected by his mother. So Frank often took him to the park or for an ice cream.’

‘I’m curious,’ Sarah said. ‘Frank Martin wasn’t Hispanic, was he?’

‘No, Frank was married to our oldest sister, Anita. Luz’s next older sister, you see? She died in childbirth in the second year of their marriage, and her baby died a few hours later. Terrible – it doesn’t happen anymore, thanks to God. But when it happened to them, Frank, of course, was bereft. But our family – you know, we are warm—’

‘Everybody knows that,’ Oscar said, and got a blazing smile for a reward.

‘Yes, well, we held him close, we tried to help. So even though Anita was gone, Frank remained our beloved uncle, always at family celebrations.