Dead Man's Bones (32 page)

“Hello, Ms. Bayles,” Juan said. He nodded at Ruby. “Ms. Wilcox. I’m sorry to barge in like this, but I need to . . . to talk to Professor McQuaid.”

Professor McQuaid? Of course—Juan had been McQuaid’s student in the spring semester. The young man—he was hardly more than a boy, I thought, just a few years older than Brian—was drenched and shivering uncontrollably, his thin cotton shirt and jeans soaked through.

“He won’t be back for another couple of hours, Juan,” I said, noticing that Ruby’s and mine were the only cars in the drive. “But I’m not letting you go back out into this weather. Come in and get dried off.”

“Thanks,” he said, sounding discouraged. “I don’t want to—”

“Nonsense,” I said firmly. I took the boy upstairs and found a sweatshirt and a pair of sweatpants for him, far too large, but dry, and gave him a towel for his hair. By the time we were back in the kitchen, Ruby was pouring a mug of hot tea.

“How’d you get out here?” I asked, as Juan sat down at the table and wrapped his hands around the mug, still shivering. “I didn’t see a vehicle in the drive.”

“I hitched a ride part of the way,” he said, “and walked the rest.” His dark hair was damply plastered on his head, and his voice was weary.

“If you’d called,” I said, sitting down across from him, “I’d have come and picked you up.”

“I . . . didn’t want to call,” Juan said. His voice was tense, and his mouth worked nervously. He darted a glance at Ruby. “I don’t want anybody to know where I . . . where I’m staying.”

“That’s okay, Juan,” Ruby said in a comforting voice. “I’m trustworthy. Don’t you remember all those cookies I fed you?”

He smiled crookedly at that, and I said, “Whatever the reason you wanted to see my husband and me, it must be important. To bring you all the way out here in this awful weather, I mean.” I paused, studying his face. “You know that Hank is dead?” I asked gently.

Juan’s nod was barely perceptible, his expression miserable. In the candlelight, his eyes, bright with unshed tears, were the color of caramel. “I saw you when you came to the house Friday night. With the lady policeman. Afterward, I figured out that you came to tell me that he . . . that Hank had got shot.”

“So you were in the house.” That explained the light I had seen upstairs.

“
Sí
. But I didn’t know why you were there. I thought—” He glanced once again at Ruby, and then decided to trust her. “I’m illegal, you know.”

“Your immigration status?” I asked in surprise. Then I got it. “You were on a student visa?”

“
Sí
. I . . . I had to drop out and go to work because of the tuition increase, and because my mother is sick and can’t work, and she and my sisters need money. By the time I saved enough for another semester, my student visa had expired, and I didn’t know . . . I mean, I couldn’t . . .” He dropped his head as if he were ashamed.

This wasn’t a great surprise, of course. Lots of young men and women enter the U.S. on a student visa and then stay on past its expiration. Sometimes they obtain forged documents, sometimes they don’t bother. For many years, this was seen as nothing more than a knotty bureaucratic problem, with both the universities and the Immigration and Naturalization Service scratching their heads and admitting that they didn’t have the staff to track violators down and deport them. It didn’t seem a particularly good use of resources.

But this laissez-faire attitude has changed with the changing times. Universities are now required to maintain an electronic foreign-student tracking system and share the data with the government. The INS is cracking down, and the FBI has gotten into the act, as well, looking for terrorists who might be hiding on college campuses and in campus towns. Generally speaking, the FBI doesn’t care whether it snares big fish or little fish in its net, just so long as it catches enough to justify more fishing. A great many foreigners, whether they are in the U.S. legally or not, are terrified of deportation. And those like Juan, whose visas aren’t current, have gone underground. It’s a difficult situation, all the way around.

“So that’s why you didn’t want to answer the door Friday night?” I asked.

He nodded. “After you left, I went to my girlfriend’s house. When I went home to pick up some clothes the next day, a neighbor told me about Hank. Then I read it in the newspaper.” He lifted his head, and I saw that his cheeks were wet with tears. “I came here to tell you that it’s . . . it’s not true,” he whispered brokenly. “Hank didn’t go to that house to hurt those ladies. I want to clear his name.”

Ruby was watching him with sympathy. “Why did he go there, then?” she asked. “It was kind of late to go visiting, wasn’t it?”

“And why did he take a knife?” I added.

“He didn’t take a knife.” Juan smudged his cheek with the back of his hand. “Somebody’s lying.”

“But I saw the knife myself, Juan,” I protested. “I got to the scene right after it happened. The knife was there on the floor, under Hank’s hand.”

Juan shrugged one thin shoulder. “He was mad at them, sure. Over the way they treated his father. And he figured to get something from them. But not with a knife.” His grin was lopsided, ironic. “Anyway, he didn’t need a knife. They’d already promised him.”

I frowned, not liking the sound of this. “Promised him what? Why would those women promise Hank anything?”

“You don’t believe me!” Juan cried with a sudden violence. He jumped up, knocking over his mug. “I should have known better than to come here. You don’t care about Hank. Nobody cares about Hank but me. You don’t care about me, either. You’ll probably tell the cops—”

“Oh, for Pete’s sake.” Ruby took the boy by the wrist and pulled him back into his chair. “Sit down and stop being a gooney bird.”

I doubt if Juan knew what a gooney bird was, but he obeyed. I got up and found some paper towels and a sponge to clean up the spilled tea.

“Don’t go jumping to conclusions,” I said. “We can’t decide whether you’re telling the truth until we’ve heard the whole story. Start at the beginning. And don’t skip anything.”

Juan chewed on his lip, debating with himself. “That’s the trouble,” he said finally. “I don’t know the beginning—not really, I mean. I only know what Hank told me.” His voice was flat, and his eyes were intent, as if he were trying to sort through the bits and pieces of truth. “The trouble was that he . . . well, he bragged a lot, you know. Sometimes it was kind of hard to figure out whether he was telling you the truth or making stuff up.”

Ruby refilled Juan’s cup from the teapot. “Well, then, what did he tell you?” she asked encouragingly. “We can start with that.”

Juan looked from me to Ruby, his face grim and un-smiling in the flickering candlelight. “He told me that his father did something really big for those old women, a long time ago. They paid him for it, but they didn’t pay him enough. At least, that’s what Hank said.”

“What did his father do?” Ruby asked.

Juan’s glance slid away. “I . . . don’t want to get into that.”

“Do you know what it was?” I asked.

Juan shook his head. “I only know what Hank told me. And maybe he . . . well, maybe it wasn’t the truth. It sounded kinda—” He shrugged. “Anyway, he told the old ladies he knew about . . . about what his father did, and they said they’d give him some money. They hadn’t done it yet, but they promised.”

Blackmail. Ruby and I exchanged glances.

“How much money?” Ruby asked.

Juan shifted uncomfortably. “Ten thousand dollars was what he told me. At least, ten thousand to start with. He said they told him they’d give him more later.”

Definitely blackmail. Gabe Dixon, by all reports, had been a good and faithful servant. And although the Obermann sisters may have treated him shabbily, they claimed to have offered him enough—a room in the house, money for his medical expenses—to compensate him for his services. They wouldn’t give Gabe’s son ten thousand dollars unless they were paying him off.

But when the Obermanns discussed the situation with McQuaid, they told him they were afraid of Hank. If they had already promised to pay Hank off, why would they want to involve McQuaid? What did Hank know that made him a danger to them? And what kind of danger did he actually pose? I frowned, catching at a thought that ghosted through my mind. Suppose—

“Okay,” Ruby said agreeably, leaning back in her chair. “So the Obermann sisters promised to give Hank ten thousand dollars. So then what?”

“Hank was supposed to go to their house on Friday night and get the money,” Juan said. “Eleven o’clock. That’s when they told him to come.” He looked straight at Ruby. “He was there because they asked him.”

“That may have been what he told you,” I said, “but it sounds a little strange to me. Friday night was the first performance of Miss Jane’s play. Why would they have wanted him to come then? If they were going to give him money, why didn’t they do it on Friday afternoon, or—”

I stopped. There was that elusive thought again. Only this time, it was clearer, its outlines beginning to emerge.

Ruby was being encouraging. “Well, then, let’s assume that Hank told you the truth, and that he was asked to be at the Obermann house on Friday night at eleven o’clock. If he was expecting some sort of a payoff, why would he take the knife?”

Juan glanced at me as if he were assessing the truth of my eyewitness report to the fact of the knife. His shoulders slumped. “I don’t know why. He knew he was going to get the money.” He looked down at his mug. “He
thought
he was going to get the money,” he amended, in a lower voice. “But maybe he suspected it was a trick.”

“A trick?” Ruby asked interestedly. “What kind of a trick?” She frowned. “Maybe there’s some proof that he was asked to go there?”

I was staring at the flickering candle, and remembering. The gun cabinet. Locked on Thursday, unlocked on Friday night. And Jane’s insistence that there be no noise after eleven. No noise, so a shot and a scream could be easily heard.

“Is there any proof?” Ruby asked again, and I refocused.

Juan’s tongue came out and he licked his lips nervously. “Well, there’s an envelope.”

I leaned forward. “An envelope?”

“It’s at the house. At least, I think it’s there.” He pressed his lips together, shaking his head. “I mean, I didn’t actually see the envelope. Hank just told me about it, that’s all. Then he hid it.”

Ruby’s eyes narrowed. “What’s in this envelope?” she asked. “A note from the Obermann sisters asking him to come?”

Juan shook his head. “Something Hank’s father gave him. Hank said it would prove that he—” He caught himself saying too much. “Prove what he did. His father, I mean. Hank said it was important. It was proof. It was the reason the old women said they’d give him the money.”

“You said that Hank was going to hide it,” I said. “Where?”

“In the back of the downstairs closet. There’s an opening there, so you can get to the bathroom plumbing. He wanted me to know, just in case.”

“In case of what?” Ruby asked, giving her eyebrows a lift as if she thought this whole thing was just too dramatic. “Was he afraid?”

Juan pushed his cup away, his voice dropping even lower. “Just in case—that was all he said. But he laughed when he said it, so I guess he wasn’t really too worried.”

“Are you sure Hank wasn’t making all this up?” I asked gently. “He liked you, Juan. Maybe he didn’t want you to know that he was planning a robbery, and he told you all this in order to explain some unexpected cash.” If Hank had a genuine affection for Juan, he might not want the boy to think of him as a thief. Still, there was that unlocked gun cabinet . . .

Juan stared at me, his eyes going dark. I could see him processing my suggestion, weighing it against what he knew of Hank, wanting to find a reason to disregard it, but finally, unhappily, finding it plausible. When he spoke, his tone was ragged and despairing.

“I guess . . . I don’t know what to think. Maybe you’re right, Ms. Bayles. Maybe Hank was making the whole thing up. About them promising him that money, I mean. Maybe he thought he’d take a knife and go over there and rob them. And then tell me that they gave it to him so I wouldn’t ask too many questions.”

“You know, there’s a way we can settle this,” Ruby said in a helpful tone. “If we could find that envelope, it might give us a clue as to what really happened. How about going over to Hank’s with us, Juan? You can show us where to look for it.”

Juan looked distressed. “I . . . I’m scared to go back there. The cops might be watching for me.” His voice was full of earnest entreaty. “I have to trust you to keep me out of the picture, Ms. Bayles. I want to clear Hank’s name, if I can. I owe him that. But I hope you can understand—I don’t want to deal with the police.”

“Okay,” I said. “How about this? Ms. Wilcox and I will take you into town and drop you off wherever you say. You give us your key to Hank’s place—your place, I mean—and we’ll go over there and look for this envelope. Then we’ll make sure that you get your key back. We can get you some clothes, too, while we’re there.”