The Lies that Bind (6 page)

“The only drugs found in her system were antihistamines,” I said.

“I didn't say she had taken drugs. I believe she was selling them.”

“And why do you think that?”

“She was very secretive about her past. I asked Michael why she came here from South America, but he never would give me an answer. Virga is obviously an assumed name. At Michael's funeral I overheard her telling Mina Alarid that
they
were following her. She was driving very fast; I think she was being chased.”

It wasn't all
that
fast for New Mexico, but I didn't say so. “By who?” I asked.

“Drug dealers.”

There are illegal drugs and legal drugs. Pick your poison. In Martha's world the good people took the legal ones, the bad people took the others. “You think drug dealers set you up?”

“Possibly.”

“Why would they do that?”

“To divert suspicion from them.”

It had a certain kind of Halcion-and-vodka logic. “Just because someone happens to come here from Latin America, that doesn't make her or him a drug dealer,” I said. “There are lots of other reasons to come to this country.”

“Justine was carrying a revolver the night she was killed,” Martha said.

The pen that was scrolling across my legal pad stopped in midstroke. “How do you know that?” I asked.

“One of the policemen, the one who was acting like the nice cop, was holding it inside one of their plastic bags, and he showed it to me. The gun had two empty chambers, he said, and he asked if Justine had fired it. Maybe he thought it had been an attempted robbery and was trying to get me to say I'd acted in self-defense. If I had killed her in self-defense, I asked him, would I have put her gun in the glove compartment?”

“That's where they found it?”

“Yes. The keys were in her pocket. They went into the car looking for her identification.”

“How did they know which car was Justine's?”

“
It was the worst-looking car in the parking lot.”

Martha had been pretty observant for someone who was under the influence. But being accused of killing someone and asked to look at a dead body in the middle of the night might be enough to sober somebody up. It sounded to me as if the police officers had been sloppy; they shouldn't have entered Justine's car. They should have towed it away and impounded it as evidence. On the other hand, they were probably thinking of Justine's death as an ordinary hit-and-run at that point. Sometimes police carelessness works in a defendant's favor, sometimes not.

Justine had a revolver in her car, not that unusual in New Mexico, where your car is considered your house in the eyes of the law. It could have been a .38, a gun women favor. Sensible people leave the chamber under the hammer empty for safety reasons, which would mean that only one bullet had been fired. I had no way of knowing who or where. As for when, I'd say recently, or Justine would have reloaded. The police had the investigatory resources to find out who and when, but Saia wouldn't tell me what they discovered, not yet anyway.

Martha's hands pressed together in her lap like a closed book. “Justine Virga was a killer. She carried a gun,” she said. “The DA let her get away with killing my grandson, and now he wants to charge me with murder. That's his idea of justice? What kind of a name is Saia anyway?”

“American.” I stood up. “I'd like to use your bathroom.”

“It's down the hall.”

I walked down the hallway to Martha's bathroom, which had the same pinky-beige carpet that covered the rest of her floors. White hand towels with the initials
MCC
embroidered in pink hung on the rack. I flushed the toilet for camouflage and opened her medicine chest. A lot of women have their own private Idaho, a place where the grass is greener—a little stash of marijuana, Xanax, José Cuervo or whatever it takes, substances that work when used sparingly, cause worse problems when used to excess. Martha's little helpers were on the shelf in a brown plastic container with a white prescription label. I picked up the container, made a note of the doctor's name, Muldauer, and pushed down on the childproof lid, which would be a challenge for anyone not at the peak of reflexes and conditioning to twist open. It was already loose. Martha probably kept it that way so she could get at the Halcion easily in the middle of the night. The pills were smooth white ovals about the same size and shape as Xanax but without the dividing line down the middle. None had been broken in half, and there were plenty of them, more than enough to encourage abuse.

I knew something about Halcion, a drug that—along with romance novels and TV—puts ladies all over America to sleep. It had been in the news lately, and the news had not been good. A half is not supposed to hurt you, but sometimes a half stops working, and then it's a whole and then two or three, and before you know it you've got a jones on. There's a narrow margin between a safe dose of Halcion
and
a dangerous one, because the body metabolizes it so quickly. Alcohol exacerbates the effects of Halcion. Alcohol exacerbates everything.

I looked into the container in my hand and tried to enter that part of Martha's mind where an anger burned that drugs and drink apparently hadn't extinguished. I saw it as a smoky, smoldering dump. There were already a number of cases before the courts in which people (usually—but not always—women) had committed murders (usually—but not always—of family members) and were using the Halcion defense. It wasn't the kind of defense I'd choose, because I'm not sure that Halcion causes psychotic or violent behavior. It could be that it keeps the bad dreams away and prevents the little aggravations from being expressed daily until finally, after years of repression, they explode. Deal with it now when it's a problem child, deal with it later when it becomes an adult monster. Sooner or later you have to turn the headlights on in your life.

I looked deeper into the Halcion container. Would Martha miss three or four? I wondered. Probably not. I took three and put them in my pocket. I'd never taken Halcion, and I wanted to see what a few plus some drinks would do, but my motives were not entirely investigatory or pure, I'll admit. Every now and then I lift something just to prove to myself that I can.

On my way back to the living room I passed an open door, stopped and looked in. A typewriter sat on an antique desk along with a collection of pictures in silver frames. The doorbell rang. “Whit,” I heard Martha say. “Unlike my daughter, he is
always
on time.” While she went to answer the door, I stepped into the room and took a look at the typewriter. It was a Selectric, not a manual, and couldn't be the typewriter that had typed the note. Next I looked at the pictures. The majority were of a fair-haired boy, a boy any mother—or grandmother—would be proud to claim. He started out little, curly-haired and cute and grew up tall, blond and handsome. He had dark eyes, fine features and a perfect smile. He was as good-looking as his father, but he didn't look like him. Michael was his mother's boy—in appearance anyway. One of those children who look so much like one parent that the other seems almost incidental. There were pictures of him as a baby with a teddy bear, as a little boy with a soccer ball, as a middle-school boy in a soccer uniform, as a teenager running down the field. There he was in a graduation cap and gown, standing next to his mother. There were no pictures of him with his girlfriend, Justine Virga, his father, Emilio Velásquez, or even his stepfather, Whit Reid. Although there were pictures of a young Whit Reid by himself, pursuing his chosen sports, holding a hunting rifle, standing next to a horse, skiing. In the only other picture of Cindy, she stood smiling with Whit on the church steps on their wedding day, a day I never saw because by then I was long gone from Ithaca, New York. Something about the frames caught my eye, and I moved up close to examine them. They were different shapes and sizes, but all were sterling silver and every one was engraved with the initials
MCC.

6

W
HIT REID WAS
standing in the living room when I got back. The Whit I knew in Ithaca looked like the photographs on Martha's desk—tall, skinny, athletic, with blond bangs that fell across his forehead. The Whit who entered Martha's apartment was still tall and still blond, but he was no longer skinny, and his hair didn't flop anymore—it stuck to the top of his head, where it had been slicked into place to hide a bald spot. He was wearing khaki pants, a white shirt and Top-Siders with no socks, and he'd put on a lot of weight. He looked athletic, but heavy athletic, a tackle instead of a quarterback. He reminded me of my ex-husband, Charles, who might once have been skinny athletic too, but it was long before I knew him. Sometimes I think there are only two or three types of men in the world and it's a woman's fate to keep meeting them over and over again.

Whit shook my hand. He had thick fingers and was wearing a gold ring on his little finger. “Nelly,” he said using my high school nickname. “Good to see you.”

“Hello, Whit. My name is Neil.”

“We're so glad to have you on Martha's team.” He moved on to Martha and kissed her cheek. His nose was flatter and broader than I remembered, as if it had gotten broken somewhere along the way, and he wheezed when he breathed. It was the kind of thing a less secure man might have gone to the trouble to fix.

“Would you like a drink?” asked Martha.

“Stay put,” he replied. “I can get it myself.” He made an end run around Martha's spindly furniture and went to the kitchen, where he helped himself to a large Jim Beam, no ice. “Neil?”

“No, thanks,” I said.

Whit brought the drink back to the living room, put it on the coffee table and sat down heavily on the sofa with his legs apart and his hands resting on his knees. In one way he looked as though he belonged on the sofa, and in another way he didn't, like a large and sloppy dog who has climbed up on the forbidden furniture so often he's made himself at home. His glass made a wet ring on the table.

“Whit, use a coaster,” said Martha, handing him one.

“Oh, sorry,” Whit replied, picking up his glass and putting it on the coaster. The routine had the smooth feel of a performance they repeated often.

Whit looked at his watch. “Cyn's late,” he said.

“You know our Cynthia,” Martha replied.

“
So you have your own law practice, Neil?” Whit said to me, drumming his fingers against his thighs.

“Me and my partner.”

“Where's your office?”

“On Lead.”

“Who's your partner? “

“Brinkley Harrison.”

“Don't know him.”

“How long have you been in Albuquerque?” I asked.

“About a month.”

It was a little soon to know
all
the lawyers, but I didn't say that. “What brought you here?” I asked. Most Arizonans consider Albuquerque the place the wind blows through on the way to Texas.

“The recession,” he said, taking a big sip of his drink. “Albuquerque hasn't been hit nearly as bad as Arizona. Rental units have a ninety-eight-percent occupancy rate here.” He turned to Martha. “That reminds me. I've been thinking about Property Management, and I don't think they've been doing that brilliant a job with Los Cerros. I'd like to try someone else.”

“Would you?” asked Martha.

The doorbell chimed. “Now
that
has to be Cyn,” Whit said, looking at his watch again. He put his drink down on the coaster, pulled himself up off the sofa, dodged the coffee table and a floor lamp, went to the door and let her in.

You have to expect changes in someone you haven't seen for a long time, but it's startling anyway. The Cindy I saw smiling in the doorway had been hit hard by the past twenty years. She still looked younger than her husband, but not by much. Marriage has a way of evening out the age differences. In high school Cindy had had a blond and boring prettiness that might well have turned into her mother's china-doll perfection but hadn't. There were crinkle lines under her eyes. She was carrying some extra weight, which softened her chin and filled out her breasts, making her seem fragile and maternal at the same time. She didn't wear any makeup. Her fine, pale hair had been tied back at some point, but now it was falling down around her face. She wore a lavender T-shirt, baggy jeans and worn running shoes.

“It's great to see you, Neil,” she said, but she was looking off over my shoulder even before she finished saying it. She gave me a hug, stepped back, smiled and said, “Hello, Whit. Mother,” but she didn't exactly look at them either. Her blue eyes were evasive, and she had the guilty manner of a woman who has been sleeping with her best friend's lover.

“Your shoes are wet,” Whit said.

Cindy
looked down at her feet. “You're right. Of course.” She took the shoes off and left them beside the door. “I think it's time to turn the sprinklers off for the season, Mother.”

“I'll talk to Rafael about it,” her mother said.

“I can do it for you,” said Whit.

“I can manage,” replied Martha.

“I'm so glad you're going to be representing Mother, Neil,” Cindy said. “Can you imagine? Who would have thought that
you,
my old hippie friend, would become a lawyer? And that you'd end up representing Mother. Or that
she'd
ever be charged with murder. Life is too weird sometimes.”

“Are you considering the Halcion defense?” asked Whit, the self-appointed legal expert. Every family has at least one.

“I only took a half,” Martha replied.

“No charges have been filed yet,” I said.

“How's dinner coming?” Cindy moved into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator door and looked in. One thing you can count on is that getting together for dinner will either defuse family tensions or exacerbate them. “Can I get anybody a drink?” Cindy asked, taking a tray of ice from the freezer and putting it down on the counter.