A soft pink rose in her cheeks. “
Papi
is very old-fashioned. He doesn’t think a man should ask a woman to dinner before he has met her parents.”
I was dumbfounded. “Skye asked you to dinner?”
She wrinkled her forehead. “I thought his name was Skeleton.” She gave a delicate shudder. “What kind of mother would name her son that?”
Relief would have buckled my knees if I hadn’t been already sitting. “You mean Skell? His name is Skellton, with two
l
’s and one
e
, S-k-e-l-l-t-o-n. It was his mother’s maiden name.”
“Kids tried to call him ‘Bones’ in school,” Joe Riddley acknowledged, “but Laura beat the tar out of them.”
“Oh.” She sounded thoughtful and more than a little relieved.
To my surprise, Joe Riddley was the one who got us back on track. The way his mind had been working for the past six months, it could have wandered off in four other directions. Instead, he said, “Skell’s been asking her to dinner. What about that, Little Bit?”
I knew why he sounded so pleased. The girl Skell had hoped to marry after college had decided she’d rather join the peace corps, and it broke his heart. Folks in Hopemore had shoved every eligible girl we knew his way since then, but he’d never done more than be polite to them at parties.
Rosa hadn’t said a word, so I nudged her a tad. “Skell has been asking you out?”
She nodded, looking into her cocoa.
“How did you meet?” She looked like she needed more than a nudge.
“
Mami
asked me to take one of her kitchen crew to Sky’s the Limit a couple of weeks ago, to look for a car. Skellton helped us. Inez’s English isn’t very good, and I went along to translate for her, but to our surprise, he spoke very good Spanish.”
“It was his college major,” Joe Riddley told her. “He went to Mexico on spring break once, too—helped build a school or something.”
“That’s what he said. He gave Inez a good deal on a car, and while she was signing papers, we talked a bit. He asked if I’d have dinner with him that night, but I had a meeting at the school, and couldn’t.” She stopped, and smiled a private little smile into her cup. “Last Thursday, our cars were side by side in the Bi-Lo parking lot. He was getting out of his as I returned to mine, and he gave me a big smile and said in Spanish, ‘
Hola.
Remember me? I sold you a car. Can you have dinner with me tonight?’ I told him I was busy helping my father get ready to open on Friday, and joked that I don’t need to go to dinner, because my father owns a restaurant. We laughed, and that was all there was to it.” Her lower lip trembled. “But on Friday night, he called me ‘Rosita,’ as if we were familiar with one another, and
Papi
heard him. After that,
Papi
insisted that I tell how I knew an Anglo man. He”—she hesitated—“he’s determined I will go out only with Mexicans. When he grew up, his family were farmworkers. His little sister was raped by the son of one of his employers, and ever since then he is certain Anglo men have only one thing in mind when they approach Mexican women. Skellton should never have used that familiar name. . . .” Her eyes were huge pools of misery.
“Oh, honey,” I told her, “he never meant a thing by that. He probably meant it as a sign he’d met you before.”
“Maybe so, but
Papi
will never believe it. Late that night, when just our friends were left in the restaurant,
Papi
told his friend that Skellton MacDonald was making advances toward his daughter. The friend said, ‘Oh, the MacDonalds are very rich. Little Rosita is doing very well for herself.” She blushed. “I don’t want to tell you this, but you need to understand what happened.
Papi
was a bit drunk by then, and he got very grand. He is descended from Santa Ana, and sometimes he thinks that makes him very important. He started swearing that his daughter will only marry the very best Mexican, and yes, he said what they say he did, ‘If that MacDonald lays a hand on my little girl, I will kill him.’ But he didn’t mean it.” Her voice ended in a cry of despair. Her big dark eyes swam with tears again, and she covered them with slender fingers.
I didn’t think so, either, but I wasn’t on the jury. A clever lawyer can do all sorts of things with a statement like that. “Your daddy’s best hope is to prove he never left the restaurant,” I advised her. “See if you can get people who can swear he was there at—say—fifteen minute intervals.”
She took her hands away from her face, but lowered her gaze to the tabletop. “I—I will have to see who is willing to swear he was there.” For some reason, the idea seemed to bother her. I wondered if some folks might not want to go to court for reasons connected with their own legal status. As an officer of the law, I wasn’t about to ask that question.
Joe Riddley hadn’t said much so far. Now he leaned forward, the overhead light making caverns of his dark eyes. “Skell MacDonald’s a fine young man.”
“Yes.” Rosa got up and walked over to the window, looked out into the stormy night, then began to move restlessly about the room. “But he had no right to call me Rosita as if we were friends.” She clutched the afghan tight about her. “He is just bored here. I have heard other teachers say that. If I did go out with him, he wouldn’t be less bored. What would we talk about? We have nothing at all in common.” She came to the table and reached for her cocoa, still standing and tapping one foot.
Poor Skell. She was lovely and exotic. No wonder he was attracted. But his parents might have as much trouble with him dating a Mexican as her father had with her dating a
gringo
—was that the right word? I was a little shaky on the difference between an Anglo and a
gringo.
I rose and refilled our mugs. Rosa carried hers restlessly about the room, looking at the pictures on our walls and the magnets and cartoons on our refrigerator. It occurred to me that ours might be one of the few homes she’d been inside in Hopemore. But she had heavier things on her mind. She whirled to face me at last. “If we find people who will swear where we were every fifteen minutes that evening, will the police chief be just and fair?”
I couldn’t tell her a lie, so I hesitated. Joe Riddley considered, then nodded. “I a jury they will be. If you tell the truth. But tell me something else. How’d your folks decide to settle in Hopemore and open a restaurant?”
This was safe ground. Rosa came back to her chair and sat down. “They’ve wanted a restaurant for years. They have both worked in restaurants most of their lives—met in one, in fact. My brother and I grew up hearing them say, ‘When we have our own restaurant, we will do this or that.’ ” She waved a graceful hand over the table; then her eyes grew anxious again. “But now, when their dream has come true, I have spoiled it for them.” Fat tears rolled down her cheeks, and Joe Riddley glared at me like her crying was all
my
fault.
I fetched the box of tissues I keep on the counter. “How did the dream finally come true?”
She blew her nose and gave me a watery smile. When she began to speak again, I saw why Jessica adored her. Rosa Garcia was a born storyteller, animated and funny, who used her hands to make the story come alive.
“My brother was a terrible student. He couldn’t do math or language arts. But he loved skateboarding, surfing—anything that involved taking risks. When he graduated, he became a stuntman in Hollywood. Now they pay him ridiculous amounts of money for doing things
Mami
used to spank him for doing. And he told her, ‘
Mami,
if you promise not to tell me to stop what I’m doing, I’ll give you the money to start your restaurant.’ That’s how they got to open it.”
“Why did they come to Hopemore?” Joe Riddley wanted to know.
“They took a vacation between quitting their jobs and starting the restaurant. They rented a little RV and drove here and there, looking for the perfect spot. One day they saw a sign on the freeway for Hopemore. He told
Mami,
‘Let’s go see this place. We have more hope now than we’ve ever had, so we should visit Hopemore.’ They stayed a week last summer, in the campground just outside of town. They met many Mexicans who were settling here. They liked the climate and the size of the town. After southern California, this is so restful. They also learned that the steak house was thinking of closing. They called me and said, ‘Rosita, come see this place. Tell us what you think.’ When I came, I learned that Jessica’s school needed a teacher. When I got the job, it seemed a sign from God that this was where we were supposed to be.” She stopped and her lower lip started to tremble. More tears filled her eyes. “Now, because of me, everything is in jeopardy.”
“Nothing is in jeopardy if your father can prove he never left the restaurant,” I reminded her.
She looked down at the table and said nothing.
Joe Riddley had another question. “You haven’t seen Skell since yesterday, have you?”
She shook her head. “Not since Friday night, when he ran into me.”
“He didn’t mean to,” I assured her. “He was dashing out to find a man who’d bought a car. I don’t know if he even saw you until he practically knocked you down.” Yet I remembered the way his eyes had roved the restaurant when he first came in. Had he been looking for Rosa? Or were we all putting ideas into Skell’s absent head? Under our strong kitchen light, she wasn’t as beautiful as she’d looked in the subdued lighting of her father’s restaurant. Sure, her eyes were dark and lovely, and she had that long black hair that rippled like a river nearly to her waist. But her mouth was prim, her nose a trifle long and hooked, her chin a little too pointed for beauty.
“Oh,” she said in obvious relief. A smile lit her face and her eyes, making her suddenly beautiful. “I thought he’d decided if he couldn’t bowl me over one way, he’d try another.”
She might be right. I was sure that Skell—who hated dull little Hopemore—found her a lot more interesting than our conventional Southern belles.
“I ought to get home.” She stood and unwrapped my old afghan from around her like it was mink. “Thank you so much.” She folded it and laid it over the back of her chair, her mouth prim again. “Just talking with you helps me feel better. I will tell my father we must find people who will swear he didn’t leave the restaurant all evening. Thank you so much.”
I brought her raincoat, which was dry and warm, and Joe Riddley walked her out under the same umbrella he’d used the day before for Nicole.
While he was gone I realized something. Twice that evening Rosa had said she would look for people who could swear her daddy never left the restaurant. She never said he hadn’t.
16
I couldn’t think of another thing I could do that night for either the Garcias or the MacDonalds, and was debating between watching television with Joe Riddley or going to bed with my electric blanket and a book when the phone rang. A sheriff’s deputy needed me down at the jail for a bond hearing on two fellows who’d held up a little mom-and-pop store out on the edge of Hopemore’s poorer part of town. “Got away with five hundred and six dollars,” the deputy informed me. Sheriff’s deputies can set bond themselves for any theft under five hundred. I put back on some decent clothes and headed downstairs. When Joe Riddley asked where I was going, I informed him, “I’m going to ask a dadblamed deputy why he didn’t put six dollars back in the till and save me a trip out in this rain.”
All the way there and back, the windshield wipers reminded me of eyes blinking back tears. I was blinking back some of my own. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt that sad.
How was Gwen Ellen going to live without Skye?
And what if Skye had indeed left everything to Skell, and Skell sold the business out from under Laura?
And what if Skell killed his daddy, and that’s why he was on the lam?
And what kind of town were we if new people—Mexicans or whoever—got labeled “those people” by folks like Charlie Muggins and automatically got put at the head of any suspect list when a crime was committed?
I didn’t get home until Marilee was concluding her eleven o’clock weather report: continuing rain. She looked about as soggy as I felt, and I was surprised and touched when she concluded her report, “I’m very sad tonight because of the death of a special friend. God bless you, Skye, wherever you are.”
Walker called right after that, but said little to lighten my personal skies. “I’m in Orlando. I tracked down my college buddy, and he found us a lawyer. He just called five minutes ago and he’s over at his beach house. He’ll come back tomorrow and meet me here at ten. I don’t know how to reach Maynard or Selena this late, so I’ll just let them spend one night in jail.”
Walker has always been easygoing, but “let them spend one night in jail” was a new high in casual speech.
“You couldn’t bond them out?”
“Mama, I don’t know how to do all that. They’re gonna be fine. You haven’t said anything to Hubert, have you?”
“We didn’t like to, with his dicey heart.”
“Wait until I know something tomorrow. I’ll call you as soon as I have anything to report.”
Clarinda wasn’t any happier with his news than I was. I had to tell her at least four times that Walker was doing the best he could in the circumstances. By then, I almost believed it myself.
I didn’t sleep well that night. The rain kept coming in bands: first a downpour, then a patter. We had left our window up a tad for fresh air, so I woke at the thud of each new deluge on our tin porch roof. Then I’d lie in the dark picturing Skye MacDonald lying on his back in the mud while rain slid down his face. I tossed and turned, but couldn’t get rid of the picture.
When our alarm went off at seven, rain was still pouring down. I snuggled deeper into my covers, tempted to pull them over my head and sleep all day. Nobody was coming to our Presidents’ Day sale in that storm.
Then I remembered the bills I had to pay, the orders I had to place, the call Walker would be making about Maynard and Selena, and the probability that while I was dozing Chief Muggins would be concocting evidence to convict an innocent man of murder. That got me on my feet.