The Jealous Kind (Holland Family Saga 2)

“No. Stay out of here.”

“Why?”

“Why? You actually asked that? That wasn’t you who painted Vick Atlas’s shower wall with his head?”

“I need help,” I said. “I have to ask you some questions I can’t ask anyone else.”

I heard her make a brief sound, like air leaving a balloon. “Where are you?”

“At home.”

“Is anyone else there?”

“No, ma’am.” I gave her my address.

“I’m doing this for only one reason,” she said. “I called you a twerp. I regret that.”

“Are you in danger, Miss Cisco?”

“I’m going to bring needle and thread and sew your mouth shut.”

I SCRAMBLED EGGS AND chopped cheese and green onions and made more coffee and cut three roses off the trellis and put them into a bottle of water on the breakfast table. She pulled her Oldsmobile deep into the driveway, past the porte cochere, out of sight from the street. I almost didn’t recognize her. She was wearing a pair of bib overalls and a white T-shirt and checkered boat shoes without socks, her hair tied in a ponytail. I pushed open the back screen. Major and Skippy and Bugs and Snuggs ran inside with her.

“What’s all this?” she said, looking at the food on the breakfast table.

“A late breakfast or an early lunch or an omelet my dog would like.”

“I must have done something unpardonable in a previous incarnation,” she said. She sat down and looked up at me. She was not wearing makeup. The skin around her eyes was gray. “What did you want to know?”

“Last night I think some guys tried to set up Saber and me. I think they were humps for Vick Atlas.”

“They tried to lure you somewhere?”

“Herman Park.”

“What did you tell them?”

“Not much. Saber stuck it in their faces. There were five of them. They didn’t do anything about it.”

“They’re probably punks doing favors for Vick. What else do you want to know?”

“How did you know Saber boosted Grady’s convertible from in front of the motel?”

“One of the ignorant peons with him tried to fence a gold bar at a pawn store.”

I pushed the local section of the newspaper toward her. She glanced down at the photograph of the pickup truck twisted on the tracks.

“The two Mexican guys working with Saber were named Manny and Cholo,” I said.

She looked at the photograph and the lead paragraphs of the story a long time, then at me. “You believe they were murdered?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“They weren’t. At least not by Atlas’s people.”

“Atlas’s hirelings have their standards?”

“They don’t disguise their work. They advertise it.”