Blood Orchid (Holly Barker 3)

“Lemon or milk?”

“Lemon, please.”

Marina spoke to her mother, who left the room. She turned back to Holly. “You spoke to Pedro?”

“Yes,” Holly said. “He wasn’t much help.”

Marina nodded. “Carlos and Pedro grew up in Cuba; they are, naturally, very suspicious of the police. I was born here. How can I help you?”

Holly took a deep breath; she had rehearsed this. “In the days, perhaps weeks or months, before his death, Carlos began working at a job other than the locksmith’s shop. Were you aware of this?” Then she saw the diamond ring on Marina’s left hand, around three carats, she estimated.

“Yes,” Marina said. “He would not talk about it, but he began to have more money than usual. I see you noticed my engagement ring; that’s how he bought it, I think. He said we could get married soon.”

“And he never told you who he was working for?”

“No.”

“Or what he was doing to earn the money?”

“No. He was very secretive about it.”

“Did you ever see him talking to a stranger, someone not usually in his life?”

A little light came on in Marina’s eyes. “Yes. Once we went to Miami to have dinner at a restaurant on South Beach. On the way, we stopped at another restaurant, and Carlos went inside for a few minutes. When he came out, a man was with him. They stood in the doorway and talked for a couple of minutes.”

“Could you hear what they were saying?”

“No, but from the way they talked—their body language, and the fact that they were both nodding a lot—I had the impression that they had agreed on something. I asked Carlos about it, and he said it was about installing a burglar alarm in the restaurant.”

“Can you describe the man?”

“He was a little taller than Carlos, older and slimmer; he was nicely dressed in a suit and tie. He was Italian, I think.”

“How do you know that?”

“He was Mediterranean-looking, with an olive complexion that’s different from Cubans’, and he had a long, curved nose. His suit was Italian, too—you know how the lapels are cut? Also, the restaurant was called Pellegrino’s, like the Italian mineral water. Perhaps he was the headwaiter or the owner.”

Good, Holly thought. Good, observant girl. “Do you remember the address?”

“No, but it wasn’t on the beach. We had another fifteen minutes to drive before we were there.”

“Was it after this that Carlos had more money?”

“Yes.”

?

??How long ago did this meeting take place?”

“About six weeks. I remember because we were celebrating my birthday. It was a couple of weeks after that when Carlos seemed to have more cash. He bought the ring not long after that and asked me to marry him.”

“Did you ever see him with this man again?”

“No, but I think I was with him when he talked to the man on the telephone.”

“What did he say that made you think so?”

“At one point in the conversation he called the person on the other end of the phone something like ‘pisan,’ which, I believe, is Italian for ‘friend.’ ”