Nuñez stroked his mustache. “I hate to disappoint you, but there’s been no change in the man’s condition.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. I was hoping he’d feel up to telling us what he and his sister were after.”
“What is it you don’t understand about the word coma? Now go home and stay there.”
“We’re on the way to my ranch near Zaragoza. Are you forbidding me to leave town?”
The detective’s eyes were an eerie pale blue, and he regarded Santos with a frigid glance. “I’ll find you wherever you go, Mr. Aragon. Good day.”
When he entered the intensive care unit, Libby grabbed Santos’s arm. “Why didn’t we think how this would look before we came here?”
“All I’d planned was a phone call, but I should have realized how twisted Nuñez’s thinking is. Let’s forget him and go out to the ranch.”
They had another wait for an elevator. “Do you suppose Victoria knows what happened to her brother?” Libby asked. “I wonder if Nuñez still has men watching for her.”
“If he does, he won’t tell us. Let’s go.”
Manuel had the car waiting for them, and Santos slid the front passenger seat of his SUV all the way forward so there would be room for his legs in the back. Once they were seated, he laced his fingers in Libby’s. “I need to get started on the book. Will you help me with an outline?”
“I’ll be glad to.” She hoped he’d reveal more of himself as he talked about his father. “I’ve been thinking about my parents. I’ve forgotten most of what I saw growing up. I don’t have any real sense of them other than as loving parents. You’ll probably remember more.”
“I may remember too much.” He pulled his cell phone from his pocket and called Javier Cazares. He gave him the latest news and asked, “I want to know if Avila wakes. Find a way to get reports from intensive care. Keep looking for Victoria. She must have been staying somewhere near the beach house. Canvass the neighborhood with her photo if you have to.” He mentioned the boutique where she’d worked and asked the private detective to question the clerks there too.
He sat back and took a deep breath. “I forgot about the outdoor lights. I’ll do it when we get back to the beach house.”
“You’re a very young man to be saddled with so much responsibility.”
“I’m used to it. Actually I’m ancient. Only what you can see is young.”
She rested her head on his shoulder. “You have an old soul. Lots of people say that. Maggie is one. She’s always looked at the world through eyes that have seen too much. Even as a child, she was more mother than sister.”
“What about you?”
“I’m a little kid through and through. I may never grow up, or want to.”
Their conversation continued in a light vein until Manuel turned off the freeway onto the road to the ranch. Libby sat up and loved what she saw. “What beautiful country this is. It looks as though it stretches to forever. Do you have horses to ride?”
“We have a whole stable. Do you like to ride?”
“I rode at summer camp, so I’m still a novice, but it was fun.”
He smoothed back the tendrils escaping her braid. “You find fun everywhere, don’t you?”
“Does that sound shallow?”
“Not at all. That’s the house up ahead. It’s a comfortable home while the beach house is more of a museum.”
She was surprised to find the house looked even larger than the Aragon home at the beach. Built of sandy-colored stone with a red-tile roof, the house had a wooden balcony running the length of the second story that shaded the wide ground floor porch. There was a stable nearby, a bunkhouse for the men and modest homes for the servants who worked in the house. There was even an arena, complete with bleachers.
“You’ve a whole little town here,” she remarked in wonder.
“This is where I grew up. I used to hang over the side of the bullring to watch my father practice. That’s one of my first thoughts of him. I must have been three or four, and he would have been twenty-two. He used to carry me on his shoulders, and I loved to hear him laugh.”
She touched his knee. “That’s how your book ought to open, the way you saw your father.”
“A lot of it wasn’t good,” he replied. “And it’s disrespectful to speak ill of the dead.”
The housekeeper opened the front door as they left the car. “Santos! Welcome home! Now tell me the truth about your knee.”