Murder on the Equator Box Set Page 11

  I couldn’t help but notice how she directed the attention away from the handsome man she stood beside and to my mom. He must be the ex. I could definitely see a family resemblance with his firm jawline, muscular build, clear eyes, and height. Jake and Adi had definitely hit the gene jackpot.

  Abuelita picked up the pictures and pinned them on the fridge with fruit-shaped magnets. “These happy photos. Happy time.”

  The waitress popped into the kitchen, her hands full of orders. I peeked through the swinging door before it shut. A hungry pack of tourists with large hiking packs and dirty boots settled in at the tables.

  "Time to get to work ladies," said Sylvia, lowering a stack of white plates onto the counter. She lifted the lid of the pot of chicken and the spices filled the kitchen, making my mouth water. It was that good. I’d have to ask her for the recipe so I could make seco de pollo for my family.

  I moved toward the sink where a stack of dishes waited to be washed.

  Abuelita stopped me midway. "Jess, you do more important job. You make cake." She pulled ingredients from a cupboard above the extra stove, setting them in the middle of the island. Measuring cups, flower, sugar, nutmeg, powdered sugar, a bar of unsweetened chocolate….

  Abuelita patted my hand to get my attention. "Is everything?"

  I nodded. She had given me the ingredients for Mammy’s goofballs.

  "Good. I help Sylvia. You make cake?" She reminded me of a little kid in a candy shop, asking her mother if she can buy a lollipop and anxiously awaiting her reply.

  “You kept your promise and I’ll keep mine. Thank you.” My eyes teared up again. Instead of pointing her finger at me and saying, “No cry in kitchen,” she patted my cheek gently, nodded her head brusquely, and left for the busy side of the kitchen.

  The waitresses bustled in and out, their arms full of plates loaded with delicious looking food. Abuelita, Sylvia, and Adi served the meals in an assembly line fashion — Adriana tending to the items on the top of the stove, Sylvia stopping to chop what was needed and stirring the pots nearest her, and Abuelita managing it all with a tasting spoon in hand. Tia Rosa kept the dirty dishes under control.

  In a matter of minutes, I had the smooth batter mixed up and ready to fry. I looked over at the gleaming stainless steel double stove, but every burner had a pot on it. Everyone was so busy keeping up with the last of the lunch crowd, I didn't want to interrupt their work. So I took my batter, the sugar, and the chocolate and went over to the extra stove by Tia Rosa. With her help, I found a large container of oil and a pan deep enough to fry in.

  Unaccustomed to the gas stove, which had to be lit with a match, I nearly caught Tia Rosa’s sleeve on fire when the flame exploded from the burner. I reached up to see if I still had eyelashes. The match burned like a wick all the way to the bottom, leaving a string of charcoal where I’d dropped it.

  I overcooked the first goofball, the outside turning a dark brown while the inside was still too gooey. It took some time for the oil to cool to the perfect temperature, but the wait was worth it. I plunked in as many balls of dough as I could comfortably fit in the pan, all the while hearing Julia Childe’s voice in my head. “Don’t crowd the mushrooms.” Thank you for the tip, Julia.

  Adi swung through the door. “A customer asked me what we’re making back here and if it’s for sale.”

  “I might have to put you on the payroll, Jess,” teased Sylvia.

  I turned off the burner and put the plate piled with crispy, golden balls on the center table. Once they cooled enough not to burn my fingers, I’d dip them in the chocolate frosting I’d whipped up between batches.

  “They beautiful. They taste good?” asked Abuelita, reaching out to take one.

  “Not yet. Give me a minute.” Taking them off of the napkin soaking up the extra oil, I dipped them in chocolate frosting and arranged them to their best advantage on the plate. Abuelita was right. They were beautiful.

  I pushed the plate toward the group gathered around the table. Abuelita lost no time in grabbing the largest goofball and popping the whole thing into her mouth. She closed her eyes, sighed contentedly with her hand over her heart, and chewed slowly.

  Adi selected a ball and delicately bit it in half, her eyes narrowing as she tasted it like a food critic. Before she devoured the rest, she said, "These are fabulous. Like buñuelos, but better."

  Sylvia chose the smallest on the plate. "These look delicious, but I don't want to ruin my diet. This little one will do." Popping it into her mouth, she turned her attention back to the stove. It didn’t take her long to return for a second. “Life’s too short to diet anyway,” she justified.

  Abuelita agreed, helping herself to the quickly diminishing pile before her. "We add to menu. You teach me?"

  "Of course. They are easy to make and take no time at all," I said, content they approved of my sweet-making skills. I couldn’t cook a meal to save my life, but I could make desserts. Mammy had made sure of that.

  Pleased with my reply, Abuelita grinned and grabbed another goofball, taking it over for Tia Rosa (who was elbow deep in soap suds and dishes) to try.

  “Mmm. Is delicious,” Tia Rosa exclaimed to Abuelita’s applause.

  Clearly, the way to their hearts was through their stomachs.

  I don’t know what it was, but a flood of emotions swirled through me. Maybe I’d had too much sun. Maybe the melancholy I felt when I looked at pictures of my family during happier times had made me sappy. Or perhaps it was the excess sugar I’d consumed. But, as I stood in the center of the kitchen surrounded by friendly chatter and warm smiles, I felt like Anne Shirley when she had met Diana in Lucy Maude Montgomery’s classic tale. Only I was so much luckier. Instead of one kindred spirit, I was convinced I had found four.

  Chapter 15

  I had just made a pot of coffee when someone knocked on the door and entered the apartment.

  Abuelita barged over to the small, round dining room table and sat strumming her fingers against the wood. "We need plan. Rosa no go jail."

  Adi took the sugar bowl and some spoons over to the table. "Mom sent us up here while business is slow. She's keeping Tia Rosa busy."

  Looping my fingers through the handles of two mugs, I joined them at the table with the coffee pot.

  "How is Tia Rosa?" I asked.

  "She said she's okay, but we don't believe her."

  "Rosa say everything okay. She no okay."

  Clearly Abuelita was not okay. Her voice carried an extra bite to it and her feet fidgeted to the same rhythm of her fingers on the table.

  Adi pushed the sugar to her, and she helped herself to two spoons full. I put an empty spoon in my coffee and whirled it around.

  “Why you do that?” asked Abuelita, looking at me as if I’d hogged all the sugar when I hadn’t had any.

  “Do what?” I looked at Adi, who also wore a puzzled expression.

  “You no use sugar?”

  “I like my coffee black. Especially after the sugar binge we just had downstairs.”

  Adi, who I was learning was the food connoisseur of the family, said, “I can see that. The contrast of bitter and sweet makes an appealing combination.”

  “But you use spoon? Why use? You stir nothing.”

  Was it really a big deal? I considered shrugging it off, but Abuelita was in a mood and I didn’t want to do anything to make her day any worse than it already was.

  “It’s a habit, I guess. I like to hook my thumb around it when I drink a hot beverage.” I sipped from my mug to demonstrate how “not-big-of-a-deal” it was.

  “But you no stir. You no use spoon.”

  What else could I tell her?

  Finally, she said, “You weird.”

  “Abuelita! The word you want is quirky,” said Adi, in my defense.

  “No. She weird.”

  I smiled to reassure Adi. “I’d rather be weird than boring.” An odd comment, coming from me — the girl my family conspired against because they thought I
lived in an enclosed, mundane bubble of my own making. They couldn’t say I was boring now!

  Abuelita patted my hand. “Is okay. I like weird. Is interesting. Now, we save Rosa. How we catch José?”

  While I tended to agree with Abuelita, I didn't feel it was in Tia Rosa’s best interest for us to ignore other possibilities. "He's not the only one who could have killed Maria. Maybe he has a strong motive, but there were others who had the means to do it."

  “He tire of Maria and he want sister. Martha nice and José love children."

  Adi shook her head. "That doesn't seem right. There are more peaceful ways to get what he wants. Couldn't he have just asked Maria for a divorce?"

  Abuelita crossed her arms defensively. "And if she no agree? He kill her. He guilty. I feel it in gut. He want divorce. She no give him. He kill her. Done!"

  "But he needed Maria to drive him around," Adi argued.

  "José doesn't drive?" I asked.

  "He doesn't. It's not like the US where everyone has a driver’s license. Public transportation is so cheap, a lot of people prefer that over the costs of having and maintaining a car."

  Abuelita crossed her arms. “José get new ride. No is problem.”

  I didn’t really see the problem either. "Or he was planning to get his driver’s license soon." There was that possibility.

  Abuelita huffed in her chair, visibly annoyed Adi and I would cast any doubts on her theory. "Is easy. We have machete. We give to police. Police arrest José." Abuelita smacked her hands together like she was ridding them of dust.

  I admired her enthusiasm, but Abuelita’s emotions clearly blurred her logic. "It’s not so easy. Agent Vasquez will know José's machete was stolen from his parents’ property as soon as he goes out there. He already suspects us.”

  “He suspect Rosa. He estúpido.”

  “Stupid or not, we cannot hand deliver evidence against us to the police. They’d find my fingerprints on the handle and, with Tia Rosa already under suspicion, it wouldn’t take them long to find evidence against you too. Agent Vasquez isn’t as stupid as you think he is. Now, while I appreciate that I’d have nice cellmates in jail, I didn’t come down here with the intention of spending my vacation in the slammer.”

  Like a dog with a bone, Abuelita said, "I wash handle. Problem solved."

  Did she have to be so stubborn? I tried to empathize with her, I really did, but my patience was wearing thin. Looking to Adi, I asked, “Can you reason with her?”

  Adi rolled her eyes. "Welcome to my world. If you can’t reason with her, then I don’t stand a chance. If Jake were here, I’d ask him to help, but he’s not.”

  That was news to me. “Where is he?”

  “One of his guides called in sick, so Jake’s filling for him.”

  “Does he know about the accusation against Tia Rosa?”

  She shook her head emphatically. “What good would it do? He’ll be away for a week. If we told him, he’d cancel his tour before leaving Tia when she’s in trouble, and then she’d feel guilty for making him lose work. Nobody wins.”

  “Then we’d better solve this before he gets back. Otherwise, you’ll have to explain why nobody told him.” It was a tough call. If someone in my family was in trouble and I found out they’d kept it from me, I’d be livid.

  “We give machete to police. Is easy,” Abuelita insisted yet again.

  “How do you plan to answer when they ask how you got it?"

  "I leave note with machete." Like she left anonymous tips at the police station all the time.

  We sat in silence for some time. Could it be as simple as that? Would it work? I had no doubt that Agent Vasquez would suspect us, but so long as there were no prints attached to the machete besides José's, he couldn’t prove anything.

  "You'll have to pick a time when there are fewer policeman around," I said.

  “I go before sun up.”

  With that resolved, I moved on to the next suspect.

  "What about Dario? I think it's too convenient that he was the one who found Maria's body while José napped inside the house. Do you think he's involved somehow? Could they have worked together?"

  Abuelita pinched her lips together in thought. "Is possible he work with José. José make fancy alcohol. Dario sell it."

  Adi sat forward on the couch. "You mean, you think he and José might have worked together to kill Maria? While I can see how both men might want to be rid of her, isn't her death bad for business? I mean, there was no other reason for him to be at their house unless they were doing business together."

  “True,” I said, thinking out loud. “When we were at Martha's yesterday, he made a big deal about telling me that his bar was too good for the puro José makes and sells. However, José did bring back three bottles of brand name liquor. I wonder if he sold them to Dario? On the other hand, if that was José’s plan, he wouldn’t have offered me a drink on the plane."

  Abuelita scoffed. “He know you no drink.”

  “I drink when I want to. It’s just not my habit to accept hard liquor from strangers on airplanes,” I said, miffed that she presumed to judge me.

  Adi pinched her chin. “I have to admit, I agree with Abuelita. You have ‘Good Girl’ written all over you.”

  What? Am I that easy to read? What did it matter anyway? My drinking habits (or lack of) were hardly worth discussing when a murderer was on the loose. “Let’s focus, please. Do you think Dario went over to José and Maria’s to buy the bottles?”

  "You said there were three of them?” asked Adi.

  “Definitely.”

  “That’s more than the allowed limit. Like, a lot more. If José managed to bring three full-sized bottles of imported liquor into the country, he must've paid several people off at the airport. You didn’t notice anything, did you?"

  “I got through customs before he did. As seriously as they take their job, there’s no way he could sneak the bottles through unseen. That explains why Maria was so happy to see the liquor. She jumped up and down in excitement.”

  “He bad man. He bribe. He kill Maria,” Abuelita repeated just in case we had any doubts where her suspicions lay.

  “If they could sell them at top dollar to Dario, they could make a pretty penny," Adi commented.

  “So, José brings back liquor for Dario in exchange for his help killing Maria? Not exactly a fair transaction if you ask me — especially when Maria was essential to José’s business, of which Dario made it a point to say he had nothing to do with. There has to be a better motive.” I felt like we were running in circles.

  “Remember distillery. Dario no buy puro. He buy adultery liquor.”

  “Adultery liquor?” I asked in hopes of a translation.

  “Adulterated liquor. It’s a major problem because importation licenses are hard to get and the taxes are so expensive,” said Adi.

  “How could Dario sell that without getting caught?”

  “First drink good. Second drink good. Third drink not-so-good.”

  I remembered the inside of José’s distillery. The vat of water that smelled of cinnamon and licorice had the same amber color of whiskey. He would have had to add cheap alcohol to the mix or it would just be a glorified, unsanitary tea mixture. “Someone would have gotten sick from that stuff by now. Have you heard any complaints against his drinks?”

  Adi set her coffee down. "It happens all the time, but I haven’t heard of any specific accusation against Dario. Maybe if we paid a visit to his bar, we could learn something useful."

  “If Maria got between Dario and José’s lucrative business, that might have given him motive enough to kill her. People kill for money all the time. If we can prove he has tainted alcohol, that establishes a connection and a potential motive. It might be enough.”

  Abuelita waved her finger in the air. "No good. Dario smart. He no tell secret."

  “That could explain why Christian was up in arms yesterday. Dario must be one of his best customers, and if Dario is buy
ing from José, it means Christian has lost a major source of income,” said Adi.

  “Was Christian’s business legit or do you think he was doing the same thing as José?” I asked.

  “I have no idea. Christian comes across as such a slimeball, I wouldn’t put it past him to do something illegal.”

  I chewed on my lip, wishing I had a stick of gum instead. “All we need is one drink. That shouldn’t be too difficult.”

  “Tomorrow Sunday. We go tomorrow. People sad Monday come. They drink.”

  It was a good idea. I was in no shape to go anywhere sooner anyway.

  "Okay, then, we’ll go to Dario’s bar tomorrow. Would it be worth our while to ask at the hospital if anyone has been treated for methanol poisoning?”

  Adi raised her hand. “I’ll go to the hospital this afternoon while you nurse your sunburn. The last thing you need is to be outside.”

  My thoughts exactly. Tomorrow would be bad enough, but today, I was absolutely miserable. “Thank you.”

  “Okay, so we have José, Dario, and Christian. Anyone else?” asked Adi.

  The last one was difficult. I didn’t want to suspect them, but their names kept coming up. And they were the ones to potentially benefit the most from Maria’s death. “What about Fernanda and Martha?”

  I expected to hear objections immediately, but they didn’t come.

  Abuelita frowned. "Fernanda hide secret. Martha worry."

  "And she has every reason to worry. Fernanda wants her mom to marry José. She was more excited at the opportunity Maria’s death presented than sad she had lost her aunt. Even if Fernanda didn’t do it — which I’m inclined to think she didn’t — she could get herself into a lot of trouble unless she’s careful. And then there’s Martha. José could offer her a stability she hasn’t had in a long time." I really hoped it wasn’t them.

  "Are you still planning on sending Martha food tomorrow?" Adi asked Abuelita.

  "I send early. Tomorrow busy day.”

  Adi picked at her nails. “I think we should try to talk to them when we deliver the food tomorrow.”