Second Grave on the Left

Chapter Eleven

“You never just Googled him?”

“Well, you didn’t either,” Cookie said when I’d asked about Reyes. We were driving back to Santa Fe. “I just browsed official databases to find his arrest record and conviction information. And I went to the News Journal’s site for articles about the trial.”

“And you never just Googled him?”

“You didn’t either,” she repeated, distressed. She was typing away on her laptop.

“Fan clubs!” I said, more than slightly appalled. “He has fan clubs. And mountains of mail.”

A sharp pang of jealousy slashed through my chest, ripping a hole in it. Metaphorically. Hundreds of women, possibly thousands, knew more about Reyes Alexander Farrow than I did.

“Why would anyone create a fan club for an inmate?” Cookie asked.

I’d asked Neil that very thing. “Apparently, there are women out there who become obsessed with prisoners. They scour news articles and court documents until they find prisoners who are attractive, then they make it their mission in life to either prove that prisoner is innocent — as they all profess to be — or they just admire him from afar. Neil said it’s almost like a competition for some women.”

“That’s just so wrong.”

“I agree, but think about it. The pickin’s are pretty slim for these men. Maybe women do it because they know they’ll almost surely be accepted by the prisoner. I mean, who’s going to reject a woman sending you love letters or going to the prison to visit? What do these women have to lose?”

Cookie cast a worried glance my way. “You seem to be taking all this exceptionally well.”

“Not really,” I said, shaking my head. “I think I’m in shock. I mean, holy cow, they tell stories.”

Cookie seemed to be in a state of shock as well. She was surfing a site on her laptop as I drove to one Elaine Oake’s house. Her eyes were wide and slightly lovestruck. “And they have pictures.”

“And they tell stories. Wait, what? They have pictures?” I decided, in the interest of transportation safety, to pull to the side of the highway. I hit the hazard lights then looked over at Cookie’s screen. Holy mother of banana cream pie. They had pictures.

An hour later, we stood at the doorstep of the woman I could refer to only as Stalker Chick. I mean, really? Paying guards and other inmates to get information on Reyes? To steal from him? Not that I wouldn’t do the same, but I had good reason.

A tall, thin woman opened the door. Her blond hair was cut short and styled to look messy, but I doubted that a single hair on her head was not exactly where she wanted it to be.

“Hello, Ms. Oake?”

“Yes,” she said, her voice holding the slightest hint of annoyance.

“We’re here to ask you about Reyes Farrow.”

“I have hours posted.” She pointed to a sign over her doorbell. “Can you come back then?”

I fished my PI license out of my back pocket. “Actually, we’re on a case. We’d really like to talk to you now, if you have a minute.”

“Oh. Well … okay.” She led us inside her humble abode, if a multimillion-dollar house with something like twelve gazillion rooms could be considered humble. Which, how could it? “I was just getting so many visitors, I had to post hours. Never a free minute.” She led us to a small sitting room. “Shall I call for tea?”

Was she serious? Is that what rich people did? Called for tea? “No, thank you. I just had thirty-two ounces of sugar-free nirvana on ice.”

She brushed a knuckle under her nose as if my uncouth behavior was … well, uncouth. “So,” she said, recovering from my impudence, “what has that rascal done now?”

“Rascal?” Cookie asked.

“Reyes,” she said.

Jealousy caused my muscles to spasm with her casual mentioning of Reyes’s name. It was uncharacteristic of me. I rarely spasmed, and in my book, it was every woman for herself. May the best flirt win. I’d always assumed I didn’t have a jealous bone in my body. Apparently, when it came to Reyes, I had 206.

I tamped the emotion down with teeth gritted and fists balled. “Have you been in contact with him any time over the last month?”

She laughed. Apparently, peasants amused her. “You don’t know very much about Rey, do you?”

Rey? Could this get any worse, I thought as my eyelid twitched. “Not really,” I said with my teeth still clamped together, so it was kind of difficult.

When Elaine stood and walked to a door, Cookie placed a hand on mine and squeezed. Probably to remind me there’d be a witness should I murder the woman and bury her lifeless body under her azaleas. I didn’t even know azaleas could grow in New Mexico.

“Then maybe you should come with me.” She opened a set of adjoining doors that led into what could only be described as a Reyes Farrow museum.

I stood with a gasp as a huge mural of Reyes met my eyes, teased me, caressed me with a fiery gaze that left me weak kneed and breathless.

“I thought you might like this,” she said as I drifted out of my chair and walked aimlessly forward.

I floated into Reyes heaven, and the rest of the world fell away. The room was large with lighted display cases and framed pictures lining the walls.

“I was the first,” she said, pride swelling in her voice. “I discovered him even before he was convicted. All the other Web sites followed in my wake. They know nothing about him except what I tell them to know.”

Or what guards at the prison tell her to know. Neil informed me they had fired four guards over the years for selling information and pictures to this woman, all featuring Reyes Farrow. And from the looks of her house, I’d be willing to bet Elaine could have afforded a lot more. Most of the framed pictures were the same ones featured on the Web site, candid shots that guards had taken when Reyes wasn’t looking. I wondered what she’d paid them to risk their jobs. And knowing Reyes, their lives.

There were even a couple of grainy ones of him in the shower. And grainy or not, that boy was hot. I leaned in to study the steely curve of his ass, the fluid lines of his muscles.

“Those are a personal favorite of mine as well.”

I jumped at the sound of Elaine’s voice and continued on with my perusal, calculating the odds of my getting away with breaking and entering here later to steal those. In the display cases were different items that had supposedly belonged to Reyes. From prison uniforms, a comb, and an old watch to a few books and a couple of postcards he’d apparently received. I looked closer. There was no return address on either of the postcards. Drifting farther down the case, I noticed several handwritten pages splayed along one shelf. The writing was crisp and fluid and reportedly Reyes’s.

“He has gorgeous handwriting,” Elaine said, her tone a little smug. She seemed to be reveling in the fact that she’d floored me. “We’re still unraveling the mystery of Dutch.”

I froze. Did she just say Dutch? After a long moment, I recovered, straightened, and placed my best look of nonchalance on her. Thankfully, Cookie stood behind her and off to the side, so the woman couldn’t see the wide-eyed expression on her face.

“Dutch?” I asked.

“Yes.” She sauntered forward and pointed. “Look closely at the script.”

I bent back down and read. Dutch. Over and over. Every line, every word, was simply Dutch repeated again and again. So, what looked like a letter was actually my nickname en masse. The last page was a little different. It was an actual drawing, word art, again with the Dutch insignia. My heartbeats tumbled into each other, as if racing for a finish line.

“Do you know how old these are?” I asked after a few calming breaths.

“Oh, several years. Once Rey figured out a guard was stealing them for me, he stopped writing them.”

A photograph sat at the end of the case and was quite possibly the most compelling of them all. It was a black-and-white of Reyes sitting on the cot in his cell, an arm thrown over a bent knee. He’d laid his head back against the wall, closed his eyes, and had the most forlorn expression on his face.

My chest constricted. I could understand why he didn’t want to go back to prison, but I still couldn’t allow him to die. Especially with what Blue had said, and Pari.

This place, this museum, was simply overwhelming. Here I thought Reyes was all mine, my little secret, my treasure to have and to hold till death did us part, and all this time he’d had hordes of women pining after him. Not that I could blame a single one, but the sting bit hard nonetheless. Cookie remained stock-still, wondering what I was going to do.

“So, you don’t know who Dutch is?” I asked, fishing for more information.

“One of the guards tried to find out for me. I’d offered him a hefty sum, but by then Reyes had caught on to me and the guard was fired. Reyes is very intelligent. You know he has two degrees. Earned them in prison.”

“Really? That’s amazing,” I said, feigning ignorance. If she figured out I knew more about Reyes than I was letting on, she would likely become a pit bull to get at it. Or she would offer me a lot of money that I wasn’t sure I could turn down. Especially now that Reyes was doing his darnedest to get on my bad side. “You couldn’t possibly give me the name of your current informant?”

“Oh, no. That would be a breach of confidentiality. And I’ve already been warned to cease and desist my exploits. I can’t risk getting this person fired or myself arrested.”

Did she not realize what a private investigator did? “Why did you ask me if I knew Reyes well?”

She chuckled, completely oblivious of the fact that deep down inside, I wanted her dead. “Reyes doesn’t see anyone. Ever. And trust me, dozens of women have tried over the years. He gets more mail than the president. But he never reads a single one.”

That made my innards happy.

“Really, this is all on the site. I try to warn newbies who visit that he won’t see them or read their letters. But each and every fan thinks she will be the one he falls in love with. They have to try, I suppose. I certainly can’t blame them. But of all the women who’ve tried, I’m the only one he’s ever seen.”

I could feel the lie all the way to my marrow. She’d never laid a naked eye on the man. That made my innards happy, too.

“So, how did you find out about Reyes?” she asked, finally growing suspicious of my presence.

“Oh, I’m on a case, and his name came up.”

“Really? In what capacity?”

I tore my eyes off him and turned to her. “I can’t really say, but I do need to ask you a few questions.”

“Questions?”

“Yes. For example, do you know where he is at the moment?”

She offered a patient smile. “Of course. He’s in a long-term-care facility in Santa Fe.”

“Oh,” I said. Cookie cast a sideways glance in my direction, encouraging me to put the woman in her place. Just a little. “Actually, he was scheduled to be taken off life support last week.”

This time, she froze. I’d surprised her, and it took her a moment to recover. “I’m sorry, but that’s not what my resources have told me,” she said, blinking those false eyelashes repeatedly.

“Well, then, you need to find new resources. He was scheduled to die, Ms. Oake. Instead, he woke up and hightailed it out of the medical facility.”

“He escaped?” she asked, her voice a high shriek. This was much more fun than I’d expected it would be. And her surprise was genuine. She had no idea where Reyes had absconded with his body. I was torn between relishing that fact and despising it. We were no closer to finding him than we were before. I’d turned back to look at his writings again as Elaine sought a chair, her legs apparently weak.

The drawing, the one that looked like art but still said my name, was actually a sketch of a building. I stepped closer and breathed in softly.

“Oh, that’s an old building,” Elaine said from behind me. “We don’t know where it is, but we think it’s somewhere in Europe.”

I turned back to Cookie, gestured her my direction with the hint of a nod. Her brows slid together and she inched closer, casting cautious glances over her shoulder. When she stood beside me, she studied the drawing and gasped softly as well.

“I’ll bet you’re right,” I said. “It looks European.” Except it was in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and both Cook and I lived in it.

My gaze traveled back to the postcards. “Can I see where those postcards are from?” I asked.

Elaine was busy fanning herself. She forced her body out of the chair and went around to the other side of the display case to open it. “Do you think he’ll come after me?” she asked as she handed them over.

“Why would he do that?” I asked, only slightly interested. Both postcards were from Mexico. They had Reyes’s prison address, but no return address and no message whatsoever. Which was way more interesting than Elaine’s sudden need to jump into panic mode.

“H-he knows who I am,” she said. “He knows I’ve paid money to get information on him. What if he comes after me?”

“Can I keep these?”

“No!” She snatched them back.

Okay. Possessive much? “Look, here’s my card,” I said, handing it to her. “If he comes after you, call me. I really need to take him in.” Cookie and I turned to leave.

“Wait, no, that’s not what I meant.” She followed us, her heels clicking along the Spanish tile. “What if he comes here to kill me?”

I stopped and eyed her suspiciously. “Is there a reason he would want you dead, Ms. Oake?”

“What? No.” She was lying again. I wondered what she’d done, besides paid people to spy on him for years.

“Then I really don’t see a problem.” I turned again to leave.

She rushed around us and blocked our paths. “It’s just, I … everyone…”

“Really, Ms. Oake, I have a case to solve.”

“Here,” she said, handing over the postcards. “I’ll give you these. I have them scanned into my computer anyway. I just need you to call me the minute he’s found.”

I glanced at Cookie, my face the epitome of reluctance. “I don’t know. That would be kind of like your breach of confidentiality.”

“Not if my life is in danger,” she squeaked. “I’ll hire you.”

My earlier conclusions were wrong. This was totally interesting. “First, I already have a client. I could hardly take on another concerning this case. That would be a conflict of interest. And second, why would your life be in danger? Are you afraid of Reyes Farrow?”

“No,” she said with a nervous grin. “It’s just that, well, we’re married.”

Cookie dropped her purse and tried to catch it midair. In the process, she knocked over a vase. When she lunged for the vase, she slipped on the tile and overturned an entire table. A lovely handblown piece of glass flew in my direction, and all I could think as I caught it was, Really? Again? We were going to have to practice muscle control.

“Married?” I asked after the table crashed to the ground. Cookie righted it and replaced the glass orb, a sheepish expression on her face. “You’re going to have to be completely honest with me, Ms. Oake. I happen to know Reyes is not married.”

Elaine eyed Cookie a long moment before answering. “It was a silly argument,” she said, refocusing on me, “and, well, I sort of let people believe that we were married. One of the other site owners said she and Reyes were writing each other, which was a lie and I knew it, then another said they were dating — dating! — so, I upped the ante, so to speak. They think we’ve been married for six months.”

After a melodramatic rolling of my eyes, I refocused on her. “Why would they even believe you?”

“Because, I … well, I sort of forged a wedding license. It’s all on the Web site. Well, not the fact that I forged it.”

Now that I had a bargaining tool — namely, her desire to live — I turned back to the display cases. “Just what are you offering in exchange for my services?”

“John Hostettler,” I said into the phone as Cookie and I drove into Santa Fe to grab a bite to eat.

Neil Gossett was on the other end. “He’s one of my guards.”

“And he’s one of Elaine Oake’s informants.”

“No shit?”

“No shit.” He would, of course, need some kind of proof, but that wasn’t my problem. “And I forgot to bring up something else odd.”

“Besides you?”

“You’re funny. I ran into Owen Vaughn the other day. He’s a city cop now. What the hell did I do to him?”

He sighed. “You mean when he tried to maim you with his dad’s SUV?”

“Yes.”

“I’d always wanted to ask you the same thing. He never told us. Just got really weird.”

“You mean weird like you?” I asked.

“You’re funny.”

Cookie and I ate at the Cowgirl Café before leaving Santa Fe. We ate in silence, studying the papers and pictures we’d obtained from Elaine — especially the grainy ones — both of us stunned speechless. We drove home the same way.

“I’m going to go through these files on the Hana Insinga case,” Cookie said when we pulled into the apartment complex.

“Okay, I’m going to run to the office and check messages and, I don’t know, do something productive.”

“Okay.” We were both in another world, both worried about Mimi and Reyes.

As I crossed the lot to Dad’s bar, I realized I had slipped into a bit of a depression. Who needed PMS when I had RAF? Mood swings apparently came with the job. But I couldn’t get past the fact that I had not seen Reyes all day. Not once. And his wounds, from what little I saw, were mortal, even for a supernatural being.

Had he died in the night while I slept in the warmth and comfort of my bed? It had been a fitful sleep, but still, I wasn’t being tortured. Or maybe he’d died while I was having coffee with the Three Stooges this morning, or while I was having tea and crumpets with Stalker Chick.

Seriously, how long could he have lasted? He healed faster than the everyday human, but I couldn’t imagine him surviving even a few hours with those wounds, much less days.

I cut through the bar to get to my office. Dad was nowhere in sight. I thought about seeking him out, but a couple of guys turned my way the minute I stepped inside, frosty mugs in hand, so I ducked into the stairwell before they could act on their nonexistent chance to hit on me. I checked messages and e-mail before typing in the words that had brought me so many sleepless nights, so many heated dreams and illicit fantasies. I clicked on SEARCH, and approximately three seconds later, a list of Web pages loaded, each resplendent with the name Reyes Farrow.

I needed to find out how much they knew. Did they know what he was capable of? Did they know his background? Did they know what his idea of the perfect date was?

The hours passed in a fog.

In the end, I came to two conclusions. One, none of them had a clue who or what Reyes really was. And two, there were some lonely-ass women in the world. I went from being consumed with jealousy to simply incredulous and even a little sympathetic. It’s not as if I could blame them. Reyes was nothing if not magnetic, his gaze in each and every picture hypnotic, a born heartbreaker. No wonder hordes of women desired him, craved him despite his criminal record.

Remarkably, there was one tidbit of information that pretty much stunned me speechless. It was a good thing Mr. Wong didn’t talk much. Or, well, ever. I felt astonished beyond the ability to converse. Under a tab on Elaine Oake’s Web site titled “Unconfirmed Rumors” was one section that explained a lot.

It is an unconfirmed rumor, and quite frankly we here at Reyes Farrow Uncensored are skeptical, that our beloved Rey has a little sister. A thorough search of state and county records would indicate to the contrary, but we all know what a secretive man our guy is. As always with Reyes Farrow, anything is possible.

She sounded like a gossip columnist. Surely that was how the U.S. marshals found out about Reyes’s sister, Kim, but how the hell did Elaine get that information?

I was actually a little surprised that none of the stories Neil told me had leaked onto any of these sites. I was certain Elaine would have paid a small fortune for such things. Maybe Neil had covered it up as much as possible. I’d have to ask him about that.

Before I knew it, the clock struck three. Metaphorically. I hadn’t stayed up this late since that Twilight Zone marathon a few weeks back. I shuddered to think about how many cups of coffee I’d drowned my sorrows in over the last few hours. Which would explain the uncontrollable shaking I was experiencing.

Hoping sleep would not evade me completely, I decided to see if Dad was still downstairs before I hit the sack. He usually went home between midnight and two, but it never hurt to check. Either way, I could raid the kitchen. A quick bite might help me sleep.

Maybe it was that fifth cup of coffee, or even that sixth, but I had a strong sense something was not quite right at Calamity’s when I got downstairs. The place was pitch black, as it should have been, but a light filtered into the room from underneath Dad’s office door. My stomach was a little queasy as I weaved around tables and barstools. Maybe I’d just hunt down some soup when I got home instead.

I opened the door. Dad’s light was on, but he wasn’t there. As mundane as that sounded, a jolt of adrenaline rushed straight to my heart. Because now I could feel a twitch of fear emanating from the kitchen. I could feel disorientation and dread as well, but the fear overrode everything else. I ducked behind the bar and grabbed a knife before making my way around to the kitchen door. The closer I got, the more overwhelming the fear became. With the warmth that surrounded the emotion, the texture and scent of honey-lemon cough drops, I knew it was Dad. And he was doing it all on purpose. Almost as if he were warning me to stay away. But he didn’t know I could feel other people’s emotions. Did he?

I had no choice but to ease as quietly as I could through the swinging doors that led into the pitch-black kitchen. Once inside, I inched into a corner to allow my eyes to adjust. Why I didn’t carry night-vision goggles on my person twenty-four/seven, I would never know.

Before I could get my bearings, the lights flickered on and I suddenly found myself just as blind as I’d been before. I raised a hand to block the blast of light and squinted into a stark whiteness. That’s when a beefy arm came into view with a knife much longer than my own. It rocketed toward me so fast, my one and only thought consisted of probabilities. If my calculations were correct, taking into account the weight behind the swing, and the length and glistening sharpness of the blade thrusting toward me, this was going to hurt.