Secure Location (17 page)

He asked the receptionist to get a manager. She pushed a button, spoke into her headset and in just minutes he was invited into the offices.

The manager was a woman, probably close to fifty. She wore blue pants, a blue shirt and a white lab coat. Cruz gave her his card, explained that he was investigating a crime and that he needed to talk to Tom Looney. She didn’t ask any questions, just led him to a conference room.

It took Tom Looney ten minutes to get to the room. He was wearing a hairnet over his ponytail and there was a pair of safety glasses in his pocket. He was also sweating.

Cruz didn’t waste any time. He slid another card across the table. “I’m here to talk to you about some trouble that Meg Montoya has been having.”

Looney didn’t say anything.

“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” Cruz said. “I don’t much care. But I’m thinking your employer might not like the idea of you needing time off unexpectedly to give a statement to the police.”

Looney shook his head in apparent disgust. “I don’t know what some crazy guy attacking her at the fundraiser has to do with me.”

Now that was interesting. To the best of Cruz’s knowledge, the incident hadn’t made the papers. “How do you know about that?”

The man’s face got red. He hesitated, chewing on his top lip. “I know someone who was there.”

“Define
someone.
”

The man pursed his lips. Finally, he spoke. “The hotel employed four men from the prison through the A Hand Up program. I live with one of the men. He told me about it.”

The pieces were starting to click together. The uncle’s strange comment—
“He’s a man or at least he says he is.”
The missing work experience on the job application. Cruz leaned forward. “You used to work at the prison. But you got fired from there for having a personal relationship with one of the inmates, didn’t you?”

The man nodded. “Look. I don’t want any trouble at this job. I work with a bunch of rednecks. It’s bad enough to be a gay man but to be a gay man living with an ex-con is just asking for trouble.”

No doubt about that.

“You lost your job at the hotel, too,” Cruz said.

“That was for a totally different reason. I missed too much work.”

“Why?”

“My partner was ill. He needed surgery and couldn’t drive for several weeks. He had therapy appointments afterward and there was nobody else to take him. I ran out of vacation time.”

Cruz knew that if Looney had told Meg the truth, there was a high likelihood that he’d have kept his job. But he understood the secrecy. This
was
Texas, after all.

“Meg has had some other things happen. Do you have any idea of who might want to antagonize her or hurt her in some way?” Cruz asked.

The man shook his head. “She’s a good person. Probably the nicest manager I’ve ever worked with. I was the one who told her about the A Hand Up program. She knew I had some personal connection but she never pried. I can’t see anybody wanting to hurt her. I guess the only advice I could give you is to talk to her secretary. That woman’s a bitch.”

* * *

C
RUZ TURNED HIS
attention to finding Troy Blakely. The guy had worked at the jewelry store for over a year. He had to have had lunch in the area, or maybe dropped off some dry cleaning. The possibilities were endless. People left tracks everywhere.

He hit pay dirt at his fourth stop—a small Thai restaurant. The waitress, a tired-looking thirtysomething blonde, looked at the picture and smiled. “He used to stop in a couple nights a week. Always had a beer while he was waiting for his food. Nice enough guy, although there was something about him that gave me the creeps.”

“When’s the last time you saw him?”

“A week or so ago.”

That surprised Cruz. There were a lot of places to get Thai food. If he wasn’t working in the area, was he living nearby?

“Anything unusual?”

“I asked him if he’d found work. A few months back he’d lost his job at this big hotel.”

“Had he?”

“I’m not sure. I remember his answer because it was sort of weird. He said it didn’t matter because he was finally going to be able to fix everything.”

Fix everything.

It could mean a thousand things. “He ever have a conversation with anybody else while he was waiting for his beer?”

She shook her head. “No. I suppose I was the only one who paid much attention to him. To be honest, I felt a little sorry for him. When he first started coming in, which was probably a good year ago, he’d said that his parents had died recently—the way he talked about them, I got the impression that they were really close.”

“His parents live in San Antonio?”

A door slammed near the rear of the restaurant and she started wiping the counter in earnest. “I need to go help put away stock,” she said.

“His parents?” he prompted again.

She wrinkled her brow. “Some small town two hours away. Hollyville. Haileyville. Something like that.”

Cruz discreetly passed her a fifty-dollar bill and a card with his name and number. “Thank you. If you remember anything else, please call me.”

It took Cruz five minutes to locate Haileyville, Texas, on the map. He didn’t bother to plug the address into his GPS. It was a hundred miles west, then a short twenty miles north—main highways all the way.

He grabbed coffee and two candy bars from the gas station and settled in for the trip. He was barely at the outskirts of San Antonio when he called Meg.

“Meg Montoya,” she answered

“How’s your day?”

“I had a couple meetings and quite a bit of voice mail and email to get through.”

His idea of hell. He hated the bureaucratic nature of police work that required writing reports and documenting endless conversations. Hated going to meetings where decisions never got made. Hated listening to consultants who couldn’t find their butts unless someone put a dollar sign on them.

“Lucky you,” he said. “Hey, I’m headed out of town. I got a lead on Troy Blakely. His parents lived in Haileyville. It’s about two hours west of here.”

Meg knew exactly where Haileyville was. It was thirty miles from her hometown of Maiter, Texas. They’d gone school shopping there and Christmas shopping, too. It was significantly bigger than Maiter, although that wasn’t saying much. Probably had ten thousand residents. Maiter had boasted they’d hit a thousand when the Wyman triplets had been born.

Cruz’s trip shouldn’t make her nervous but it did. Nobody in Haileyville was going to be talking about something that happened twenty years ago, some thirty miles away.

“Will you be back tonight?” Meg asked.

“Yes. I’d really appreciate it if you would either be in your office or in our rooms. Please don’t leave the hotel.”

“I won’t,” she said. She didn’t need to leave the hotel in order to do what needed to be done.

“Thank you,” he said.

She disconnected before she did something stupid like beg him to be careful. Then she pulled out Detective Myers’s card from her purse and dialed his office number.

“Myers,” he answered.

She could just see his stubby, nicotine-stained fingers grabbing his desk phone.

“This is Meg Montoya. I need to tell you something.”

Chapter Fifteen

When Cruz got to Haileyville, he searched for funeral homes on his smart phone. There were four. The first one he tried was closed but the second one had lights on. He rang the bell. A man in his mid-forties, wearing a black suit and shiny black shoes, opened the door.

“May I help you?” the man asked, his tone hopeful. Cruz understood. In a town this size, the four funeral homes would be in fierce competition. “My name is Detective Cruz Montoya. I’m investigating a case and I’m trying to find information on this man.” He flashed Blakely’s picture. “It’s my understanding that his parents died, maybe about a year ago. Do you recognize him?”

The man studied the picture, then shook his head. “Perhaps one of his siblings handled the arrangements. What’s the name?”

“Troy Blakely.”

The man tapped his chin and Cruz saw that his nails were very clean. Probably bad for business to have embalming fluid under the thumbnail. “Now I’ve got it. You’ve got the timing right. It was almost a year ago. If you’ll follow me, we can look it up.” The man led him to a back room, done in tasteful gray and maroon. The man motioned for Cruz to sit and took his own seat in front of an old desktop computer. After a few clicks of the mouse, he stopped. “Here we are. Blakely. Gloria and Ted. Sad situation really. The woman died and the husband arranged the funeral. At the same time, he prepaid for his own services. That’s not all that strange. However, we realized he had something in mind when just three days later, we were advised that he was also deceased. A deliberate overdose on his wife’s medication.”

“Their family?”

“No family. I assisted in the writing of his wife’s death notice for the local paper and specifically asked him about children. He did mention that his wife had lost a daughter from a previous marriage many years ago but he didn’t want us to mention that in the newspaper.”

“No son? You’re sure?”

“As sure as I can be. No mention of one and he definitely wasn’t at either funeral.”

Cruz wanted to pound his head on the table. It wasn’t making sense. It had to be the right couple. Same last name. The waitress had the name of the town right.

But no son. Troy Blakely had made it sound like he was very close to his parents.

Something did not smell right.

“What’s their address?”

The funeral director frowned. “I’m not sure I should release that.”

Cruz cocked an eyebrow. “Who’s going to complain? They’re dead and there’s no family.”

The man nodded. “I suppose you’re right. And we, of course, want to cooperate with the police.” He wrote something on a slip of paper and passed it across the desk to Cruz. “Good luck, Detective.”

Cruz plugged the address into his GPS and found the small house in less than ten minutes. It was a modest ranch on a quiet street, with concrete birds and rabbits and even a few frogs in the flower garden.

Had they belonged to the Blakelys? Were they left behind in the garage, no longer a concern for a man determined to follow his wife?

He knocked and a minute later, a young woman opened the door. She had a baby, dressed in pink and white, perched on a hip. “Yes,” she said, her tone guarded.

“Hi,” he said, trying for relaxed. It was a struggle when he was strung tight. “I thought Gloria and Ted Blakely lived here.” It was as good an opening line as any. It was possible the new owner had learned something about the previous owners from helpful neighbors.

She shook her head and swayed in the way that all young mothers seemed to know. His sister and sister-in-laws had come home from the hospital knowing how. He stared at the baby. Cute kid. Not much hair. He was about to lift his gaze when the baby flashed him a gummy grin that lit up her face.

At that moment, he’d never envied his partner more. In a few short months, Sam would come home to pure sweetness. Sure, there’d be dirty diapers and sleepless nights but it wouldn’t matter. Because there’d be love. Unconditional love.

“They’ve been gone for almost a year,” the woman said, bringing Cruz back. “They both died. We got the house for a good price. Guess it freaked some people out that the man had killed himself here.”

“Any family?” he asked.

The woman shook her head. “I guess not.”

This was going nowhere fast. “Thanks for your time,” he said, giving the baby one last look. He turned, walked down the sidewalk to the house next door, and knocked on the red door. A woman with a square body and a round face answered. Cruz guessed her age to be about sixty.

“My name is Cruz Montoya,” he said, holding his card steady so that she could read the information. “I was hoping to talk to someone who knew Gloria or Ted Blakely.”

She shrugged and her housedress lifted on one side. “I suppose I knew them as well as anybody. They kept to themselves a lot.”

“What about family?”

“Poor things. They didn’t have anybody. Not like me and Bert with our five.” She leaned forward so far that Cruz thought she might topple over. “I think they might have lost a child,” she said, her voice a mere whisper. “One time when I was visiting, I had to use their bathroom.” She patted her abdomen. “Five babies and your bladder ain’t what it used to be.”

Maybe he should tell his sister. She kept complaining that her breasts were sagging. It would give her a whole new body part to worry about.

“I happened to see in their bedroom. There was a pink cross hanging next to the dresser. “It had a name on it. I think it was Missy.”

Cruz pulled out the picture of Troy Blakely. “Did you ever see a man who looked like this hanging around?”

She shook her head. “I don’t think so. But then again, I don’t see so good anymore.”

“Is there anybody else who might have known them?” he asked.

She pointed at the house across the street. “You could talk to the Moulins. Of course, neither Debi nor Frank gets home from work until after five.”

He wouldn’t make it back to San Antonio until after seven-thirty. He didn’t want to leave Meg alone for that long. “Thanks for your help,” he said. He got in his car and headed east.

* * *

D
ETECTIVE
M
YERS LISTENED
to Meg’s story without interruption or expression. He sat in a visitor chair, she sat behind her desk. When she finished, she realized she was clenching her hands together. “Well?” she prompted. She’d spewed her guts. He could at least answer.

“I appreciate you telling me,” he said. “I’d have liked to have known right away but that’s a moot point now. I take it your ex-husband doesn’t know any of this.”

She nodded. “I’d like to keep it that way.”

“I don’t have any compelling reason to tell him,” he said. “But he’s a smart guy and from what I can tell, a good cop. If he starts digging, he might stumble upon it.”

That’s what she was afraid of.

“You don’t have any reason to believe what’s happening now has anything to do with what happened twenty years ago?” Myers asked.