The Kay Sister Read online

  “Other than spitefulness? Not that I can tell.”

  “And the Fells?”

  “They’ve also been here several generations. Seem like the quiet family of the Naco pool. Normally on the side of good, but never involved enough to be called out by either side.”

  Reis chuckled. “I think Mark Fell might be the one that breaks the mold then. I think he’d be willing to do a lot for Rosa Kay.”

  “Any sign of Lucia Kay?” Gaby asked after a pause.

  Reis felt his face grow dark. “No. I should have followed my gut and ordered the Sheriff to put someone watching that house.”

  “No, Reis, you did the right thing. This town is already rife with gossip. We don’t want to incite a lynch mob to the Kays’ door.”

  “Yeah, yeah. But now we’ve lost someone who I am sure had a hell of a lot to contribute if she could only be made to talk.”

  Gaby nodded. “Maybe she’ll return if it looks like we’ve left.”

  “So you think she’s running from us?”

  “I don’t know, but I can’t see anything else that changed in her life. You said yourself those girls seemed neck-deep in secrets.”

  Reis nodded, still frowning. “I think we should question that pastor, Ian Russel. See if he can give us a better feel for the Kay sisters.”

  “You don’t want to question the sisters again? It might be a good time, now that they’re just two, their ringleader gone.”

  Reis paused, then shook his head. “No. I think going there now would make them clam up for good. Especially if the town gossips are right and not even they know why their sister upped and left.”

  “Okay. The pastor then. You want to go now?”

  Reis shook his head again, taking a sip of coffee. “He’s running that mission center. When I left the station, there was a line of people coming right out the door. I don’t want him to have the excuse of work to cut our interview short. We’ll go when the mission closes at seven, catch him just before he locks up.”

  3

  Rosa regretted not having taken the car. She felt that it would draw too much attention if she was seen leaving town. Instead, she’d gone out the back on foot, cutting through the edges of their arid land and taking the longer, but more isolated, way to the little house. But now, with the sun beating down on her in all its fierce summer glory, she wanted nothing more than to be back home already.

  To distract her mind from the sun burning the back of her neck, she went through her brief meeting with her aunt and cousin.

  Pedro, her fifteen-year-old cousin, had answered her coded knock.

  “Rosa!” he had said, his nearly black eyes lighting with surprise. “It’s normally Lucia who comes. Man, I have missed you! Is Camelia coming too?”

  She watched him peer past her into the bright day, then her aunt had spoken from inside.

  “Rosa? Quickly, inside. Shut the door, Pedro.”

  Her aunt, who looked so much like her son, both stocky and dark-skinned with even darker hair and eyes, took Rosa in from head to toe then muttered a prayer under her breath.

  “Sit. Pedro, get something cold for your cousin. Tell me what happened. Is Lucia okay?”

  Rosa had had to swallow a laugh. Her aunt always reminded her so much of her mother, although the two were not related. Joanna was the wife of Rosa’s maternal uncle. But they seemed to have the same approach to life. Being both curt, intelligent, and not the sort to back down from difficulties.

  Rose took the proffered seat and drew in a steeling breath. “Lucia is gone. I don’t know where, why, or when she’ll return.”

  Pedro, who had been returning with Rosa’s drink, dropped the glass, which shattered on the floor. He muttered several curses under his breath, then apologized loudly to his mother and cleaned the mess he made. Rosa had held her silence until he had returned with a new glass of iced water and sat down.

  She took a long sip to wet her parched mouth, then met her aunt’s eyes. “Do you have any ideas of where Lucia might be, Aunt Joanna? Or why she left?”

  Joanna had shaken her head and looked to Pedro, who sighed. “She really didn’t say anything?”

  “She left a note saying she had to go, couldn’t say why or where. Told us to wait for her.”

  Pedro glanced at his mother, who rose, declared that Rosa would stay for lunch, and left for the kitchen. Rosa had held back a smile, knowing her aunt did her best thinking while her hands were busy with some household task. Pedro had his dark eyes locked on his shoes, looking thoroughly miserable.

  “I am still looking into a few things,” Rosa had said, in an attempt to make him feel better. “She may have left something to do with your papers. I just wanted to let you know now, but I will come again if I find anything.”

  Pedro had lifted his eyes to hers, then glanced back at the kitchen. Seeming satisfied that his aunt was busy, he leaned forwards. “Thanks, Rosa, but that’s not what has me worried. I think Lucia went over the border. I think this is all linked to my father.”

  Rosa went still. Pedro’s father, Rosa’s uncle whom she had never met, was a criminal. Although her mother had never gone into detail, it was clear that he was something of an underworld lord in Mexico. He was why Amapola fled, why his wife and cousin fled and why Henry Kay broke the law for both women.

  “What could Lucia possibly have to do with Santiago?”

  Pedro had winced at the name and checked to make sure his mother was still clanking around the kitchen. “He almost found us about a month ago. Lucia and some contact of hers managed to thwart his scout, but I don’t know if she managed to keep her identity safe. What if he found out and took her?”

  Rosa felt fear swoop through her, then in the next breath, shook it off with the aid of some facts. “I don’t think that’s the case, Pedro. There was no sign of any kind of disturbance in the house.”

  “Was she there alone?”

  “No. Camelia was there too, sulking in her room.” Rosa hadn’t quite managed to keep the bite out of her voice, then felt a stab of guilt as she remembered that she had also been too involved in her own mind and had left the house. If either she or Cam had been with Lucia, maybe she would have said more, or perhaps she wouldn’t have left at all.

  “Then maybe Lucia didn’t make a fuss to spare Camelia,” Pedro had said, his voice filled with dark foreboding.

  Rosa had stood, trying to push the thought away. “No. I…A neighbor would have seen and said something if she left with some stranger. You don’t understand how quickly a town like ours can spot someone who isn’t a local or how much they like to spread gossip about us.”

  Pedro had seemed to swallow the urge to press his point and merely nodded. “I hope you are right.”

  Lunch had followed, the only mark on it, her aunt asking about their papers and Rosa’s unsatisfactory answer.

  Pedro had walked her to the door. “Rosa?”

  “Yes?”

  “Lucia would send us food every month,” he began, and Rosa frowned.

  “I know, but what do you mean ‘send’? I always thought she came herself.”

  Pedro’s thick eyebrows had raised a touch. “No. She said it was too dangerous to come out this way often. So she had a network of trusted people. She didn’t leave you any of this?”

  Rosa caught the genuine worry in his tone and had reassured him that she would do her best to fill her sister’s shoes, just as Lucia had apparently filled their mother’s.

  She finally reached home and put the visit to the side in her mind, relishing in the coldness of her kitchen, taking a tin of iced tea from the fridge, and downing half. She reached into her pocket and pulled out the seal, wondering what it was for. She had thought her sister may have only wanted to weigh down the note holding her apology, inadequate explanation, and second clue. Yet in their father’s hunts, any object with the clues had always meant something.

  She shook her head and spoke to the empty kitchen. “She dances on the turn of the crescent moon
.”

  Perhaps it was the clarity gained by being out of the sun or the refreshing drink. Maybe it was the effect of seeing family she usually had to pretend didn’t exist, but an old memory surfaced.

  She was six, standing with her mother, looking down into a wooden crib, where a three-month-old Camelia lay, giggling and trying to catch the dangling toys on the mobile.

  There was music playing in the background, the kind with a mechanical tang to it. The song ended abruptly, and Camelia immediately began to fuss.

  “Will you put it playing for her again?” her mother had asked, hazel eyes bright with happiness.

  “Yes, mama,” Rosa had said, bouncing over to her mother’s treasured music box.

  She carefully turned the box around and twisted the lever, rewinding the music box. As she released it, the music began to play again. Rosa had turned the box around to face the room, also taking a moment to watch the figure in a flamenco dress, spin to the tinny music.

  Rosa gasped, dispelling the memory and looking at the ceiling as if she could see through it to her mother’s old music box. The lever was shaped like a crescent moon.

  Filled with adrenaline, Rosa raced up the stairs two at a time and almost fell before reaching the landing.

  She froze at the door to her parents’ bedroom, her hand hovering above the handle. Rosa rarely entered this room. She took one steadying breath, then opened the door, faint traces of her mother’s perfume hitting her in the face, bringing tears to her eyes.

  Ruthlessly brushing that weakness away, she moved to the dressing table and pulled the old music box towards her. With shaking fingers, she opened the carved cedar wood box —the tiny dancer popping up as she did so. Inside, set neatly atop her mother’s jewelry, was the last note, marked with the image of a scroll.

  As she pulled it out, she saw the small, flip-style cell phone hidden underneath.

  She took the phone out as if it might bite her, placed it on the table, then opened the note.

  In Lucia's hurried handwriting, the note read, “There is a message waiting to be sent on the phone. As soon as you find it, send it, and know that the reply is the true scroll. I’m sorry I can’t say more. Good luck, and maybe, if we are insanely lucky, we will see each other again.”

  Rosa felt the bright warm day turn shadowy and cold. What the hell had her sister gotten her involved in?

  4

  Rosa walked to the mission, for once wholly unaware of the stares and whispers that followed her. She was too busy trying to guess who she had sent the message to. That person presumably held the actual ‘scroll’ that contained the information that Lucia had wanted to pass on. The message itself was no help at all. It spoke about a first edition volume of some book called ‘Wisdom and Destiny’, and about how a contact had been found, but they were awaiting their response. She let her feet follow the familiar route mindlessly, trying to unravel the message that seemed to be linked to their dad’s old bookstore.

  That can’t be it, though, can it? If all Lucia wanted was for me to take over the store, she could have just said so.

  “Ms. Kay. This is a nice surprise.”

  Her head snapped up, and her eyes locked on the steady caramel gaze watching her. Part of her mind panicked and was sure that Reis somehow knew where she had gone today and was about to arrest her for harboring and aiding illegal immigrants.

  She shot that part down and forced a sarcastic smile onto her face, even as her pulse raced in instinctual fear.

  “I think you’ll find that you’re the only one that is surprised, Agent Reis,” Rosa said, moving towards the mission again. To her consternation, he fell into step beside her.

  “Really? It is a wonder then that your sister could leave without anyone being any the wiser.”

  Rosa stiffened and wondered if he realized that his own point disproved itself. It was true that if everyone knew where everyone was likely to be, it should be easy to find them. Conversely, it also made it easy to plan a route through town likely to be empty of watchers. Rosa realized belatedly that she had a half-amused, half condescending look on her face and quickly wiped it away.

  “Ah, I see,” Reis said as they both stepped into the building. “You think that it was by that very merit that Lucia managed to escape.”

  Rosa felt her eyes harden as she looked up at him. “Escape? You make it sound like she had some reason to run.” Rosa sensed him about to ask a new question and quickly put an end to their little meetup. “In any case, I won’t hold you up any longer. I am only here to collect my sister.”

  “Rosa, you’ll never guess what I…” Camelia trailed off, her hazel eyes going wide when they fell on Agent Reis and grew impossibly wider still as Agent Boone came in silently behind them.

  Her abrupt stop caused Pastor Ian, who was scanning a paper attached to a clipboard, to bump into her.

  “Sorry, Camelia,” he said, steadying himself and looking down at her.

  Her early shock vanished, and she turned a brilliant red. “No, no. It was my fault.”

  Deciding that that was already far more than the FBI needed, Rosa stepped forwards and took Cam’s hand.

  “Come on then. We’re having your favorite for supper.”

  “Really?” Cam asked, still blushing furiously and casting glances at the agents.

  “Yes. A good evening to all of you,” Rosa said, locking eyes briefly with all of them in turn and trying to steer Cam out the doors. Cam seemed to have finally realized that the FBI was not there for either of them and she dug her heels in.

  Rosa gave her a warning glare as she turned back. Camelia gave her an exasperated look and opened her mouth.

  “I’ll be back tomorrow,” she called, not doing a great job of hiding the suspicion in her voice. “Have a good evening, Pastor Ian.”

  Both agents raised their eyebrows as she failed to greet them and strode past Rosa out the door. Rosa stifled an annoyed sigh, gave everyone a brief nod, and followed her sister. Whatever qualms she had had about continuing to keep Cam in her bubble of ignorance vanished like morning mist. Camelia had been too young when her parents had left them. She never knew even half of what was going on. Even her knowledge of Pedro and Joanna was only because she had stumbled across their father’s papers accidentally. That was when he stopped putting anything in writing. A habit Lucia seemed to be continuing.

  Sorry, Cam. It is for your own good. As well as everyone else’s.

  ****

  Agent Reis exchanged a glance with his partner, wondering if she had noticed it too. The Rosa they had spoken to with her two sisters was not the same Rosa Kay they had just encountered. It was as if she had been behind a veil, her potential hidden beneath a murky mist but could be glimpsed if one looked the right way. Now, as Boone dipped her chin a tiny fraction, he knew they had both seen it. A keen mind, determination, and fierce loyalty that rivaled their own.

  She could be a worthy ally, or enemy, depending on how things played out, Reis thought, secretly hoping that she didn’t end up as an enemy. It would make his job here even harder than it already was.

  “So,” Pastor Ian said as the silence grew. “How can I help?”

  Reis, who had been watching Rosa intently, turned back to Ian and gave the man his best attempt at a friendly smile. In the corner of his eyes, he watched Boone fighting a smile and gave up, letting his chiseled face fall into its natural stoic planes.

  “I wanted to know if you would be willing to help us sound the town out,” Reis began.

  The young pastor’s face became hard. “Excuse me? Are you asking me to share the details of my friends, neighbors, and parishioners so that you can better get them to answer your questions?”

  Reis couldn’t help the chuckle that bubbled from him. “Very astute for a small-town pastor.”

  Ian’s eyes lost even more of their warmth, and Reis quickly tried to correct the situation.

  “I didn’t mean any offense, but I apologize all the same.”

  P
astor Ian nodded. “So what do you want then, Agent Reis?”

  “Your help, as I said, but not quite in the way you inferred,” Reis said, hoping the other man would let his first request slide. Clearly, he had moral qualms helping in that way, but there was more than one way to get to where he wanted.

  “Then, in what way do you propose?”

  Reis sighed. “I’m an outsider. None of the people here trust me, none of them are willing to do more than answer generic questions, and most are terrified because I’m FBI. I want your help to ease their minds, to help me reach them so that I can solve this murder and get out of your hair.”

  Pastor Ian weighed him for a long moment. “If that is your goal, why not give the lead back to our Sheriff? Let him do the leg work and ask the questions. You’ll still get the answers, but the people won’t have their backs up.”

  Reis gave a reluctant nod. “I suppose that might help a little.”

  Ian shook his head. “I am sure it will. Just as I am sure you had already thought of that.”

  Reis grinned. “Very well. Complete honesty. I think the key to this case is wrapped up in the Kay family. Anything you can offer on that point would be appreciated.”

  Boone shot him a startled glance but otherwise didn’t react to his sudden capitulation to the verbal battle.

  The pastor gave a short laugh. “I am not going to be telling tales on my parishioners, Agent, no matter who asks or why. What I will offer is that none of the Kay sisters will give you anything at all if you try to bully them with your badge. Nor will they respond to other methods of persuasion. Rosa Kay is exceptionally brilliant. She’ll see a trick coming a mile away, and if she catches you trying to dupe her once, she will never give you anything ever again. Camelia will, for the most part, follow her lead.”

  “So you’re saying that no matter how I go about asking them for help, I won’t get any?”