No Harm (The Kate Teague Mysteries Book 1) Read online

  Kate looked around the kitchen, trying frantically to find what had done this. She thought of knives and broken glass, until she saw spilled coffee and half-eaten croissants on the table.

  Immediately she thought of poison and, moving fast, she dodged Esperanza’s swinging arms, grabbed her around the middle and dragged her to the sink. She turned on the cold tap, forcing Esperanza’s head under the running water.

  “Open your mouth!” she demanded. “Let the water run into your mouth.” Kate retched as blood and bits of flesh mingled among the scraps of lettuce and meat trimmings in the sink.

  “What is it?” Carl was behind her.

  “Looks like she’s eaten something caustic. Quick, get her in the car.”

  He picked Esperanza up and carried her to the back door.

  Kate grabbed the car keys. The remains of the croissants lay on a plate on the table. She dumped them into the crumpled bakery bag, and holding it at arm’s length as if it held explosives, she ran outside.

  FIFTEEN

  “DAMMIT!” Lieutenant Tejeda stormed out of Esperanza’s tiny emergency room cubicle. “I told you to be careful.”

  “You should have warned Esperanza, too,” Kate said, defensively.

  Carl was close beside her. “What did Esperanza get in her mouth?”

  “Lye,” Tejeda said. “Drain cleaner.”

  An icy finger ran down Kate’s spine. “Was it in the croissants?”

  “No. The sugar bowl.”

  “Shit.” Carl put his hand over his mouth as if a bit of the lye might have dropped there.

  Kate knew how he felt; her own mouth suddenly felt raw inside. “It’s my fault. Everyone knew that I wanted to talk to Esperanza. Now she can’t talk at all. We’re lucky she wasn’t killed.”

  “There wasn’t enough to kill her,” Tejeda said. “You think the lye was intended for Esperanza?”

  “Must have been. No one else ever used her sugar bowl.” Kate looked toward Esperanza’s curtained cubicle. “How is she?”

  “Scared. Sore. Third-degree burns in her mouth and throat. You saw what happened to her face when she tried to spit the stuff out? Good thing she didn’t swallow much of it.” Tejeda’s hand was warm on Kate’s shoulder. “It would have been worse if you hadn’t acted so fast, flushed the area.”

  Kate gazed up at Tejeda, both relieved and glad that he was here. Something about him softened the edges of the crisis for her.

  “It’s not your fault, Kate.” Carl reached out his arms and reeled her in, pressing her against him. It looked like an affectionate gesture, but she knew he was trying to draw her attention away from Tejeda, maybe trying to warn Tejeda off.

  Annoyed, Kate pushed away from him. Down the hall the double ambulance-ramp doors slid open with an electronic whoosh, announcing the hurried entrance of an orderly in hospital white. He ran toward them. “Your car’s blocking the ramp. Move it. Now. Paramedic’s on his way in.”

  Carl hesitated, his grip tightening around Kate. He obviously didn’t want to leave her alone with Tejeda.

  Fed up with Carl’s dramatics, Kate held her hand out for the keys. “I’ll go.”

  “S’okay.” He slouched away down the hall with his hands in his pockets, the orderly running backward in front of him, urging him to hurry. Carl ignored him.

  Tejeda watched Carl’s back. “Something bothering him?”

  “Yes,” she smiled. “You are.”

  He laughed. Carl heard him and turned and glared before he went out the door.

  “I called you this afternoon,” Tejeda said. “But you were out. Carl didn’t give you the message?”

  “Guess he forgot,” she said. “I was at Susan Ratcher’s, snooping around.”

  “She tell you anything?”

  “A little. First of all, I was right—Miles mostly kept pictures in his nightstand. And they might have been pictures of his baby. The housekeeper went to Mexico for an abortion, but I’m not sure she went through with it. Her medical bills didn’t arrive until months after she’d left.”

  “I better watch out. You’ll be after my job.”

  “Not a chance. Why did you call earlier?”

  “Wait a sec.” He glanced down the empty hall then moved with her a few steps farther away from Esperanza’s cubicle. “Does the Clinico Miraloma mean anything to you?”

  “’Fraid so. That’s where we took Nugie.”

  “Two pregnant American women were admitted there for treatment in November of nineteen forty-three. One was given a so-called therapeutic abortion, the other stayed three months and delivered an eight-and-a-half-pound baby boy.”

  “Who were they?”

  “Joan and Jane Smith.”

  “Big help. You think one of them was Miles’s housekeeper?”

  “It’s a good possibility. But which one? They both gave the same billing address.”

  “That’s strange. What’s the address?”

  “Miles Byrd’s.”

  “Two women?” She tried to figure out the time frame. “Mina took the housekeeper to Mexico. But she couldn’t have been pregnant because Dolph went overseas around Christmas of nineteen forty-two. He’d been gone almost a year by then.”

  “Think about it.”

  “I suppose it’s possible,” she said sadly. “Susan Ratcher said they would do anything to avoid scandal, but an abortion for Mina? That’s too cruel. She always wanted children so much.”

  “Records at Clinico Miraloma show some follow-up treatment for infection on the woman who had the abortion. Could have left her sterile,” he said. “But at least she lived. Doctor Guenther Maderos ring any bells?”

  “Maderos?” She only vaguely remembered what he looked like, but otherwise he was clear in her mind. Nugie had decided that he was Mexico’s Mengele because of his impossible, German-accented Spanish. She joked that she was going to turn him over to Dolph; he had to be an escaped Nazi. They had laughed at him every time he left the room, a way to cover their fear both of him and what would happen to Nugie.

  Kate looked up at Tejeda. “Maderos performed Nugie’s abortion.”

  “I know. He did Mina’s too, if she was the other woman.” He shook his head. “Doesn’t have much of a track record, does he?”

  “Poor Mina.” Did she ever know Nugie had gone to Maderos, Kate wondered? If he had botched an abortion on Mina, knowing Nugie had been taken to him would have made her death seem even more of a waste. Maybe that explained the change in Mina since Nugie’s death; she rarely expressed interest in anything that happened beyond today. Before Nugie died she had loved planning what she called “little treats” for the girls, taking Kate and Nugie to lunch in Beverly Hills, shopping weekends in San Francisco, theater trips to New York. Just the three of them, just for the pleasure of being together. But Nugie died. And Kate got married. And somewhere in there the specialness between Kate and Mina faded, maybe because it felt wrong without Nugie.

  “Are you Miss Ruiz’s employer?” The cool hand of a starched, white-clad nurse on her arm startled her. For a moment, the question didn’t register; she’d never thought of herself as Esperanza’s employer.

  “Yes. I’m her employer.” Kate felt a moment of panic. “Is she okay?”

  “Miss Ruiz would like to see you.” The woman smiled professional reassurance. “She’s dressing. We’re releasing her to go home.”

  Tejeda folded his arms and leaned against the wall. “I’ll wait for you out here.”

  “Esperanza?” Kate pulled the curtain aside. Esperanza was slipping her dress on over her head and Kate helped her keep it away from the injuries on her face as she pulled it down.

  Kate handled her with extreme caution, afraid she might accidentally touch one of the burns. “How do you feel?”

  Esperanza raised her right shoulder, she wasn’t sure how she felt. Her round black eyes appealed to Kate for explanation.

  “I’m so sorry.” Kate put an arm around Esperanza, who seemed suddenly very small and young as
she huddled close to Kate. She seemed frightened, and Kate realized that this was probably the first time she had ever been admitted to a hospital. “I feel so responsible for this mess.”

  Esperanza touched the fading bruise by Kate’s eye and shook her head.

  “You’re right,” Kate said. “It was probably the same guy who did this to me.”

  Esperanza turned around and Kate helped her with her back zipper. With shaky hands, Esperanza tried to smooth the front of her blood-stained dress. A shiny, bitter-smelling ointment covered the burns on her lips and chin. Gingerly, Esperanza touched the corner of her mouth, and winced, the pain tearing her eyes.

  “Are you ready to go home?” Kate asked.

  Esperanza firmly shook her head. She reached for a small stack of prescriptions on the examination table and made a gesture as if she were writing.

  Kate dug a pen out of her handbag and gave it to her.

  “My sister,” Esperanza wrote on the back of a prescription.

  “She lives somewhere in Wilmington, right? Take us about an hour. Let’s get your prescriptions filled, then we’ll go to Rosa’s, if you can direct me with hand signals.”

  Esperanza reached for Kate’s hand and held on like a scared child. Kate felt the irony of this role reversal, bossy Esperanza, who had nurtured her since infancy, now clinging to her. In spite of the circumstances, it was a nice feeling.

  Holding hands, they went out together.

  Carl and Tejeda waited in chilly silence on opposite sides of the doorway. Kate spoke to the neutral space between them. “I’m taking Esperanza to her sister’s.”

  “Like hell you are,” Carl exploded, taking a menacing step toward her. “After what’s happened I’m taking you home and keeping you under lock and key.”

  “Wait a minute.” Tejeda held up a hand. “It might not be a bad idea if Mrs. Teague stays away from home for the night.” He turned to Esperanza. “Can she sleep at your sister’s tonight?”

  Esperanza gripped Kate with both hands and nodded vigorously.

  “Okay?” he asked Carl, but it was more an announcement than a request for agreement. He turned to Kate. “I can send an escort with you. He’ll follow you until he’s sure you aren’t being tailed. As long as no one but us,” he gave Carl a piercing look, “knows where you are, you should be safe. Safer, at any rate, than you’d be at home.”

  “I’m going with them,” Carl said.

  “Sorry,” Tejeda said firmly. “The best thing you can do is go home and make everything seem as normal as possible until we get to the bottom of this.”

  “Home?” Carl looked at Kate.

  “Please stay for one more night,” she said, emphasizing one. Why did this have to happen just when he was about to move out?

  “If that’s what you want.” It wasn’t at all what she wanted, but Esperanza seemed so tired and agreeing to it seemed to be the only way they would get away from the hospital without more argument, and without Carl. Kate sensed something triumphant in Carl’s manner as he took Esperanza’s other hand.

  With Tejeda trailing, the threesome went upstairs to the pharmacy and waited while Kate had Esperanza’s prescriptions filled. The silent little parade walked out to the parking lot, tension crackling in the spaces between them.

  Kate pulled Dolph’s Mercedes into the driveway and waited for the patrol car to fall in behind her. The officer at the wheel, his face hidden by the dark, blinked his lights once, and they pulled out of the parking lot together. As she drove across town through the evening traffic, he stayed conspicuously close behind her, waving casually every few moments when she checked her rearview mirror for him. Other drivers gave them a wide berth.

  Kate headed north, toward Wilmington. Shortly before they reached the Los Angeles County line, the lights behind her blinked twice. She looked up and the officer pulled along beside her. He smiled and pointed his thumb over his shoulder as he shook his head. No one had followed. He waved a last time, then headed for the first off ramp.

  Suddenly alone, Kate felt vulnerable. Could she protect both herself and Esperanza if someone had managed to follow them, despite the escort?

  Tense and watchful, she stayed in the middle lane until they were past the residential part of Long Beach. Beyond the city, the lighted freeway cut through a long dark stretch of factories and harbor storage yards like an endless yellow cord. The farther away the lights of the city, the thinner the traffic became. Kate relaxed a little, having fewer cars to worry about.

  As they neared Wilmington, Kate could see exhaust fires from the immense oil refineries shooting through the black sky, filling the air with a sulfurous, rotten egg smell. Esperanza, who had seemed to be dozing, sniffed the air then sat up and looked around to check her bearings.

  Occasionally, the flat, barren landscape around them was interrupted by forty-foot mounds of skeletal, rusting automobiles waiting to be crushed into neat cubes of scrap metal. The auto graveyards were eerie, Kate thought, encroaching along the freeway as if waiting for fresh material to fall in.

  Esperanza poked Kate’s arm then pointed to an off ramp that bisected the mounds.

  “We get off here?” Kate asked doubtfully, checking to make sure that the roadway to her right was clear.

  Esperanza nodded.

  Staying in the third lane of four, Kate waited until she had almost passed the ramp, then cut sharply across two lanes, neatly missing the cement end-barrier. Pausing quickly at the stop sign at the end of the ramp, she checked behind her, but no one had followed.

  Esperanza clutched the dash with one hand for stability, and with the other she directed Kate to turn right at the first intersection. On the left was a broken line of factories and warehouses deserted for the night. On the right a vast, black, mist-shrouded field separated the road from the scrapyards.

  Esperanza leaned forward, her eyes riveted on the dark field. She held up her hand for Kate to slow the car. Then she pointed to a driveway apron cut into the concrete curb. There was only dirt field beyond the curb. Unsure, Kate slowed, then drove past the apron. Esperanza poked her again and made a circle motion with her finger. “Turn back,” it indicated.

  “You’re kidding,” Kate said, her courage failing when Esperanza repeated the circle with her finger. Kate obeyed and made a broad U-turn. She stopped across from the apron. “There’s nothing there,” she protested.

  Esperanza made a familiar shooing gesture that had always meant, “Do it and don’t argue.”

  Kate bumped the car up over the apron and onto the field. “If it were anyone but you I wouldn’t do this. Where are you leading me?”

  Esperanza pointed straight ahead to a faint light glowing in the middle of the darkness. Kate forced the car over dirt that had been baked to adobe by the long, dry summer. Eventually she picked up a rutted track that seemed to head toward the light that, as she got closer, appeared to come from a small square window maybe a hundred yards ahead.

  Against the dark, Kate could make out the vague, irregular shapes of small buildings and the carcasses of a dozen cars. For an instant, the headlights caught a crude sign, “Sanchez Auto Dismantellers,” painted on a rusted bumper and nailed to a wooden post.

  The rutted path ended in front of a corroded, fifteen-foot camp trailer, its middle window the source of the yellow light. Kate stopped, but kept her motor idling. “Now what?”

  Esperanza leaned across her and gave the horn a long blast.

  Almost instantly the trailer door flew open with a metallic bag, shooting a rectangle of light across a gravel walkway lined with up-ended hubcaps. The straggling ends of a summer flower garden spilled over the hubcaps and onto the gravel.

  Kate heard Esperanza fumbling with her door handle. She turned off the motor, but with the keys clutched and ready in her hand, she got out and walked around the car to help her. Gravel rolled into her sandals and dug painfully at the soles of her feet.

  In the open doorway, a small round man appeared holding a cylinder that
glinted metallically in the soft light. “Who’s there?” he shouted, shaking the object in his hand as it released a weak beam of light.

  Kate raised an arm to shield her eyes as he aimed the light at her.

  “Kate! Is that you?” he called into the night.

  Hearing her name in this strange place made her jump. How could anyone know she was coming? Frightened, she edged back toward her side of the car, ready to hop in and leave.

  “Rosa!” the man called back over his shoulder as he stepped down from the wooden crate that served as the trailer’s front step. He ran toward the car in a funny half-skip, a man no longer used to physical exertion.

  Esperanza opened her door and the dome light in the car snapped on. Sitting there in the only patch of brightness in the dark field, she looked like an angel at a Christmas pageant.

  “Esperanza!” The man gave the “r” a rich roll. “Holy Mary, Mother of God.” He crossed himself before reaching for her. “The crazy things been going on, I thought it was Kate come to tell us you was dead.”

  “She’s been hurt,” Kate said, put at ease by his tenderness toward Esperanza. “She wanted me to bring her here.”

  “Of course.” He took Esperanza by the arm and guided her slowly toward the trailer. Over his shoulder he said, “Come inside, Kate.”

  She strained against the darkness to see him better, to force recognition. He looked like a small, aging Mexican cowboy, short even in his high-heeled boots. As he stood waiting for her in the pale light from the open doorway, she saw him clearly for the first time, and was sure she had never encountered him before.

  The woman, Rosa, appeared beside him, tugging her too-snug dress in place over her round middle. Kate knew the dress, one her mother had worn a few years ago. Welts showed down the sides where the seams had been let out to accommodate this smaller, younger version of Esperanza.

  Brusque and angry, Rosa took charge of Esperanza as soon as she was inside. “Oscar,” she ordered, “bring Kate inside. She’s going to catch cold in those short pants.”

  Inside, the trailer was warm and cheery, smelling of strong coffee and the kerosene lamps that gave the tiny place a soft pink glow. How strange, Kate thought, this homey little island among the wrecking yards. She had time to take in the entire trailer while Rosa bustled in the narrow space, scooping up the day’s newspapers and clearing away the dinner dishes.