Read Online Blood Sweep by Steven F. Havill - Free Book Online Page A

Missouri with his world heavy with theory, practice, and performance, it wasn’t hard to imagine his agile mind coming up with some scheme—a new instrument of some kind, or perhaps he had changed his mind and was planning a personally produced CD of his music. But he would never try to cajole finances out of his grandmother, whom he revered.
    â€œDo you recall…Francisco’s friend? Remember…” Teresa squinted at the window as if her memory lay outside…“Do you remember the boy who played in the concert…was it last winter?” Her speech was halting as she both tried to recall what she wanted to say from one sentence to the next, but also struggled to cope with English—not a language for which she had much affection.
    â€œOf course I do.” Mateo Atencio, the fifteen-year-old youngster from a tiny village in south-central Texas and also a senior performance major at Leister Conservatory on a full-ride scholarship, had stunned the audience with his virtuosic flute performance, playing both solo and accompanied by Francisco Guzman on the piano.
    â€œI hear that he got in trouble somehow,” Teresa said slowly. “In Mexico. Maybe it was Mazatlán.”
    â€œ Ay. Did my hijo call you?” Estelle knelt beside the chair, both of her hands covering her mother’s. And why would he do that? Estelle knew that both her sons treasured talking with their grandmother, who was now never left alone. The boys knew that. Had Francisco had such important news, he would have asked to speak with his brother, Carlos—who would receive and deliver messages with perfect accuracy. Failing that, he would have spoken with Nana , Addy Sedillos. If not her, then whichever dispatcher was on duty at the Sheriff’s Department. Or their father at the clinic. Or, or, or…
    The Spanish word opened the floodgate, and when Teresa replied, it was in the elegant, old-fashioned borderlands Mexican dialect with which she’d spent the first eighty-five years of her life in Tres Santos.
    â€œ Su amigo, el Capitán…” and she stopped as if recalling that difficult name had exhausted her circuits.
    â€œ Tomás, you mean?” Now a colonel in the Mexican judiciales, Tomás Naranjo had been a valuable resource for the Posadas County Sheriff’s Department when matters had spilled one way or another across the border. “He called here?”
    â€œI told him that he could reach you at the office, but he seemed in such a hurry, that man.”
    Estelle frowned. Naranjo being in a hurry was a difficult concept to accept. It was unlikely enough that he would have called Estelle’s home during the day—and even if he had, he would have been the epitome of genteel manners. He would have taken time to court Teresa over the phone, asking about each family member in turn. Eventually, he would have gotten around to the problem at hand. And what help would Teresa be? Naranjo would certainly have called Estelle at the Sheriff’s Office had something urgent arisen. That he might have called her home, choosing to speak with Teresa, was incomprehensible, and stirred Estelle’s suspicions.
    â€œDid he explain what he wanted? What was going on with the boy? Why would they be in Mexico?”
    Teresa looked distant again, and for a long moment didn’t answer. Estelle had long since learned to simply wait, not pushing her mother with impatient prompting.
    â€œI don’t know,” Teresa said finally.
    â€œBut the eight thousand dollars? Did Naranjo himself request that?”
    This time Teresa nodded thoughtfully. “That was last week, mihija. That is the bail that is necessary. And I know that the two boys have concerts coming up.” A fleeting smile touched her lips. “They always do, those two. Maybe that’s what it is.”
    â€œBail.” Her stomach felt as if it were full of lead. “Tomás asked you for the money?