Read Online Dead In The Water (Rebecca Schwartz Mystery #4) (The Rebecca Schwartz Series) by Julie Smith - Free Book Online Page A

stylishly spiky, but wouldn’t stand up right after its mashing. Some of it sagged and some stuck up in tufts, affording an amusingly zany look that went well with his freckles. I thought he was younger than Julio, but I couldn’t be sure. It was hard to imagine him a father.
    He blurted, “I heard Marty murdered her.”
    “You did? Maybe you better tell me about it.”
    He flushed. “I thought it was just a rumor.” He stuffed his hands in his jeans and stared at his tennis shoes. “It’s really true, huh?”
    “It’s really true someone murdered her. Where were
you
last night between six and eight?”
    “Me?” He seemed deeply shocked by the question. “Having dinner with Amber.”
    “Just kidding.”
    “Oh.” To Julio he said, “This really messes me up, man.”
    “Ricky, could we talk about it later?”
    “Oh, yeah. Sorry—see you later.” He gave me a nervous, surreptitious grin and more or less stumbled out, tripping over his toes. The look reminded me of a little kid who covers his face and thinks he’s invisible. Ricky might be a
puer etemus
, but it’s the sort of thing lots of grown-ups do.
    The funny thing is that it usually works, I’ve noticed. When one person telegraphs he wants to keep something secret, others usually enter into a silent conspiracy to help him do it, even when it’s much to their disadvantage. And so my natural impulse was to respect Ricky’s privacy. I ignored it.
    “I think I made him uncomfortable,” I said. “He gave me a funny look when he left.”
    “You didn’t make him uncomfortable. He thought you were swell.”
    “It seemed as if he really had something on his mind.”
    “Ricky overdramatizes.”
    Oh, well. Discretion is a good quality in a man.
    All this time, there hadn’t been a peep out of Esperanza. We found her lying on her bed staring at the wall.
    Julio said, “
Nena
, I’ve brought Rebecca. You know—the nice lady from Libby’s? I thought you might want to talk to her.”
    No answer.
    The hopelessness of the whole idea swept over me like a bucket of cold water. And I was furious. Esperanza had been afraid of me before, she’d be afraid of me now. I was a stranger. She wasn’t going to talk to me.
    Now I saw exactly why Julio had brought me here. This was no sexual ploy, it was a sexist one. Dealing with difficult children was women’s work and he’d simply never learned how to do it. He’d told me the truth—I was sure he did feel helpless in the face of Esperanza’s withdrawal. Instead of having the balls to break through, figure it out, do what had to be done, he’d recruited me. But I wasn’t really angry at him. I was pissed off because I felt as much at a loss as he did.
    Julio stayed at the threshold while I crept in and sat on the bed, not sure whether the closeness would be comforting or threatening. I started winging it, babbling, more or less stream-of-consciousness-style, hoping I’d hit on something that got a response.
    “You know, Libby loved Sadie very much, too. It’s going to be very hard for both of you without her, and I understand how bad you feel. I want you to know that it’s okay to cry and feel as bad as you need to feel and that that feeling will go away, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow—”
    I stopped to get hold of myself, hoping she was too young to have seen
Casablanca
. I got up the nerve to stroke her hair, and to my surprise, she turned on her back and looked at me. Her eyes flicked to Julio, and I thought I saw fear in them—he had said she seemed afraid of him—and instinctively I turned, perhaps to see if I could see what she saw. But Julio smiled a quiet smile and left.
    The coward
, I thought, but my heart wasn’t in it. I knew he had done the right thing, leaving us alone.
    What next? It was anybody’s guess what was troubling her—other than simple grief—but that flicker of fear made me think there
was
something. Why would a child be afraid of her father?
    The first thing that