Castillo's Bride. Anne Marie Duquette
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“Ah, sí. Nombre?”
“Guadalupe.”
“Lupe es una nombre bonita. Muy bonita.”
“Gracias.” A tender smile transformed the guard’s plain, lined face above her name tag, which read simply, Olivia.
Aurora headed for the exit and switched to English. “Let’s hope your daughter turns out better than my niece. And doesn’t carry grudges from the past like her mother does. Goodbye, ladies.”
For once, neither Tanya nor Dorian had a thing to say. Silence followed Aurora out of the gloomy jail and into the blinding Mexican sun.
THE MOB OF CHILDREN assailed her as she stepped out the door, only to be driven away by a harsh command from her truck’s hired guard. He hurried up to meet her, gesturing toward her undamaged truck.
“All okay, señorita. Not broken. Wipers, tires, you look.”
Aurora looked, walking around the truck. “Cómo se llama?” she asked.
“Roberto. Roberto Ortega. I speak English. Buen inglés. You said diez dólares if truck safe. You owe me cinco.”
Aurora nodded, and paid him a second five. She unlocked the door, got in and then paused. Those damn lawyers haven’t helped one bit. I’ve gone through all the conventional channels. Time to start using the unconventional ones. “I have a problem,” she said with sudden inspiration. “I could use some help—and I’m willing to pay.”
Roberto straightened. “I am your hombre, señorita.”
Aurora switched back to Spanish, and told him about Dorian’s missing husband, about Dorian and Tanya. “I need information about her esposo, Gerald Atwell. You get it to me, and to the guard inside, and I’ll pay you. Ten now, ten later.”
“Fifty later,” Roberto said, haggling in Mexico’s time-honored tradition. Rory, thinking of her diminishing bank account, determinedly haggled back.
“Twenty more.”
“Forty.”
“Thirty.”
“Sí.” Aurora removed a business card, along with another ten. “Call me at this number. Collect. Is there a number I can get from you?”
“My friend works at a carneceria—how do you say, a meat store?” Phone numbers were exchanged. He studied the side of her truck. “What does this say?” he asked, pointing.
Aurora translated her logo into the appropriate Spanish.
“I dive, too,” Roberto said proudly. “With tanks, without tanks. I dive for lobster, crab, shellfish. You need help on your boat?”
You don’t know the half of it, Roberto. Aurora shrugged, the noncommittal Mexican response.
“I help you find this man, you hire me? Take me to San Diego? Sponsor my carta verde? Be my sponsor for citizenship?”
Green card? Sponsor? Since she was a business owner, that was theoretically possible, but Aurora already had enough on her hands. She couldn’t possibly take the time to get a Mexican citizen a work permit, let alone sponsor him for American citizenship. The boy didn’t even look eighteen! She shook her head.
“Please, I get this man out of jail for you, you hire me?”
Out of jail? Aurora paused. She’d planned to bribe the guards, not the self-appointed parking-lot attendant. The boy—no, he was a man, despite his youth—made her reconsider. “How old are you?”
“Diez y siete.”
Seventeen. So young. “I don’t want any trouble,” she said in Spanish.
Roberto nodded. “La inmigración, la policía, no trouble if you know which ones like extra dinero. I will see. I will soon be eighteen. With a carta verde, I can apply for California residence for my familia..”
She hesitated. Mexico’s immigration and police departments were nothing like her country’s organizations. And she knew virtually nothing about the young man before her. “I don’t know you well enough to hire you. I only hire skilled workers,” she said. “People I can trust.”
Roberto flushed an angry red. “You don’t believe I am skilled? Or I can dive?” He pointed to her black plastic dive watch. “Watch.” Roberto took in a deep breath, and held it. And held it. And held it.
In amazement, Aurora watched the digital seconds go higher and higher and higher. When Roberto finally gasped for breath almost four minutes later, lifting his chin high in triumph, Aurora blinked at the numbers on her watch.
“I dive deep. Like dolphins. Like whales,” he said. “I catch plenty lobsters.”
Aurora whistled. Even she couldn’t hold her breath that long. “I believe you.”
“Then—believe this. I will help you get your familia out of jail. When I do, you hire me. I come to California with them and you sponsor my green card.” Roberto pulled out a worn work rag from his pocket, carefully wiped his right hand, then thrust it out. “We shake. Deal?”
Aurora shook his hand. “Deal,” she said. “For now, you help me find Gerald Atwell. And then…we’ll see what I can do.”
WHEN SHE’D DRIVEN BACK to San Diego, she made her second stop of the day, at the office of a good friend. “Donna Diamond, Private Investigator” was also Donna Padierezsky, a Navy veteran who’d left Naval Intelligence Services for a private career in San Diego.
Donna’s office was modern, her tools were high-tech and her sense of humor, so necessary in a job like hers, showed in her pseudonym.
“Hey, I can’t have clients calling me at home or knowing where I live,” she explained once. “Plus, I want something clients can spell when they write out my check. Even the bank messes up on Padierezsky.”
Donna was presently searching for Jordan’s attackers—and would-be murderers. The women were old dive buddies, and Donna insisted on working for free. She’d asked Aurora to swing by the office after her prison visit. Donna’s very feminine looks—black curls, attractive face and petite body—led many to overlook her keen mind, a fact she often turned to her advantage. She had drinks and take-out food waiting as Aurora entered.
“Come and take a load off. Chow’s here too, Rory,” Donna said without preamble, her manner as brisk and no-nonsense as it had been in the Navy. “How’s Dorian?”
“She looks terrible. Tanya’s still full of herself,” Aurora said.
“Figures. Here.” Donna passed Rory a set of finely designed, jade-inlaid lacquered chopsticks she’d picked up while on duty in Japan, and a box of Chinese takeout. “You can fill me in while we eat. I want to hear everything.”
Aurora did as requested, describing her time at the prison.
“And you actually told Tanya you’d leave her there?” Donna asked as Aurora finished her story.
“Yeah. Not that I would—but I needed to get through to her somehow. So much for tough love. I guess scare tactics weren’t the best solution. She doesn’t scare. And Dorian didn’t approve of me threatening her baby chick.”
“Baby chick, my Aunt Fanny. You should send that child off to boot camp. If she ever gets out of Mexico,” Donna said bluntly. “Her parents can’t handle her, that’s for sure. Why don’t you take her in?”
“I’ve offered, but Dorian won’t hear of it and Gerald doesn’t want to admit failure.”
“They’d both better admit it, now,” Donna replied. “Speaking of Gerald, I haven’t been able to get a message to him at all. If only he’d been arrested for theft, or pimping…even murder—”
“Donna, please.”
“—I’d