Dead In The Water (Rebecca Schwartz Mystery #4) (The Rebecca Schwartz Series)

I?”
    She nodded once, vaguely, her heart not in it, just pleasing a grown-up.
    “I’ll help you no matter what, Esperanza. And I can do that because I’m a lawyer. Do you believe that?” (I’d heard that kids know instinctively when you’re feeding them bilge water, but I was gambling that it wasn’t true.)
    She nodded again. This time did I see a faint glimmer of hope? Probably not, but I bulled forward.
    “You lost a good friend when you lost Sadie, and I think you need another one. I’d like it to be me.” I had a sudden twinge. Was I being manipulative? Quickly I said, “I don’t mean you have to do anything for me or even talk to me if you don’t want to. But I want you to know you can if you like.”
    I waited a moment. “Would you like to tell me about the white thing?”
    She turned to the wall.
    “I just thought that, since you trusted Sadie with it, and I’m your friend now, that you might trust me.”
    Dead silence.
    “Okay, I understand. I was just wondering—a thing like that—what did it look like, exactly?”
    Her voice was flat, a monotone, as if she were on drugs. “Like a brain.”
    Julio came in. “You two doing okay?”
    I patted a small leg. “You know, you’ve got a terrific little girl here.”
    “Don’t I know it.”
    A tiny sniff escaped the huddled-up heap on the bed—a stifled sob, I thought. Julio said, “You know what Esperanza really loves?”
    “Pizza?”
    “Besides that.”
    “Spaghetti?”
    “Besides that, too.”
    “Movies.”
    “As long as nothing awful happens to any fuzzy animal. But something else.”
    “Sea otters!”
    “Bingo! Bingo! The grand prize for Rebecca! But what I meant was, the way she really likes to look at the sea otters is from a boat. Isn’t that right,
Nena
?” He paused for an answer, received none, and continued undaunted in the same vein. “So guess what we’re going to do this afternoon? We’re going for a sail! That is, if Esperanza wants to—”
    He winked at me, so confident was he this was an offer she couldn’t refuse.
    And she didn’t refuse. She simply kept her own silent, ominous counsel.
    “Want to go with us, Rebecca?”
    “I don’t know. Libby and Keil—”
    “We’ll all go! It’s more fun that way—isn’t it,
Nena
?” Esperanza seemed interested. She didn’t face us, but she broke her gravelike silence: “Can Amber go, too?”
    “Amber’s grounded. Ricky came by and said—”
    She sat up, her golden face white. “What? What did she do?”
    “He wouldn’t tell us. He just said it was so bad he didn’t want to talk about it.”
    She rolled off the bed, running, but she stopped suddenly, stood a moment, and then started to fall.
    Julio moved quickly, catching her as she sank to her knees. “Head down,
Nena
. Head down.” To me he said, “It’s all right. It’s all right. She’s just fainted. It’s not a seizure or anything. She’s okay!” He was shouting.
    I saw that her face was sweaty now. Julio fanned her with an opened book, and elevated her feet. In a moment she woke up, and the look in her eyes said she didn’t need to go to hell to know what it was like. “You fainted again, baby.”
    She closed her eyes again, to get away, I thought. When we had put cold washcloths on her face and given her juice, we left. It seemed to be what she wanted.
    Julio stared at his aquarium, and it gave me such a start, I said, “I do that. I stare at mine when I’m upset.”
    “You have an aquarium?”
    “Saltwater tropical. Smaller than yours—only a hundred gallons.”
    “Well.” He seemed to want to smile, but couldn’t bring himself to do it right then.
    “That’s what Marty and I have in common.”
    He patted his pockets, caught himself, and looked at me sheepishly. “I haven’t done that in ten years. Haven’t smoked in twelve.”
    “I’d better go.”
    He ignored me. “She fainted once before—when Sylvia and I told her we were getting divorced.”
    A small voice interrupted. “Dad?”
    Julio and I smiled conspiratorially, two kids who’d gotten a wish.
    “Yes, honey?”
    “What time are we going sailing?”

CHAPTER SEVEN
     
    If it had to be a sunset cruise, I was going to do one little thing first. Maybe not get Marty out of jail, but at least give her a piece of my mind. And there was one other thing I wanted to check on.
    Jacobson, apparently working all weekend, was in her office, which looked out on a little lemon grove. It was a cheerful place for such