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

“That’s a Jeep!”
    He was so enraged I would have feared for his sanity if he hadn’t explained about the car sect he belonged to.
    “That,” I said, “is a chariot.” And he saw that I was a lost cause.
    Due to one thing and another regarding the surprise of love at first sight and my lack of cash on hand for such an eventuality, I couldn’t actually drive the Jeep out of the place that day. But I drove it around for about half an hour before I could bear to say good-bye, and by the end of the test-drive, Julio had come around. He sat beside me singing the theme from “Rawhide” and cracking an imaginary whip at nonexistent dogies, which may have been meant to annoy me, but ended up getting both of us caught up in the pioneer spirit of the thing. The salesman sulked in the backseat.
    Back in Julio’s car, I was so exhilarated, I threw my arms around him and ended up in a serious lip-lock.
    “See you tonight?” he said.
    “Yes.” No question. Absolutely.
    I picked up my rented car at the aquarium, stopping first at the American Tin Cannery. There was a lingerie outlet there. After a small but satisfactory shopping spree, I headed for Carmel.
    * * *
     
    Katy’s maid was a loose end I needed to tie up. She met me at the door of her little house with a face swollen from crying and an air that was frankly eager. Her belongings were strewn everywhere as she attempted to pack, extremely inefficiently it looked like, distracted by grief. She seemed glad to see someone, anyone.
    I explained my errand and was told I must not call her “Yolie,” that only Katy had done that, that it reminded her too much of the woman who had been her employer for fifteen years. Her name was Yolanda Estevez, she said, all very formally, but even in her sadness, I could see why Ricky had called her a “great old gal.”
    She was pushing sixty, probably, and she carried a lot of weight, but she wasn’t fat; she was motherly. A serene, gracious kind of mother who’d probably raised seven or eight kids of her own before taking on one nearly her own age. That she had taken care of Katy in ways an adult didn’t usually need was obvious from her conversation. I can’t say I was surprised. Anyone who drank as much as Katy apparently needed a mother.
    She wore a simple blouse and skirt that went well with a simple hairdo—her hair was almost shoulder-length, naturally curly and becoming. Occasionally she touched the front of her skirt, as if wiping her hands on an apron, but she wore no apron today. It was obviously the habit of a lifetime, and it brought to mind the aromas of baking bread and bubbling sauces.
    The little house Ricky had remodeled had been fixed up with pillows and plants—modest things—but it was a comfortable place to be, or would have been if not for the disarray. Clearly Yolanda had the knack of making you feel comfortable and cared for.
    Distractedly she continued packing as we talked, but her heart wasn’t in it. She made practically no progress, and I could see she was doing it only because it kept at least a part of her mind off Katy.
    “I feel like I had my arm chopped off,” she said. “I been with Katy so long, I don’t know what to do without her.”
    “It must be awful for you.”
    “They say she was beaten. They say someone beat her before they strangled her. They beat my poor, delicate, beautiful Katy.”
    “Ohhhh.” Involuntarily I let the noise out. I had put the horrible image of Katy’s pathetic, beaten body out of my mind. Yolanda’s words brought it back.
    “What is it, baby?”
    “I saw her. Ricky found her body and he called me before the police.”
    Yolanda stopped her aimless packing and sat down. “You poor child.”
    “I know this is hard for you.”
    “For so many years I love her like a daughter. I do everything for her—I cook, I wake her up and get her to bed when she fall asleep somewhere else, I remember her appointments, I get her ready to go.” Her arm made a wide sweep. “Everything.”
    “You two must have been very close.”
    She nodded, blinking tears.
    “Do you think you’re up to answering a few questions?”
    “Chure.”
    “Do you know the Sheffield Pearl?”
    “Chure.”
    “Ricky says you were here the night she showed it to him—do you remember that?”
    “She give it to him, I think.”
    “Did you see her give it to him?”
    She shook her head. “No, but she give it away twice before. To two other men. She asked me later if she give