Spiral

‘stigmatizes’ more than anything else, account of it sound like you gonna die from what you got.”
    The keyboardist stared down at me. ”And the one thing Kalil ain’t gonna do is die. He gonna live as good a life as my music can make for him.”
    And with that, Buford Biggs picked up his soda can, tossed it into a white plastic barrel at the end of the alcove, and walked off the patio and around the house toward getting his son.
    I waited in my chair another five minutes, but the hummingbirds never came back.

    EIGHT

    When I opened the sliding glass door into the kitchen, there was a stolid woman with long, sandy hair at the center island. When she turned, I realized she also appeared on the birthday video. Delgis Reyes had pale skin and blue eyes that picked up one of the minor colors in her simple print dress. I could see the makings of a sandwich on the counter behind her.
    ”Who are you?” said Veronica Held’s former au pair, in a demanding tone and with a Spanish accent.
    ”John Cuddy, Ms. Reyes.”
    The blue eyes measured me as she put her fists on her hips. ”What you want here?”
    ”Colonel Helides asked me to investigate the death of his granddaughter.”
    ”I am sorry.” The fists became hands again and dropped to her sides. ”We are told you will come. You want, I find you someone to talk to?”
    ”Actually, I’d like to talk with you.”
    She did a half-turn toward the counter. ”But I make sandwich for Gordo.”
    ”I think he can wait.”
    Reyes was clearly troubled but said, ”We sit here?”
    ”Fine with me.”
    There were bar stools around the central island, and we each took one.
    Reyes said, ”I don’t know what I can tell you about this thing.”
    ”Let’s start with how you came to be Veronica’s au pair.” A degree of relaxation from Reyes. ”My brother, Umberto, is the guard for the Colonel’s house. I go there sometimes, help with the meals. The Colonel see I am a good worker, so he hire me for Veronica.”
    ”It was Nicolas Helides and not Spi Held who hired you?” Reyes tensed again. ”Yes, just so. I live here, but the Colonel is the one to pay me for the watching of her.”
    I turned that over. ”When you say ‘watching’ Veronica, what do you mean?”
    More tension. ”When she alive, Veronica is a... diffi-cult girl.”
    Duy Tranh’s term for her, too. ”How?”
    ”How she is difficult?”
    I nodded.
    Reyes started rubbing her hands in her lap. ”Veronica do not listen to her father and mother too good. She do what she want.”
    ”Can you give me some examples?”
    ”Ejemplos.” Reyes closed her eyes. ”She want to go places by herself they don’t want her to.”
    ”What kind of places?”
    ”Clubs they play music, sing songs.”
    ”Do you mean bars?”
    ”Yes.”
    ”But she was only thirteen years old.”
    ”There are some places, they don’t sell the alcohol.”
    ”Even for those, though, wouldn’t she have to be—what, eighteen?”
    Reyes became agitated. ”She wear the makeup, Veronica look as many years as me, and I have now twenty-five.”
    ”Wouldn’t they check her identification, though?”
    More agitation. ”You ask questions, I try to help you, but I don’t know all these things.”
    ”I’m sorry. You’re right.”
    Reyes took a breath.
    I let her take another before, ”Can you give me some other examples?”
    ”Of when Veronica don’t listen to her parents?”
    ”Yes.”
    A third breath. ”She like to be at the tennis place.”
    ”Veronica enjoyed the sport?”
    Some embarrassment now. ”She like the teacher there.”
    I thought back to Kalil’s video. ”The pro who was helping Mrs. Helides?”
    ”The Colonel’s wife, yes.”
    ”Do you think there was anything... sexual?”
    A darkening more than embarrassment. ”I do not know what the Colonel’s wife does.”
    Sometimes you get an answer when you didn’t realize you’d asked the question. ”I meant, anything sexual between the pro and Veronica?”
    Now Reyes hung her head as the hands twisted a little in her lap. ”This is most why the Colonel hire me, I think. To be the... chaperone?”
    ”How did Veronica feel about that?”
    ”She no get mad at me or anything. She make it more like a game.”
    ”A game?”
    Reyes lifted her head before nodding. ”Veronica try to leave with me no seeing her. I catch her, she laugh, then next day, try a different way.”
    ”What about when she went to school?”
    Tension again. ”After the band start