Bones in the Wash: Politics is Tough. Family is Tougher. by John Byrne Barry

Author:John Byrne Barry [Barry, John Byrne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2013-12-06T23:00:00+00:00

21: Turquoise Trail

SEPTEMBER 1 (MONDAY)—64 DAYS UNTIL ELECTION

The morning after Rob’s party, Bella planned to drive her rental car to Taos, where a childhood friend lived. Tomas asked her to breakfast, as early as she wanted. They decided instead that he would accompany her for part of the drive north and Bella would drop him in Santa Fe at Tory’s, who would drive him back to Albuquerque for a campaign event later in the day.

They left at daybreak and took the more leisurely Turquoise Trail north, with the plan to stop for breakfast in Madrid at the Mine Shaft Tavern. Bella wasn’t in as much a hurry as she intimated, just reluctant to get drawn back into the family drama. “I came to help Robbie celebrate his fiftieth, but I don’t want to overstay my welcome.”

“Overstay,” said Tomas. “You’re here for a day!”

Tomas said he wanted to hear more about Bella’s life, but he rattled on almost all the way to Madrid. About the campaign, and his discomfort with the voter integrity bullshit—he could be straight with her—about the investigation, but mostly about Tory and, to his surprise, about Vera too, and their tough tête-à-têtes in the months before she disappeared.

“I told Vera she could come in from the cold, talk to some friendly federal agents who wanted to take the cartel down. She knew how vicious the Quintana brothers were.”

“You mean, like witness protection?” asked Bella. She drove fast and kept her eyes on the windy two-lane road ahead of her. No trees in any direction.

“She gave me her usual lecture about how she was only providing her clients with their constitutional rights. That I didn’t know what I was talking about. That I couldn’t protect her regardless. That it was just business. She called me a coward when I was anything but.

“I told her, ‘We could go anywhere, be lawyers, teachers, farmers. Make a new life for ourselves.’ She ridiculed me. ‘The two of us on a farm? Seriously? What are you going to do, grow a beard, dye your hair?’

“When I suggested we go abroad, that Sonia had made a new life in Argentina, she said, ‘Yeah, in exile.’”

“Exile is right,” said Bella.

He told Bella more than he told Tory or Lamar Rose. Things he had never told anyone before. But then she was his “sister-mother.” That’s what Vera called her, disparagingly. Vera, who had been jealous of her, even though she lived thousands of miles away.

Bella talked too, about her children, her work. Not a word about the past. By that time, they were at the Mine Shaft Tavern in Madrid sitting in front of plates of huevos rancheros and fried potatoes, in a long bright room smelling of coffee and grease.

When he asked how things were going with Peter, she sighed, and took a minute to chew a forkful of beans.

“Gracie’s sixteen. Two years and she’s gone. I can’t stand to think of her leaving and I don’t know if Peter and I will survive beyond that.

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