Girl, 11 by Amy Clarke (grave mercy TXT) 📗

Once they were settled back at the table together, Elle held up her tea and smiled. “Thank you for this. It’s my husband’s favorite brand.”

“Your husband is Mexican?” Maria’s eyes lit up. “No wonder your Spanish is good. It’s the language of romance, you know.”

“It certainly worked on me.” Elle laughed. Maria seemed to be letting her guard down. It was never an easy thing to do with a stranger, but in her experience, between a woman of color and a white woman—even less so. As a Mexican woman in America, Maria would have a million reasons not to trust someone like Elle. She would try not to give her another one.

A few moments passed in silence. In between sips, Maria stared at the swirling liquid in her mug. Finally, she looked up at Elle again. “You never really explained why you’re looking for Luisa. Is she in trouble?”

“No, she’s not in trouble, but her ex-husband is . . . was.”

“Leo? Oh, I love Leo. She should never have left him.” Maria’s eyes glowed, stabbing Elle with guilt. Maybe she should just leave without telling Maria about what happened. Let her find out from police or her daughter when the time was right. But she couldn’t let her go on believing Leo was alive when he wasn’t. That didn’t seem fair.

“Señora Alvarez, I’m afraid I have some terrible news. Leo was killed a couple days ago. He was shot in his apartment.”

The old woman’s face froze, and the warmth in her eyes was replaced with a sudden flood of tears. “¿Qué?”

“I’m so sorry. He’s dead.”

Suddenly, Maria’s jaw clenched, bringing all her wrinkles into straight lines leading down to her pursed lips. “It was that hijo de puta. That pelado Luisa is with. I am sure of it. He stole her from Leo, but it wasn’t enough. He was always jealous of her marriage to him, to a real man who loved her.” The woman slumped in her chair, resting her elbow on the table and leaning her face into her hand.

Elle looked down at her lap, trying to give her privacy in her grief. Another possibility to add to the mix. If Leo really was killed by his ex’s jealous new boyfriend on the day he was trying to give Elle a tip about TCK, that was the worst possible timing.

After a few moments, she tried to speak to Maria again. “Señora, is there anyone I can call to come be with you? I’m so sorry, but I really need to keep looking for your daughter. If you’re right about the man she’s with, then Luisa could be in danger too.”

Wiping her eyes, Maria stood up and shuffled to one of her kitchen drawers, opened it, and took out a sticky note. She wrote two lines and then handed it to Elle. “This is the address where she stays with that man. I never go there. She knows I do not support.”

Elle took the note and started to pull away, but Maria clasped her hand, meeting her gaze. “You find him. Find him and keep him away from my daughter. Please.”

She nodded, bringing her other hand up to squeeze Maria’s. “I’ll do my best.”

Outside Maria Alvarez’s apartment, Elle turned the car on to warm it up. While she waited, she took out her phone and visited Luisa’s social media profiles again, scrolling through her recent activity. A scan of her pictures revealed no older man that matched her mother’s description; all of her photos were either selfies or the finished product of her clients’ hairstyles. She hadn’t posted or interacted with anything in more than a week. Her last status update simply said, No Matter What, with a prayer-hands emoji. Cryptic, but not exactly ominous. Hopefully Luisa was staying with this guy Maria had pointed her to in Falcon Heights so Elle could at least see what she knew about Leo’s suspicions. Although if she was in a relationship with another man, odds were she wouldn’t have anything helpful to say about her ex. Not to mention the possibility one of them might have had something to do with his murder.

The air pouring through the vents finally started turning hot, and she shifted her car into gear.

After swinging through a Dunn Bros. drive-through for a mocha, Elle drove toward Falcon Heights, taking sips of strong, sweet coffee at the stoplights. The afternoon light was fading into evening, giving her a twist of longing for the days when the sun didn’t start giving up at half past three. Even though Elle had lived in Minnesota her whole life, she’d never been able to reconcile herself to the cold, dark winters.

Just before the exit off I-694, a familiar logo caught Elle’s eye. It had been over a year since her podcast network started putting up billboards promoting Justice Delayed, but she still wasn’t used to seeing her silver-on-black branding blown up on a roadside advertisement. The marketing team had mercifully let her reject their original request to feature a picture of her on the ads. People knew what her face looked like from the local news shows she occasionally dialed in to for commentary on a case, but she didn’t need to be splashed all over the Twin Cities billboards. Having her name out there was risky enough. She took the exit and let out a breath.

The address Señora Alvarez gave her was a modest two-story brick house with an attached double garage and a neatly shoveled driveway. On closer inspection, it had to be a heated drive—even the best shoveling job wouldn’t get rid of every scrap of snow and ice, but the pavement was wet and completely clean. She left her half-drunk coffee in the car and braced herself for the cold wind before she got out.

As she walked up the path, Elle examined the house: slate-gray bricks and white trim with a series of spotless cottage windows, darkened from the inside by heavy drapes. A flower garden sat