Sounds Of Silence

“I know you would.” She lifted her shoulders. “But he’s gone, and Danilo needs his grandpa. I’ve just got to get away from here.”

He sighed. “I guess I can understand that.” He set his hat back on his head. “Are you ready to go now?”

“Soon as I find my shoes and lock up the house.”

Isabel set the empty basket against her hip and picked her way through the backyard, skirting Danilo’s sand pile, which was littered with dump trucks, plastic buckets and bent spoons confiscated from her kitchen.

As she entered the small laundry room off the kitchen, she fretted anew at the sad state of the screen door and back step. She’d bought paint with last week’s alterations money, but it was going to be a while before she had time to deal with it. Five bridesmaid dresses, all to be fitted and hemmed by next Friday, hung in her spare bedroom closet. Plus there was the puppet stage curtain she’d agreed to make for Bible School.

Painting and rescreening a door, as important as it was, would have to wait. Maybe the people who came this afternoon wouldn’t look too closely.

Isabel left Eli fiddling with the back door light fixture—which Danilo had somehow broken with the baseball bat his grandpa gave him for his birthday—and went in search of her flowered flip-flops. If she had to be a matronly widow, at least she didn’t have to look like one. On the way past her bedroom mirror, she remembered the pencil in her hair.

Good grief. Quickly she loosened the shoulder-length black mass and ran a brush through it. Lipstick? Sure, why not. Pink to match her shoes. She grimaced at her plain white blouse and denim capris, but decided not to change. Pathetic when a trip to the local Border Patrol station became a social outing.

Wondering why in the world Eli needed her there, she nearly ran head-on into him as she reentered the kitchen.

“Oops.” He steadied her with big warm hands on her shoulders. “I came in to test the light switch, and thought I’d check your fire alarm battery while I was in here.”

Isabel caught her breath. He’d never been inside her house before. She was careful about appearances. “Thank you,” she murmured. “I’m ready, so we’d better go. I have to pick up Danilo at noon.”

“Okay.” He quickly let her shoulders go, then turned to open the kitchen door for her. “You need a new battery, by the way.”

Isabel pulled herself together as she entered the Border Patrol station. For some reason, it helped to stay close to Eli. He put a hand on her elbow as if sensing her discomfort, held the door for her and seated her in his office.

The Border Patrol community had been her family since the day Rico had moved her to Del Rio as an eighteen-year-old bride. She’d met her husband when she was a junior in high school and Rico a sophomore at UT San Antonio. Her parents had begged her to finish her own education, but because Rico could talk the paint off the walls—a trait their son shared—they’d eventually caved in and given their blessing to the wedding.

And, oh, how happy she and Rico had been! Isabel had quickly adjusted to the desertlike climate and learned to laugh at the idea of landscaping with cactus, mesquite and rocks. They’d found a little evangelical church that suited both their backgrounds and gave Rico an outlet for his love of music. Rico’s partner, Jack Torres, had been a tough nut to crack, but eventually even he couldn’t resist Rico’s insouciant conviction that Christ was the answer to every need. Jack became a believer and literally spent most waking moments in Isabel’s living room, learning to be a disciple.

Now, watching Eli disappear into the dispatch room, Isabel twisted her wedding rings and tried to remember those good times. It wasn’t healthy to dwell on the tragedy that had mown her down like a freight train.

The train had also run over Eli, whose father had been the one responsible for the events that affected all their lives. But he didn’t let it send him into depression. From what she could tell, Eli plowed right on, never looking back. Isabel often wondered what it would take to shake him up.

“Isabel, I want you to meet somebody.” Eli was standing in the doorway looking at her.

She jumped, afraid in a crazy sort of way that he’d been reading her thoughts. How silly. “Okay.” She smiled and tried to see around him. Maybe he had a new partner, although why he’d have Isabel come all the way over here for that—

“Come here, Susie-Q,” Eli said, reaching behind his back. He tugged a small child into view and held her by the hand—a little girl with long, black braids and big, dark brown eyes, appearing to be about six or seven. Hispanic, judging by the golden-brown skin, and so beautiful it made Isabel’s eyes sting.

Isabel looked at Eli for explanation.

He cleared his throat. “She’s deaf and doesn’t speak, Isabel. We can’t get her to tell us her name or where she came from or anything. She showed up at the orphanage yesterday with nothing but the clothes on her back and one shoe. And this.” He lifted his other hand to show her a sealed plastic bag containing a closed switchblade knife.

Isabel took a sharp breath. “Benny didn’t know her?”

Eli shook his head. “Owen and I took some food over there for Cinco de Mayo, and stayed to play for a bit.” He smiled down at the little girl, who was staring at her feet. Apparently somebody had given her a pair of sandals. They were too big, and had rubbed a blister on one foot. Eli jiggled her hand until she looked up at him with sober trust. “When I caught her hanging around, she like to’ve spitted me with the knife. Didn’t you, Little Bit?”

Isabel watched the little girl’s lips curl upward ever so slightly. She seemed to understand she was being teased. There was extreme intelligence behind those dark chocolate eyes. “So what’s she doing here? She’s Mexican, I presume.”

“Kind of a convoluted story.” Eli leaned against the door frame. “I left her there with Benny, but I took the knife. This morning, Bryan Hatcher’s body was found on the riverbank.”

Isabel gasped. “Pam and Rand’s son?” Pam was a member of their church, her husband a well-to-do rancher with friends in the state legislature. Both were well-respected in the community.

“Yep.” Eli showed Isabel the knife’s beautiful pearl handle. It had a raised gold initial “H” near one end. “Here’s where things get weird. This is Bryan’s knife, and it’s got his blood on it. But it had been handled so much, the only distinguishable fingerprints on it were his and Mercedes. Coroner says he couldn’t have killed himself.” Eli grimaced. “The biggest question, though, is how this little lady got hold of it.”

“Oh, Eli.” Swallowing, Isabel looked at the little girl, whose downcast eyes fanned long black lashes onto cheeks the color of damask roses. Instantly her heart ached to hold this little one who’d no doubt been exposed to some terrifying events.

“Yeah.” Eli’s jaw worked as he gently squeezed the girl’s hand. “Hatcher’s been suspected of smuggling activity, and we’ve been watching him. We’re working with DEA, Mexican police and Del Rio Homicide. I’ve been put in charge of protecting her, because we think she may be a witness. If she is, the murderer’s looking for her. My supervisor pulled some strings with our immigration guys, and on the Mexican side, too, so I could bring her across the border.”

Eli paused after having made possibly the longest speech Isabel had ever heard him make. Something in the way he held her eyes, the protective clasp of his big hand around the little girl’s tiny one—

Isabel frowned. “What does all this have to do with me?”

“Sh-she needs a p-place to stay.”

Isabel’s gaze flew to the little girl, who let go of Eli’s hand to crouch down and study the pink silk pansies on Isabel’s sandals with such innocent pleasure that Isabel closed her eyes.

But the image wouldn’t fade. In that moment, her life underwent one of the irreversible changes she’d experienced only three times before. The first had been the Vacation Bible School when she’d given her heart to Jesus. The second, the night Rico asked her to marry him; the third, Danilo’s birth.

She had to force herself not to run from the room. “Eli, why me?”

Chapter Two

Mortified that under pressure he’d relapsed into his childhood speech impediment, Eli tried to come up with an answer to Isabel’s question. One that wouldn’t make him sound crazy.

The Holy Spirit told me it should be you.

And, if he were gut-level honest, one big reason was the excuse to see Isabel every day.

“We can’t spare an agent to stay with her twenty-four/seven,” he finally said. “But there’s a little stipend in the budget, and I thought you could use the money—”

“Eli, I’m trying to sell my house,” Isabel said, as if she were explaining something to her son. “Danilo and I could be leaving Del Rio any day now. Then you’d be right back where you started.”

Eli tried to gauge the depth of her protest. Her expression was troubled, but he could tell she was distracted by the child’s fascination with the flowers on her shoes.

See, that was the thing. A little girl needed a woman to care for her. A woman with an innate sense of beauty. A woman of grace and tact and spiritual wholeness, even when life crushed her.

“Okay, that’s a good point,” he said. “But maybe we’ll nail Bryan’s murderer soon, and we won’t have to deal with that.”

Isabel sighed. “There’s another problem. I speak Spanish, but I don’t know any sign language.”

“She reads lips pretty well.” Eli bent down to rest his hand on the little girl’s head. When she looked up at him, he said carefully, “¿Flores?”

She gave him a wide smile and reverently touched one of the flowers on Isabel’s shoes.

Eli winked at Isabel. “See?”

Isabel’s smooth brow knit. “If she can do that, why can’t she communicate with you? What happened when you asked her name?”

“Try it.” Eli was curious to see if his instincts were correct.

Isabel rested her elbows on her knees, so that her face was close to the child’s. “Isabel,” she said, touching her own chest. She put a teasing finger on the little girl’s nose. “¿Como te llama?”

The child beamed and flattened Isabel’s hand. With her finger she traced a large letter M, then looked up at Isabel to see if she comprehended. When Isabel nodded, the girl finished spelling the name Mercedes.

Eli stared at Isabel dumbfounded. “Well I’ll be…. Her name’s Mercedes.”

“You mean she hadn’t told you that?” Isabel sat up.

“She hasn’t told us anything,” Eli said. “We’ve given her pencil and paper, asked her stuff, but…nothing. It’s weird, because you can tell she comprehends what you’re asking. Then she just gets this blank look and refuses to answer.”

Isabel smiled at Mercedes, who settled cross-legged on the floor and leaned against Isabel’s knee. “What else do you want to know?”

“Where she came from. Who her parents are. How she got that knife.”

“I suppose I could ask.” Isabel traced a gentle finger down the little girl’s crooked part. “Why do you think she told me her name?”

Eli couldn’t help wondering the same thing. His supervisor had brought in a deaf interpreter and a social worker this morning, but Mercedes had given the woman the same blank look she gave everyone else.

There was some connection with Isabel that Eli couldn’t explain. He shrugged. “Maybe you look like her mother. Who knows? Listen, Isabel—” He crouched on one knee. “I’d really appreciate it if you’d take Mercedes home with you tonight. Like I said, there’s even a little stipend money in the budget. You could talk to her some more, try to get her to talk back.”

Isabel bit her lip. Eli could see conflicting emotions chase across her expressive face, and he knew the money had nothing to do with it. In fact, he was probably going to have to make her take compensation. Mercedes had obviously grabbed a piece of Isabel’s tender heart.

“It might be good for Danilo to have to share me a little bit,” she murmured.

“He’s a good kid,” Eli said. “He’ll like having somebody to play with.”

Isabel tipped her head and looked him in the eyes. “You think it’ll just be for a day or two?”

“I’m sure of it,” he said with more confidence than he felt. “So you’ll do it?”

Mercedes suddenly wrapped both arms around Isabel’s legs.

Eli saw Isabel’s eyes fill as she laid a hand on the little girl’s dark, untidy head. “I’ll do it,” she sighed.

“Good.” Eli grinned. “I knew you would. There’s just one thing though.”

“I knew it.” Isabel’s beautifully marked brows drew together. “What’s the hitch?”

“It’s no big deal.” But Eli found himself unable to meet her eyes. “It’s just that we need to hide Mercedes until we find the killer.”

“No big deal,” Isabel muttered as she pulled into her driveway. “Sure, Eli. Hide an active seven-year-old in the same house with a five-year-old motormouth.” The neighbors were going to notice an extra child, and how was she going to handle grocery shopping?

Her elderly Escort shuddered to a stop, and the rear passenger door burst open. Danilo, who hadn’t stopped talking from the moment she’d picked him up in front of the gym, jumped out of the car and ran to open the door for Mercedes.

“Come on, Mercedes, I gotta show you the sandbox!” He grabbed his new friend by the hand and tugged.

Mercedes resisted, giving Isabel an apprehensive glance.

Isabel smiled, making a shooing motion. “Go ahead.”

She needed a little time to freshen the guest room, empty the closet. There was lunch to fix, too. Danilo liked peanut butter and jelly on toast. Every day. What would Mercedes like?

Probably anything, considering the poverty across the border.

As she unlocked the side door, Isabel looked up at the light fixture, which had been left on. Had it only been this morning that Eli had been here repairing it? Seemed like a lifetime of events had transpired since then.

Which just went to prove what a true marshmallow she was. Why couldn’t she just tell Eli n-o? He could have found somebody else to take Mercedes. There were lots of kindhearted women in their church. Women with more room, more money, less emotional baggage.

In a way, though, it was sort of flattering that he’d asked her. Eli was such a sweetie, and that boyish stammer did something to her resistance.

As she hung her purse in the laundry room and turned on the air conditioner window unit in the den, Isabel shook her head. And of course there was Mercedes herself. What mother could turn away a little girl who laid her head against your knee?

Isabel took a jar of peanut butter and a loaf of bread out of the pantry, then peeked out the kitchen window into the backyard. Beyond the clothes flapping in the breeze, she could see the children in the sandbox. Mercedes perched with fastidious femininity on the wooden side, while Danilo knelt on all fours, plowing a truck into a sand dune. His tennis shoes and socks had been abandoned outside the box. Isabel would probably have to excavate his ears and pockets before letting him in the house.

Resigned to sweeping up at least a bucket of sand, she finished putting lunch together, then went to the door.

“Danilo!” she called. “Bring Mercedes and come in for lunch.”

“Okay, Mommy,” he hollered back. Momentarily both children appeared at the door. “I don’t have to wash my hands,” Danilo announced through the screen. “I stuck ’em in Fonzie’s water bowl.”

Isabel grinned. A few weeks before Rico’s death, he had started feeding a mutt who’d wandered through their yard and made himself at home under the front porch. Big, ugly brown Fonzie—named after Rico’s favorite Happy Days character—had thoroughly weaseled his way into the family.

“Nice try.” She pointed at the sink. “Wash.” She beckoned Mercedes, who hovered outside, and rubbed her hands together. “Lavate,” she said slowly, so the little girl could read the word on her lips. Then, “Wash,” to demonstrate the English version.

Isabel loved to teach. In fact, she’d started college with the intention of earning her certificate, but getting pregnant right away had put an end to that. Rico had gotten bored with school and decided Border Patrol would suit him, so off they’d gone to the Academy at Glencoe. Since then she’d been so busy functioning as wife and mother, there hadn’t been time to think about finishing college. And after Rico’s death, she’d had all she could do to make ends meet. A talented seamstress, she’d made curtains, raised and lowered hems, sewn on buttons—boring jobs that sapped every bit of creative energy from a hobby she’d once loved.

All that was going to change, however, when she moved back to San Antonio. Her mother had promised to keep Danilo while Isabel went to college. She was going to be a teacher if it killed her.

All she had to do was sell this fixer-upper.

She gasped. She’d forgotten all about the appointment with the real estate agent this afternoon.

It was time to introduce to Danilo the concept of secrecy.

Isabel set a plate of sandwiches in the middle of her kitchen table, which served as dining room, breakfast nook, study and sewing room as the need arose. Danilo, who had long ago disdained the idea of a booster seat, hopped onto a chair with both legs folded under his bottom.

He folded his hands under his chin. “Can I say the blessing, Mommy?”

He always said the blessing, but he always asked first—a relic of the days when Rico used to take turns with him. The question never failed to tighten Isabel’s throat.

“Yes, but let’s get Mercedes situated first.” Isabel turned to find the little girl still in the laundry room, holding a pink hand towel against her cheek. After a deep, appreciative sniff, Mercedes neatly hung the towel on its rack. She smiled and circled her palm in front of her face.

“¿Bonita?” Isabel guessed, nodding. Oh, dear, how was she going to communicate with this little one? How would one say “eat?” She took a stab at it, bringing bunched fingers to her mouth.

Mercedes’s face lit. She rubbed her tummy.

Isabel laughed in relief. “Okay, I’m hungry, too,” she said in Spanish, patting her own stomach. “Come.” Offering her hand, she led Mercedes to a place at the table across from Danilo, who was now bouncing with impatience.

“Hurry, Mommy, God’s waiting.”

Smiling, Isabel sat at her end of the table near the bay window. “Let’s pray,” she said, bowing her head. Hopefully, having spent a couple of days with Benny at the orphanage, Mercedes would understand what was going on.

“Dear God, thanks for helping me write my name today.”

As Danilo rambled for a couple of minutes and finally got around to thanking God for the food, Isabel couldn’t help peeking. She was surprised and pleased to see Mercedes, eyes closed and hands moving, talking quite comfortably to God in her own way.

With a jolt, she realized Mercedes had pointed to her and Danilo several times.

When was the last time she’d felt like the answer to somebody’s prayer? Father, help me to be a blessing to this little girl.

“Amen,” said Danilo, reaching for a sandwich.

“Manners,” Isabel cautioned. “Offer one to your guest first.”

Danilo blinked. “Oh, yeah.” He thrust the plate across the table. “Here, Mercedes. The one on top’s got more jelly in it. You can have it.” He looked at Isabel, who smiled in approval. She’d given up convincing him Mercedes couldn’t hear his chatter.

Mercedes timidly took the top sandwich, watching for Isabel to begin eating before she took a dainty nibble. In between bites Mercedes examined the mermaid characters on her plate and cup. Someone had given them to Isabel as a baby gift before Danilo’s birth, and she’d put them away in case she ever had a girl. It was good to have a use for the dishes.

“Nilo,” began Isabel, “there’s something I need to talk to you about.”

Danilo’s eyes widened. “Mrs. Logan said she wouldn’t call you.”

Isabel frowned. “About what?”

“About the time-out.”

“And why were you in time-out?” Danilo hid behind his milk glass, but Isabel waited him out.

He emerged sporting a world-class milk mustache. “I’s just talking.”

“You can’t talk whenever you feel like it, Danilo. That’s disrespectful and disobedient.”

“I’m sorry, Mommy.” Danilo’s big brown eyes were sorrowful. “I told Mrs. Logan I’s sorry. I was telling Josh a joke. You know, what has two knees and swims?”

Isabel closed her eyes and took a deep breath. This was not going to work. Nilo couldn’t not talk. How in the world was she going to keep Mercedes’s presence a secret?

She leaned her head on her hand and regarded her son. “Okay, buddy. If Mrs. Logan forgave you, then I forgive you. But that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about. It’s Mercedes.”

Danilo beamed at Mercedes. “Thank you for getting me a sister! She’s way more fun than Josh’s sister.”

Isabel’s mouth fell open. “She’s not your sister! She’s just going to stay with us for a couple of days while the police look for a bad man who wants to find her.”

“I won’t let any bad man get her,” Danilo declared. “I’ll put on my superhero pajamas and—”

“Honey, no. Listen, all I need you to do is not tell anybody she’s staying with us.”

“But why?”

The three-letter W word. Why, why, why. If she heard it once, she heard it forty times a day.

“Because…” Isabel laid both hands on the table on either side of her plate. “Because I said so.”

“Not even Josh?”

“Especially not Josh.”

“Not Mrs. Logan?”

Isabel firmly shook her head.

Danilo scrunched his face for a moment, then grinned. “Superheroes can’t tell anybody who they are. I like secrets.”

Relief washed through Isabel. “That’s right. It’s a secret.”

“Okay.” Danilo cut a Rico-like look at Isabel. “But can I at least pretend she’s my sister?”

Pablo Medieros reracked the hundred-eighty-pound barbell he’d been bench-pressing and sat up to wipe his chest with a towel. In his opinion, the Piedras Negras Fitness Center was of barely acceptable standards, but it was the only private gym in town. His gaze touched the dusty windowsills and ceiling fans, the frayed carpet, the spiderwebs in the corners.

When Governor Avila, his boss and first cousin, won reelection this fall, his first action would be attracting businesses to the depressed cities along the border. If he brought money here, civic improvements across the state would follow.

Of course, in Pablo’s opinion, the legal route wasn’t always the most efficient. He didn’t much care which side of the law he stepped across; after all, legality was relative.

Relative, as in family. Relative, too, depending on one’s perspective.

Smiling at his own joke, Pablo walked to the locker room and extracted his cell phone from his gym bag. He punched numbers to check his messages.

“Hey, Pablo,” came the rasping voice of Camino, one of his two employees. “We found a kid who saw the little girl you’re looking for, hiding out in the orphanage in St. Teresa Colony. I’d check it out for you, but the governor’s got me tied up with a trip to the States this week. Don’t know what you want her for, but—”

The connection disintegrated, leaving Pablo scowling.

What was the good of paying people to work for you, if they were always leaving town? On the other hand, if Avila was out of the way, Pablo would have time to do something about the mess that brat had caused.

He still couldn’t believe he’d let her get away with the knife. Rage overtook him afresh, and he kicked the door of the closest locker. Scrawny little girl-child, worse than vermin. If only he’d caught her. He’d almost had her by the foot that night.

Well, it would be easy enough to take care of her at the orphanage. He’d kept an ear to the ground via a buddy in the Acuña police department. If he could get to the girl before she turned the knife in, everything would still be all right.