Dark Water - Laura McNeal [49]
Hickey and Greenie stared at me. “In an envelope with your name on it?”
“Well,” I said, “sometimes my uncle loans money, too, and maybe somebody was paying him back.”
“Again,” Hickey said slowly, “I have to point out the weirdness of putting your name on the envelope. Are you, like, your uncle’s cashier?”
This was a terrific idea, and I seized it. “Yes, actually. I am. He’s thinking of making me a part-time secretary. I balance his checkbook and whatnot.” Whatnot? I had just used the word whatnot.
“But do the guys who pick your uncle’s avocados go, you know, recreational hiking a lot?” Greenie asked.
“No, I don’t think so,” I said. “But they fish and stuff.” I had actually seen some Hispanic guys at the river once with professional-looking nets. I remember wondering what in the world they might catch.
“They do?” Greenie asked. “Weird.”
“Why is that weird?”
“I don’t know. It just seems kind of wildernessy. The few times my dad’s had a Mexican help him with yard work, the guy brought those cup-o’-noodle things.”
“Some of them are different,” I said.
“Yeah,” Hickey said, getting suddenly animated. “Some of them are totally living in the wild here. Remember that story a while back in the newspaper?”
I shook my head. I was holding the envelope closed and wishing they would go away so I could read the note. I wondered if Amiel realized that he’d dropped the cash and was looking frantically for it all over the trail.
“A bunch of migrants were living in a canyon over in Carlsbad, I think it was,” Hickey went on. “And there were these places in the reeds where they would go and meet prostitutes. The reason it was in the paper was one of the women was told she’d have a good job when she came over to the U.S., and she could earn back the money to pay the coyote who brought her across. But then she found out she had to work in one of those reed brothels.”
“That’s disgusting,” Greenie said.
“Yeah,” Hickey said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a place like that in Fallbrook.”
“I’ve never seen anything remotely like that,” I said numbly. “Anyway, thanks for bringing this. You could have just kept it, obviously.” On impulse, I reached into the envelope and pulled out a twenty. “Here,” I said. “You should get a reward. I’ll replace the money when I give it to my uncle.”
“No way,” Hickey said, standing up and looking insulted. “No. I don’t need a reward to give people their own stuff back. If you don’t find the owner, though, you can buy us all a Pedro’s.”
Greenie stood up, too, and they made their way out of the living room, onto the porch, and into the sun.
Thirty
I fished out a little shred of paper, its shape as irregular as Illinois, and read,
Please give this money to Mrs. Agnese.
Thank you from Amiel.
I was freakishly disappointed. The bundle of cash might have made it unlikely that I would find a passionate letter that began, Fly to me, mi amor, but he could have said something a little more personal.
Then again, wouldn’t it have been more direct—and easier—for Amiel to knock on the door and give the money to my aunt? Or my uncle? Why involve me at all?
I heard a car door shut, and in a few minutes, my mother came scuffling through the avocado grove. Leaf-scuffling can be fun when you’re in a good mood, as long as you forget to worry that you’ll scuffle over a rattlesnake, but my mother looked as if she’d welcome a fatal snakebite. I stuffed the money and the note under a sofa cushion and went to meet her on the porch.
“Mrs. Bookseller, I presume?” I asked, trying to be chipper for her.
My mother didn’t look happy when she said she didn’t know yet.
“Was the interviewer nice?” I went on in a peppy tone. Somehow our roles were upside down, like our old house. Normally, the teenage girl dresses in a sensible skirt and goes to job interviews and the mother asks if the interviewer was nice.
“Kind of patronizing,” she said stiffly, tossing her purse on the chair. I could tell by the way she avoided my eyes that she wanted me to clam up. Go away, she was thinking. Leave me alone.
Once you