Tess was in the shower at her usual time in the morning when she realized how amazing she felt. Champagne-in-her-veins, two-double-back-flips amazing. The thought made her laugh and she ended up swallowing water.
As if. Tess Granath, elementary-school giraffe, couldn’t in a million years have been a gymnast. She had dreaded the gymnastics units in PE. The only varsity sport she’d participated in had been basketball, her junior and senior years, after she’d finally gained control of her body.
With the spring in her step this morning, maybe she’d surprise herself, she thought in amusement.
Actually, she reflected, grabbing her purse to go out the door, she was already surprised. Sex had never made her feel nearly this good before.
On impulse she called Lupe Estrada and asked if she could take her out to lunch. She hadn’t seen her in a couple of weeks and Lupe had been subdued even then.
Lupe was quiet today, too, even once they arrived at the pizza parlor. Lupe had always loved pizza, but Rey scoffed at it.
She’d gone back to work doing tailoring for the dry-cleaning business, she said, but made a face. Laying her hands over her stomach, she said, “Every time I feel a twinge, I think it’s happened again.” She’d told Tess how excruciating the kink in her intestines had been, and worried because even the doctors didn’t seem to know why it sometimes happened. And, of course, the surgeon had had to cut muscles to go in, which would also be slow healing.
In answer to Tess’s questions, she admitted that once she was fully healed, she hoped to get pregnant. Then she might have to take in sewing instead of going out to work.
Lupe was a beautiful woman, petite and curvaceous with glossy, wavy, black hair down to her hips, who hadn’t married until she was nearly thirty.
Rey had never seemed comfortable with Tess, which had limited the two women’s friendship. Mostly, they got together when he wasn’t around. Her best guess was that he was ashamed not to be fluent in English, even though he hadn’t moved to the United States until he was a young man. She’d seen him flush when he made a mistake. But when she tried out her Spanish on him, he had looked at her with a stony face and said, “I speak English.”
Typical male ego, she’d thought at the time.
Lupe claimed not to have heard anything about the other men Antonio had lived with. “I don’t think any of them were home to see what happened,” she said. “I don’t know why he was home during the day like that.”
“I was on my lunch break, so he might have been, too.”
Their number was called and Tess jumped up to get the pizza. They both dished up slices.
Into a silence Tess said, “Have you heard that the investigation has been taken over by two detectives from Stimson? I gave my statement to them last week. The deputy prosecuting attorney was there, too.”
Quiet for a minute, Lupe at last said softly, “I heard someone say you’d changed your mind about what you saw.”
Tess’s shock was supplanted by anger. “Who?”
Lupe’s very dark eyes skittered from hers. “It was...people talking where I work. Out in front, customers. I didn’t know them.”
“Did you believe them?”
“Of course not! But Rey said he heard the same, so I thought I should tell you.”
“Did he believe it?”
“He doesn’t know you the way I do. I told him you’d stand up for what’s right.”
Maybe the time had come to just ask. “I’ve...had the impression he doesn’t like me.”
“That’s not true!” Lupe exclaimed with more spirit, her head lifted. “He just worries that you’re not Catholic and you have so much more money... That you might look down on us.”
Tess wasn’t sure she could take another bite. She set the pizza down.
Lupe frowned. “You have to understand. He’s still constantly asked to prove he’s a citizen. He’s made to feel stupid. I think he’s embarrassed because I finished high school and he didn’t. And you—you have a college degree and own your own business.”
“You don’t feel that way, do you?”
“No!” Lupe declared indignantly, her color high. She bit her lip. “Sometimes I’m a little bit jealous.”