Chapter 10: The Nightingale and the Rose

The fact that Penny was texting while the two older women talked convinced me that they had not only met by arrangement but that this was not their first get together. Nor was it a secret meeting, judging by the obvious pleasure Maria and Penny showed on my arrival. Caroline did appear a little uncertain about my response, looking at her coffee cup for several seconds before she turned to give me a rather forced smile. I had not seen her since I stormed out of her home weeks before.

“I explained to Caro that you ran away because you needed time to think,” Maria grinned at me. I had forgotten the incident; I was escaping the pressure put on me by Phil with his wife no more than collateral damage. “Another of your tactful moves, Dad,” Penny added, finally putting her phone away. I had been made aware that I had to say something although my mind was refusing to find words to utter. I was torn between a simple apology and an explanation which was not possible because I still had no proof that Caro’s husband was involved in anything sinister. Caroline saved me.

She rose gracefully, almost concealing the grimace of pain as her swollen joints protested, kissing me on both cheeks then using her thumbs to wipe off the traces of lipstick. She continued the rubbing, turning it into a caress. “We must have a long conversation very soon, Andrew Andreas. It is not like you to turn your back on a problem. You know you can talk to me about anything, however unpleasant it may be.” She then collected her purse, bent to kiss Maria and Penny goodbye before leaving the restaurant, exchanging greetings and smiles with the staff and half the customers.

“I made contact with Caro as soon as we came back to El Paso,” Maria said. “Even before you sent me to negotiate a license with Philip. She is more worried about him than you are, and she really needs to talk to you. She trusts you, Honey.” I caught the startled look on Penny’s face when she heard the endearment. I was trying to remember the last time Maria had called me ‘honey’ and whether she had ever done so in public.

The moment ended with the arrival of our waitress, settling me and bringing fresh cups of coffee for all of us. Penny talked about the curtains and cushions she wanted for her new room in the house of pomegranates, and the discussion drifted off into domestic matters. My role was largely passive, laughing or tutting at appropriate intervals, so my mind was free to ponder on the consequences of meeting Caroline.

There is no question in my mind that I should help Philip, the man who mentored me through my formative years. You can argue about his motives, but I must acknowledge that, without his initiative, it is unlikely that I would have exploited my knack for invention. My problem is that I have no concrete proof that Phil is in trouble, nor do I know the nature of the threat he appears to be under. I cannot cure what ails him without more information. To get him to talk, I would have to turn our past relationship on its head; he would have to defer to my superior position. The master would have to accept becoming the servant.

As I sat in the coffee shop, half listening to my daughter and mistress, I concluded that my only hope lay with Caroline. If I could convince her of my worth, she might influence Philip to give me a hearing. I am sure that no one else can make him listen and confide. If all else fails, she will be able to tell me more of what has been happening since they left their retirement home in Florida. Will she open her heart to me?

Caro and I have spent time together in the past, even flirting a little like two rival courtiers in the train of the monarch, Philip. We kept each other at arms-length but within sight so we could watch for any favoritism. I would have to convince her that the king was in danger and that I was the best person to help him, even if I no longer believed in his divine right to rule.

We decided to stay in the coffee shop for an early lunch. It was only as we were leaving that a chance remark by Penny raised another possible problem with Caroline. Although they had not been great friends over the years, it surprised me to remember that Susan had not mentioned Caro during her recent visit. Later, I got my daughter alone and asked if her Mum had mentioned either Caroline or Philip. “She went on a few times about Uncle Phil treating you like an idiot, but she didn’t mention Aunt Caro at all. I don’t think Mum likes them very much.”

Those few hours in the coffee shop were like a return to better times for Maria and me. The dark cloud that appeared to hang over her so often since our return to El Paso had lifted, letting the warmth of her personality shine through. It was obvious that this happy side of her was familiar to Penny. It seems that I may be the only person Maria has withdrawn from. My own feelings have not been as well hidden as I supposed since my daughter found a moment as we left the café to whisper: “It’s so nice to see you happy again, Daddy. We’ve all been worrying about you.”

“No wonder the girl has a cloud over her head. You’re the epitome of the idiot-savant, Andrew.” Caroline and I were having our discussion and it had not started as I anticipated. Part of the problem was that I had still not settled on the best opening; Caro had no reservations, going straight for the jugular. “What are you doing to that poor child Maria?” were her first words. She had kissed me on both cheeks but there was no attempt to gently remove lipstick.

I started to explain all I had offered and how Maria appeared to like me as much as I liked her before we returned from Las Vegas. Caro stopped me as soon as I mentioned that Maria seemed to be under a cloud. That was when I went back to being an idiot. That gibe has been thrust on me so often that I hardly notice, but this time I wanted Caro to take my concerns seriously and her calling me a fool was not a promising beginning.

I was like an old bull, and as I turned to face the picadors, the matador came up behind me to jab me in the bum. “Are you seriously considering taking Susan back?” We were still standing facing each other just inside the front door of Caro’s mansion. I took her by the shoulders and shook her very gently. “You’ve lost me, Caro. Go back to the beginning and explain everything.”

“Even Penny’s appalled by the success of her plan,” was her elliptical response. It took some time for the full story to emerge. The problems arising from the affair between the head teacher and one of his staff had ruined the final two years of Penny’s schooling. She had endured the same sort of gibes from staff and pupils as Mark was now experiencing. Unlike her brother, she put her head down, ignoring the treatment she was receiving. She resolved to save her little brother.

After a lot of thought, Penny reasoned that the only answer was to bring her father and mother back together. That would eliminate the poisonous atmosphere in the school and would give Mark a convincing rebuttal to the gibes. It was a reasonable plan, and I must admit that it could have worked if I had not got to know Maria. Certainly, in the week Susan spent in El Paso I had remembered some of the things that made me love my wife when I asked her to marry me.

“I warned Susan right from the start not to shit in her own nest,” Caro insisted, blushing at her rare use of a naughty word. “God knows, I’ve not been the perfect wife, but I avoided affairs with Philip’s employees. Steve badgered me at every company function. Susan bleated on about it being a meeting of minds, but I told her that was bullshit. Even if it was no more than that, it was a crack that pupils and teachers would burst wide open.”

“You thought about having an affair with Steve?” It is strange how your mind works; I was hearing important truths about my marriage, and I latched onto a trivial affair that did not even happen. I was sure of that, since Steve would have found a way to let us all know of his conquest of the boss’ wife. “He’s handsome and after living with Phil his arrogance didn’t bother me. I turned him down because he so obviously had an agenda. You’re the only man in EI I would have bedded but I knew you were off limits.”

We talked for another hour. It was not until I was driving home that I realized that the subject of Phil’s problems had not been mentioned. Later that evening, Penny and I went for a walk as the air cooled after another hot day. I asked her about her plan to reconcile her Mum and me. “I’m sorry Daddy. I just couldn’t see any other way to stop people treating Mark the way they did me. I should have had more faith in you, but I think I was infected with Mum’s attitude.”

I reassured her that her plan was sound, admitting that it might have worked if it had not been for Maria. Penny’s face lit up. “I’m so glad Daddy. Maria has been more of a Mum to me than my real mother. She really loves you and she understands you. She gave me a roasting when I complained about you switching off a couple of weeks ago.” The two women were lying by the pool when Penny grumbled that I was ignoring them. Maria waved her hand round to encompass the house and gardens: “Every time your dad goes quiet it puts another million into the bank.”

Penny demurred, suggesting that I had been lucky to be in the right place at the right time. This, apparently, was Susan’s attempt to rationalize my wealth with her opinion that I was unintelligent. “There is nothing lucky about Andreas’ inventiveness. He is clever beyond imagining and he works very hard to develop his ideas.” Penny turned to me as she repeated what Maria had said to find me weeping silently. No one, not even Philip, had understood me so well as this poorly educated former escort who had insinuated herself into my life less than three months before.

My daughter held me in her arms while I told her my worries that Maria had realized I was too old and that I would lose her after she had given birth to our baby. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard, Dad. It doesn’t make any sense at all, even if I didn’t know her and hadn’t had to listen to endless lectures about how wonderful my dad is, as if I didn’t know already.” I let myself be comforted but it still did not explain why Maria seemed to be unhappy in my company ever since we returned from Las Vegas with her family.

The next day, I forced myself to contact Caro again, this time to discuss what was troubling her husband. On this occasion the kiss of greeting was on the lips, and she kept her arm around my waist while we walked to the back deck to enjoy the relative coolness of the morning air. She admitted to being worried about Philip although she believed that it was personal rather than related to business. She felt guilty because he had sold EI so she could move to a climate kinder to her arthritis.

“We had the house in Spain for years, as you know, and had made some good friends amongst our neighbors. With holidays and long weekends, we spent six weeks at the villa each year. Living there full-time seemed a small step, but it didn’t work out that way.” She spent several minutes beating around the bush but eventually admitted that they had enjoyed swapping partners with the couple next door to their villa. “Six weeks a year of a new body sharing my bed was refreshing, and Phil felt the same. We simply didn’t consider the effect of living next door twenty-four seven. Hernando wanted us to swap totally but the other three balked at that level of commitment.”

It was not only the social pressures that made the transition to living in Spain difficult. Caroline’s arthritis did not respond as well as she hoped to the improved climate, and she sought a source of cocaine which she used occasionally when the pain was overwhelming. The move to Florida was a disaster. Philip missed the challenge of running the business, discovering that it is difficult to develop a hobby into a way of life. Eighteen holes of golf every day for six holiday weeks quickly becomes stale if there is nothing else to do. “Looking back, I can see that Phil finding a local source of my medicine and his desire to get back into harness happened simultaneously. I still find it hard to believe there is any connection.” The most I could get her to accept was a conditional argument.

“If there is a connection, let’s go through everything that has happened to see if we can find a clue.” Reluctantly at first, Caro agreed, so I took her back to the first mention of El Paso. Their English supplier of cocaine was unable to help them after they had moved to Spain. Philip spent time in Seville making discreet enquiries, finally coming home in triumph with the proposal that they move to Florida where the drug was said to be readily available. She recalled that the news had eased the growing tension between them; she was being hounded by Hernando and Phil was miserable without a business to manage.

It took some probing before she remembered the sequence of events around that time. Phil vaguely mentioned a television documentary about maquiladora factories in Mexico close to the American border. A day or two later he showed her a map of Texas and extolled the climatic advantages of El Paso. They had what she described as a ‘Come to Jesus’ meeting about their relationship, concluding that it was worth a major effort to preserve. The outcome was a move to Texas and a world cruise to get her away from her importunate neighbor.

Everything was circumstantial with no proof in either direction. Caro had not seen the documentary on Mexican factories, and she had no idea where the idea of moving to El Paso came from. The one solid fact was that she had a reliable source of cocaine from the moment they arrived in Texas. It was delivered by Rodrigo, Phil’s works manager, but she could not remember if his employment preceded or succeeded the supply of the drug.

Strangely, the lack of proof made Caro more concerned than she had been when I began probing. Mostly, she was concerned about what would become of her if Phil was killed or left her alone in a foreign country, but there was clearly a very real worry for her life’s partner. “I’ve not been a good wife and he, sure as hell, hasn’t been a good husband, but I’m really fond of him. This isn’t the first scrape he’s been in over the years, you know. The last time was in Spain, and I had the contacts to help ease him out of trouble. This time I feel utterly helpless.”

We agreed that I had to talk to Phil to try to get him to open up. She insisted that he held me in high regard, but I had serious doubts: Phil believes in God and himself and most of the time he puts a question mark beside God. I tried to reassure Caro that we would take care of her whatever happened, but that made her worse. I think it finally brought home to her that her husband might be in over his head. I asked myself ‘Why me?’ as I drove home.

Part of the answer was that my role in Phil’s plot was still completely obscure. He had made frantic efforts to get me to join him and I had no idea why. The invention he intends to use in his new factory is openly on the market and he has been offered an exclusive deal at a favorable rate. I have no management skills and no more than moderate engineering ability, except in the one area of invention. It seems too far-fetched to suppose that a drug baron would want me on his staff to provide engineering innovations.

Phil was pleased to hear from me and readily agreed to meet me for lunch in a restaurant on the main drag. The roadworks that had led to me meeting Caro were still in force and I found myself diverted parallel to the road I wanted, one block back. A car ahead pulled out and I was able to park at a meter by the curb. Through a passageway, I reached the main road a block from the restaurant where Phil was already seated at a table.

As I sat down, a man entered, strutting around talking on his mobile phone. He was holding the instrument at a strange angle, but I might not have noticed if it had not been for Phil’s reaction: he put the menu up in front of his face, whispering ‘Has he gone yet?’. There had been a similar incident when I entered the coffee shop after Maria and Penny; a rather similar looking man had walked about holding his phone in the same strange manner. The guy left the restaurant a minute or two later and I pulled the menu away from Phil’s face, asking him what was going on.

“I’m being followed. Did you see the way he was holding his phone? He was taking pictures while he pretended to have a conversation.” My first instinct was to tell him not to be ridiculous, but I used the incident to try to get my old friend to open his heart. “I think it time you owned up, Philip. It’s been clear as day that something is bothering you. You’ve been jumpy ever since I arrived in El Paso. I don’t know if I can help but I sure as hell can’t if you won’t even tell me what’s going on.” He had his hands on the table trying vainly to hide the tremor. “Not here, Andrew. I do want to talk but it must be in private. I’ll call you with a place and time.” And with that, he rose and left the restaurant.

I ordered a beer and the chef’s salad while I thought. I was certain that the man who was taking pictures followed me in. My sudden dive into a parking slot would have caught him unawares; something similar could have happened the week before when I made a sudden decision to follow Penny and Maria into the cafe. I had no difficulty imagining reasons for following Phil, but why would anyone be interested in my movements? Cometh the hour, they say, cometh the man, and I had only a couple of hours to wait until he arrived in the smiling shape of Eric Erickson.

Eric and I had been meeting regularly to discuss those happenings in the Department of Engineering that the Dean was not sharing with me. I asked if he could think of a reason for tailing me and he laughed so much I was afraid he would choke. “If I was the sheriff of this town, I’d have a whole posse after you. You arrive with a gorgeous but flawed beauty on your arm, pick up a plum job and have a million plus available to buy a mansion. Then I would check your history only to find that you spent quarter of a century playing mild-mannered Clark Kent to the Superman who made such a spectacular entry into El Paso.”

He laughed again when I conceded that I had been behaving a bit out of character since I flew to Las Vegas as a member of a stag party. “I’ve heard rumors of the video with you kissing all the beautiful young women although I haven’t been able to track down a copy.” I tried to convince him that the girls had actually been kissing me, which brought more peals of laughter.

“Seriously, Andrew, you’re a foreign national who turns up out of the blue at one of the most sensitive border crossings in the world not on the Korean peninsula. The Border patrol would certainly check you out and the DEA – the Drug Enforcement Agency. They are going to call in the FBI and probably the CIA to probe a little deeper.” In other words, the whole alphabet soup of Federal agencies. “And didn’t you say you came to see your old boss?” I certainly did say that, and I made no secret of my misgivings about the legality of what Phil planned.

“Then there’s the whole business of the two Las Vegas showgirls and the professional gambler you brought with you. Sources and sinks, Andrew my friend. El Paso is close to a source of recreational drugs and Las Vegas is a popular place for visitors who seek more thrills than are available in the casinos.” Nor would it be difficult to discover that the first visit Maria and I made after leaving Las Vegas was to her crooked uncle in El Centro, another border town.

My whine that I had done nothing to alarm the authorities brought another fit of laughter. “You can pay the bill,” Eric said when he had sufficiently recovered to speak. “But if you pay with a hundred-dollar bill expect a couple of Federal agents to grab it to check the serial number.” It all seemed so obvious as Eric spelled it out; I may be the only person in the county that does not believe I am a smuggler or worse. “Do you think the Dean knows?”

Eric put his arm round my shoulder as we left the restaurant, the laughter all gone. “You should work on the assumption that everyone suspects the worst of you. Give them time to get to know you, Andrew. I’ve followed your career as an engineer and in my heart I know that you are honest.” I took comfort in that until I thought that Phil knows me best of all and he considers that I will be tempted by whatever it is he is planning. “You should think hard about why you are here, Andrew,” were Eric’s final words.

I drove home in a thoughtful mood. Mick’s truck was in the drive, but that was becoming an everyday occurrence. It was no surprise to find Momma and Mrs. Gonzalez having a shrill but amicable discussion in the kitchen; the two women appeared to be competing to produce the most obscure Mexican dishes, delving into recipes handed down from mother to daughter for generations. The rest of us benefited at mealtimes, and the two ladies had discovered a fountain of youth in their rivalry. I waved to them on my way through to my favorite lounger amongst the pomegranates.

There was no one else in the garden but there was banging and occasional bursts of conversation from the garden room. The previous owner had used the long, narrow extension behind the garage to house his mowers and tractors. Mick was contracted to maintain the garden and Mark had claimed the garden room as the clubhouse for him and his two friends. Their three bicycles were propped against the garage wall; my guess was that Mick was inside with the boys encouraging whatever mischief they were plotting.