Free Taking the Fall by Laney Monday Page B

into place, he said in a hushed voice, “Your sister, she’s lucky. About Ellison Baxter, I mean.”
    I froze. Ellison Baxter. For the past hour, I’d managed to all but forget about him and our little dilemma. Just what was going on here? What was Carlos getting at? “Lucky?” I braced myself for an accusation. Lucky she hadn’t been arrested yet? Lucky the whole town didn’t hunt her down and deliver mob justice?
    Carlos’s eyes betrayed a sort of smoldering bitterness I wouldn’t have thought possible in the friendly kid with the sweet smile. “I heard that worm was picking up on her. The first day in town. He didn’t waste any time trying to get to that one. Guess he wanted to get things done before she found out he has a reputation now.”
    “He didn’t get—”
    “No matter. He was good. Real good. I’m not sorry he’s gone.” Carlos’s expression darkened even more. He took off his hat and ran his hand anxiously through his hair. “That rat took advantage of my sister,” he whispered fiercely. “All the women, he seduced them. Many, many, women. None of them knew then. They thought they were the only one. He’s—he was—clever, that one. Kept it all a secret.”
    I kept my voice even, tried to sound just mildly curious and concerned, not elated that not only was Carlos not here to accuse or trap us, but that he seemed to have a lot of information to share about Ellison Baxter. “How’d he manage that?”
    He grunted. “Stuck with the women who want to hide it too, even after. Married women. Women who don’t do these things.”
    “Like Lourdes?”
    “Yes, like Lourdes. Not married, but a good girl. She was so ashamed. You ask me, one of them—or one of their husbands—finally gave him what he deserved.”
    Or maybe a brother. I kept that thought to myself and said, “Just how many women are we talking about?”
    “Carlos!” Lourdes stood there with two glasses of icy orange juice in hand. “Are you talking about Ellison? It’s not right to speak ill of the dead!”
    Great. She sounded just like Blythe. Let the man tell me what I needed to know, for goodness sake. He was just about to spill a complete list of suspects, as far as I was concerned. At the very least, I wanted to know if he knew the name of Ellison’s current girlfriend.
    My irritation evaporated when I saw the heat in Lourdes’s cheeks, the look of mortification in her eye, and the obvious contrition in Carlos’s.
    “I’m sorry, Lulu. I—”
    “It’s alright. Everyone knows.” Was that a tear Lourdes was holding back? Her lip quivered a little. She turned to me and said, “I told Stacey Goode about Ellison and me. Trying to make her feel better, you know? You heard about what happened to her?”
    I nodded, taking one of the glasses of orange juice off her hands.
    “And she told everyone.” Lourdes shook her head sharply. “I didn’t know she had no shame. That she’d think my story was for the whole town.” Lourdes moved to sit on one of the wooden chairs, but Blythe took a seat on the couch and patted the cushion next to her, inviting her to take a more comfortable seat. Lourdes took a long drink of her juice. “I almost left town after that, but Mama Ruth begged me to stay.”
    I gripped the cold glass, feeling a little like beating Ellison with a hairbrush myself. “But now she’s gone.”
    “It must’ve been really hard to say good-bye to Miss Ruth,” Blythe said.
    “It is hard. But I understand. She felt it was time for her to go. Her good friend, Marta—she was Mayor Conway’s personal assistant. Did you know that? Anyway, Marta passed away a couple months ago. After that, Miss Ruth started talking about leaving Bonney Bay. She’d never mentioned that possibility before. She made me promise to help you two, and she also made me promise not to take the position Marta had left open in the mayor’s office. It’s still open. I guess Mayor Conway can be difficult to deal with. But I made her