Free Fox Tracks by Rita Mae Brown

better.”
    Sister laughed. “I like this girl. What a fierce business, though. A designer has to be creative, smart about money, and tough. Not only do you face the press with each season’s showing, you have to deal with all the behind-the-scenes backstabbing.” She studied Sophia’s most recent fashion line. “How about that?” she said, raising her eyebrows at a spare, elegant off-the-shoulder evening gown.
    Returning to the old family photos, Sister recognized that Sophia’s cutting-edge designs also had echoes of the spare, gorgeous clothes that her female relations had worn long before air-conditioning.
    Gray hunched forward. “So the plantation was nationalized and the Galdoses figured out that eventually they’d be imprisoned. Hmm. But when Adolfo Senior came with little Adolfo and his sister, he didn’t try to break into the tobacco business—or at least not growing it.”
    “Well, this is just a shot in the dark, but back in Cuba they grew Criollo tobacco for cigars,” said Sister. “Up here it’s almost all cigarette tobacco. Cigar wrapper tobacco is grown in Connecticut, a little bit in Massachusetts. Who knows, honey, maybe after losingeverything, Adolfo’s dad just couldn’t bear to start again in the same business. It doesn’t say here whether or not he was able to smuggle out seed, but if he did, he probably sold it to other Cubans emigrating to Nicaragua or the Dominican Republic. Why does anyone think revolution improves life?”
    “It does, if you’re the revolutionary.” Gray half laughed. “Ever notice how they’re all intellectuals or lawyers? They stir up the lower classes, foment bloodshed, come to power, and perhaps the poor have more than before, but they sure as hell don’t have any power.”
    She scrolled through more photos, more history, then returned to Sophia’s webpage featuring her latest clothing collection. “I feel so sorry for this woman. To lose your father like that.”
    “Every day someone loses someone they love to violence, war, a car accident,” Gray said, voice rising. “But this is uncanny. Somehow this Boston murder is related to Adolfo’s death, don’t you think?”
    “It’s certainly strange,” said Sister. “The man who owned the tobacco shop in Boston was also a second-generation Cuban.” She drummed her fingers on the highly polished surface of the mahogany desk. “There has to be a connection.”
    “Maybe. But it’s all far away. I don’t think our two tobacco shops in Charlottesville are in danger.”
    “Don’t be so sure, Gray. The man who owns the shop in Seminole Square is Cuban.”
    “So he is. I forgot about that.” Gray considered that. “Don’t jump to conclusions. I’m sure he’s safe.”
    “I hope so,” she said before changing the subject. “You were groaning over there with that puzzle. Why do you do crosswords if they make you so miserable?”
    “There’s nothing quite as satisfying as one completely filled out.”
    “Sometimes I wonder about you.”
    “Ditto.”
    They laughed and she leaned in toward him, kissing him on the cheek.
    He rubbed his unshaven cheek. “Sorry. A little rough.”
    “That’s one of the marvelous things about being a woman. No scraping of the face. However, there are a few other drawbacks.”
    “You have no drawbacks.”
    “Oh, the honey dripping from those lips.” She smiled at him. “Okay. While you were suffering the tortures of the damned with one down and twenty-three across, I looked up American Smokes. Nothing came up. The company isn’t listed anywhere. There are a few small tobacco companies—one using white burley tobacco, which they claim is mild and has a lower nicotine content—but no American Smokes.”
    “Doesn’t make sense,” said Gray. “No cartons in the stores either, I guess, or the media would surely shoot a close-up of the brand, you know, a photo or explanation in the paper.”
    “Doesn’t make sense.” She returned to more online reading on