Luther’s friend said, “Santiago’s her pimp. Few years ago, when she come here, Luther try to get her in his stable and Luther and Santiago have a thing. Santiago ’bout kill Luther. Stick him with an ice pick.”

“Oh.” Great. “He run any other girls around here?”

“Nah. He been moving up. He some kind of Jamaican gangster now, and he doin’ real well. Drives a nice car, wears a fine cut of clothes. I think Luther feelin’ jealous.”

“Hunh.”

Luther’s friend pushed off the Pontiac. “I better see about Luther. You don’t see about him when he get like this, he sulks.”

“Right. Thanks for the help.”

Luther’s friend went into Clyde’s.

It was two-forty-five. Still plenty of time to get back to Karen’s by four.

I took my time walking back to the Taurus, remembering what Roland George had told me about the Italian mafia hating the Jamaicans and the Cubans and the Asians. Maybe I was on to something. Maybe this was a clue. Maybe if I could ferret out its true and hidden meaning, Karen Lloyd and Toby Lloyd and Peter Alan Nelsen could all live happily ever after. Just like in a movie.

For all of the drive back to Chelam, I wondered what Charlie DeLuca might be doing with a Jamaican gangster named Santiago. All I had to do was find out what.

Chapter Twenty-five

Twenty-five

I got back to Karen Lloyd’s home at twenty minutes before four that afternoon. Karen’s LeBaron sat in the drive, but Toby’s red Schwinn mountain bike wasn’t leaning in its spot against the garage. I parked on the street to leave room for Peter. Karen answered the door in a long beige skirt and a sea-green top with a large ornate necklace that looked like something a Zulu chieftain might wear. Her makeup was freshly applied. She said, “Thank God you’re not Peter.”

“Yes. I’ve often thought that myself.”

“I’m trying to get the place straight.”

The carpet had been vacuumed and the magazines on the hearth tidied and the pictures on the mantel dusted and arranged symmetrically according to size, the largest frames centered around the Early American electric clock, the smallest at the ends. Pike was sitting at the table, sipping tea and staring at the world through his dark, expressionless glasses. I said, “Where’s Toby?”

Karen said, “School. He wanted to stay home, but I said no.”

“Okay.”

“I told him that our lives weren’t going to stop because of this. I said that we’re still going to be the same people and live here and that he would go to the same school and still have basketball practice.”

I looked at Pike and Pike raised his eyebrows. I guess it had been like this all afternoon. I said, “Consistency is important.”

“That’s right. It is.”