Cliff Diver (Detective Emilia Cruz Book 1) Read Online Free Page B

know?” she asked.
    “Mama.” Emilia
kept her voice even. “Who is this?”
    “This is Ernesto!”
Sophia exclaimed, her smile widening with pride.
    “You must be
Emilia,” the man said. His diction was uneducated, his voice was raspy and he
had a lower tooth missing. He gestured at the coffee maker on the small
counter. His hands were calloused from a lifetime of manual labor. “Thank you
for inviting me into your home.”
    “Mama?” Emilia
pressed.
    “We were at the mercado ,”
Sophia said.
    Emilia swallowed
down her impatience. Any pressure invariably made her mother cry. “You already
went to the mercado this morning, Mama?”
    “Yes, that’s where
I found Ernesto,” Sophia said, emphasizing the man’s name. She took his mug and
scurried to the coffee maker to top it up.
    Her mother was
glowing, Emilia realized, and not with the vague uncertainty she usually
projected, but with a rare air of assurance.
    When Sophia gave
the cup back to Ernesto, Emilia caught her mother by the upper arm. “I’m glad
you have a new friend, Mama, but you should have asked me before bringing
strangers into the house.”
    The man shuffled
to his feet with a sort of threadbare dignity. “Forgive me, señorita. I am
Ernesto Cruz. Your mother was kind enough to offer me the hospitality of your
house.”
    “Ernesto’s not a
friend,” Sophia gushed, her arm still firmly in Emilia’s grasp.
    “I’ll work in
return for her kindness,” the man said and indicated a large wooden crate and
bulging knapsack on the floor by the table.
    Sophia put her
arms around Emilia’s waist and hugged her, making Emilia release her grip.
Emilia shifted her mother so she could continue talking to the man. “I don’t
quite understand, señor.”
    “My grinding wheel,”
he explained. “I sharpen knives and scissors for whoever needs it.”
    “Is that why
you’re here? My mother asked you to sharpen something?” Emilia frowned around
her mother’s head. Every few months the local knife grinder usually set up his
grinding wheel on a busy street corner a few blocks away. He sang or shouted to
call attention to his presence and women in the neighborhood brought him their
items to be sharpened. It was a social event when he came, a reason to gossip
as the sparks flew and blunt steel was honed and polished. Each sharpened item
cost a few pesos. But the grinder never came into anyone’s house unless there
was something large to be sharpened, like a meat slicer or an office paper
cutter. “Something in the house?” she asked.
    Sophia started to
laugh and pulled out of the hug. “Emilia, you are being so silly,” she cried.
“This is my Ernesto.”
    “Your Ernesto?”
    “Ernesto Cruz.
Your father.”
    “Mama?” Emilia
didn’t quite let her mother get away. This obvious vagrant was not the father
who had died years ago. “What’s going on?”
    Sophia’s face was
bright with happiness. “My Ernesto has come back to me.”
    “Señor.” Emilia
addressed the man still standing by the table. “Your name is Ernesto Cruz?”
    “Yes,” he said. He
nodded once at her, clearly understanding that something was not right.
    “Stay there,
señor,” Emilia ordered. The man slid back into the kitchen chair and put his
hands possessively around the cup of coffee on the table.
    Emilia tucked an
arm around her mother’s shoulders. “Mama, we have to have a little talk.”
    “Not now.” Sophia
gazed lovingly at the knife grinder. “Your father’s home and I promised to make tamales . Get an apron and you can help me.”
    Emilia’s eyes flew
from her mother to Ernesto. He shook his head slightly.
    Sophia squirmed
away from Emilia and started to unload the plastic bags on the counter. “I’m
going to make sopa de mariscos and tamales to celebrate.” She
showed Emilia a handful of corn husks before she dumped them into the sink.
“Look! So nice, as if Señora Cardona knew that today was the day Ernesto was
coming home.”
    Emilia put