“But morally, I know, it sucks. I wanted to get on the stand and tell my story. I wanted folks to hear it from my point of view. But he convinced me not to. So I didn’t. Then we lost and I was screwed anyway.”
“What’d you do with the contract?”
“I flushed it down the toilet. But let me tell you, I had no problem with giving my parents that money. I was going to make a lot more. I was working on endorsement deals that would’ve paid me more than my football money.”
“And then it all went away.”
Mars shook his head wearily. “Faster than I could run the forty.”
“Tell me about your parents.”
“What do you want to know?”
“I want to know about their pasts. Where they came from? Were they born in Texas? Did they come from someplace else?”
Mars looked perplexed by this. “I’m not sure wha
t I can tell you. They didn’t talk about any of that with me.”
“How about relatives? That you visited or visited you?”
“That never happened.”
“No relatives?”
“No. We never went anywhere. And nobody came to see us.”
“That’s pretty unusual.”
“I guess, looking back on it. But it was just the way it was. And my parents, I guess you’d call it, doted on me. So that was cool. I liked that.”
“Tell me about your father.”
“Big man. Where I got my size and height. Strong as an ox. My mom was tall for a woman, about five-nine or so. And man she could run, let me tell you. We’d go out on runs together when I was a kid. She could sprint and she had endurance. Ran me into the ground until I got to high school.”
“So you got your speed from her?”
“Guess so.”
“Maybe she was an athlete when she was younger. Maybe your dad too.”
“I don’t know, they never said.”
“There were no photos of them at your house. Were there ever any?”
Mars leaned back against his pillow. “They didn’t much like getting their picture taken. I remember there was one of them on a shelf in the living room that was taken when I was in high school. That was about it.”
Decker scrutinized him.
Mars said, “Hey, I know it sounds kinda crazy now, but back then it was just the way it was, okay? I didn’t think nothing of it.”
“I’ve seen an old, grainy picture of your parents. But tell me what your mother looked like to you.”
Mars’s face spread into a smile. “She was so beautiful. Everybody said so. She could’ve been a model or something. My dad said he married way over his pay grade.”
Decker held up his phone. “I took a picture of this in your parents’ closet. Any idea what it means?”
Mars read the screen. “AC and RB? I have no idea what that means. That was in their closet?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t know. I never looked in their closet.”
“Okay. Your dad worked in a pawnshop and your mom taught Spanish and did some sewing?”
“Yeah.”
“Who’d she sew for?”
“Some local company needed some piecework done. Didn’t pay much, but she could work at home.”
“And the Spanish? Did she go to a school to teach?”
“No, she didn’t teach kids. She taught adults. White dudes mostly. You had a lot of folks coming over the border to work and such. People who hired ’em had to learn the language so they could tell ’em what to do. So my mom taught ’em.”
“And where did she learn Spanish? Was it her native language?”
“No. I mean, I don’t think so. She wasn’t Hispanic, if that’s what you mean. She was black. A lot darker than me. I’m pretty sure she was an American.”
“Based on what?”
“She spoke like one. And she didn’t have any foreign accent.”
“Did you learn Spanish from her?”
“Bits and pieces, but we mostly spoke English. My dad was a stickler on that. We weren’t Spanish. We were Americans, he would say. He didn’t like it when she spoke Spanish at home.”
“And she worked another job?”
“Yeah. The sewing and the Spanish lessons didn’t pay much. She worked for a company that cleaned places around the area. And she’d press clothes. The woman could iron like a pro, I’ll tell you that. Hell, she’d iron my jeans I wore to school.”
“Did you ever ask them about their pasts?”
“I remember once wanting to know about my grandparents. It was grandparents’ day at school when I was in the third grade. Just about everybody else had grandparents who came in. I asked Dad about it. He said they were dead. And then he didn’t say anything more.”
“Did he say how they died?”
Mars slapped the bed rail with his free hand. “Shit, what does that matter? You think my dad killed his parents? And you think I killed mine?”
“No, I don’t think you killed your parents. I don’t know if your father killed his. He might have.”
Mars had been about to say something else but then stopped. He looked right at Decker. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“You know nothing about your parents, Melvin. You know nothing about any of your relatives. There was one picture of your parents in their house. They never told you anything about themselves. Why do you think that is?”
“You mean you think they were hiding something?” Mars said slowly.
“At least it’s worth exploring. Because if they were hiding something it might give someone else a really good reason to kill them.”
CHAPTER
18
OKAY, WHAT ELSE have we found out about Roy and Lucinda Mars?” asked Bogart. The entire team was assembled around a conference table in the rental space.
Milligan glanced at Decker and said, “Okay, I have to admit, it’s a little funny. There’s just really nothing on them that we can find. There were Social Security numbers issued to them, but when I dug into them nothing else came up.”
“Nothing?” said Bogart. “You think they stole the numbers?”
“It’s possible. And they did have driver’s licenses on file twenty years ago, but I couldn’t find anything else about them.”
“Roy Mars had a job,” said Jamison. “And so did Lucinda. They had to have FICA taken out of their paychecks and they had to file tax returns and such.”
“Not that we could find,” said Milligan. “The pawnshop where he worked is long since gone, but they could have paid him in cash or barter. And maybe the same for his wife. And lots of people don’t file tax returns because they don’t make enough money and don’t owe anything.”
“But you still have to file,” pointed out Jamison. “It’s a federal crime not to.”
“And lots of people ignore that,” countered Milligan. “And apparently the Marses were those kind of people, because the IRS