How To Salsa in a Sari by Dona Sarkar

was a grainy shot of a woman. She had Cat’s eyes and her long silky hair. Issa flipped the photo over and noticed two things. A key taped to the back of the picture with a name underneath: Maria Sanchez Soledad, 1994. Havana, Cuba.
    Who on earth was this? Couldn’t be Cat’s mother, she had a different last name. Maybe she’d been a modern woman and used her maiden name.
    Maria Soledad, who are you?
    Issa sat back on her heels. Something felt off about this whole thing. Why did Diego have this picture hidden away?
    She carefully pried the key off the photograph with her fingernail and looked around the room. Where there was a key, there had to be a lock.
    Taking a tip from the old black-and-white Maltese Falcon -esque movies she and Alisha loved to watch, Issa felt around behind all of Diego’s paintings to look for any hidden safes.
    Nothing.
    Hoping for a possibility of a secret room hidden behind the bookshelves, she started moving books out of shelves and waiting for a wall to start moving.
    Nothing.
    â€œI’ve been watching too much TV,” she muttered as she replaced all the books she’d moved.
    This was stupid, there were literally a million places Diego could have a secret safe. It might not even be in the house. She was wasting time. She should just take the first-edition copy of Pride and Prejudice Diego had told her about yesterday and go back to the guest house for an afternoon of reading by the fireplace. Now, there was a good plan. Now all she had to do was find the book.
    It had to be expensive, so probably he’d placed it high up on a shelf hidden from burglars or unruly teenagers or whatnot.
    She squinted through the sunshine pouring through the skylight to see the top shelves of the bookcases.
    Strange.
    She noticed there was a small area in the north corner of the library that had a shelf of books sticking out a bit. The books almost seemed like they were going to topple off the shelf. Issa dragged over a chair to the shelf and stood on her tiptoes to reach one of the leather-bound books. It came off the shelf easily into her hand. She reached into the empty space the book left behind to see what was causing the book to not fit. Her fingernails touched metal.
    Interesting.
    She quickly grabbed all the books on the shelf and placed them carefully on the floor. Reaching up into the now uncovered shelf, she felt a small box.
    Issa wasted no time dragging the box off the shelf and placing it on the floor. A box with a lock. What were the chances? Pulling out the key from the Bible, she tried the lock on the box.
    Perfect fit.
    Issa sat on the floor and slowly opened the box, expecting a human skull or something.
    No skulls, only newspaper clippings. In Spanish. Each article had a picture of the Maria woman from Diego’s Bible picture. Issa racked up her limited eighth-grade Spanish and tried to read one of the articles. From working with the press, she knew that the most important information lay in the first two lines of the article.
    Noviembre 3, 1995. Habana, Cuba, Diego Soledad. asesinado, marido, hija, pierde.
    Maria Soledad murdered. Husband, Diego, and daughter missing.
    â€œOh my God!”
    Diego had murdered his wife, Cat’s mother, and fled Havana!
    Issa could barely breathe. She was standing in the office of a murderer. This explained everything. Why Diego never talked about Cat’s mother, why Diego Morena seemed to only come into existence ten years ago. There was no Diego Morena, only Diego Soledad, who was a violent criminal. A murderer who her mother was about to marry!
    Her heart was pounding so loudly in her ears that she missed the sound of a car pulling up to the driveway until the engine stopped.
    Crap!
    She slammed the box shut with all the articles back in and replaced it on the shelf. She did her best to reshelf the books the way she’d found them.
    The key!
    She ran back to the desk and taped the key to the back of the photograph.