The Unbidden Truth by Kate Wilhelm

glider, a glass-topped table and a television. A big ceiling fan whirred and helped stir the air. A pitcher and two glasses were on the table, along with a cigar box.
    Inez talked as she poured drinks for them both. “After you called, I got to thinking about Joe and the old days. I haven’t thought of that time in years. Like another life.” She handed Barbara a glass. “Try that, see if it doesn’t help.”
    It did. It was pale green and frothy, with fruit juices that she could not identify, and it was delicious. “That’s good,” she said. “Thank you. And thank you for seeing me.”
    â€œI read about his murder. Done by a woman. I always thought that some day a woman would finish him, and now…” She sighed. “What can I tell you?”
    â€œI’m trying to fill in Joe’s past,” Barbara said. “How the brothers got started in business, things like that. You know they became very successful developers?”
    â€œYes. They were bound to, they were so hardworking, both of them, and smart. We all went to the same high school, sort of grew up together. Larry was older, and when he got out he went right to work, learning to be a carpenter. Then Joe graduated and joined him. We got married when he was twenty, and I was nineteen. Too young. That’s way too young. My girls did the same thing, married too young, but what can you do?”
    Barbara sipped her drink and did not interrupt as Inez rambled on. Joe’s mother drowned in a boating accident when he was still in high school and his father took to drink, and a fewyears later drank himself to death. “I always thought that was what happened to him, being left so young, but I don’t know. Anyway, we had some good times, the four of us, Larry and Nora, Joe and me. We were poor, but it didn’t seem to matter so much then. And they were ambitious.”
    They fixed up a house or two and sold them, and they met a man, H. L. Blount, who had a big pickup truck and helped them buy a piece of land to build a gas station and motel. “That was the start of the real business,” she said. “They worked on the truck, put in seats and a canopy, and even side covers that could be let down, against the sand, you know, and they’d go down across the border and bring back workers. Those Mexican men worked like slaves, and they did good work and were glad to get it. And that left Larry and Joe free to go look for other places to build on, and that’s how they began to get the business going. H.L. told them they were crazy to do the work themselves, they should hire it out and work as developers, and they did.
    â€œI used to go down to Mexico with Joe once in a while. We’d park the truck and spend a day shopping and eating and then drive back the next day with the workers. Nora always went with Larry when it was his turn. She was a hustler, more than Larry even, right from the start. Her and H.L. did most of the planning, what to buy next, what to put on it, like that. After I talked with you, just remembering those days, the good times we had after it cooled off at night, drinking a little beer, singing, dancing, it seems like a dream. I found a box of pictures. You want to see them?” She opened the cigar box.
    They spent the next hour looking at the pictures, with Inez talking about them. “That’s the first big job they did, the gas station and motel, out on Highway 79.” The buildings looked to be in a vast rocky desert.
    â€œOut in the middle of nowhere?” Barbara asked.
    â€œIt was all desert back then,” Inez said, waving her hand to take in everything. “You’d never know from the way it’s built up now, but this, all of this was desert, with little tiny villages where there’s towns now, or maybe just a gas station, or not even that much, just a crossroad. Just desert and more desert, but they knew it would grow. H.L. knew