THE NOVEL DETECTIVE
z
TERESA DOVALPAGE
BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR
Death Comes in through the Kitchen Queen of Bones
Death of a Telenovela Star
Death Under the Perseids
Last Seen in Havana !e Novel Detective
Published by Soho Press, Inc.
227 W 17th Street
New York, NY 10011
ww.sohopress.com
Copyright © 2026 by Teresa Dovalpage
!is is a work of ction. !e characters, dialogue, and incidents depicted are a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
ISBN 978-1-64129-828-5 eISBN 978-1-64129-829-2
Interior design by Janine Agro, Soho Press, Inc.
Printed in the United States of America
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WHEN I LOOK BACK on my teenage years, I see a skinny girl wandering around a lonely school hallway, knocking on empty classrooms’ doors. With her eyes still veiled by the innocent opacity of childhood, she longed to leap over the wall of her adolescence and discover the Truth of Life. Oh, how much she wanted to see it! But it was Death she saw. Two, to be exact. Two deaths at La Manzana.
PART I
CHAPTER
ONE 2020
FOR MANY YEARS, I would wake up before dawn with my heart pounding a mile a minute. Afterward, it was hard for me to fall back asleep. I knew that, from deep within my dreams, two dead people would be calling out to me: Yoyi, the prettiest girl in my ninth-grade class, and Felipe, our English teacher and the school’s heartthrob.
In my nightmares they weren’t making out or smiling at each other, like I had seen them many times. No, I saw them as they had looked on the last day of their lives: Yoyi, lying on the oor, dying or already dead, and the teacher’s body shattered against the ground of the school’s courtyard. Invariably, at some point, Estrella and I would appear, shaking and sobbing—two frightened teens facing the Truth of Death for the rst time.
Having left Cuba a few weeks after that dreadful episode, I never found out the results of the police investigation. One thing I was sure of, though—it wasn’t a double suicide, as a neighbor had told my grandma. Yoyi hadn’t poisoned herself,
nor written the odd suicide note that I saw next to her. I also doubted that Felipe had jumped out of the fourth- oor window. !ere had been someone else at the school—not the ghost of Andrés Gómez Mena, as I had once naively believed, but a esh-and-blood someone who had killed Yoyi and Felipe.
!e worst part was a secret shame I never dared to share with anyone. Why hadn’t I told the lieutenant everything I knew when I was called to testify at the police station? !at little lie I had said to protect Estrella . . . and then the issue with the amphetamines, which I had covered for my mother’s sake. !ey had been minor bs, but still.
I tried to reassure myself. What did all that matter anymore? I was now an adult living in the United States, and my Cuban life was but a distant memory. I probably didn’t remember things too clearly anymore. !e nightmares didn’t stop, but a quiet voice whispered to me that someday, I’d nd out who the killer was. And then the dreams wouldn’t return.
!at’s why I wasn’t totally surprised when Estrella reached out to me, though by then, in early January 2020, we hadn’t had any contact for over four decades. !e same span had passed since the deaths at La Manzana.
It wasn’t eight o’clock yet. I was getting a call from a 305 area code. !e number didn’t match any of my Miami friends’. I almost let it go to voicemail, but curiosity got the best of me.
“Hello?”
“Teresita, so glad you answered!” a familiar voice said. So familiar that despite the years without seeing each other (well, hearing each other, since we hadn’t met again yet), I recognized it immediately.
“Estrella? Where are you?”
“Oh, I’ve been in Miami for quite a while and just saw a review of one of your books, a mystery novel. I always suspected you’d be a writer. How cool is that, girl!” I felt attered.
“Well, thanks. What about you?”
“I’m a DJ at La Poderosa, a Spanish-language radio station. I have a show called Strolling !rough Miami with Estrella where I interview people at Domino Park, the Palace of Juices, the Versailles restaurant . . .”
I smiled. Estrella had wanted to be an actress, but a DJ sounded more like her. !at girl couldn’t keep her mouth shut!
“Is your mom there too?” I asked.
“Yes. She lives in Tampa now but isn’t doing well.”
!ere was a pause.
“Sorry to hear that,” I said, not sure how to proceed. Estrella’s mother, Mantonia, was a sweet lady who’d had a soft spot for me.
Out of the blue, Estrella asked, “Do you remember Yoyi?”
!e question was strange, but I answered it honestly. “How could I not?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know who killed her and Felipe?”
“Of course!”
“!en would you go back to Cuba with me and talk to the witnesses?” she asked shyly, her voice shaking a bit. !at was new. Estrella used to be assertive, bordering on aggressive. “You’re a mystery writer, so you must know something about solving crimes.”
!is time I laughed out loud. She seemed to believe that writing mystery novels made me a detective. !at’s like
expecting to defecate the perfect custard if you just eat enough eggs and the right amount of condensed milk.
“You know . . . uh . . . everything that happened,” she added, tentatively. “We were together that afternoon.”
Not the whole time, I thought.
“Don’t be silly, Estrella. I wouldn’t know how to deal with a real-life case. Wasn’t there an investigation? What did the police nd out?”
“!ey did a half-assed job. At rst, the detective who was handling the case, a curly-haired bitch, considered me a suspect because I was the one who found the body . . . I mean, Yoyi.”
I nodded, though she couldn’t see me. Estrella hated Yoyi, and everyone at school knew it.
“!ankfully, the detective left during the Mariel boatlift, and whoever got the case later decided it was a suicide pact,” she went on. “!eir theory was that after the a$air was discovered, Felipe knew that he was going to jail for having sex with a minor so he threw himself out the window. Upon nding out, Yoyi poisoned herself.”
“So very Romeo and Juliet!” I replied. “But that’s totally wrong because, when I heard the commotion caused by Felipe’s fall to the courtyard, Yoyi had already taken the poison. You found her dead . . . or half dead, didn’t you?”
“Yes, yes. She was at least unconscious.”
“Who discovered their a$air?” I asked. Up to that day, only Rogelio and myself had known. “And when?”
“!e cops didn’t give details. Like I said, the results of the investigation were a ton of garbage. But by then Yoyi’s mother had left the country . . . during the Mariel boatlift too. Her
sister came for her.” Estrella paused, then added, “I remember hearing some neighbors say she died in Miami, not long after that. Poor lady. And after she was gone, no one cared anymore.”
“What about Felipe’s family?”
“What could they say? Being the adult, Felipe was supposed to be the instigator and ultimately responsible . . . In any case, I was happy with the conclusions because the police left me alone. But I still would like to know what really happened. It—it matters a lot to me.”
Her voice broke again.
“Why?” I asked.
“Because I was involved with it. And so were you! Wouldn’t you like to have—uh—closure?”
“I’m not sure that’s the right way to—”
“Would you come, please?” Estrella insisted. “I’ll pay for your ticket and our expenses in Havana.”
Going back to Cuba! For real? I felt a rush of anticipation . . . and fear. My calico Maine coon, Miss Flu$, immediately picked up on the shift in my mood. She gave me a long, puzzled look.
“After all these years, where are we going to nd any of the witnesses?” I asked weakly.
“Rogelio’s still in the same building where I used to live. He married Marisela, so we’ve got two located. By the way, he’s a cop. He works at the Dragones Street police station.”
!e same police station where I had gone that afternoon to testify . . . I switched my phone to speaker mode and scratched Miss Flu$ behind the ears.
“He may have access to our former teachers’ and classmates’
addresses. You can talk to them and draw your own conclusions.”
“Wouldn’t it look odd to bring up something that happened so long ago?”
“We’ll say that you are going to write a book about it.”
!e story started to take shape. Like when I get an idea for a new novel and the characters appear, and the setting comes into focus. Except this wasn’t ction. !e characters were people we had known, and one of them was likely a murderer. We went back and forth for a while until I nally said yes.
I was surprised at how easily Estrella had convinced me to go with her. But it had always been that way. When we were young, she would drag me into things I wouldn’t have done on my own, but secretly wanted to—like going to the movies without permission on the day of the tragedy. !is time hadn’t been di$erent. Because, deep down, Yoyi’s case was the plot of the rst novel I had wanted to write but never got to— because it lacked the proper ending.
CHAPTER TWO: 1980
AT FOURTEEN YEARS OLD, Teresita hadn’t yet discovered what her friends enthusiastically referred to as the Truth of Life, la Verdad de la Vida, capital letters and all. Behind her glasses (humongous for her small face, with green plastic frames), her caramel-colored irises sparkled. She dreamed of reaching one hundred pounds, but no matter how often her grandma stu$ed her with condensed milk, fritters and sandwiches, the girl kept teetering at ninety-three pounds.
She lived with her mother, Cristina, who was a pharmacist, and her grandmother Jimena, a housewife, on Espada Street. Her grandfather had passed away in ’62 and her father had left the country on a raft six years ago and now lived in Albuquerque, a place that Teresita couldn’t yet nd on a map. (But that was classi ed information, not to be shared with anyone else, including her best friend, Estrella.)
Cristina managed the largest pharmacy in Havana, La Central, located on the rst oor of a ve-story building— La Manzana de Gómez—that occupied an entire block,
sprawling across Zulueta, Neptuno, Monserrate and San Rafael Streets. !e building’s rst owner, Andrés Gómez Mena, had been shot there in 1917 by the Catalan watchmaker Fernando Reugart. According to rumors, the reason was that Gómez Mena had made an indecent proposition to Señor Reugart’s wife.
In the ’40s and ’50s, the porticoed rst oor had housed clothing stores, cafeterias, boutiques and theaters. Some businesses were in the shopping arcade that faced Parque Central. Others occupied the interior passageways that crossed the building diagonally. But by 1980, most establishments were closed due to repairs or lack of inventory. !e only eatery that remained was a cafeteria named Salón H. !e upper oors, which once held consulates, law rms and schools, had also emptied. Entire sections were closed o$.
!e José Antonio Echeverría Middle School functioned on the fourth oor of La Manzana from eight in the morning to one in the afternoon. !e Workers’ and Peasants’ School used the same area in the evening. On the highest oor, which nobody ventured up to, dust and darkness reigned supreme. Gómez Mena’s ghost was said to haunt the deserted corridors, weeping over his property’s fate.
EVERY MORNING, CRISTINA AND Teresita set o$ for La Manzana at 7:30 a . m . Sometimes Cristina’s temperamental Buick stopped dead in the middle of the road and, like a lot of old manual cars, had to be pushed so the engine would come back to life. Other days, it wouldn’t start at all, and they had no choice but to resort to a bus that took them to Parque Central.
Teresita was enrolled in the José Antonio Echeverría Middle School. After classes, she stayed at the pharmacy until her mother got o$ work at ve o’clock. During those empty hours, Teresita did her homework, read or browsed the few surviving La Manzana stores.
!e pharmacy La Central had an unusual attraction in the lobby: an aquarium where red and orange sh swam morosely. !e aquarium could be seen from the street and passersby stopped to gaze at it. Whenever she came in, Teresita always spent a good ve minutes mesmerized by the underwater world and the rhythmic movement of its inhabitants. !en she went up a red spiral staircase to a mezzanine shared by the dispensary, the packaging area and her mother’s o ce.
In the packaging area, pills and powders were distributed into packets and bottles by a plump old woman named Marta Hernández. To the left was the dispensary, its walls lined with wooden shelves that housed apothecary scales and glass droppers. !e air carried notes of menthol, Mercurochrome, camphor and salicylic acid.
To the right was Cristina’s o ce, presided over by a banker’s desk. A black rotary phone with a ring that could have awakened the dead sat on the desk. !e number 62-14-41 was written on a yellow disc in the dial center.
On the wall that faced the street, a large closet, mostly unused, jutted out over the gallery downstairs. It had a plastic-covered window, but the plastic was full of holes. Teresita often sat there, not only to breathe in the fresh air that came through the holes, but also because, if the door was slightly ajar, she could see everything that was going on without being noticed.
!e pharmacy technicians greeted Teresita politely when she arrived with her woven bag full of notebooks and textbooks. She would reply in a hushed voice or not at all. She was shy, more so in the presence of older men, and most of La Central’s technicians were men of a certain age: Santiago and Filemón were both over fty. !en there was Jorge, well-groomed and younger, a skilled dancer of a contagious conga-style rhythm called Mozambique. Cristina didn’t like hiring women because “they’re sly, get pregnant or steal whatever they can, including other women’s husbands,” she would say. Marta might have been sly but wasn’t let go because she had been a packer for four decades, and at her age, it was doubtful she’d get pregnant or snatch anybody’s husband.
!efts of medicine were another matter altogether. Cristina was fuming because for the past two months, the amounts of the amphetamine Desartedrón didn’t add up on the books.
“Someone’s stealing pills,” she’d say. “One week I’m missing a strip. !e next week, we are two strips short. You think I haven’t noticed? Be careful, because the thief is going to nd out what color the police station oor is!”
!e technicians and Marta kept mum. Teresita imagined the police station oor as dark and creaking with every step. Everyone at the pharmacy thought Cristina’s daughter was a bit slow. Marta, however, had her gured out.
“Hey, sack of bones,” she’d say with a wicked smile, out of Cristina’s earshot, “you’re always in everyone’s business while pretending to mind your own. Is that right, Four-Eyes? Or isn’t it?”
Teresita wasn’t bothered by the insults disguised as jokes.
She knew there was some truth in them. Instead of answering, she would snigger, look at Marta over her glasses and retreat like a weasel to the storage area. It was precisely there, with a copy of Death on the Nile on her lap, that Teresita unraveled the mystery of the disappearing pills.
CHAPTER THREE 2020
THE MOMENT I SPOTTED Estrella at the Miami airport— smiling, arms wide open, running toward me—I felt an unexpected wave of joy. We hugged and stood there for a few seconds before going through the usual, not entirely honest pleasantries: “You haven’t changed a bit,” and “I’m so glad to see you.” I was glad to see her, but underneath it, like a current pulling me back to the past, came the memories I had never managed to shake—Felipe’s body sprawled in the courtyard, and Yoyi, limp as a rag doll, inside that classroom . . .
We boarded the Havana-bound ight. A man, unmistakably Cuban, unbuttoned his white guayabera as soon as the plane took o$. A Virgin of la Caridad medal hung from a heavy gold chain around his neck. He also sported a gold bracelet with an onyx charm against the evil eye. He looked like the kind of character I’d never dare put in a novel for fear of being accused of stereotyping—a walking cliché. I wanted to snap a picture of him and send it to my editor.
At rst, Estrella and I didn’t say much. She had warned me while we were waiting at the gate: “Let’s not talk about death and crime on the plane. Someone might overhear and think we’re plotting something.”
I thought it was one of the most paranoid things I’d ever heard but didn’t argue. Still, we couldn’t y in total silence for a whole hour. And what better, safer topic than men?
“I’ve been widowed for ve years,” I volunteered. “Not much to report in that department . . . though I haven’t ruled anything out.”
Estrella rolled her eyes dramatically, just as she used to do when we were young, and launched into a lengthy reply: “What can I say? I was married once, but not lucky enough to become a widow.” I winced. My friend had never been known for her tact. Clearly, that hadn’t changed. “!e guy turned out to be a total deadbeat. I had to kick him out. !en came Manolito, a balsero I met on the Metrorail the day my car was in the shop. He didn’t even have a vehicle of his own, so I had to drive him to work every day in my little Honda. Must’ve found a better ride, because one day, poof, he ghosted me. Next came Yuslán—also Cuban. I have a weakness for our compatriots. He didn’t have a car or a job, but he did have a big appetite, and for a while the cabrón kept eating my food and sleeping in my bed until I got tired of supporting both of us.”
“What a catch,” I said. “Maybe you’ll nd a decent ‘compatriot’ in Cuba.”
“Nah, I’m on a break. Not hiring at the moment.”
We both giggled.
“What about children?” I asked. “Do you have any?”
It was Estrella who winced this time.
“!at’s another story for another day,” she said, her tone clipped enough to let me know not to pry. “You?”
“Just one very spoiled cat,” I replied, pulling out my phone and scrolling to the most recent pictures of Miss Flu$.
Estrella leaned in, smiling. “Isn’t she a beauty?” she purred. “One of these days, I might just get myself a u$y diva like that too.”
Having thoroughly discussed the superiority of cats over men, we let the conversation taper o$.
THE PLANE BROKE THROUGH the clouds and began its descent. I pressed my nose against the window, amazed at the dense patches of vegetation that dotted the miniature landscape below. Havana as I remembered it had never been that lush. !ere were some famous trees like Parque de la Fraternidad’s haunted ceiba, where people left dead roosters, honey-covered feathers and other Santería o$erings, and Parque Central’s twenty-eight palm trees, but the sea of green that appeared as we lost altitude was a surprise.
!e overhead speaker crackled to life: We would be landing at José Martí International Airport in ten minutes. Applause erupted from several rows behind us. Estrella whistled and clapped along.
“How exciting to return to our homeland, right?” she said, eyes bright.
She seemed to have forgotten the grim reason behind our trip. As for me, I felt no excitement at all. Just curiosity, laced with foreboding.
We touched down. !e pilot requested that seatbelts
remained fastened while the sound of unbuckling belts lled the air.
“Are you sure someone will be waiting for us?” I asked Estrella.
“Yes! I’ve already arranged everything. We’ll stay at a casa particular, a tourist rental apartment in Old Havana. And there will be an almendrón ready to take us home.”
Ah, those mid-twentieth-century American cars of all the colors of the rainbow that are now featured in tourism ads . . . My mother owned one way before they were considered cool. It was a two-toned blue ’56 Buick with four portholes on each side and chrome tail ns.
A wobbling portable stair connected the airplane to the ramp. As soon as I stepped outside, a cloud of warm air lled my lungs. I had gotten used to Hobbs’s dry weather, so Havana’s blistering humidity wrapped around me in a sweaty, too-tight embrace. My blouse got damp. !e backpack stuck to my back. Apprehension tingled in my armpits.
Inside the terminal, at the rst checkpoint, the customs o cer inspected both my passports: the Cuban, which was a requirement to be admitted into the country if you were born there, and the American. I worried the guy would recognize my name. (Actually, I’m not that famous, and my novels haven’t even been translated into Spanish, but still . . .)
“Why are you coming to Cuba, Teresa?” the customs o cer asked.
I settled the backpack on my right shoulder.
“To visit my aunt, who is sick.”
!at was the explanation suggested by Estrella, though I didn’t have aunts in Havana or anywhere else.
!e o cer scrutinized the American passport, then looked at me for what seemed like an hour. I fought the urge to bite my nails.
“How long will you be here?”
“A week.”
Again, that wasn’t exactly the truth. I had bought exible tickets, because if we solved the case in ve days, I didn’t want to stay longer than necessary. But if we had to stay for, let’s say, two weeks, I didn’t want to be rushed either.
!e o cer nodded and stamped my Cuban passport.
“Welcome home, Teresa!”
Home?
“!ank you.” I almost added “comrade” but held my tongue.
Estrella only carried a Cuban passport, and nobody asked her why she had come. Together, we left behind the customs booth. My friend dragged a small suitcase with squeaky wheels and walked with the same con dent, energetic strides she took as a teenager, her body leaning slightly forward.
We followed the arrows toward the airport exit. !e corridor seemed endless. !e backpack felt heavy, though it only contained three changes of clothes, a notebook and a pair of sneakers. But it carried the invisible burden of my memories too.
!e glass doors opened automatically. I found myself on the sidewalk. A crowd waited outside. I heard people’s voices, smelled their sweat and strong colognes, but for a moment, I didn’t see any of them. My eyes blurred. My feet sank into the shifting sands of the past. Suddenly, and before I fully realized it, tears were streaming down my face.
“What’s wrong?” Estrella took my arm and shook me. “Are you okay?”
I attempted to compose myself and nally answered between sobs, my throat tight with an emotion whose existence I wouldn’t have suspected ten minutes before: “How can I be okay, silly, when it’s the rst time I’m back home after forty years of being gone?”
CHAPTER FOUR 1980
IT WAS A COOL February afternoon. Around two-thirty, Teresita was in her favorite spot, the storage area, reading Death on the Nile. She had nished school earlier that day. !e last class period had been English, where the teacher, Felipe, had made rowdy jokes, laughed and danced Mozambique steps in the middle of the classroom, to the students’ delight. Fun! Why couldn’t all classes be like that? Technical drawing, for example . . .
Cristina was downstairs in a meeting. Marta and the older technicians had gone out to lunch. !e only one left in the dispensary was Jorge. Teresita saw him approach the telephone and dial a number.
“I have ve,” she heard him say. “Same price. Yes, in front of the sh tank.”
Jorge hung up and looked around like the spies in bad movies but didn’t notice Teresita’s presence. He left quietly a few moments later.
!ere was a popular TV show, Sector 40, where some very
nice and competent detectives that belonged to the Revolutionary National Police invariably caught some very bad and incompetent criminals they called “social vermin.” Teresita loved the show, although she would have preferred it if not all the o cers were men. Why weren’t there female detectives too? And why did none of them have real names? !ey only called each other “comrade lieutenant” and “comrade captain,” as if identities didn’t matter. When her turn came, if ever, the girl didn’t want to remain nameless. She fully expected to be addressed as Lieutenant Teresita!
Either way, thanks to the episodes she watched, she had learned the importance of surveillance and tracking. !en came the interrogation of suspects and the involvement of mass organizations. (Usually, a revolutionary old woman, a cederista, provided key information and made arrests possible.) In the end, the sentence was handed down, and the guilty parties went to spend a few years behind bars.
!e methods used in Sector 40 were di$erent from those of Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple, the heroes of the books Teresita was addicted to reading. !ey started with crime analysis, drew logical conclusions and on the last pages identi ed the criminal without anyone’s help. But in all cases, keen observation skills were essential. In this regard, Teresita had no reason to envy those famed detectives. After all, she had four eyes, like that impertinent Marta Hernández would say.
As soon as Jorge walked away, Teresita set the book aside and peeked out the window to begin the surveillance process. Her teacher Felipe was leaning against a column, across from the aquarium. He sported a mustache à la Pedro Infante and was quite handsome and well-built. He had once been a
baseball player and had the muscles to prove it. At school, the girls adored him. !ey would sigh when he explained how to pronounce the th sound by putting his tongue between his clean white teeth.
Now he was smoking and carried an air of concern, which was unusual for him. Teresita, who didn’t want to be discovered snooping, hid behind the plastic cover but didn’t take her eyes o$ the teacher.
Jorge came out of the pharmacy, approached Felipe and slipped something into his hand. !e teacher, just as discreetly, handed him two crumpled bills. Teresita noticed the bills were blue, twenty-peso notes. Quite a fortune!
After the exchange, Felipe headed to Parque Central, and Jorge went back to the pharmacy. Teresita took o$ her glasses. !e mezzanine turned into an Impressionist painting split by a dusty sunbeam. A moment later, she heard Jorge’s voice sweetening up as he spoke to Cristina:
“!e meeting was good, huh, Doctora?”
“Oh, please,” she retorted. “When have you ever seen a meeting accomplish anything of value? Wasting one’s time, that’s all!”
!e two climbed the spiral staircase together. Jorge entered the dispensary, and Cristina went into her o ce.
Teresita remembered how lively Felipe had acted that day. !at wasn’t the rst time that the teacher had come to class laughing too loud and humming forbidden Beatles or Bee Gees songs. Her mother had once told her that amphetamines made people “too happy for their own good.” And what else could Jorge have sold him? Crystal clear, wasn’t it?
But Teresita kept her ndings to herself. Last thing she
wanted was to get Jorge into trouble, which could result in bad grades for her. Jorge was married to Fernanda, who taught technical drawing—the only subject Teresita was barely passing. As for Felipe, pill-popping wasn’t his only “transgression,” as they’d say on Sector 40. Teresita knew of another, much worse, one that she hadn’t told anyone about either.