Antonio snatched a precarious piece of chicken from my sleeve. “Who’re you looking for?” He plopped it in his mouth while I crouched on the floor, flabbergasted, still holding my shirt away from my chest.
“No one. Absolutely no one.” Because it looked like Jack had made his choice.
Antonio raised an eyebrow at me then leaned through the swinging door to the kitchen. “Accident, Pops. We need a repeat of table—”
He flicked his chin up. “What table?”
I held up five fingers.
“Table five’s food. Lola, um, dropped the plates.”
I heard my father curse in Spanish as Chely burst through the kitchen door, grinding to a halt when she saw me. She threw up her hands, her mouth in a circle. “Oh, man. What happened?”
“It wasn’t me, tío,” she called to my dad. “I’m glad it wasn’t me. You father would have fired me on the spot.”
I resisted the urge to flip someone off—Antonio, my table in the back, the empty space where Jack had been—and finally dropped my hand, defeated. “I’m going upstairs.”
I stomped through the kitchen and went straight up the back stairs to the break room. I’d avoided the mirror in the kitchen, but now that I was alone, I beelined to the bathroom and closed the door. My eyes involuntarily squeezed shut. I pried one open, peered in the mirror—and stifled a scream.
It was so much worse than I’d thought. Bits of chicken clung to my hair like globs of fat. My flirty white peasant blouse was completely covered with brown sauce. Mole was not a good accessory.
Cursing, I unbuttoned the blouse and slipped it off, knocking chunks of chicken to the floor. My olive skin was smeared darker with the sauce, blotchy red from the heat. I wiped away a layer of goo. No blisters, gracias a Dios.
I untied my apron and peeled off my pants, tossing the whole outfit into the laundry bin. I couldn’t throw it away without trying to salvage it, but I couldn’t wear it home. I also couldn’t put my street clothes back on.
“Cabrón, Antonio. This was an expensive bra, too.” Fifty dollars down the drain.
I stared at myself in the mirror. The splatters of sauce on my face were like chocolate freckles. The mole had slipped under my bra and adhered the fabric to me like a second skin. My 34-C breasts might as well have been covered with ganache. I turned around and peeked over my shoulder to see if any of the mess had found its way to my backside. What a blessing. My butt was mole-free.
I groaned. Who was I kidding? I was a disaster.
“Lola?”
“Thank God, Gracie,” I said when I heard my sister’s voice. “Did you hear what happened? God damn Antonio! I’m so mad at him. He owes me a bra—”
“Do you need anything?” she interrupted through the door.
“Yeah. Mami’s housedress.”
“¡Cómo no!” I heard the horror in her voice. “Really?”
“I have no choice! The sauce got on everything.” I pushed open the bathroom door. “Look at me.” I tugged the front of my bra down to show Gracie the evidence. “I’m a mess!”
I waited for sympathy and instead saw her frozen face gaping at me. “What?”
She turned toward the door of the break room. “Lola—don’t—” she choked.
My head felt spongy and everything came to a screeching halt. I pivoted and saw Jack leaning against the doorjamb.
Chapter Twenty-One
Jack’s eyes slowly skimmed my body and the heat of humiliation—increased by the fact that Sarah, the girlfriend who wouldn’t go away, was somewhere nearby—rushed through me all over again.
Somehow I managed to step my lead feet back into the bathroom and slam the door. Leaning against it, squeezing my eyes shut, I made the sign of the cross and prayed this would end quickly. A light tap sounded through the door, followed by Jack’s husky voice. “Come on, Lola. We need to talk. It’s not what you think.”
I knew it wasn’t, but I didn’t like how seeing Sarah made me feel. I wanted Jack, and I wanted him to myself.
“About what?” I asked, a frog firmly stuck in my throat. I was Magdalena Falcón Cruz’s daughter, which meant I was nothing if not stubborn.
“I didn’t think she’d come back,” he said, “but she did.”
“No kidding.”
“Damn it. I told her I was done. I told her parents I was done. I told Brooke to stay the hell out of it. Sarah showed up again anyway.”
I laid my hand flat against the door, imagining it matched up with his. “I can’t do this, Jack. Not after we…” I swallowed the lump climbing up my throat.
He was silent for a beat, then said, “Come on. Open the door, Lola.”
I counted in my head. Uno. Dos. Tres. Cuatro. Cinco. Seis. And then I cracked open the door.
He paced, raking his hand through his hair as he turned back to me. “I really thought it was taken care of.”
So maybe he wasn’t the mujeriego I’d ranted about a few minutes ago, but would we ever be free of Sarah? “Guess you were wrong.”
He closed his eyes for a minute, breathing in. “I’m trying. She just showed up and called me from in front of the restaurant.”
Frustration seeped out of him and into me. I swallowed the rant I felt creeping up again.
“Here. Why here?”
He cocked his head slightly, raising his brows in a why do you think? way.
“Because of me,” I said. Great. “Is she Glenn Close? Is she going to go psycho on me?”
“No,” he said, but there was the tiniest hesitation before he spoke again. “No.”
“I don’t have a rabbit.”
“That’s good,” he said with a smirk.
Salsa’s droopy face floated behind my eyes. “If that’s a joke—”
He pushed the door open, another wave of humiliation washing over me. Jack had come back to see to me—in all my chonis, bra, and mole glory—but knowing that Sarah had returned to Sacramento put a damper on everything.
“She’s not violent,” he said.
“Gracias a Dios, because she had a Jagged Edge thing going on in her eyes.”
“Brooke has her corralled. I should go deal with this, but you have to trust me, Cruz.”
“I’ll try,” I said.
He brushed the backs of his fingers over my cheek. “I meant everything I said earlier.”
I bit my lip. That felt like eons ago, but it had only been this morning. In my head I’d erased everything I’d said when I’d seen Sarah, Brooke, and Jack in the lobby. But I believed him.
“Are we okay?” he asked. Before I could answer, his cell phone rang.
I folded my arms over my sauce-covered chest, scowling at the phone. That Sarah had some nerve.
He checked the screen, his jaw tensing. “It’s Brooke.” He answered, his face grim as he listened, and a few seconds later, he hung up. Everything in his eyes said that he wanted to stay, but he moved toward the door. “I have to go.”
”Yeah. I’ll just talk to you later,” I said. I knew this wasn’t easy for him, pobrecito. It wasn’t easy for either of us. Sarah was a big old thorn in our collective side.
He leveled his gaze at me like he was trying to read between the lines. “Yes, you will,” he said, and he lowered his head and kissed me. “Good sauce,” he said, touching his tongue to my lip.
I wanted to drag him down to the ground and let him lick the mole sauce right off of me. “Good luck,” I said as he left the bathroom. And then he was gone.
My heart still beat in my ears when Gracie knocked on the open door a minute later. “You okay?”
“Fantástico.” Not.
She handed me Mami’s worn embroidered Mexican dress. I slipped it over my head, looked in the mirror, and spread my arms wide. All I could do was laugh. A sad, angsty laugh, but I certainly wasn’t going to cry. Jack and I had something. We really were a team. He just needed to keep Sarah on the bench for good.
Gracie batted my arm. “You don’t look so bad…really,” she said
without much conviction.
I pulled another bit of chicken from my hair. Yes, I did. “I gotta go,” I said, trying to button up my thoughts about Jack. About us. “I have to figure out a costume for a party tomorrow.”
Her big brown eyes grew instantly wide. “¿De versa? Where? I wanna go to a Halloween party!”
“Uh, no, you don’t want to go to this one. It’s for work.”
She folded her arms over her chest, looking way too much like our mother. “Lola, what are you up to?”
I’d already said too much. If Gracie knew the truth, our mother could guilt it out of her. I squeezed her arm. “Not a thing. I gotta go,” I said. I grabbed my purse and scurried down the stairs, determined to figure out a costume so I could infiltrate Cuerpo y Alma, get their member list, cross-reference with Jennifer’s friends, and figure out who killed her. And why.
Maybe by then, Jack would have taken care of, again, what to do about Sarah.
Chapter Twenty-Two
By game time the next day, I hadn’t heard from Jack and I still had no brilliant costume idea, but I’d fallen into a routine with dance team warm-ups, makeup, and costuming. I almost felt like a pro. The buzz in the dressing room was subdued, but the women were charged up.
“This one’s for Jennifer,” Victoria Wolfe said to us as we headed through the tunnel to the arena. “Make her proud.”
Selma’s lower lip quivered. Carrie dabbed her fingertips below her eyes. Vanessa bowed her head. Invoking Jennifer’s name sent a ripple through me. I’d hardly known her, but I was definitely going to give it my all tonight. I could only imagine what Victoria’s words meant to the other girls.
I followed Selma in the line, running behind her as we shimmied onto the court, cheering and riling up the crowd. We stopped to work our own sections of the arena, clapping and pumping an arm every now and then.
As soon as I could, I yelled over the crowd. “Selma!”
She glanced at me, never breaking her rhythm.
“Are you going tonight?” I asked.
She whipped her head toward me, the tiniest hiccup in her step-tap movement. “Going where?”
“To the Halloween party, you know?” I prompted.
“Totally,” she said, her grin growing bigger at the mere idea. “Are you?”
“I’ll be there,” I said, but I wasn’t nearly as enthusiastic as she was. “What’s your costume?”
“It’s a surprise,” she yelled with a wink, “but it’s super sexy.”
Hijole. My mother better start praying for me now. This was going to be a big hedonistic, erotic ball, I just knew it.
“Hey,” I called, wanting to get an answer to one question that had been bugging me. “What’s in those buildings on the grounds?”
She drew her eyebrows together. “Where?”
“Off by the parking lot? There are a couple of buildings—”
“Oh! Yeah, I know what you’re talking about.” She shrugged. “No idea.”
The song ended and I scooted over next to her. “Did you ever see Jennifer go into them?”
Her mouth gaped and she stared at me. “Is this a clue? Do you think they have something to do with this?”
“Just following a hunch.”
Finally, she shook her head, turning back to the section of the crowd she was working. “I never saw her head over that way.”
Before I could prod her to think harder, I heard my name bellowed from the crowd. “Lola!”
I peered into the stands. The royal blue and white blended together. It was impossible to pick one person out of the slew of fans.
“Lola! Up here!”
I lifted my gaze higher and saw a big blue foam hand, one finger pointing up. Then I saw electric orange hair. Reilly. My gaze slid left. Next to her was Neil. And next to Neil was a stony-faced Manny.
My heart dropped to the bottom of my gut, but I chased it back up again. Better that they were here than at Cuerpo y Alma tonight.
I felt the heat of someone else’s stare. Or maybe it was the burning of thousands of eyes on me—I couldn’t really tell. I turned and saw someone standing in the tunnel entrance. I finally recognized who it was.
Larry Madrino. But what I didn’t know was if he was staring at me or—
I squinched my eyes, trying to follow the angle of his gaze. A chill wafted over me. The invisible line from his eyes led straight to Selma. She must have felt the intensity of it, too, because her attention shifted to the tunnel and she fluttered her hand at Larry.
I whipped my head around to scrutinize Larry again. It could have been my imagination, but he seemed to hesitate before waving back at Selma.
“Lola!” Reilly had climbed down to the bottom row of seats, and she flagged me down from the railing. “Ven aquí, chica!”
I held up my hand to tell her to hold on a minute. Something wasn’t right about the way Larry was staring at Selma, but when I turned back to the tunnel, he was gone and Victoria, headset firmly in place and mouth moving, had taken his place. All the dancers knew to clue into Vanessa, who had taken Jennifer’s place as our team captain. Even from clear across the basketball court, I could see she’d taken her cue from Victoria. She rolled her hand in the air, her signal for us to gather in the center of the court for our first routine.
Reilly would have to wait.
So would Larry. I put them out of my mind for the time being, got through the moves without any major flub-ups, and headed back through the tunnel for the first costume change.
…
Nearly two hours later, the game was finally over. I’d searched for Larry again, but if he’d stayed at the game, he hadn’t sat in his premium seats. The wives and girlfriends sections were filled to capacity, but no one seemed angry, distraught, or murderous. Reilly, Neil, and Manny were nowhere to be found, absorbed by the departing crowd.
It was now or never. Following my gut, I hurried down the corridor leading to the trainer’s room. I didn’t know what I’d say if I ran into Larry, but he’d left the game and no letters had been delivered. Coincidence?
One quick peek through the small window in the door showed Trainer Steve attending to one player in the giant stainless steel soaking tub. Another leaned back on the exam table, drinking from a red plastic cup as he waited for his turn with the trainer.
No Larry.
I ducked out of view before Steve could see me. Barely. I started back down the hallway toward the exit, tossing a new question around in my head. Larry and Jennifer had been friends. Had he known about her proclivity for nudity?
I turned the corner and sped up. For a while, I’d wondered if Selma, the one common denominator between Jennifer’s two lives, could be the killer. But now I was back to thinking it might be Larry. If he hadn’t liked the fact that she’d been a nudist… I had a sudden twining knot in the pit of my stomach. There was something about the way he’d been staring at Selma…
Oh no. Could she be next?
What if he knew about the Halloween bash? My pulse ratcheted up. What if he was on his way there right now?
I snatched my cell phone from my bag and dialed Selma, rushing to the parking lot. She answered before the first ring stopped and blurted, “You’re not backing out, are you?”
“No!” I said, then calmed my voice. Spooking her wouldn’t help. “I’m on my way home to change. Where are you? Wanna drive together?”
“No. I’m halfway there. I’m meeting Parker before we head into the party,” she said, the message in her voice crystal clear. ¡Ay, Dios! Some before-bash nookie was on their party plan. That was more than I needed to know. On the flipside, if she was with Parker she’d be safe.
“Selma,” I said, “could Larry Madrino have known Jennifer was a nudist? That you’re one?”
“Steve’s brother? I don’t think so. He’s so straitlaced. He wouldn’t have understood.”
I couldn’t quite bring myself to warn Selma about Larry—I was part of the Innocent Until Proven Guilty camp—but I d
id tell her to be careful. “Call if you need me,” I said.
“No cell phones inside, remember?”
Right. “So I’ll just see you at the party then.”
At home, I threw together the best costume I could. With no more time to waste, I wrapped myself in a trench coat and tiptoed down the front staircase of the flat above my parents’ house, praying to la Virgen de Guadalupe that I wouldn’t run into anyone. Especially Magdalena or Gregorio Cruz.
“¡Dolores!” My mother’s voice shot out the front window as I descended the stairs in front of it. “¿Adónde vas?”
One prayer that wasn’t answered. “Just going to a Halloween party, Mami.” I held the trench coat tighter and hurried down the last few steps.
“Espera,” she barked, and I instantly halted. No matter how old I was, I was pretty sure she’d have that effect on me.
“I’m late, Mami,” I said, turning to her.
Her face blurred through the screen, but her frown and her scrutiny of my coat were unmistakable. “What is under that?”
“Nada. Don’t worry. It’s just a costume.”
“Dolores Magdalena Falcón Cruz,” she said, squinting her eyes as if that would help her see through my coat.
My grip on the heavy fabric tightened. I could ignore her and start walking again. Or I could tell her no. But both of these would get me nothing but a whole lot of grief, pretty much for forever. The home-cooked meals would be spooned out with a scowl and a heavy dose of guilt, and the prayers for my soul would triple.
Not worth it.
I cracked open my coat, just wide enough for her to see the plaid skirt I had on.
She squinted her eyes, frowning. “No entiendo.”
I wasn’t about to show her the rest. She’d never understand the sexy schoolgirl outfit I’d scrounged together. I’d cut an old pink-and-black-plaid skirt into an ultra mini—un poquito too mini, actually, since I’d gone with a lacy black thong underneath to give the illusion of nakedness. Unless I could keep my coat on, I wouldn’t be bending over at Cuerpo y Alma.
Bare-Naked Lola (A Lola Cruz Mystery) Page 19