Melissa Bourbon Ramirez - Lola Cruz 01 - Living the Vida Lola

by Melissa Bourbon Ramirez

  “Miss Cruz,” Case said, opening the door. “You should see a doctor.”

  Oh no. I wasn’t leaving yet. Think, think. “My friend saw a doctor after her son died. He said it was true. It could happen.” I covered my face and wailed. “Oh God, I’m going to die!” I gave a big sniff and calmed myself down. “I shouldn’t have gone there. Not after poor Garrett—” I looked at the ceiling. “I’m sorry, Emily.” I buried my head in my hands. “I’m sorry I didn’t believe you.” I squinted and peered at him through my lashes, wondering if my sob story would soften his heart any. Or if Emily’s name would ring any bells.

  He stopped dead in his tracks. “What are you talking about?”

  Bingo! “Poor Garrett never saw it coming. One day he’s getting a tattoo, two weeks later he’s dead.” I jabbed my finger in the air again. “That’s not right, you know. His mother was so upset.” My adrenaline was pumping. I tried to bring it down, to ease my tension.

  The color had returned to Case’s face, but his tone was guarded now. “His mother?”

  “Poor Emily. She knew that tattoo killed Garrett. She knew. Why didn’t I believe her?” I sank into a chair and shook my head. “But I didn’t believe her. I just thought she was grieving and n-now I’m going to d-die. Just like Emily and Garrett. Why, oh why was I so stupid?”

  “The mother’s dead?” He swept back another wayward strand of hair.

  I nodded, running my fingers under my eyes. “She drowned. So sad.”

  His Adam’s apple slid up and down in his throat as he checked his watch. He walked toward the door. “Miss Cruz, I’m sure you’re not going to die. I’d love to be of some assistance, but I haven’t taken a position on the body art industry—”

  “She said she talked with a man who could help her. A politician, she said. It wasn’t you?”

  He shook his head. “I’m afraid she must have spoken with someone else. I’m very sorry that Ms. Diggs and her son are dead, but I’m sure it’s unrelated to Tattoo Haven.”

  Ay, Dios. I tried not to let my shock show on my face. He’d called Emily Ms. Diggs and said Tattoo Haven—all in one breath, but I hadn’t mentioned either by name. He knew the details, so why was he lying?

  His face grew hard. Uh-oh. Had he realized his slip?

  I jumped up from the chair. Time to end this meeting. “The industry needs regulations,” I said. “You can be the first to demand it.”

  Case’s shoulders hunched as he followed me out of his office and into the reception area.

  I flashed him my awful-looking navel again before I dashed out the door into the main corridor. “You can save lives, Assemblyman. Think about it.”

  Chapter 15

  I maneuvered my car into a spot along the curb in front of Mary Bonatee’s house, taking a second to peer up and down the sidewalk. No suspicious characters lurking about. No Muriel. No Case. Thank God.

  I stepped along the cracked sidewalk up to the hidden door. My plan was to determine if Emily might have been blackmailing Mary or her father. My pretense in stopping by was to grab some more of Sean’s toys to take to him. Poor kid needed familiar things around him.

  Bea pulled the door open with a flourish. “Did you find her?” she said with her first breath. Before I could answer, she wagged a long-sleeved arm at me. “The cops—” Her voice cracked with emotion. “—they say she’s—she’s—dead.”

  My heart broke for Emily’s friend. It was true that it’s the people left behind who suffer the most. “I’m so sorry, Bea. I’m doing everything I can to find out what happened.”

  She lifted her chin, peering at me from under the brim of her cap. “I know you are. That’s good,” she said, nodding. “That’s real good.” Her gaze dropped to my hands. “Where’s Emily’s notebook? Do you still have it?”

  “The journal’s really helpful, Bea. I still need it.” I didn’t elaborate that Manny had handed the original over to the police and that I was using a copy.

  She didn’t respond, but just shuffled back to the sitting room and stared at the muted, flickering television. I stood there feeling like I’d let her down. Bea had really cared about Emily.

  I pushed my sunglasses to the top of my head, stepped inside, and closed the door. Cool air washed over me. Air-conditioning. God, I loved it. A moment later, Mary walked down the stairs, looking fresh and crisp. I tried not to pat my hair. The leftover curls from my salsa dancing night gave me a Girls Gone Wild look. Mary, on the other hand, was like a mannequin, her short plastic-looking hair staying put even when she shook her head.

  “Hi,” I said. Great opening. I blamed my lack of cleverness on my sexual frustration.

  “Hi.”

  Huh—seemed she suffered from the same ailment. Maybe repressed orgasms were an epidemic. God help us, but we’d survive.

  I cut right to the chase. “You heard about Emily?”

  She nodded, but her mouth stayed shut.

  I wasn’t in the mood to beat around the bush, not considering how she’d held out on me at our first meeting, so I went for the jugular. Mary Bonatee needed to start talking. “Sean’s father,” I started.

  She stiffened and tried to set her lips in a hard line, but they wavered. “What?”

  “Do you know who Sean’s father is?”

  Mary’s shoulders drooped as if she’d suddenly lost the will to fight her conflict. “What does it matter?”

  “Everything matters when someone dies violently.” I folded my arms as if I were a disappointed parent. “You neglected to mention that you and Allison Diggs went to school together. You knew Emily before she moved in here.”

  “I played with Ally, so yes, I knew Emily.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me this last time I was here?”

  Mary’s deer-in-the-headlights gaze dropped to her twisting hands. She was nervous, sure, but my gut told me she wasn’t the enemy. “It didn’t seem important.”

  I wasn’t sure it was important either, but it felt more like a lie than an omission. “Did you know Emily and your dad dated?”

  She nodded. “It started after my parents got divorced, but it didn’t last very long. Sh—she—”

  “You think she broke up your parents?” I finished for her.

  Mary hesitated, but finally muttered, “Yes.”

  I studied her—could her blame for Emily have turned to hate? She bit her lip, and a flurry of tears slid down her cheeks. “That’s what you meant when you said that thing about parents not understanding the impact they have, right?”

  She smeared her tears across her cheeks with her fingertips and nodded. “Sean has my father’s eyes. His features. Does he think I’m stupid? That I wouldn’t put it together?”

  I leaned against the staircase. As gut-wrenching moments went, this was spectacular. She was really hurting. “I’m sure he knew he could trust you to be good to Sean.” She stayed silent, so I went on. “Is it possible that Emily could have been blackmailing your father?”

  She thought about this, wiping her eyes a final time. “Blackmailing him with what?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to figure out. Can we go through how Emily came to live here one more time?”

  She sighed. “My dad called me at the end of June and said he wanted to let the room to someone. But he knew my friend was living here. He had no right to kick her out.”

  “But he did it anyway?”

  “Oh yeah. Took her to dinner and broke the news. She ended up moving back in with her parents, and believe me, she did not want to do that.”

  “Why do you think it was so important to him that Emily move in here?”

  Mary shrugged and shook her head. “He said everything depended on it. That I just had to understand.”

  “But she lived in Sacramento, right? Why’d she need a new place?”

  “She used to have some sort of corporate job, but when she was living here, she worked at a café.” Mary’s brows pinched. “She moved a long time ago, before Sean was born. Took Ally and
Garrett and just left. They were in Sacramento still, but I don’t know where. Ally called now and then, but she never said much.”

  Maybe it was her obsession with finding out why Garrett had died that prompted the career change as well as her return to her old stomping ground. I went back to my original question. “Could it have been blackmail?”

  She straightened, her own tiger eyes suddenly glowing. “I can’t see my dad denying Emily money if she’d asked. Something went down between them, but I think he still cared about her. And if it would have helped Sean…”

  She trailed off, and I felt for her. She wanted to believe the best about her dad, but at the moment, she didn’t know how. I let Mary talk, still looking for that big break—that moment of clarity—but it didn’t come. “And your mother?”

  “My mom passed away a few years ago.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry.” So much for Emily threatening to tell Bonatee’s wife about Sean. “Did you ever tell Emily you knew who Sean’s father was?”

  She shook her head. “I wanted to, but I—I just couldn’t. My dad didn’t tell me, so I wasn’t going to be the one to bring it up.”

  So Sean was a gigantic white elephant standing between Mary and her father. “Your dad said you went to kindergarten with Emily’s daughter. Does she still call? Do you still talk?”

  She looked uncomfortable. Almost guilty. “Sometimes. We drifted apart.”

  “Why?”

  She paused as if she were considering how to answer that. “We have a friend who works at a tattoo place,” she finally said. “Ally started getting tattoos, kind of obsessively—then her brother got a few. They all started doing ecstasy and smoking pot. It wasn’t my thing, so I stepped back.”

  Smart girl. “Did Allison know your dad and Emily had an affair?” I asked.

  Mary’s black hair stayed perfectly in place as she nodded her head. “Oh yeah, she knew. We were both horrified. We used to stay up at night and talk about it.” Her eyes darkened. “But she never told me about Sean.”

  I remembered how Allison had flung herself out of my car in order to see her younger brother. Her words hurtled through my mind. “She shouldn’t have kept Sean from his dad,” she’d said. That secret had driven a wedge between Emily and her daughter, but why Emily kept Sean to herself might always be a mystery. Maybe Lucy had been right and the secret had been fueled by fear that Bonatee would win a custody battle if it came down to it.

  I went back to Emily’s obsession. “Did she talk about Garrett’s death?”

  “Not much. She hated how he’d changed. How he’d been influenced by Ally and had started getting tattoos and doing drugs. It seemed better not to talk about it.”

  She’d said the magic word—tattoos—and I jumped. “What did you think of his tattoos?”

  She frowned. “One was a cross. It was okay. A little big. One was a yin/yang. It wasn’t as good. Kind of small, and the black smeared into the white.” She thought for a second. “I can’t remember the others—Oh! He gave himself one. It was new, I think. I saw it at the funeral. It was on the top of his hand.” She shuddered. “It looked awful. Pretty rough.”

  “How do you know he gave it to himself?”

  “Ally told me. This guy we know showed Garrett how to do it. Apparently it’s supposed to look like—” She made air quotes with her fingers. “—a ‘prison tattoo.’ ”

  “Huh,” I said, but inside I cheered. This corroborated Emily’s suspicions and what Zod had said. It didn’t point a finger at the killer, but with the doctor’s statement that a tattoo could actually cause a heart infection, it seemed like Emily had been right about Garrett’s death. “What did Emily think of the tattoo?”

  Mary’s eyebrows pinched together as she thought. “I think she blamed Ally for getting Garrett into all that stuff. They never got along, but Garrett was like the final nail in the coffin.”

  I asked a few more questions, but Mary had nothing else to offer. “Can I take some of Sean’s things to him?” I asked, remembering the other reason I’d come.

  She nodded. “My roommate came back. I packed Sean’s stuff up so she could get settled again.”

  Ah. Now I noticed two produce boxes sitting off to one side. I chided myself for not spotting them earlier. Notice the details. It’s what any good PI did. How many years did I have to have under my belt before I didn’t feel like a rookie anymore?

  I picked up the box with a baseball bat sticking out the top. Mary followed me outside with the other. “Mary,” I said, nudging my box into the back of my car, a sudden thought occurring to me. “Was your dad seeing anyone before Emily showed up?”

  Her lips thinned, and she squeezed her eyes shut for a moment. “He’s always dated on and off.”

  “Anyone particular?”

  She hesitated for a second, and I thought she was going to clam up. “Maybe. I went to his office a couple weeks ago. He was with someone.” Her voice broke. “It seemed like they were—” She hesitated. “—pretty close.”

  “Do you know who it was?” I asked, probably a bit too eagerly.

  “No.”

  “What were they talking about?”

  “I didn’t hear much. The woman was sort of crying. He was telling her that it wasn’t her fault and that everything would be all right. Then he said that they weren’t meant to be together, and she started crying more. That’s when I left.”

  Mary helped me load the boxes with Sean’s stuff into my car, and I drove away. My cell phone, barely audible, played “La Bamba” before I’d gotten out of her neighborhood.

  I flipped it open. “This is Dolores.”

  “I got your corporation for you,” Sadie said. Her voice was completely professional. I had a feeling Manny wasn’t around, since his presence seemed to send her off the deep end.

  “Okay.”

  “Not over the phone. Come into the office, and we’ll talk.”

  It was all about control with her. She wanted to be the boss. “It’s not like my phone’s bugged, Sadie.”

  Click. She hung up on me. “Fine,” I barked at the phone. “I’m on my way.”

  Ten minutes later I walked through the banal lobby of Camacho and Associates and into the meeting room. Reilly gave me a dopey, lovesick look. I hadn’t had the chance to talk to her since I’d left her at Denny’s. Pobrecita. I hoped Antonio wouldn’t break her heart too badly.

  I hurried past her with a quick smile and stood next to Sadie in front of the whiteboard where I’d recorded all my case notes. My nostrils flared when I saw she’d changed the timeline. Damn it. How dare she butt in.

  Then I gasped at what she’d added.

  • Ryan Case and George Bonatee, owners of My Place, Just Because, and Tattoo Haven. Corporation name: B.C. Incorporated

  • Businesses managed by Muriel O’Brien

  • Todd Case is tattoo artist at Tattoo Haven, son of Ryan Case

  “No, the tattoo guy’s name was—” I slapped my hand over my mouth. Todd. Zod. The photograph I’d seen of the Case family in the newspaper appeared in my mind. If the clean-cut kid in the picture was the pierced and tattooed Zod, that was some transformation.

  Sadie shuffled and took a step closer. One side of her mouth curved up. “Vital information, right, Sherlock?”

  I let the nickname go. “The tattoo guy at Tattoo Haven is Ryan Case’s son. Bonatee and Case own the businesses… .” My mind reeled back to something Mary had said when I’d first met her. Her roommate’s name had been Joanie. As in Case. I’d been so wrapped up with learning about Garrett and the tattoo he’d done on himself that the name hadn’t registered. It wasn’t just Allison and Zod that knew each other, and it wasn’t just the Diggs and the Bonatees that were connected. It looked like the Cases were old friends, too.

  My questions were whether or not the assemblyman believed Emily’s claim that Garrett died from a heart infection that stemmed from a tattoo, and whether or not he knew that Todd had taught Garrett how to tattoo himself. “Are you s
ure about this?” I asked, feeling new respect for Emily and the mission I thought she’d been on.

  “Positive.”

  Sadie’s smug attitude didn’t even bug me at the moment. I was too busy being surprised by the fact that George Bonatee was part owner of the tattoo shop. If Emily had come to him for help, it was like the gingerbread boy asking the wolf to get her across the river. By helping her pursue a case against Tattoo Haven, he’d have implicated himself as a responsible party.

  Sadie leaned her backside against the table with her ankles crossed, watching me. “Epiphany?”

  “Sort of,” I answered. “This helps, thanks.”

  Sadie frowned, her eyebrows pinched in confusion. She wasn’t in the practice of saying thank you to anyone, and I didn’t often say it to her. “You’re welcome,” she murmured, as if she couldn’t quite say the words at full volume.

  She ambled to the whiteboard and studied it, still looking puzzled. I couldn’t take pleasure in flustering her right now. I needed to reflect on how intertwined Bonatee and Case were. I ticked the connections off on my fingers.

  1. Bonatee and Case were partners in three small businesses.

  2. Case’s son showed Garrett how to tattoo himself, the same tattoo that was potentially responsible for Bonatee’s ex-lover’s son’s death. That was big.

  3. I mulled. Joanie, Case’s daughter, lived in the house Bonatee owned and was friends with Mary, and Todd Case had to be the tattoo guy Mary had referred to.

  4. My mind was blank, and I couldn’t come up with a fourth connection.

  I didn’t need another one. Three was enough.

  I didn’t know what any of it meant yet, but things were starting to make sense. Sort of.

  Manny sauntered out of his office, his limp altering the thud of his boots against the carpet. Sadie’s body reacted to the sound of his approach, her spine almost crackling as it straightened. She stood tall, all five feet three inches of her.

  He leaned back against the conference table, crossing his ankles and posed exactly as Sadie had been a few minutes ago. Her expression grew tight as she turned around to face him. “Boss.”