Melissa Bourbon Ramirez - Lola Cruz 02 - Hasta la Vista, Lola!

by Melissa Bourbon Ramirez

  Apparently I’d become Jack’s official muse. My last case had dealt with tattoos, so he had written about the body-art industry. He should definitely be giving me kickbacks for story ideas. “I’m not sure I can help much.”

  “You have personal experience. Putting a name and face to the issue makes it real for the reader. Lets them connect, you know?”

  “I’m just on my way out, so—”

  “Great. I’ll go with you,” he said at the same time as the whoosh of the front door sounded. I turned… and nearly dropped my phone. He was suddenly right in front of me. “So, this is where it all happens.” Jack walked into the conference room, scouting the perimeter, checking out the various information outlined on the whiteboards.

  I hurried after him. “Those cases are confidential.”

  Manny sauntered out of his office, a slightly pained look on his face. The cleft in his chin looked more prominent than usual, and his eyes had turned beady. He nodded curtly at Jack.

  Jack tucked his cell into his pocket. A narrow notebook and his thin black laptop computer were clutched under his left arm. He held out his right hand to Manny. “Good to see you again,” he said, but his tone said, Back off, buster. “Just here to pick up Lola.”

  “Lola?” Manny said, but his gaze never left Jack’s face. Their grips seemed to tighten.

  I smiled wanly. I was Dolores to the elder generation in my family and to my colleagues. To my siblings, my cousins, friends—and Jack—I was Lola. When had I begun walking a tightrope between two worlds?

  “Manny, you remember Jack Callaghan.” Jack had been around during two cases I’d been involved with—not to mention the other night right in front of the agency—but I couldn’t actually recall introducing them.

  “I remember,” he said tightly.

  I watched as the muscles in both their forearms strained with their machismo. Ah, to be a man and wield such animalism.

  Finally they seemed to call an unspoken truce and released.

  Manny rocked back on the heels of his alligator cowboy boots and folded his arms over his chest. He looked at me. “You working on your case?”

  “I’m going with her while she’s investigating.” Jack cracked a protective half smile. “Sort of in a bodyguard capacity.”

  I looked from Manny to Jack. They were like two wolves, circling each other, vying for the best fighting position. “I don’t need a bodyguard—,” I started to say, but they weren’t listening to me.

  Manny’s lips thinned. “Where?”

  “I’m taking her to Rosie Gonzales’s apartment.”

  I gaped at him. Reluctant surprise crossed Manny’s face. “You have an address?” we said in unison.

  “Yep. Lola asked me to find a few addresses in the Bee’s database.” Jack swung out his arm, ushering me through the opening to the lobby.

  He was here. It was a good lead, and we were wasting time. I grabbed my purse, the file folder, and my notebook on the case. “I’ll call you later,” I called over my shoulder.

  “Your car or mine?” Jack asked when we were out on the sidewalk.

  I was torn between an urge to sucker-punch Jack for his macho hero act and wanting to kiss him for finding a solid lead on my case. I opted for a verbal attack—just to set some boundaries. “What was that?”

  Jack leaned against my car. “What was what?”

  “The handshake and the ‘I’m going with her.’ ” I faced him. “I can take care of myself, Jack. I don’t need a bodyguard, and certainly not one who vanishes at will.”

  He studied me, ignoring my rant, and seemed to pull a new topic from thin air. “What’s going on between you and Camacho?”

  “What? Nothing.” A sliver of guilt knifed through me. Of course I’d thought about Manny in that way once or twice over the years—any woman with a pulse would—but he was my boss. And I had Jack Callaghan sitting beside me. “I work for him,” I said. “He’s my mentor.”

  “And he’s interested in you.”

  I did Jack the courtesy of really considering his statement. Manny was attractive—in a mercenary kind of way—but I wanted someone to snuggle with, someone to share my dreams with, someone like—“Jack,” I snapped, “he’s not interested in me. He has a girlfriend.” Who looks like Lara Croft, or Angelina Jolie playing Lara Croft—so really, there was no contest.

  “A girlfriend doesn’t stop a lot of men.”

  I gave him a little attitude. “Oh, yeah? You know this from experience?”

  “Funny, Cruz. I’m a one-woman kind of man.” A hint of playfulness flitted back into his voice.

  Yeah, but was I the woman? “I don’t need a bodyguard,” I repeated. But I did need the address, and I wanted Jack.

  Jack’s face was unreadable. “Right,” he said. “So, how about that identity theft.”

  Ooh, he had a doctorate in evasiveness. “Fine, come with me if you want.”

  The left side of his mouth crept up in an illicit smile. “I’ll come because you want me to.” He got in the passenger side of my car, slipped his laptop under the seat, and flipped open his reporter’s notebook in one slick move.

  I glanced back at the plate-glass windows of Camacho and Associates. A shadow passed by. I blinked, but when I opened my eyes, the small lobby looked empty. All the nicknames Manny had been calling me shot to the front of my mind. Jack putting voice to my suspicions made me jumpy. I didn’t want Manny to have a thing for me.

  I angled my body to face Jack, getting back to business. “You actually got Rosie Gonzales’s address?”

  He settled into the bucket seat and rolled down the window. “We’ll see.”

  He stopped talking, dangling his unspoken information in front of me like a worm on a hook. No need to bite—me and José knew that worm personally. “You looked up my name.”

  Jack grinned, a lock of mahogany hair falling onto his forehead. “I called a friend in subscriptions, and he searched your name. That was a good idea,” he added. “It worked.”

  Jack looked at me, the expression on his face one I loved seeing. It was a pleasing mixture of satisfaction and respect.

  “Her motive had to be more than wanting stuff.” I filled Jack in on the storage facility. “If she was going crazy with my credit, wouldn’t the unit have been full? I’m assuming she was running from something, and that’s what motivated her stealing my name.” It was my hypothesis. Now I had to work toward proving it.

  “Makes sense.” He pulled out a sheet of paper and handed it to me. Turns out there are about twenty-five Rosie Gonzaleses and fifteen Dolores Cruzes in the greater Sacramento area. “If she was running, she was safe as you. Until last week,” he added.

  We were silent for a few seconds, mourning Rosie. I looked at the endless list. “Glad to know I’m a unique individual.”

  “You’re definitely a unique individual.”

  Two can play at this game, Callaghan. My arm brushed shamelessly against his thigh as I stretched across his legs and reached into the glove box. Across his tautly muscled thigh. I swallowed hard, snatched a pen from the opening, and shrank back to my own space. The words on the paper blurred for a moment as I took a deep breath. Maybe only one could play at this game—him.

  Puckering my lips, I blew out a stiff breath. It’d be so much safer if my heart chambers didn’t want to explode when I was around him.

  An endless moment later, I was able to draw steady lines through two Rosies and five of the Doloreses on the list. “I think we can tentatively eliminate these right off the bat if we assume Rosie didn’t live in Roseville, Lincoln, or even Natomas. Too far from Florin Road, where she died.”

  Jack remained uncharacteristically silent, and I suddenly felt as if this were a test. With my chin tilted against my chest and my eyelashes shading my eyes, I sneaked a glance at him. “Yep,” he finally said, “you’re probably right. That narrows it down to ten possibles.”

  “None of these subscriptions have been canceled?”

  Jack s
hook his head. “They’re all active.”

  Another idea struck me. I drew a line through four more names. “These women take the paper every day. Let’s assume Rosie just took it on the weekend, to keep informed. If she was running, she would want to prolong the deception for as long as possible. She’d probably be cautious with her spending.” She might not have taken the paper at all. I know I rarely had time to read anything beyond the obits. And Jack’s column.

  “Maybe, maybe not. It prioritizes the list anyway. If the hunch doesn’t pan out, we can always go back to the others.”

  I pulled out my cell phone and dialed the first number. It was answered on the second ring. “Hola?”

  I slipped into Spanish. “¿Por favor, estoy hablando con Dolores Cruz?”

  “Sí. Soy Dolores Cruz.”

  Frowning at Jack, I shook my head. Strike one. “Lo siento. Nesecito a otra Dolores Cruz. Gracias.” To Jack I said, “Not our girl.”

  I called the next two numbers with the same results; we were oh for three. The next number rang and rang. The fifth call led to an answering machine. The voice on the machine identified herself as Dolores and directed the caller to leave a message. I hung up instead.

  “So we’re left with three possibilities,” I said after the last call went unanswered. “Maybe one of them was our girl.”

  Jack strapped the seat belt over his chest. “Let’s roll.”

  We tried the downtown address first since it was closest. The single-story tan house was situated next to a mom-and-pop grocery on one side and a row of similarly designed houses on the other. A little girl, about eight years old, answered my knock.

  I smiled at her. “Hi. I’m looking for Dolores Cruz?”

  “That’s me,” the girl said, jutting her chin forward. Her brown hair was pulled back into a ponytail, bangs flat against her forehead. Her big black eyes were like pools of oil.

  “Oh.” I hadn’t expected that. “Um, is your mommy home?”

  Little Dolores Cruz shook her head from side to side, her ponytail sweeping against her cheek with each motion.

  Jack crouched down. “Is her name Dolores, too?”

  The girl nodded her head this time, the ponytail swinging out behind her.

  “Is she at work?” I asked.

  As the girl shook her head, frustration simmered inside me. I wanted to blurt, Is your mother alive? but that would be un poquito insensitive.

  Jack was at the girl’s eye level. “Honey, is your mommy coming home soon?”

  She nodded again. “She’s next door.”

  Jack and I locked knowing gazes. If Mama Dolores was next door, then she couldn’t be Rosie Gonzales. I put a line through the name on the printout, and we headed back to the car.

  I drove toward South Sacramento and the next address on the list. “You were sweet with her,” I said to him. No wonder he wanted a football team of kids. He actually liked them.

  “She’s just a little person,” he said, as if talking to little people, aka children, was the easiest thing in the world.

  I was usually good at it, too. My excuses for today were Jack’s presence and the dead Dolores Cruz.

  The rest of our drive was filled with sporadic bouts of trivial conversation followed by stretches of silence. I asked Jack what angle he was taking in his identity-theft column.

  “Facts mixed with a personal story.” He grinned. “Yours.”

  “I’m not sure I want to share my story.”

  He looked at me like I was missing the point of something big. “It’s a hot topic. You’ve done the research. You’re living it. Other people need to know that it’s real. That it can happen to regular people. To someone just like them.”

  “Hey,” I said, feigning hurt. “I thought you said I was unique.”

  “Cruz, you’re beyond unique. They broke the mold when they made you.”

  I wasn’t sure he thought that was a good thing, but I left it alone. Instead, I put my detective skills to work on Jack. He liked kids, was concerned about the greater good, and dropped everything to help me, even if it also helped him. But his past pressed invasive fingers into my brain. “How many women have you slept with?” I blurted, then slapped my hand over my mouth.

  The stunned expression on his face made me swallow. Damn. My mouth had a mind of its own at times. “You sure you want to have this conversation?” he asked.

  “Definitely.” No!

  His breath was slow and steady, weighted with the impact of his next sentence. “You tell me first. How many men have you slept with, Cruz?”

  I sputtered. “We weren’t talking about me.”

  “You and Sergio. You do it every day?” His face had gone hard and tense. “Did you initiate it?”

  My knuckles turned white on the steering wheel. “That’s too personal, Callaghan.”

  “Fair play, babe. You want to know all the details about my sex life.”

  “That’s different.”

  “How?”

  Good question since, of course, it wasn’t the least bit different. Knowing the down-and-dirty details of his past wouldn’t make me feel better. I’d been a relatively good girl over the years, but I knew Jack had not been on the same basic abstinence-unless-it’s-love path that I’d been on. I couldn’t answer.

  “Contrary to what you obviously think,” he said with a frown, “I don’t sleep with every woman I come across.”

  I gave him a sidelong glance that said, Yeah, right. “I saw the economy box of condoms in your bathroom when you had me over for dinner, remember? It’s no secret you’ve had a few sleepovers.”

  He leaned his arm against the open window frame and rested his head against his fist. “Actually, I never sleep over, and no one ever sleeps over with me.”

  “You were in a relationship for four years. You’re saying you didn’t have any sleepovers?”

  “Not counting that,” he said in monotone.

  I tried not to psychoanalyze his every move and tone. “You slept at my place after Antonio’s accident.” He’d comforted me and made me feel safe when I’d needed it most. He’d been a good friend.

  And then he’d almost lost his life.

  He leaned his head back against the seat of the car and stared at the traffic in front of us. “I don’t want to know how many men you’ve been with,” he said after a moment, turning to look at me again. “I’ll start—and stop—counting when you’ve been with me.”

  I bit the inside of my cheek. His gaze was disconcerting, and I felt myself blush. “The difference between you and me,” I said, “is that I believe in love and relationships.”

  “And you think I don’t?”

  “Just look at your track record. It’s littered with one-night stands and short-termers. The one long-term relationship you’ve had ended. Was it because she wanted to get married?”

  “No, it wasn’t. We weren’t right for each other.” He looked at me. “I believe in love.”

  “Good to know. And just an FYI, I won’t sleep with someone just because”—I paused, searching for the right word—“because I have an urge.”

  He raised a suggestive eyebrow at me. “But you do get urges. That’s good to know.”

  My cheeks went fiery; it was a toss-up if they burned with embarrassment or desire. My urges hung there—a big white elephant crammed between the bucket seats. We passed a few dilapidated storefronts intermixed with a Dairy Queen, a 7-Eleven, and a couple hole-in-the-wall eateries on the street leading up to the apartment complex.

  “Nice area,” Jack commented.

  “Detective work isn’t all glamour. It’s good versus evil, you know. Pursuing the greater good.” I caught my breath, remembering I’d just thought the exact same thing about Jack’s purpose in his job. We actually had something in common besides mutual lust.

  Jack’s raised eyebrow told me he’d missed the revelation. “Cut the bullshit, Lola. You actually do need a bodyguard in a place like this.”

  I’d told him more than
once that my body was my weapon. “Have you seen my kick?”

  He stifled a laugh, and I frowned at him. “What happens when you come across someone with a gun?”

  Ah, the age-old question that Manny and Sadie both hounded me with. Target practice was honing my gun capabilities, but I wasn’t going to carry unless I absolutely had to. Accidentally shoot someone? Free pass to San Quentin? Not going to happen. “A knee to the crotch,” I said with a smug waggle of my head. “Works every time.”

  He looked at me like he thought a little one-on-one combat would be a huge turn-on.

  He was right on the money.

  I tried to keep a passive face as we walked across the cracked sidewalk and into the dank, dark building. It reeked of urine; the cement floors and brick walls were stained and slimy.

  The nauseating odor of the interior hallway penetrated my nostrils. I tried breathing in through my mouth. It didn’t really work.

  Jack and I entered the stairwell at the end of the hallway, the same rank smells filling the confined space. We climbed the steps to the third floor. I avoided touching the stair rail, hugging my arms close to my body.

  Sunday’s newspaper was scattered in front of Dolores Cruz’s doorway. I gave Jack a look that said, No one’s here to bring it in. He nodded, clearly getting my nonverbal communication. I knocked. No answer.

  “What now?” Jack whispered.

  A sound down the hall caught my attention. The click of a door closing. The slice of light that shone underneath suddenly snuffed out. We were being watched.

  I hightailed it to the door and knocked. It was yanked open, popping back as the safety chain snapped taut.

  When the door settled open two inches, a middle-aged Filipina with brown almond-shaped eyes stared out at me, her wide, flat nose pronounced on her face. Nosy women, gotta love ’em.

  “Hi,” I said, flipping my hand up. “I’m—” I paused. Did I want to show my cards? “My name is Dolores,” I said, deciding I really didn’t have another choice. Maintaining anonymity was pretty high up in the detective rulebook, but right now I needed to reveal my identity so it could work for me.

  Her vacant expression didn’t change.

  I forged ahead, holding out one of my business cards. “I’m a private investigator.”