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

by Melissa Bourbon Ramirez

  “Then let me simplify things,” he said. “I’m crazy about you.” He looked at me, almost pleading with his eyes. “I think about you all the time.”

  Words tumbled out of my mouth before I could stop them. “All the time? Even while you’re being groped by another woman? Or while you’re playing knight in shining armor for your ex-girlfriend?”

  He pressed his thumb and finger against his closed eyes like he was gathering up his inner strength. “I already told you. I am not,” he said tightly, “interested in Molly.”

  That I believed. “No,” I said softly, “but Sarah’s a different story.”

  He stared at me for a beat. His lips drew into a thin line. “You’re wrong, Lola.”

  Now I folded my arms, shifted my weight to one hip, and thrust my chin out. “Am I? She’s the one you broke up with when you left San Luis Obispo, right? The four-year relationship? You went MIA to help her,” I said, “and you won’t tell me why.”

  He laced his fingers behind his neck and leaned back against the kitchen counter. All I could hear was the low sound of his breath and the thrashing of my heartbeat while I waited for him to say something. Anything.

  And then he did…

  “I almost married her,” he said.

  . . . and I wished he hadn’t.

  “Married?” I repeated, choking the word out. His other women had always been in the back of my mind. Hell, I had pictures to prove it. Postcoital pictures of him and Greta Pritchard that had tainted my entire love life. All I’d ever wanted was to be the one who’d given Jack that satisfied look. For me to be the one he wanted and loved.

  He nodded, and I just stared at him. Jack Callaghan had almost gotten married. That did not compute. “As in engaged?” I asked, needing clarification.

  There was going to be a wedding? While I waited for him to elaborate, my mind went wild with possible reasons for the broken engagement. Fear of commitment? Had he cheated on her? Or maybe she’d cheated on him. But if he’d been betrayed, why would he drop everything to help her? No, he had to have cheated on her despite the fact that he’d told me he’d never, ever do that, not after his father had done it to his mother.

  “I didn’t screw around on her,” Jack said.

  Since when was mind reading one of his skills? “I wasn’t—”

  He interrupted my denial. “Yes, you were. It’s written all over your face.”

  Damn. Busted. “Then why’d you break it off with her? And,” I added, “why do you still see her?”

  He suddenly looked more tormented than I’d ever seen a man look. I closed the distance between us with three steps. “Jack,” I said, putting my hands on his shoulder. “Just tell me.”

  He raised his gaze to mine. “I broke it off because she wasn’t you.” He hesitated before continuing. “I still see her because I have to, not because I want to.”

  Why couldn’t he have stopped at she wasn’t you? “Why do you need to see her?”

  There was a weighty pause. That hesitation again. Finally, he said, “Because I cared about her once. I just—I need you to trust me, Lola.”

  I wanted to! I wanted to wrap my arms around him, believe every word he said, and be enveloped by his body, his affection, his love.

  But trust didn’t come easily—not after my relationship with Sergio—and I had my own problems to worry about. I had Rosie Gonzales. I didn’t want to stress out about the fact that Jack was at some other woman’s beck and call. “You have to give me something, Jack,” I said. “Anything.”

  After a few long seconds, he said, “She’s sick.”

  I dropped my arms to my side and tried to process this. What kind of man left his fiancée in her hour of need?

  I answered my own question. My uncle had. He’d divorced my aunt when she’d been at the height of her sickness, but that was different. Tía Betty had gone loca. Literally. She’d lost all her marbles, and nobody could blame Tío Ramon for wanting to escape.

  “What kind of sick?” I asked. But I didn’t give Jack time to answer before the next question came out. “Was she sick when—when you broke up with her?”

  “Yes,” he said simply.

  I took a deep breath and tried to hold on to what I knew of Jack. He’d said he broke up with her because she wasn’t me. That had made me feel warm and tingly inside. How could I reconcile that Jack with a man who’d dump a woman when she was ill?

  “I know it sounds bad, Lola, but—”

  “Oh my God.” Tía Betty. That was it. “She’s got emotional problems, doesn’t she?” My imagination took over. “Is she a stalker? Is she threatening you? “Cristo,” I muttered. “Are you in danger?”

  His expression hardened. “No. Jesus, Lola. She’s bipolar. She won’t stay on her meds, and she gets herself in some pretty bad situations.”

  Momentary relief flooded me. At least Sarah wasn’t going to go all Jagged Edge on him. But I was a fix-it girl, and I got right back to work. “Doesn’t she have family who can help her? Friends? Somebody besides you?”

  “They try, but I’m able to calm her down better than anyone else.”

  What did that mean? What kind of comfort did he offer? My head started to throb as I realized that Sarah might always have a hold on him. I was torn between feeling compassion for a woman I’d never met and wanting her out of Jack’s life completely. I started to turn, but he grabbed my arms and held me. “Don’t.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t walk away from me, Lola.” His hands moved to my face. He bent his head and kissed me, softly at first, then with such urgency that I felt like he was trying to burn the kiss into a memory.

  He pulled away and lowered his forehead to mine, and I could almost feel the aching in both our hearts. I tangled my fingers in his hair and smoothed it back. “I—I’m glad you told me,” I said, “but I have to think about this.”

  He pushed a stray strand of hair behind my ear. I dropped my hands, but he took me by the wrist and held me close. “Take all the time you need,” he said, “but I’m not giving you up. Think about that, while you’re at it.” Then he kissed me again, deep and searing, before he turned and walked out of the kitchen, out of my flat, and into the night.

  My heart was crushing under the burden of Jack’s confession and his obligation to Sarah. But it didn’t shatter and it didn’t burst, because I was a survivor. And a fighter. And I sure as hell wasn’t ready to let Jack go.

  Chapter 12

  I wanted a little Reilly pick-me-up, so first thing the next morning, I called the office looking for her. “She’s out today,” Manny said.

  “Again?” This was really getting on my nerves. “Where is she?” I demanded.

  “Sick.”

  Suddenly there were too many sick women in my life. “I’ll bring her some caldo,” I said, leaving an opening for him to fess up, admit that he had her doing some kind of dangerous dirty work, and say that she wasn’t actually home sick and didn’t need me to bring her soup.

  He said nothing.

  When I called her at home, the phone just rang and rang. My imagination ran wild. Aside from her ever-changing hair color, Reilly was the most predictable girl on the planet. She lived with her mother, was like a Gossip Girl, J.Lo style, and drove a lime green Volkswagen Beetle, complete with a cute little flower on the dash.

  Soup wouldn’t do her any good, since she wasn’t home. I’d get to the bottom of it, but for now I called my cousin’s wife. “Lucy, what’s on your schedule today?”

  “How’s your face? Tell me!” I held the receiver away from my ear, her voice exploding across the phone line. “Still glowing?”

  I tried to put a smile in my voice, but I just couldn’t muster it. “Still glowing.”

  As I moved on with my investigation of Rosie Gonzales, my determination to get to the bottom of Lucy and Zac’s situation moved up to first place on my personal priority list. I needed them to have a happy ending because if they fell apart, my faith in love might just vanish
on the spot. “What’s your schedule like today? I could use some company.”

  “Company,” she repeated. “As in your sidekick again?”

  She’d helped me on my last case. If she came with me today, I could kill two birds with one stone—help her and get her help with the Rosie thing. “Absolutely.”

  Nervous enthusiasm edged into her voice. “Let me check my book.” There was a loud crack as Lucy dropped the receiver on the table. A moment later she was back and nearly shouting into the phone. “I have a facial in fifteen minutes, and a wax after that. Zac’s with the kids. I can be done by eleven fifteen. Can you wait?”

  Two hours. It was doable. “Sure. I’ll pick you up at eleven fifteen sharp.”

  “Thanks, Lola. I needed this. It’s going to be awesome.”

  I tried to let her enthusiasm infuse me as she hung up the phone. I felt the first lift in any spirits since last night. I didn’t know how awesome my plan was, but spending the day with Lucy would hopefully perk both of us up. I was determined to get to the bottom of her marital problem.

  Love had to win.

  “Reilly!” I hammered my fist against the front door of the Fuller house. “You there?”

  My pounding could have woken the dead, but it didn’t bring Reilly to the door. I scribbled out a quick note and was taping it to the door when the high-pitched beep sounded from the street.

  I knew that beep. I turned as a little green Bug zipped up to the curb. Reilly honked the horn again, popped out, and raced toward me. “Lola! Oh my gosh, I have so much to tell you!”

  I gasped and stared at her. She had an entirely new look—more Agent 99 than a rainbow version of Mrs. Marc Anthony. Her neon locks were now jet-black, dark glasses shaded her eyes, and dark red lipstick colored her lips. “What happened to you?”

  She stopped in her tracks and struck a pose. “You like?”

  “Uh…” I didn’t know if I liked. “You look different,” I said, but she was already past me, tugging my note from the door and letting herself into the house.

  I started to follow, but before I took two steps inside, she was in front of me again, guiding me back outside. She pulled the door closed and started toward her car. “Gotta run!”

  “Wait!” I blocked her path. “What’s the hurry? Where have you been?”

  She looked over her right shoulder, then over her left. All very spylike. “Top secret.”

  “Reilly,” I snapped. “It’s me. Lola. You don’t keep secrets from me.”

  She skirted around me and circled her car to the driver’s side. “El bosso’s orders,” she said before slipping back inside. She leaned over and rolled down the passenger window. “When I get the all-clear from MC, I’ll fill you in.”

  “MC?” As in Hammer?

  “Manny Camacho,” she called as she yanked at the steering wheel, made a tight U-turn, and zipped down the street.

  Reilly was dressed like a Backyardigan on a spy mission, was keeping secrets, and was calling Manny MC. Ay, Dios, the world was going crazy.

  I tried to put things in perspective: So what if Reilly was changing her style? So what if she was becoming mysterious like the rest of the Camacho crew? It was bound to happen at some point. In a weird way, I’d almost expected it. I’d just hoped Reilly wouldn’t succumb to keeping secrets like everyone else in my life. Surely it would sort itself out in time.

  At 11:15 sharp, medicated with pain reliever to ease my throbbing temples, I pulled up to Lucy’s house.

  I stood in the entryway while she ran back to her bedroom to grab her shoes. “I’m glad we get to spend some time together,” I called after her.

  “Me, too! Especially with your doppelgänger, you know, dead but still haunting you.”

  Doppelwhat? Lucy and her New Age mumbo jumbo. I went in search of the nearest dictionary. Flipping pages, I finally found it—“doppelgänger: A ghostly double.” Huh. Not so mumbo jumbo after all. Rosie was haunting me from beyond. I felt like the kid in The Sixth Sense—like I needed to help her before she could find peace in the great beyond.

  A few minutes later, we were back in my car and heading toward the freeway. “What time do you need to be back?”

  “God, I don’t know. Let’s get wild and stay out all night!”

  I glanced at her. Her platinum hair was loosely pulled back into a barrette, half an inch of brown roots creeping out of her scalp. Her fitted beige T-shirt and baggy wraparound pants emphasized her boobs and hips, the Birkenstocks on her feet completing the picture of whole-earth goddess. She looked ready for a night on the town at the Davis Farmers’ Market.

  I opened my mouth to talk some sense into her, but she continued on before I got a word out. “So,” Lucy said. “Where are we going? What are we doing? God, you have no idea how great it is to be out of that house! Right now I don’t ever want to touch skin again.”

  “I thought you loved your job.”

  “I do.” There was a heavy pause filled with unspoken thoughts. “I just feel like I’m, you know, suffocating.”

  I yanked the car off the main road, slammed on the brakes, and looked at her. “You want to stay out. You feel like you’re suffocating. Spill it, Lucy. What is going on?”

  Her lower lip quivered and like a turbulent geyser erupting, she burst into tears.

  “Lucy! Oh my God!” I fumbled in my purse, searching for a tissue.

  She sobbed into the wrinkled Java City napkin I handed her, blowing her nose when she was finished.

  I laid my hand on her knee. “Tell me what’s going on.”

  She threw her palm up, and I clamped my mouth closed. “I’m f-fine. If fine means—if it means that—that Zac and I are heading for—” She heaved and sobbed. “H-headed for d-divorce court.”

  “Wh-what?” I sputtered. “What are you talking about?”

  “Zac doesn’t,” she howled, “want me—anymore.” Lucy blew her nose again, sounding like the horn on an eighteen-wheeler.

  “Loca. Of course he does.”

  “No, he—” She broke off, trying again. “Wh-when he comes home, it’s like—like he doesn’t even see me. I’ve become his mother,” she wailed, “not his w-wife.” She threw her hands up then buried her face in them. “When did that happen?” She sobbed and gestured to her hair, her pants, her shoes. “When did this happen? You know I have a body under here, but no one ever sees it.”

  I thought back to the facial Lucy gave me. “The roller coaster…”

  “There’s no goddamned roller coaster. There’s no excitement. We don’t even talk anymore unless it’s about the kids. I can’t remember the last time he touched me.”

  I took a deep breath and phrased my words carefully. “Things have a way of getting twisted around and misinterpreted. Maybe he thinks you’re interested in someone else?”

  She spat out a laugh. “Me? Lola, you’ve got to be kidding! Who else would I be interested in? I love Zac.”

  I shrugged. “There’s no client?”

  She scoffed. “Right, like I’d be caught dead with one of those freaky metrosexuals. I wouldn’t want a ‘facial’ man, for God’s sake.” She shook her head. “But that’s beside the point. Zac doesn’t look at me. I could walk around naked, and he wouldn’t notice.”

  “Well, yes, I think he’d notice that.” My mind raced as I decided what direction to take this conversation. “Lucy, I’m going to tell you something, and I don’t want you to freak out.”

  She wiped away a stream of tears and her pencil-thin eyebrows rose. “Uh-oh. That doesn’t sound good.”

  “Well, that kind of depends. Abuelo asked me to help Zac.”

  Her lips became as thin as her eyebrows. “Help him do what?”

  I felt a surge of guilt over the whole deception. “He’s afraid you’re seeing someone else.”

  Lucy stared at me, openmouthed. “You’re kidding.” Her voice dropped to an alarmingly low tone, the complete opposite of the hysterical wail she’d just channeled.

  I nodded. �
��He does. And he went to Abuelo for advice.”

  “Why in the world would he go to that ornery, old—?” She slapped her hand over her mouth. “I’m sorry!”

  “Hey, he is ornery and old. And I don’t know why Zac went to him. All I know is that Abuelo asked me to look into it.”

  Lucy looked at me, her face drawn and sad. “That’s why you came for the facial? That’s why we’re going out today?”

  I was trying to help her, I reminded myself, but the guilt bubbled up. “I loved the facial, Lucy! I just want to help if I can.” I hurried on. “I really do need your help today.”

  Lucy looked out the side window. “Why would he possibly think I was having an affair?”

  I shrugged. “Maybe he thinks you want off the merry-go-round.”

  She slapped her hands over her ears and shook her head with frenetic energy. “Screw that goddamned metaphor!”

  The space between us seemed to shrink.

  She frowned, dropping her hands to her lap. “What am I going to do?” she whispered.

  Confirming that Lucy was not having an affair was done. I believed her. Helping her solve her marital issues was something else entirely. Jack and I hadn’t even had one decent date, and he’d invaded my mind and body and soul, but how was I supposed to help Lucy and Zac survive their decade-long marriage?

  I glanced at the clock on the dashboard. Time was slipping away, and I had a druggie to out. “How about we sit on it for a while? We’ll think of something.” I started the car again. “I have a lead on the dead woman, and I need your help.” Her acting chops, specifically, and after her little good cop–bad cop stint on my last case, I knew she was up for the job.

  Lucy blinked away her emotions. “Okay,” she said, straightening up and putting on her game face. “Let’s do some detective work.”