Drop Dead Lola

by Melissa Bourbon

  Reilly started to speak, but I butted in before she had a chance to get a single word out. “I may have said something earlier, um, at the office—” I looked at Manny. “—that was not right.”

  Sadie threw out a leg, putting one hand on her cocked hip. “You don’t say. Dolores Cruz, speaking out of turn? Imagine that.”

  It wasn’t easy, but I ignored her snarky sarcasm. “I just…I hope it didn’t cause any…problems.”

  “Relax, Dolores,” Sadie said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but rest assured, nothing you say could ever have any bearing on my personal life.”

  I wasn’t sure I could take her at face value. I got under her skin, and now that I knew she and Manny had once shared a life together, things made a lot more sense. The way she acted toward me had to be based on jealousy. She thought, like Jack did, that Manny had a thing for me. From the way she acted, I’d bet my sexy underwear collection that she wanted to reunite with her ex. Seeing him standing behind her now, in her house, made it seem plausible.

  Reilly exhaled the breath she’d been holding. “Great!” she said. “Phew. That’s is good news. Nothing to worry about then.”

  I knocked her arm with the back of my hand. The girl needed to learn when to be quiet and cut her losses. “Yeah, okay, great. See you later, then.” To Reilly I said, “Let’s go.”

  She nodded her head, a little more emphatically than she needed to. I could almost hear her brain rattling around inside her skull. I took her hand and pulled her from the stoop, but not before she turned back. “So amazing to see you two together. And with Quetzal. Wow. A family should be together. That’s great. Just great—”

  “Reilly!” I yanked on her hand, jerking her forward again.

  She stumbled but caught herself.

  “Bye Reilly!” Quetzal’s sweet voice called from the house. “Bye other lady!”

  We both turned this time and waved. “Bye, baby,” Reilly said. “Take care of your mommy and daddy.”

  Dios mio. Reilly was losing it. I sped up, dragging her with me and putting her into the passenger seat of my car.

  “Manny didn’t say a word, did you notice?” I asked her once we were on the way back to the office. “Did he hear me, or did he not hear me?”

  “Sadie said she didn’t know what you were talking about, so I’d say Manny didn’t hear you.”

  “Or he just didn’t bring it up to her yet,” I said, playing devil’s advocate. “He wasn’t there very long before we showed up. Maybe he didn’t have a chance—”

  Reilly shook her head. “I don’t think so. I’ve never seen Manny hold back when he’s pissed at something. Have you?”

  Manny Camacho was a man of few words, but Reilly was right. When he was worked up over something, he didn’t usually hold back. If he thought Sadie was going for full custody of Quetzal, he would have led with that. “Don’t you think Sadie still cares about him?” If anyone would have an opinion on that, it would be Reilly.

  “Totally.”

  “Do you think she wants to get back together?”

  “Absolutely,” she said without a moment’s hesitation.

  “What about Manny? Do you think he does?”

  “That I’m not sure about. I know he loves Quetzali. That’s what he calls her. Quetzali. Isn’t that adorable? I think he wanted—or maybe wants—to be a regular family for her sake. But does he want Sadie still? I don’t think I’d place a bet on it.”

  I didn’t think I would, either.

  We drove the rest of the way in silence, each of us pondering a scenario where Manny and Sadie reunited. What would that mean for the PI firm? Would a happy Sadie be better than the Sadie we had now? What about Manny? Could he give up the Tomb Raider women he had a history of dating? Maybe the fact that he couldn’t—or didn’t want to—had led to the end of their marriage in the first place.

  In the end, there was no way to know the truth. It was only after we were back at the office that Reilly and I looked at each other and realized that Sadie might still be planning to take Manny to court to get full custody. Our trip to Sadie’s house hadn’t actually helped Manny with that situation.

  “Do we tell him?” Reilly asked, voicing the very question I’d been mulling over.

  “I don’t know. What if we’re wrong? I don’t want to be the one to cause a bigger problem for him—”

  “Him being me?”

  Reilly and I gasped in unison and spun around to face Manny. Damn. I hadn’t heard the swoosh of the door opening and closing, or the zip, zip, zip of the corner-mounted camera. The man always looked serious…and brooding, but now those qualities seemed especially heightened. His dark eyes were practically black. His swarthy complexion coupled with his dark stubble made him look dangerous. I wanted to shrink into a corner, but instead I held my head high, chin up, and met his eyes. My words, however, came out messy. “Him what who?” I said, cringing as I heard how tangled the sentence—if you could call it that—sounded.

  Manny’s eyes narrowed and he spoke with a measured tone. “What bigger problem are you going to cause for me?”

  “Nothing, boss,” Reilly said. “Not a thing. No problems caused for you. No problems caused by us. We’re just going about our business. Doing our own thing. We are good, jefe. We. Are. Good.”

  The way he folded his arms over his chest and glared at each of us in turn proved that he didn’t actually believe we were good. “¿De veras?”

  Yeah, no, not really, I thought, but I kept my mouth shut.

  “Tell me then,” he said, “what was that about, showing up at Sadie’s house?”

  Reilly’s eyes went wide and she was speechless, which was a rare occurrence.

  I gaped, but mustered, “It was a misunderstanding.”

  He rotated his hand, prompting me to go on.

  “Reilly mentioned something that I repeated and I thought maybe you heard, but then we both realized that we weren’t sure if what we’d heard in the first place was right, but you’d already left and seemed pretty pissed, so we thought maybe you’d heard me so we decided to go after you.” I gasped for breath before finishing. “And stop you from accusing Sadie of something that we weren’t sure was the truth.”

  “And what would that be?” he asked, but I had the feeling he knew exactly what I was talking about.

  Reilly was rattled and gullible. She wasn’t reading Manny like I was. “I think Sadie…I mean I took a message from a…” She gulped, bugged her eyes, then blurted, “I think Sadie might be trying to get full custody of Quetzal!”

  Manny didn’t move. Didn’t say a word. But his eyes glinted, revealing…something.

  “Jefe, say something, please,” Reilly said. Her breath came quickly, and I thought she might be on the verge of hyperventilating.

  “No te preocupes, Reilly,” he said.

  She blinked. “No te pre-a-what?”

  I couldn’t help but roll my eyes. Telling Reilly not to worry was like telling a fish not to swim. The worry gene was in her DNA, and now that she’d spilled the beans to him—whether or not it proved to be true—she was going to lose sleep over it.

  “Calmate, Reilly. Just calm down. Sadie is not trying to take Quetzali. Everything is fine.”

  “Am I fired?” she asked in a panic.

  Manny closed his eyes for a beat. He drew in a deep breath as if he were trying to gather some strength. Dealing with a neurotic Reilly was not within his wheelhouse. “No. I depend on you. You are not fired.”

  She exhaled and surged forward, wrapping her arms around him in a bear hug. He stiffened under her embrace, but she didn’t let up. “Oh my God, thank you, jefe. Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

  I waffled between utter horror and downright hysteria. ¡Ay caramba! Reilly was hugging Manny Camacho. Somehow he managed to pry himself loose, nodded quickly and just o
nce, and vanished into his office. Reilly sank onto her chair and folded her upper body down, putting her head between her legs. I crouched down next to her and rubbed her back. “Are you okay?” I asked.

  Her head moved in what I thought was a nod. “I will be,” she said, her voice muffled.

  The front door whooshed and Neil lumbered in. He wore his typical blue jeans, a t-shirt that strained on his bulky frame, and his hair was cut short. He looked like an aging high school football star. If he ever had played sports, he was well beyond that now. The reality was that he was a tech god. He spent most of his time in what the associates called The Lair. But instead of going straight to his cave, he stopped short when he saw us. Concern instantly colored his face and he charged forward, practically knocking me out of the way. “What’s wrong, babe?” he demanded.

  “I’m okay, Teddy Bear,” Reilly said, lifting her head and giving him a wan smile.

  “Are you sick?”

  “No. I’m fine, really. I just thought I was going to…going to lose my job,” she said, a catch in her voice.

  Neil transformed before my eyes, going from Bruce Banner to the Hulk. He turned his glare to Manny’s office. “What the hell—” he started, but Reilly put her hand on his arm, channeling Black Widow. Neil calmed down under her touch. “I made a mistake—”

  “We made a mistake,” I corrected.

  Neil scowled, but didn’t ask any more questions. He was a man of few words, but there was no doubt that he cared about Reilly. He helped her up, put his arm around her, and guided her into The Lair, using his foot to knock the door closed behind him.

  Reilly was in good hands.

  Chapter 17

  I’d spent the rest of the afternoon going over the whiteboard, racking my brain. I had a mishmash of information, none of which wove together into a motive for murder. I’d spent time searching each of the baseball players, with extra attention on Aaron Radley, but nothing suspect popped up. What I really needed to do was pay a visit to the guy, but what I needed more than that was sustenance. I was tempted to get Chinese, but in the end, I bypassed Szechwan House in favor of la cocina de mi mama. I hadn’t seen her since the so-called intervention she’d staged, and we needed to clear the air—not always easy to do with Magdalena Falcón Cruz.

  The scent of frying tortillas hit me the second I opened the back door. I padded to the kitchen, stopping when Salsa, with her wagging nub of a tail, hopped up to greet me. I bent down to scratch her ears. “What are you doing here?”

  Mami walked into the kitchen, a dish towel in her hands. “She was barking too much so I let her out.”

  I read between the lines. If Salsa needed Mami to rescue her while I was gone, how could I possibly move away from Forty-second Street? It was a good point, but it didn’t change the fact that I needed to be on my own and away from the over-bearing love of my family. “Gracias, Mami,” I said. “What are you cooking?”

  “Tacos.”

  Short and terse, with her lips pursed for extra measure. Dios mio, she was going to make me work for it. “Smells good.”

  “Eat it while you can,” she said, filling one of the fried tortilla shells with her special ground beef, carrot, and potato filling. What she meant, I knew, was that if I moved out, I wouldn’t have access to her cooking.

  The back door swung open and Antonio and Beto sauntered into the kitchen. Mami thrust the filled taco at me and threw up her hands, hurrying toward her sons. “Look at you, my boys. ¿Tenéin hambre, chicos?”

  Tonio grinned and hit Beto’s arm with the back of his hand. “What did I tell you, man? There’s always food at Mom’s.”

  Beto laughed. “Nothing’s changed.”

  He was right. Nothing had changed. When it came to her children, Antonio and Roberto could do no wrong. There would always be food for them. For me, my days of waltzing in were numbered if I was to believe my mother. Luckily for me, I knew that her feeling that I’d betrayed her would pass and all would be right in Magdalena’s world after the dust settled.

  My grandparents and father were at the restaurant, so the four of us made our tacos and sat at Mami’s kitchen table. “What are my sons doing tonight?” Mami asked Tonio and Beto.

  “Getting into trouble,” Tonio said, laughing.

  Our mother wasn’t completely blind to their antics, bless her heart. She wagged her finger at them, but focused on Antonio. “Tu es travieso,” she said to him. “Do not get your brother in trouble.”

  Antonio pressed his palm to his chest and feigned innocence. “Me? ¿Un travieso? No, no, Mami. I am an angel.” He leaned over and kissed her cheek. “Your angel.”

  She giggled and fluttered her hand. Pink tinged her cheeks. “Oh, you. Stop.”

  “It’s true, Mami.”

  “I’ll keep him in line,” Beto said. With his buzzed military haircut, thick arms, and veins running down his neck, he looked like he could keep anyone in line. But I knew that Antonio, with his goateed grin and rascally nature, would give Beto a run for his money.

  I told them about my case while we finished eating. “You’ll get to the truth, sis,” Beto said.

  Antonio winked at me. “She always does.”

  They rinsed their dishes and popped them into the dishwasher before they each bent to give me a kiss on the cheek, and did the same to our mother. Then, like two whirlwinds, they were out the door and onto whatever adventure they had planned for the night. I helped Mami clean up the rest of the kitchen, then sat back at the table and flipped through a magazine. I had thought about broaching the subject of moving out, but decided against it. I needed to give her time.

  She sat opposite me and propped her elbows on the table, lacing her hands together. She stared at me until I looked up. “M’ija, we need to talk about this.”

  Apparently she wanted to have the conversation now.

  “You want to move out,” she said matter-of-factly.

  I couldn’t read her. Was she upset, or had she accepted it as inevitable? “It’s time, Mami.”

  She looked at Salsa, curled up on the floor and sound asleep. “I know, pero I will miss you.”

  My heart skipped a beat and climbed up to my throat. I stretched my arm across the table and took her hand. “I won’t be going far, Mami.”

  “Graciela is married. Tonito is gone. Now you. Who will I take care of?”

  Roberto had been staying in their spare room since he’d come back from his last tour. “Beto can stay upstairs while he gets resettled,” I suggested.

  Her shoulders straightened and she sat up a little straighter. “Si. Buen idea. That might be good for him.”

  “He can take Tonio’s room, even while I’m still there,” I said. I didn’t have a place to move to yet, and I wasn’t in a hurry. It was time to move, but it would be bittersweet.

  She nodded her approval. “Yes, yes, that is a good idea.”

  “Te quiero, Mami.”

  “Ah, Dolores. Te quiero también. You are a special girl. I am…¿cómo lo dices?…proud…”

  I nodded.

  “Yes, I am proud of you, m’ija.”

  My mother wasn’t one to give praise easily, so her doling it now sent my pulse skittering. I gave her hand a squeeze. “Gracias, Mami.”

  She dipped her head in a little nod, then pulled her hand free and stood. “I will make you egg burritos for your breakfast tomorrow, si?”

  She showed her love through food. Who was I to refuse? “Sounds great.”

  She set to work cutting up a potato and frying the cubed pieces. In another pan, she cooked some chorizo. I continued flipping through the People en Español magazine, stopping to read an article on Eva Mendez, then one of two sisters reunited thanks to a home DNA ancestry test. In a sidebar, there were anecdotes about unexpected surprises other families received thanks to the tests. One woman took the test only to find out
she was the product of a sperm bank donation—and had thirty other half siblings in the world; a man took it and learned that the person he’d thought was his biological father was not. Sometimes the stories were heartwarming, but just as often, it seemed they were heartbreaking.

  I flipped the pages, reading about a girl who’d been kidnapped and had managed to escape three years later. Where were the celebrities? Where was Ricky Martin? Juanes? Dios mio. I needed more Eva Mendez and Ryan Gosling. I tossed the magazine aside just as Mami put three foil-wrapped burritos on the table in front of me. “Buena suerte mañana,” she said. “Solve your case and help that poor mother.”

  I took the burritos, gave her a hug, and said, “I will.”

  I bolted upright in bed, groggy yet agitated. What had woken me up? I scanned my room. Salsa lay in her bed, breathing in a steady rhythm. The light from the streetlamp outside crept through the slats of the mini blinds on the windows. Everything was quiet. Peaceful. Except I didn’t feel peaceful. Something niggled at the back of my mind, I just couldn’t pull it forward.

  My bedside clock projected the time onto the ceiling in red. 4:05. I fell back, turned onto my side, and scrunched the pillow under my head. Two more hours of sleep. Or maybe three. That wasn’t too much to ask, but no matter how hard I tried, it wasn’t happening. I was exhausted, but I was wide awake. Incongruous, I thought. Mr. Perry, my high school English teacher would be so proud of my SAT vocabulary word.

  Like a series of flashcards, other words cycled through my mind. Sanguine. Retaliate. Coerce. I imagined sheep leaping across a screen, the words emblazoned on the animals’ wooly fur. It didn’t work. I tossed and turned and at five thirty, I was still frustratingly awake. A hot shower washed away any sleepiness that had hung on. I dressed in a new pair of skinny jeans, a peasant top, and black flats and headed out.

  I debated my choices: pay a visit to Aaron Radley or Joe Quaffman? If I weighed them, Quaffman seemed more important. The lawsuit and the electrician’s anger at Philip Haskell over stealing clients was a solid motive. I dialed the business number, determined this time not to be railroaded into making an appointment by the woman I’d spoken to the last time I’d called. Luck was on my side. A man answered.