It was good to see Reyes’s friends over. His life was slowly becoming normal. Or, well, as normal as his life could become. I couldn’t say
returning
to normal, because as far as I could tell, he had never had anything near a normal life. I studied him from my vantage point and wondered what he would consider normal. Was it a family with 2.5 kids? He had been a prince. A general in hell. A severely abused child. An inmate. Could he adjust to what we humans considered normal?
I sat on the bed and patted the mattress beside me. Ashley climbed up and took the doll to study it.
“What if I said yes to Reyes? Would you be very mad?”
She shrugged one slender shoulder. “A little.”
“Because he is supposed to marry you?”
“Yes. He promised.”
“Well, what if I only kept him for a little while? And when you grow up and become as pretty as your mother, you can decide then if you still want someone as old and grumpy as Reyes Farrow.”
The corners of her mouth tipped up. “He’ll always be pretty, though.”
She knocked that one out of the park on her first swing. “Yes, he will always be pretty.”
“Boys can’t be pretty,” Stephen said, squirming out of his mother’s grip. She lowered him to the floor and he ran to see what the menfolk were up to.
“Can so!” I called out to him.
Bianca chuckled and sat beside her daughter. “Sometimes, God gives us something even better than what we want. You have to have faith that he will give you someone just as pretty as Uncle Reyes.”
She eyed her mother, bewildered. “There’s
not
anyone as pretty as Uncle Reyes.”
And another homerun for the little lady in the pink sundress. She was good. I might have some serious competition when she got older.
* * *
After a long and fruitless talk with Ashley, I took a quick shower, dressed in my best PI attire, then waited for my neighbor—my other neighbor—to make her morning appearance.
And waited.
And waited.
I made more coffee, said my good-byes to the Sanchez family, and waited some more.
“You’re worried about her,” Reyes said, accepting a cup of coffee from my side of the playground. He looked good on my side. He had dressed in a pair of jeans, white T-shirt, and heavy boots. His dark hair, still wet from his own shower, curled over his forehead and around an ear. I longed to tuck it behind said ear, but it was just an excuse to touch him, to feel him beneath my fingertips.
But Cookie was officially very late. It was almost eight o’clock. She was always over by six thirty. Seven at the latest, and Amber had to be to school in about five seconds.
“Go check on her,” he said, crossing back to his apartment. “I have an order coming in.”
“Wait a minute,” I said, my tone a little sharp.
He turned back to me, one brow hitched in question.
“That is my cup you’re taking, mister.”
His dimples appeared as he walked back to me. “I’ll give you a dollar for it.”
“It’s my very favorite cup.”
He stepped closer until his mouth was at my ear, until his warmth coiled around me and soaked my skin. “Two.”
“I’ve had it since I was a kid.”
After a quick glance at it, he asked, “Your cup predicted there would be a television show called
Downton Abbey
?”
“You don’t know that. Downton Abbey could be a real place in England.”
“It has the show’s logo.”
“It could be the house’s logo. Like its crest. The show used it for authenticity.”
“And a picture of the cast.”
“That could be anybody. It’s grainy.”
He set the cup down and leaned onto the counter, bracing one hand on either side of me. “Why don’t you tell me what you really want?”
“Your mouth on mine,” I said before I could stop myself.
And before I could retract my request, he bent his head and slanted his mouth across mine.
“I’m late!” Cookie barreled in, her clothes askew and her hair a tad more spiky than usual. She rushed over, took my cup of coffee, and downed it in three gulps. It was still pretty warm, so I couldn’t help but be impressed.
Then she noticed the fact that I was wearing a suit made of hunky man flesh.
“Oh, Reyes, hi.” She stumbled back.
“I’m late!” Amber said, following in her mother’s footsteps. Her hair hung in tangles down her back, her long limbs covered in wrinkled and mismatched clothes.
“Oh, my god,” I said to Cookie. “You’re wearing off on your daughter.”
Reyes straightened when Amber’s eyes alighted on him. She beamed brilliantly at him. “Hey, Aunt Charley,” she said, her focus fixed on Reyes. “Hey, Reyes.”
“That is Mr. Farrow to you,” Cookie said, realizing the depths of Amber’s attraction. “Go get your backpack. I’ll drop you off before I go to work.”
Amber lowered her head. “Okay.”
When she left, I asked, “She still hasn’t fessed up?”
“No.”
“She will, hon. I know Amber. It will eat her alive.” Cookie nodded, but before she could leave, I asked, “How was your date last night?”
A soft pink blossomed over her face.
“That good, huh?”
“It was—” She thought about her words carefully. “—nice.”
“I’m glad. You guys didn’t, like, make out or anything, did you? Because that’s just wrong. He’s my uncle, Cook. How am I going to be able to look at you?”
She turned and said over her shoulder, “I’m not discussing this with you right now.”
“Okay, but that means we’ll just have to go into more detail about it later. You’ll be embarrassed.”
Reyes chuckled. We stayed behind. Put off work as long as we could and talked. Just talked. We laughed about Amador’s poor sportsmanship when he’d lost miserably to Reyes that morning, about Ashley’s insistence that Reyes wait for her, about Cookie’s blush and Amber’s guileless adoration of him. It was nice. Everything about that morning was nice.
I knew it was too good to last. My forty-eight hours were up, and I still had no clue where Phillip’s girlfriend was. Not that I was about to hand her over to the bad guys, but I needed to talk to Agent Carson. To fill her in on my latest findings and my newest plan. Surely it would work. What could go wrong?
So, after a wonderful morning with my main squeeze, I realized time and tide wait for no man. Or woman. I called Special Agent Carson on my way over to my office. I couldn’t tell her what Phillip Brinkman told me just yet. I needed to talk to his girlfriend first, to get her side of things. If Carson pulled the plug on everything because of Emily’s testimony, the Mendozas would know that Brinkman was just trying to get out from under him. Everything would be lost.
It amazed me that he would rather go to prison than turn on them. That told me just what kind of people the Mendozas were, and that they were not to be trifled with.
Then again, I liked trifling. Trifling was my middle name. Charlotte Trifling Davdison. Let Papa Mendoza bring the fight to me. I was ready. And I had a fab supernatural entity who could sever his spine in the blink of an eye, should it come to that. So there.
“Carson,” she said when she picked up. I liked it. Clear. Concise. To the point.
I decided to try it myself. “Davidson.”
A loud sigh filtered to me. “Charley, you called me. You can’t just say Davidson.”
“What are you, the phone greeting police?”
“What did you get for me?”
“I didn’t get you anything,” I said, starting to panic. “Are we exchanging friendship bracelets already? I can go get one now.”
“What do you have?”
“I had chlamydia once. Thank God for antibiotics.”
“Did you talk to Brinkman? What did you get off him? Have you heard from his men? Have they threatened you again?”
She was so serious. “Yes, I talked to Brinkman, and no, they haven’t threatened me again. I need a little more time. And I need to talk to Brinkman’s girlfriend, Emily Michaels.”
“Charley, I told you, that is not possible.”
“Do you remember the last two—no, three—cases I closed for you? Where’s the trust?”
“I trust you implicitly. But the men who want Emily Michaels dead are not quite so trustworthy. And either way, I’m not giving you her location.”
“Then can you set up a meet?”
After a long, thoughtful moment, she said, “If it will help this case, I can do that. It will take a couple of days.”
“I only have a couple of hours. I need to see her now.”
She cupped a hand over her phone, and I could only imagine the expletives flying around her. “Give me thirty minutes. I’ll see if I can perform miracles.”
“I have complete faith in you,” I said, giddy with hope. Once I had Emily’s side of things, maybe I could talk some sense into her, since it didn’t work with her boyfriend. There was simply no reason for him to go to prison for a murder that never even happened. He might have to do some time for money laundering, but I’d leave that up to Carson.
* * *
I headed down to the restaurant to grab some breakfast when Cookie came in. She seemed devastated. We sat in a corner booth so we could talk, not that anyone was in. The place didn’t open until eleven, and it was barely eight thirty.
Since none of the servers were in yet, we were served by a very sexy cook whose dimples seemed to calm Cookie down a bit.
“She broke down on the way to school,” Cook said, her heart hurting. “That incident with Quentin really scared her.”
“It scared me, too,” I said, stirring my coffee.
“I guess I didn’t realize how serious it got. I was just so upset that she would skip school and leave campus like that.”
“I was a little surprised as well, but they really like each other. It has me a tad concerned.”
“Why?” Cookie asked, surprised. “Quentin is a lovely boy.”
“And he’s four years older than she is.”
“Three. Amber will be thirteen next week.” She shook her head. “It’s so hard to believe that. She’s just growing up so fast.”
“I’m a little surprised you aren’t more concerned.”
“I would be, normally. He is too old for her, but have you seen that girl?”
Amused, I said, “She’s a knockout, I know. Which is reason enough for my concern.”
“Yeah, but again, Quentin is wonderful, Charley. I’ve never seen Amber so smitten. Except when she sees Reyes Farrow.”
“She does like them older, doesn’t she? Speaking of Quentin, what about the girl in the cable car? Miranda. What did you find out about her?”
She looked into her glass of water and took a drink before answering. “I meant to tell you. We’ve just been so busy. I left the case file on your desk.”
My interest piqued. “And?”
“It looks like she had a very hard life, Charley. I didn’t get very far with the file, but I managed to get a copy of her autopsy, the investigation of her disappearance, and the court transcripts of her mother’s trial.”
“Where is she now? Miranda’s mother?”
“She’s in the women’s correctional facility outside Santa Fe.”
I nodded in thought. “Looks like I’ll be making a trip to Santa Fe very soon. Did they give you a cause of death?”
Cook took another drink. “They said most likely blunt force trauma to the head. She was there over a month before they found her body, so it was hard to get an exact cause.”
Since Cookie wanted to talk about Miranda’s case about as much as she wanted her fingernails pulled out with pliers, I veered back to the subject of Amber. “I’m glad that rascal of yours admitted the truth.”
Cookie relaxed the tight grip on her glass. “I am, too. She was more worried about my reaction to her lying than her skipping school and leaving campus with a boy.”
“Told you,” I said with a wink. “I knew it would eat her alive.”
“Yeah, I totally played it up like she’d broken my heart and I would never be the same again.”
“And she fell for it?”
“Hook, line, and sinker.”
19
Do you believe in love at first sight,
or should I walk by again?
—T-SHIRT
Having just received a delivery, Reyes came in from outside with a woman following in his wake. A very familiar-looking woman. One with a determined gait and fire in her eyes. The minute those eyes landed on me, I ducked under the table, my head landing in Cookie’s lap.
“Tell her I’m not here!”
Cookie coughed, then glanced around frantically. “What? Why? Who?”
“Mrs. Garza. Tell her I’m not here.”
“She already saw you,” she said through gritted teeth. “She’s coming this way.”
“Pretend like I passed out and call an ambulance.”
“I am not calling an ambulance to cover for you.”
“No, really, it’ll work.”
“Charley Davidson, they have better things to do with their time than—”
“I can see you from here, Ms. Davidson.”
From underneath the table, I could see Mrs. Garza, too. Though only her bottom half. She had a killer bag slung over her right shoulder, turquoise with a woman’s face painted
Día de Muertos
style, and if I wasn’t mistaken, she was wearing an amazing pair of Rocketbuster boots. One of which she was tapping impatiently.
That woman had the best clothes. Then again, I was probably paying for them, thanks to her son, aka my investigator, Angel. She’d recently figured out I was the one sending her money every month and insisted I tell her what was going on, why I was depositing five hundred dollars into her account every month. That was until Angel blackmailed me into a raise. Now it was a cool $750, but I figured he was worth it.
But Angel didn’t want her to know. He was so adamantly against it, I couldn’t help but comply. What he didn’t take into account was the fact that his mother was smart. She knew there was no uncle the minute Angel and I concocted the excuse. But what else could I have said? He just did not, under any circumstances, want her to know the truth.
He said it was because his death had devastated her and he didn’t want her to have to go through that again, but she seemed to handle the prospect of another explanation better than he did. Could there have been something more to Angel’s reluctance? I’d wondered that a lot since she came into my office that day. It had been only two weeks. She wouldn’t be put off for long. I could tell by the determined set of her jaw. She wanted answers. Answers I could give her only if I betrayed Angel.