Sadie snapped her mouth shut. I could almost see her blood simmering.
“Questions, Dolores?” Manny asked.
I shook my head. “No. I’m clear.”
“Explícamelo.”
I stifled the thread of anger that wound through me. I was a professional. I’d been working my ass off, first as an assistant under his license while I earned the mandatory PI hours for the state of California, and for the last two years as a full-fledged associate. He always questioned everything—with everyone—but at this moment, it irked me. I didn’t want to explain myself in front of Sadie. “I’m going to investigate the disappearance of Emily Diggs,” I said, sounding a bit too much like a regurgitated line from my worn PI manual.
Sadie leaned back and folded her arms, looking smug. “Right, but what’s your first move going to be, Veronica Mars?”
Oooh, she was ice-cold today. My left eye started to twitch. I sat up straight in my chair and, making my voice strong and clear, looked straight at Manny. “I believe I’ll start with the last known address, talk to some people she knows, and go from there.” I wasn’t about to give away all my secrets. Anyway, a good part of investigation was intuitive, and I had to see where the clues led.
Sadie frowned. I could tell she wanted to keep me on the hot seat, but Manny said, “Fine. Report directly to me—”
Of course. Who else would I report to? But I looked at him and notched up the corner of my mouth. “Por supuesto, Manny,” I said, forcing my face to stay impassive when I heard Sadie hiss. She hated when Manny and I spoke Spanish to each other almost as much as I hated her juvenile nicknames for me. But it made the world go round.
“I’ll keep you up to date on the police investigation.” He gathered up his papers and stood. “That’s all.”
We were dismissed. The minute hand on the wall clock clicked up a notch. Ten forty-five. I scooted my chair back and headed out to search for Emily Diggs.
The heat outside pressed against me like a wall of fire. Shimmering panes of glass seemed to stretch across the asphalt, and the air rippled and distorted before my eyes. Flowers in the yard wilted, my hair drooped even more, and sweat dripped from my temples. Another glorious summer day in Sacramento.
I quickly cocooned myself in my car and turned up the Juanes song, “La Paga,” until it roared out of my speakers. Dancing. It was at the top of my wish list—with or without a rico suave guy to partner with. It was a short drive to downtown, and I spotted Emily’s house right away, nestled under a canopy of leafy branches. Even lock-your-car areas of Sac, like this one, had spectacular trees. I found one, parked under it, and turned off my car. Juanes would have to wait.
Emily Diggs’s residence blended in with all the others on the block—a little run-down with ancient geraniums sprawled in the border. I picked my way up to the old wooden door and knocked. A moment later, a small arched cutout in the door creaked open and two lifeless eyes stared at me.
“Hi.” I held my business card up to the cutout. “My name’s Dolores Cruz. I’m investigating the disappearance of Emily Diggs. Do you have a few minutes?”
But the muddy eyes just peered at me, obviously not impressed by my bright professionalism.
I regrouped, smiled, and tried again. “I’m a private investigator. Is there someone here I could talk to about Emily?”
After a few more seconds, the cutout in the door slammed shut. I stood on the stoop, slack-jawed, threw my arms out in disbelief, and stared at a lone snail clinging to the wall. “Great,” I said to it. I’d been thwarted already. “So what now?”
The snail didn’t move.
“Kick the door open?” I suggested, but then shook my head. I’d worn strappy sandals, and I was pretty sure Camacho’s wouldn’t cover the damage. “No can do.”
Still, the snail didn’t budge.
“I know,” I admitted, “Kung fu isn’t the answer to everything.”
The door squeaked open, and my hope returned. A twenty-something black woman stood there looking more refreshed than a person had a right to in this heat. “Can I help you?”
She was not the same person who’d peered at me a minute ago. Their skin had a similar brown tone, but this woman’s eyes were bronze, and they sparkled like a tiger’s.
Putting my game face back on, I said, “I’m investigating the disappearance of Emily Diggs.” I stuck my hand out to her. “My name’s Dolores.”
The young woman recoiled. Her eyes darted to my hand then back to my face. I wavered, almost pulling it back. Was offering a handshake totally uncool? Had I committed a Generation X (or was it Y?) faux pas? Dios mío, at twenty-eight, was it possible that I was no longer hip?
I swallowed and persevered, my hand dangling like a dead fish for what felt like an hour. Finally, she took it in a limp grip, gave it a quick shake, and pulled her arm back to the safety of her own space.
“And you are?” I prompted with a lilt. Ick. I sounded perky, like I was selling magazine subscriptions for the cheerleading squad. Rein it in, Lola, I told myself.
“Mary Bonatee,” she said with a touch of angst-ridden teenager. What the hell’s it to you? her tone screamed.
A name to go with the face. It was progress. “Mary, nice to meet you. Do you mind if we step inside? I’m melting out here.”
It was no lie. I was on the verge of looking like the Wicked Witch after Dorothy threw water on her. My blouse stuck to my body, my palms were sweaty, and even my sandaled feet were sticky.
I edged forward, hoping to ease into the house, but Mary pulled the door close to her side, blocking my entrance. “I don’t know—”
Once again I contemplated kicking the door in, but I wouldn’t get very much information if Mary were sprawled out on the floor. I smacked my tongue against the roof of my mouth searching for any sign of moisture. Nada. Dry as the desert. I tried another tactic. “I understand Emily has children. They must be terrified.”
A flicker of emotion passed over Mary’s face, but it was gone so fast that I couldn’t be sure it had been there at all. Suddenly, however, she opened the door and let me pass. Relief washed over me the second I hit cool air inside.
I barely resisted the impulse to rush to the nearest sink and start guzzling from the faucet.
“How’s that working for you?” Dr. Phil asked from behind curved glass. I didn’t see anyone watching the TV, but I felt a lurking presence. I cranked my head around and searched. Nadie. No one. Zip.
Mary led me to the kitchen. She was skeletal, but I envied the crispness of her appearance. She filled a glass of water from the tap and handed it to me.
“Thanks,” I murmured, my sandpaper-tongue thick. I gulped it down, finally able to shake the wooziness out of my brain and focus on Mary. She stood with her bony arms crossed in front of her and leaned against the kitchen counter. Classic defiance. I went on alert. What did she have to hide?
“Can you tell me anything about Emily? Has she disappeared before?”
“The police were already here.” She frowned. “Why don’t you talk to them?”
“I don’t work for the police. I was hired by Emily’s brother.”
Mary stared out the window and blinked heavily. “Just like I told them,” she said. “I don’t know anything. She just didn’t come home one day.”
“Was that unusual for her?”
Mary shrugged her shoulders. “Yes.” She shifted her chin, kind of rolling it, as if she were loosening a tight collar around her neck. Guilty behavior. Maybe she was involved in Emily’s disappearance.
“How long have you known Emily?”
She looked off to the side, as if she was counting back days and hours. “She’s lived here a little more than a month and a half,” she said after a few seconds. “She moved in right around the Fourth of July.”
Not exactly enough time to evaluate patterns of behavior, but it corroborated our client’s story. Had something changed in Emily’s life that had made her move in here? “Do you have a prior a
ddress for her?”
She shrugged again.
I kept trying. “Employment history? Anything that could help?”
She hesitated, and then nodded. “She filled out a rental application.” She didn’t budge to find it for me.
I gave myself a mental pep talk. Slow and steady won the race. “Does she have any friends? Relatives?” I asked.
“She’s always kind of kept to herself.” Mary’s expression softened. “Never brought people around, even when I pla—” She stopped abruptly, swallowed, and continued. “Even when I told her she could.”
A red flag shot up in my mind. Mary had been about to say something else. The question was what?
“Have you seen Sean?” she asked.
The youngest son. “Not yet.”
The color of her eyes seemed to dull. She leaned forward, looking anxious. “But you know where he is?”
“He’s with his uncle.” And probably pretty freaked, poor kid.
“She was never mother of the year, but how could Emily leave Sean?” Mary’s back straightened, her lips pursing. I could sense her gearing up for a rant. “Why do parents screw with their children—that’s what I want to know. If you choose to have kids, you should think about them instead of yourself, right? They get divorced, they promise they’ll spend time with you, but they don’t—” Her eyes bugged. “—and they screw around with your friend’s—”
So one of Mary’s parents—or maybe both—had done a pretty good number on her when she was younger.
My folks, on the other hand, had done zip to damage me—unless you counted the whole relationship-with-Sergio debacle. And their total lack of support about my career choice. And the guilt. God, the guilt. But otherwise…
Okay, I gave two points to Mary. Parents could definitely make things difficult. “I’m sorry,” I said, pushing my own familial eccentricities aside, “but could we get back to Emily?”
She blinked and snapped back to reality, her eyes returning to normal size. “Sorry. I just don’t get it.”
“So you really think she could have just up and left Sean?”
“Well, she’s not here.”
She crossed the room and sank into a chair at the table. Her short black hair had a hint of wave and was parted at the side and slicked across her head. She had one of those faces with perfect cheekbones and flawless skin. Short hair was attractive on her. On me I was pretty sure it would look like a helmet. “Could she be running from someone?” I suggested.
She smiled. Sort of. “Who would she run from? It’s not like this is a James Bond movie.”
No kidding. “So you think she walked out on motherhood,” I repeated, going back to Mary’s original idea.
Mary ran a hand under her eyes, sweeping away a tear that slipped down. “I’ll say it again,” she snipped. “Sean’s alone. She did walk out on him.”
“Why are you so sure her disappearance was by choice?” Something inside me screamed foul play. And, no, I hadn’t been watching too much CSI. My conviction wasn’t based on anything, but I wasn’t ready to condemn Emily without cause. Call it women’s intuition, but she looked nice in her photograph.
Mary cocked her head and looked at me. “Maybe she was just tired of being a mother.”
“Why would you think that?”
“It happens, right? Sean wasn’t planned.”
“Did she tell you that?”
Mary shook her head, her perfect hair still in place. “Not in so many words, but I picked up on it.”
Apparently I’d been wrong. A month and a half had been plenty of time for Mary to have discerned quite a lot about Emily Diggs and her deep emotional baggage. “Any idea who the father is?”
Her lips were tight, and she shook her head. “No.”
This interview was beginning to feel like slow torture, worse than slathering masa on a thousand drenched corn husks for tamales. “Even if Sean was unplanned, it’s been six years. Why leave now?”
Mary stared at me, unblinking. “Why not? Some people bolt when things get tough.”
Rule number one in the PI handbook is to be a good listener—well, after don’t get emotionally involved and protect yourself at all costs, but those were throwaways. Mary had her own personal baggage. “What was tough for Emily?”
She continued as if she were in a trance. “You get wrapped up in your own life and forget about how your decisions affect the people around you. Too bad you can’t choose your parents,” she muttered. “Or trade. My roommate, Joanie, would have taken my dad instead of hers in a second.”
Again with the parents. “But what was tough for Emily?”
“Being a mother, I guess.”
I didn’t want to pour salt on whatever festering wound Mary had involving her parents, so I maneuvered the conversation in a different direction. “Did you see or talk to Emily the day she disappeared?”
“No.”
A change in the environment registered in the back of my mind. I turned and looked down the hallway. Something was different. The house was still. Dr. Phil’s voice was gone.
After popping out of my chair, I strode to the hall. “Had Emily been upset?” I asked over my shoulder, peering toward the front door.
“She was different than she used—”
I lost the rest of her sentence, focusing instead on the mysterious woman with the dead eyes. Where was she? I walked down the hallway, and not two seconds later, she burst from behind the wall as I turned into the front room.
“Beatrice!” Mary shouted from behind me.
Beatrice. Score. I had another name.
An erratic tremor took hold of Beatrice’s head. “You ain’t found Emily.”
I stared at her. Give a girl a chance. I just started looking for her like twenty minutes ago. “Not yet,” I said.
Beatrice tugged her hat down over her forehead, shadowing her face. She turned and faced the wall, breathing deeply. Self-imposed time-out?
“Beatrice, why don’t you go watch your show?” Mary said, her tone placating.
Beatrice slowly turned back to us. Her eyes were crossed and her lips stuck out. She considered Mary. “No. I need to help this girl.” She looked at me, and I started. A light had come on behind her eyes. “I have something.”
I wondered if Beatrice’s elevator made it to the top floor, but I asked the obvious question anyway. “What kind of something?”
She folded her arms and straightened her shoulders. “Emily’s journal.”
Mary blinked slowly and put her hands on her hips. “Aunt Beatrice,” she scolded. “You do not.”
“Aunt?” I looked from one woman to the other, noticing a vague resemblance for the first time.
Mary nodded. “She’s my mom’s sister.”
Ah, that explained why Mary would tolerate a potentially crazy woman in the house.
Aunt Bea just nodded. “I do have it.”
“Why would Emily give you her journal?” I asked.
“She asked me to hold it for her one day. Important stuff in it, she said. So I kept it, but then she didn’t come back.”
Mary held her hand out. “Give it to me, Bea.”
“Uh-uh.” She sounded like a rebellious child.
Mary’s face grew stern. “Emily’s missing. It should go to the police.”
“I said uh-uh.” Bea was indignant.
I’d already made up my mind. There was no way I was leaving this house without that journal. “Would it be all right if I take a look at it?” I asked. “It might help me find her.”
She hesitated, shooting an uncertain glance at Mary. Finally, her eyes cleared. She swung her head and looked pointedly at me. “You think so?”
It was my turn to nod. “You never know what important stuff she may have written.”
“Well,” she said, still hemming and hawing, “I do want you to find her.”
I held my breath as she walked to the couch and pulled a spiral notebook from under a cushion. The edges were worn, and the cov
er was pulling away from the coil. It wasn’t much of a journal, but it had a worn look that told me Emily used it well.
Bea came back toward us and held the journal out. I wrapped my fingers around it, but she didn’t let go. My smile strained. She’d better hand it over or I’d bust a move on her. “She’d want me to see it,” I said sweetly.
Her hands trembled and she looked nervous, but she finally released it.
“Thank you, Bea,” I said. And I meant it. Emily had enlisted one of her roommates to watch over the journal. Surely there would be something useful in it.
Bea gave me a wild look, and then she flicked her eyes at Mary. “She should talk to George,” she said hoarsely. Then she repeated to me, “Talk to George.”
“Aunt Beatrice!”
But Bea didn’t even blink at the indignant tone of Mary’s voice. “She should. You know she should.”
“Who’s George?” I asked, but just as quickly as it had gone on, the light in Bea’s eyes suddenly snuffed out. She shuffled over to the TV, pressed a button, and Dr. Phil’s voice filled the room again.
I turned to Mary. “Who’s George?”
“He’s the property manager,” Mary said. “And my father.”
Muy interesante. “Why does Bea think I should talk to him?”
“He has Emily’s application. Really, you should ignore my aunt. She means well, but she doesn’t always make sense.”
Ignore Bea? Not a chance. She’d given me more information in two minutes than Mary had given me in nearly fifteen. Bea might have a loose grip on reality, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t perceptive. I studied Mary. “Does your father know Emily’s missing?”
She nodded. “He’s been out of town, but I e-mailed him.”
Sounded like a close father–daughter relationship. “Would you give me his number?”
She hesitated and then disappeared into the kitchen, returning a minute later with a business card. I gave it a quick once-over and tucked it into my purse. Paying a visit to Mr. George Bonatee, attorney-at-law, was at the top of my to-do list. I was really rocking now. A journal and a business card. Score.
Melissa Bourbon Ramirez - Lola Cruz 01 - Living the Vida Lola Page 2
