The Cartel Strikes Back: The Ted Higuera Series, Book 5

by Pendelton Wallace

Both of his sons stopped playing around and gave him their attention.

  “Nothing is more important than family. You know that, sí?”

  After a brief silence, Tony said, “Yes, Papa.”

  “I am not going to live forever. I might even retire someday. I need to know that you two will take care of the family, of the business, when I am gone.”

  Neither of his sons commented.

  El Pozolero turned in his seat and faced his youngest son. “Rojillo, I worry about you. You are too cold; you do not have a heart. You think only of yourself. You don’t realize that you only succeed by surrounding yourself with successful people.”

  Tony flashed a smile at his brother.

  “And you, Antonio, you are too limited. You think small thoughts. You only worry about what is in front of you now. You don’t see the future. You need to open your mind and see things as they can be.”

  Tony’s grin faded.

  “I like your dedication to family,” El Pozolero said. “Your lovely wife, my grandchildren.”

  He looked back at Rojillo again. “When I am gone, you must take care of your mother, your sister. Remember, nothing is as important as family.”

  Both sons nodded.

  “Rojillo, mi Corazon, when are you going to settle down? Find a nice girl, give me more grandchildren? You know, a man is measured by his children. Remember that. All that I have, all that I have accomplished, it means nothing without you and your sister.”

  El Pozolero stopped to catch a couple of deep breaths. He didn’t want to show weakness in front of these two. They were like young lions, eager to push the old leader aside.

  “I worry about you two. You need to lead from your heart. There are many things we have to do in this business that we would rather not do. That’s business. But you need to remember the people. The ones that make this all possible for you.”

  Tony looked a little uncomfortable; Rojillo sat and stared at his father like a stone.

  “I remember my roots. I know where I came from, where I have been. You haven’t been there. You don’t know what it is like to fight for your life as a child.

  “I am telling you now, take this lesson from me. I build schools, hospitals, water systems for the povrecitos, the poor ones, because I need them. They keep my secrets, they tell me what is going on. They protect me when the DEA comes looking. If you don’t take care of them, you will surely fall to your enemies. Do you understand?”

  “Sí, Papa,” the two men chorused.

  ****

  Ted looked at the smart phone in his hand.

  I have an emergency at home. I have to go right away. I’ll call you when I get there.

  He tried calling Maria, but she didn’t pick up. No different than the last five times he called.

  “Maria, this is Ted. Please call me ASAP.” He hit the “end” button and slipped his phone back in his pocket.

  Where is she? Why doesn’t she answer?

  Ted paced back and forth in his office. It was hard to consider it his office. It had once belonged to Jonathon Jefferson, Catrina’s first partner. When Jeff was killed in Mexico extracting a drug trafficker, Catrina asked Ted to come back to the firm as her partner.

  His office hadn’t been damaged by the explosion or the fire. It still had the elegant cherry wood furniture Jeff bought. The American flag with a gold eagle on the flag pole still stood in the corner. Ted changed practically nothing.

  He couldn’t stand it. He had to talk to someone. Chris, his usual confidant, was in court today, so Ted walked to the next office over, Catrina’s.

  “Got a minute?” Ted asked as he knocked on the door frame.

  “Sure, come on in.” Catrina, dressed in her usual work outfit of black jeans, black sweater and black boots, sat behind her desk with the elegance of a queen.

  Ted noticed the bouquet of Mexican orchids encased in a hand-thrown vase on her desk.

  “Flowers, huh? Is Tom trying to get back with you?”

  Catrina looked at the flowers and smiled. “No, they’re from someone else.”

  “A new man in Catrina Flaherty’s life? I’ll alert the press. Who is he?” Ted reached for the card.

  Catrina slapped his hand away. “I don’t think I’ll tell yet.” Catrina looked at the inscription on the card. She leaned back in her leather swivel chair and smiled at Ted.

  “Let’s see if this is going to turn into anything before I send out a press release.”

  “Hmm. . . but flowers. Did he get into your pants?”

  Catrina threw a paper clip holder at Ted. “Eduardo Higuera. Didn’t your mother teach you any manners? You don’t ask a lady that kind of question.”

  A broad grin spread across Ted’s face. “Was he any good?”

  Catrina ignored his question and asked, “How’s the new server room coming?”

  Ted slid into the new chair opposite the maple desk. What a change from her former decorating style. Before the fire, Catrina furnished the office, including her own, with garage sale furniture. Now it looked like the epitome of professionalism. He switched over to professional mode.

  “Not bad. They’ve got all the racks in and the wiring done. I’ll install the blade servers tomorrow.”

  “So, what’s up?” Catrina moved the conversation along.

  “I got a text from Maria.”

  “Uh-oh. Trouble on the home front?”

  “She said she had a family emergency; that she had to go home. She said she’d call me when she got there, but it’s been three days and I haven’t heard from her. She won’t return my calls.”

  Catrina put down the papers she’d been reading and took off her glasses. “Did she say why she had to go home?”

  Ted fiddled with the ink pen in his hands. “No. She just said she had an emergency. I don’t know what’s going on.”

  “That doesn’t sound good.”

  “What’s driving me crazy is that she won’t return my calls. I can understand that she had to go home. But why didn’t she call me first? Maybe I could have helped her with the crisis.”

  “She obviously doesn’t want to share her family’s problems. What do you know about them?”

  Ted looked at his hands. “Not much, really. Her dad is some kind of businessman. I think he imports produce into America. I know they have money and they live on this big ranch in southern Baja.”

  “Okay, could it be business problems?”

  “I don’t have any idea. I thought we were close. I just asked her to marry me . . .”

  “You dog you!” Catrina leapt up from her chair. “When were you going to tell me?”

  “That’s just it. She didn’t give me an answer. Then she disappears. I feel like she’s in trouble. I don’t know if I should wait to hear from her or go after her.”

  “Higuera, you’ve got to go. From a woman’s point of view, even if she doesn’t need you, she’ll think it’s the most romantic thing ev-VER.”

  ****

  Ted got a cup of coffee from the break room and headed back to his office. Like him, Catrina was a Seattle coffee snob and he could always count on good coffee in her shop.

  Okay, Teddy, you’re supposed to be some hot-shot detective now. As Catrina always says, “let’s detect.”

  He returned to his office and pulled the keyboard tray out from under his desktop.

  Maria is missing. Where do I start?

  He began with the airlines. He needed to hack into their reservation system so often, that he wrote a script to get him in. Instead of going to each screen and filling in boxes, Ted’s code flew through them at the speed of light and brought him right to the search screen.

  He typed in Maria Gonzales. He got nothing.

  Okay, Maria didn’t fly out. Let’s check her friends.

  Ted called friend after friend and they all said the same thing. They didn’t even know that Maria was out of town.

  Was she really out of town? Maybe I did something to piss her off and she’s just dodging m
e.

  Then a horrible thought struck him.

  ¡Dios Mio! It’s the proposal. She doesn’t want to marry me and she can’t face me to tell me “no.”

  Was it a man from her past? She never talked about an ex.

  Ted felt the life leave his body. He sat in his chair and stared up at the ceiling. He had no desire to keep living.

  Pull yourself together, you romantic hijo de puta. You’ve got to find out.

  What to do next? There was something wrong. Maria might be in danger. He had to know. He reached for his jacket and headed out of the office.

  He pulled up to her house in the U-District. It had a small, neat front yard and a large fenced back yard. The brick cottage looked like something out of a fairy tale.

  “Maria! Maria!” Ted knocked on the front door.

  No answer.

  He reached in his pocket and pulled out the key she gave him. He opened the door and poked his head in.

  “MARIA!” His spidey sense was going off the charts. Something was definitely wrong.

  “Popo!” Not a bark. Wherever Maria went, she took her giant dog with her.

  That makes sense. They’re attached at the hip. She wouldn’t leave without him.

  No sign of anything unusual in the living room. Ted moved to the kitchen. A bowl of sad looking fruit sat on the counter. He opened the fridge. A quart of past pull date non-fat milk sat on the shelf.

  He closed the refrigerator door and headed to the bedroom. He stopped at the door and stared at the mess.

  Clothes were strewn all over the bed. Shoes, stockings and underwear littered the floor. The door to her closet stood wide open. Very unlike Maria.

  She left in a hurry. Something spooked her.

  He walked to the garage. Her Subaru Outback was gone.

  It doesn’t make any sense. If she had an emergency, why would she drive? It’s about twenty-five hundred miles. It’s at least a five-day journey, especially if she’s driving by herself.

  She wouldn’t be crazy enough to attempt the trip. But if she didn’t go to Mexico, where did she go?

  Ted reached in his pocket and pulled out his smart phone. He looked up a number and pushed “send.” This was a call he thought he’d never make.

  “Homicide, Bremen,” the husky voice said.

  How would he receive Ted’s call? Tom might have broken up with Catrina, but did he still consider Ted a friend?

  “Tom, it’s Ted Higuera.”

  “Higuera. How’s things in the taco bending world?

  Ted breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Tom, I have a problem. I need your help.”

  There was a brief pause on the other end. “What’s up? Has there been a homicide?”

  “No. Nothing like that. I . . . uh . . . need you to help me find my girlfriend.”

  He heard a chuckle on the other end of the line.

  “I’m serious. She’s disappeared. I’m at her house now. Her bedroom’s a mess. She obviously packed in a hurry. She has rotting fruit and outdated milk in her kitchen. I haven’t heard from her in three days. I’m really worried.”

  “Okay, slow down, cowboy. Did you guys have a lover’s spat?”

  “No, not really. I just asked her to marry me. I haven’t heard from her since.”

  “Sounds like runaway bride syndrome.”

  “Get serious, Tom. I need help here. Can you file a missing person report for her?”

  “You can’t be serious? You can file a missing person report with any desk sergeant in the city; you don’t need Homicide for that.”

  Ted paced back and forth in Maria’s living room while he spoke. “But if you file the report, it’ll have more pull. The cops’ll pay more attention to it. I really need a solid here.”

  “Take it easy, son. I’ll file the report. I’ll put out a bolo on her. What kind of car does she drive? What’s the license plate number?”

  Ted gave Tom the requested information, thanked him and hung up.

  What next? Ted sat on the sofa and stared at the wall. Oh, yeah. Her mom.

  He found the number on his phone and dialed. To hell with the international call charges.

  “Hello?” he heard a woman’s voice on the phone.

  “Hi, Theresa? This is Ted Higuera.”

  “Oh! Hi, Ted. How are you?”

  “I’m okay, but listen I have a problem. Maria’s missing.”

  “Oh dear. I haven’t heard from her in several days.”

  Ted’s spidey sense started tingling again.

  “Do you know where she might have gone? She said she had a family emergency.”

  There was a slight pause, then Theresa spoke again. “No. I don’t know anything about it. I don’t know anything about a family emergency. There’s only us. I mean she’s an only child, as am I. Her father has a brother and sister, but I saw them yesterday, they’re not in any trouble.”

  What’s going on here? No family emergency? Why would she lie to me?

  Why wasn’t Mrs. Gonzales more worried? Maria would never take off somewhere without telling her mother. He’d never seen a closer mother/daughter pair.

  “Well, if you hear from her, would you give me a call?”

  “Certainly, Ted. I’ll call you right away, but I’m sure that she’s just fine. Don’t worry about her. She’s a big girl.”

  Ted hung up the phone and contemplated what to do next.

  He looked at his phone again and punched in Alaska Airlines on the Internet.

  It only took a few minutes to book a flight from Seattle to Cabo San Lucas.

  Chapter 14

  After a quick trip to his apartment to throw together a bag and get the neighbor to care for his cat, Oscar, Ted jumped in his car and headed south to Sea-Tac airport.

  When his cell phone rang, Ted pushed the button on his steering wheel and spoke towards his dashboard. “Ted Higuera here.”

  “Higuera, this is Tom. I’ve got some news for you. We found her car.”

  “Really? Where?”

  “In the parking lot at Boeing Field. The FBO says it’s been there for about three days.”

  Boeing Field is Seattle’s general aviation/executive airport. It’s also the home of Boeing Commercial Aircraft.

  “Does that mean she flew out on a private plane? Why didn’t she just book a flight on an airliner?”

  “Can’t tell you. I’m closing the bolo now. I think you have what you need.”

  “Yeah, thanks, Tom.”

  Ted pushed the “end” button on his steering wheel and looked around to see where he was. He hadn’t come up to the Boeing Field exit yet. He pulled into the right lane and exited the freeway.

  Northwest Air is a fixed base operator (FBO) on the east side of the runway. Maria’s Outback was parked across from the door.

  “Hi, were you working on Thursday?” Ted asked the receptionist, a pretty Latina.

  “Yes. How may I help you?”

  Ted handed her a business card. “I’m Ted Higuera. A private investigator. I’m looking for a missing woman. Her car is in your parking lot.”

  The receptionist batted her eyelashes at Ted. “I’m sure I don’t know anything about it.”

  Ted pulled out his cell phone. “Here’s a picture of her. Tall, red hair, thin.”

  The receptionist looked at the picture. “No. I don’t recognize her. My name is Lupe, by the way.”

  “Hi, Lupe. Is there anyone else I can talk to?”

  “You could talk to our chief pilot. She always knows what’s going on around here. I’ll give her a call.” Lupe picked up the receiver and pushed a button on her phone. “Hi, Amy, there’s a Mister Higuera here asking some questions. Do you have time to talk to him?”

  There was a brief pause, then Lupe hung up the phone.

  “She’ll be right out.”

  Ted took in the lobby around him. The walls were covered with prints of various airplanes, from WWI fighters to the latest jets. Chrome chairs with padded seats and backs were
lined up against one wall behind a coffee table piled with old copies of flying magazines. A chart of Washington with all sorts of red and blue ink lines on it hung on the opposite wall.

  “Hi, I’m Amy Short,” the woman said as she held out her hand to Ted.

  Ted studied her a moment. She was short, just like her name, with a dark pixie cut. She wore blue polyester slacks and white shirt with epaulets. She had the figure of a body builder.

  “Hi, I’m Ted Higuera, private investigator. We’re looking for a missing woman.” Ted told his story and showed Amy the photo.

  “Yeah. I remember her. I probably wouldn’t have paid any attention to her, but she had this big black and white dog with her.”

  Ted’s eyes lit up. “A Great Dane?”

  “Yeah, that’s it. My uncle had one when I was growing up.” Amy turned towards the chairs. “Would you like to sit down?”

  “Sure.” Ted sat and Amy sat down beside him. “What can you tell me about her?”

  “It was kind of unusual. A Boeing 737 cargo plane landed here. I’ve never seen it before. It had some kind of produce company logo on it. They opened their door, she and her dog boarded and they took off. I don’t think they were on the ground for half an hour.”

  “It had a produce company logo on it?”

  Amy leaned forward and put her elbows on her knees. “Yeah, something Mexican sounding. Maybe Baja something . . . I think that’s it. Baja Produce.”

  Ted was taking notes on his smart phone. “Do you know where they went? Did they file a flight plan?”

  “I don’t know. We don’t keep track of other aircraft’s flight plans. Maybe you could check with air traffic control.”

  Ted rose from his seat and extended his hand. “Thank you, Miss Short. You’ve been most helpful. Can you tell a non-pilot how I can get into touch with air traffic control?

  Amy rose and shook Ted’s hand. “I have a phone number for them. I could get it for you. Or you could just drive over to their offices on the other side of the field. The ARTCC is located in Auburn, but they have offices here.”

  Ted looked at his watch. “I better call them. I have a flight to catch.”

  Amy went to her office and returned a moment later with a piece of paper. “Here’s the ARTCC number. I also put my number on the paper in case you need to ask me more questions.”