Fry Another Day

by J. J. Cook

  “She’ll be fine.”

  “What happened to your outrider? I didn’t see him tonight.” She grinned at me. “He’s a good-looking fella. I wish he was coming with me tomorrow. He’s my type.”

  “That’s Miguel.” I bit my lip to keep from saying something I might regret later. “He had to go back to work. He’s a lawyer here in Mobile.”

  She whistled. “How’d you get him to hang around like that?”

  “Oh, he wasn’t very busy. This is his slow season.”

  “That’s funny.” She blew smoke into the air above her. “Either you’re blind or crazy if you think that. I never met a lawyer who’d give up billable hours to follow a food truck race and run for supplies. That fella is sweet on you, isn’t he?”

  I laced my fingers together and pulled them apart again. I’d thought I was through with talking about Miguel. The universe was against me.

  “He’s with someone,” I explained.

  “Yeah. You. I’m telling you, he wouldn’t have gone through this stupid race with you if he was taken by any other woman. You can believe it or not.”

  I didn’t respond. I didn’t want to talk about it anymore. The garden was beautiful around us. A few of the guests had decided to strip down to their underwear and get in the pool.

  “What are you gonna do if you win the race tomorrow?” I asked the question I’d promised myself I wouldn’t ask.

  She finished her whiskey and put out her cigarette in the empty glass.

  Eww.

  “I’m gonna send my daughter to college. She’ll be the first one in our family to ever graduate past high school. How about you?”

  “I’m going to remodel my diner into a world-class restaurant that people come to from all over to eat my food.”

  “Sounds like we both have big dreams.” She shook my hand and got to her feet. “Good luck tomorrow, Biscuit Bowl.”

  I laughed. “You, too, Shut Up and Eat.”

  I could hear her smoker’s wheezing laugh for a few minutes as she walked back toward the mansion.

  “Hey, Zoe!” Delia called from the pool. “Why don’t you come in, too?”

  “I don’t think so. Thanks anyway. I have somewhere I have to be.”

  “Going to find Miguel?” she asked.

  “You got it.”

  “You go, sister.”

  I stalked back to the mansion as I called Cole. I went in front to wait by the circle drive. Uncle Saul was out there, still smoking his big cigar. He moved over on the bench where he was sitting so I could join him.

  “Leaving so soon?” he asked. “Not inclined to jump in the pool?”

  “No. Not now. I’m mad, and I need closure.”

  He nodded. “Going to talk to Miguel?”

  “Yes. He owes me an explanation. I’m all done crying. I want to know why he led me on.”

  “That’s the spirit.”

  “If I pushed him into acting like he wanted to be with me when he really didn’t want to, all he had to do was say something. I thought I was very careful since I knew about his dead wife. Maybe I was wrong.”

  “I think—”

  “What do you think?” I turned to him. “Did I seem too pushy? Maybe he wasn’t ready.”

  “Since he’s dating Tina—”

  “That’s exactly what I mean. If he wants to be with her, that’s fine. He shouldn’t have acted like he wanted to be with me. At least he could’ve called me and not left me hanging.”

  “Yes.”

  Cole arrived a moment later. Uncle Saul held the door open for me. “Okay. Don’t do anything too crazy. I don’t want to see you get kicked out of the race.”

  I hugged him. “I won’t. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  THIRTY-ONE

  I gave Cole the address of Miguel’s office. I figured Miguel might still be there trying to get caught up with his work. Or with Tina.

  Traffic wasn’t too bad getting across town. It seemed to go even faster when I suddenly got cold feet.

  “What am I going to say to him?” I asked Cole after filling him in on what had happened. “If he doesn’t want to be with me, he doesn’t want to be with me.”

  He shrugged. “Sometimes you have to hear it from the horse’s mouth, I guess.”

  “I feel stupid. I should probably just go home.”

  But that didn’t sit well, either. I had a powerful need to see Miguel’s face and look into his eyes as he told me that he loved Tina. I had a sense about these things, or at least I always thought I did. That sense was telling me that Miguel had been genuine with me while we’d been gone.

  Or were my emotions clouding my judgment?

  We got to Miguel’s legal office, which was located in a run-down building in a bad part of town. The lights were still on inside. I sighed as I looked up at the building.

  “Maybe this isn’t such a good idea.”

  “You’ll never know if you don’t go in,” he said. “You’ll wonder about this moment the rest of your life. Want me to come with you?”

  I smiled at Cole’s words of wisdom, and his offer of help. How could I turn away now? I had to go through with it.

  “Thanks. Will you wait for me here?”

  “I got nowhere else to be, Zoe. You take your time.”

  I thought about the old days when knights and soldiers put on their armor and went off to war. That’s how I felt. I wished there were some magical armor that could protect my poor heart, but it was only me and my silly desire to make Miguel tell me to my face that he didn’t want to be with me.

  I went inside. Miguel’s office was on the second floor. I took a deep breath and went up the stairs to give myself time to decide what I’d say to him. Even by the time I got there, I wasn’t sure. I hoped to be inspired when I saw his face.

  The office door was open. I walked in, but there was no sign of Miguel. There were only two rooms in the office. He was gone, but his cell phone was on his desk. All the lights were on. The desk phone was off the hook. A weird voice kept telling me what to do if I wanted to make a call.

  Nothing looked out of place besides that. Maybe he’d gone home.

  I was about to leave when I noticed a small amount of blood on the carpet near the front of the desk. Examining it closely, I could see the blood was fresh. It was still pooling on top of the carpet fibers—still time to clean it without staining.

  There was something under the desk, too. I used a pen from Miguel’s desk to pull it out. It was an empty pack of Marlboro cigarettes.

  Marsh! Detective Marsh had been there.

  Why had he been there?

  A terrible thought crossed my mind.

  Was it Marsh from the beginning? Was he the one who’d killed McSwain because he’d asked questions about Alex’s partner in crime? Had he been the one who’d killed Alex, too?

  I took out my cell phone and used it to speed dial Patti Latoure. I was shaking with fear and hoping nothing horrible had happened to Miguel.

  Patti finally answered after a few tries. “Zoe. We were just talking about you.”

  “We?” My heart was pounding, hoping Miguel was with her.

  “Detective Macey Helms came down from Birmingham. She has some interesting information.”

  “Can it wait a few minutes?” I kind of cut her off. “Miguel Alexander may be missing. I think Detective Marsh from Charlotte might be responsible for the things that went on during the food truck race.”

  Patti chuckled. “Funny you should say that. Macey was telling me her story about her partner shooting her right after she saw him kissing Tina Gerard.”

  “Kissing Tina? She’s involved in this, too?”

  “It seems that way. Where are you?”

  I skimmed over the reason I’d come to look for Miguel and told her what I’d found a
t his office. “Could you look up Miguel’s home address and meet me there? Maybe you could put out an APB, or whatever you call it, for his Mercedes. I don’t think it’s here. Tina and Marsh may have hurt Miguel.”

  “Take it easy, Zoe. Calm down. I’ll look up Miguel’s home address—although I would’ve thought it was something you already had. It’s possible nothing has happened to him. He might not even know those two are the real culprits.”

  I waited impatiently for her to find his address. My fingernails tapped on the backside of my phone. I had a bad feeling about this.

  “Here’s his address. It’s only a few blocks from where you are,” she said. “But don’t meet me there. You stay where you are. I’ll let you know if anything is going on over there.”

  Like that was going to happen.

  I wrote down Miguel’s address. The minute I was off the phone with Patti, I ran out of the office and into the street.

  “What’s going on?” Cole asked as I got back in the taxi.

  “I’ll tell you on the way,” I answered as I dialed Uncle Saul’s cell phone number.

  Cole raced to the address I gave him. Miguel lived in a small apartment building that was mostly covered by hanging moss from a few large live oaks. Huge, old azalea bushes obscured the front windows.

  The Mercedes wasn’t there, either. There were no lights on inside.

  Cole got out with me this time, grabbing a baseball bat he kept under his seat. We searched the mail slots. There were four apartments. Miguel’s was on the second floor.

  I tried the buzzer over and over again. Either he wasn’t there or couldn’t answer. Both answers were bad in my mind.

  “We should try to get someone else down here to open the door,” Cole said.

  I reasoned with a man on the first floor who answered his buzzer. I told him that we thought Miguel could be in danger. The man, dressed only in his underwear, finally came and opened the door for us. I could hear sirens in the distance. Patti wasn’t far behind us.

  We ran up to the second floor. The building was a little shabby, but you could see this had been a nice place at one time. I wondered if Miguel had lived here with Caroline, or if they’d had a house that he’d sold.

  Thousands of crazy thoughts raced through my mind as we reached the door to Miguel’s apartment.

  “I can knock it down with my bat,” Cole enthusiastically volunteered.

  “You might break your arm before you break it in.” I held him back.

  “So what do we do?”

  Patti was coming up the stairs with two uniformed officers. “Zoe, didn’t I tell you to stay where you were? What part of that didn’t you understand?”

  I ran and hugged her, tears in my eyes. “I’m so glad to see you. I think they did something with Miguel. I don’t think he’s here, either.”

  She hugged me back, a little stiffly, but I didn’t care. I was really happy to see her.

  “You’re determined to get into trouble, aren’t you? You have to leave the police work to the police. Let’s get someone to open this door for us.”

  She roused the building manager. By that time, Macey Helms was up there, too. She was moving very slowly, painfully, to join us.

  “Hello, Zoe.” Her arm was in a sling, and she was very pale. “I hope Miguel is all right. I understand we both came to the same conclusion about Tina and my partner.”

  “I guess so,” I answered. “It occurred to me on the way home from Birmingham that Tina could’ve been setting up everything to cover Alex’s murder. She had a lot to gain.”

  She nodded and winced. “I don’t think she realized that paying Miguel that money and meeting with him would throw her onto our radar. On the other hand, when Miguel looked innocent of any wrongdoing, so did she. What can I tell you? Bad guys do stupid things sometimes. I’m glad it works that way for our sake.”

  “How did she and Detective Marsh get involved?”

  “I don’t know yet. Right now, we’re working on the assumption that Marsh probably killed McSwain because McSwain started looking too close. He may have killed your friend, Reggie, as a decoy for what he was about to do to Alex.”

  The more she talked about what Tina and Marsh were willing to do to kill Alex, the more anxious I became about Miguel.

  The apartment was small. The officers who were searching it came back only a few minutes later. Miguel wasn’t there. There was no sign of a struggle.

  Patti sent them over to take a look at the office. “I don’t want to make a big deal out of Miguel’s disappearance and find out he was out all night with a client and hasn’t thought about anything else.”

  Helms agreed with her. “We definitely don’t want to lose Marsh and Tina.”

  “I have everyone looking for the Mercedes, but if they took Miguel’s vehicle, the chances are they’ve ditched it. They could already be out of Mobile.”

  “Can’t you call the FBI or something?” I asked.

  “It doesn’t work like that, Zoe,” Patti said. “We have to take care of this one step at a time. We’ll find Marsh and Gerard, and we’ll figure out where Miguel is. Just take a deep breath and go on home. We’ll call if we hear anything.”

  I thanked her again for her help. Ollie, Delia, and Uncle Saul were there, waiting downstairs with Cole. One of the old churches nearby was chiming midnight. The air was hot and sultry with a little hint of rain that might have been coming from Mobile Bay.

  “Now what?” Cole put away his baseball bat.

  “It’s Zoe’s call.” Uncle Saul hugged me. “I have a feeling we’re not going home yet.”

  There was no doubt in my mind that I wasn’t waiting at home for news. I pieced together a plan that I thought might work and told them what I thought we should do.

  “Uncle Saul, you have a lot of friends around the city that you could call. Ollie, let’s go back to the shelter and see if we can find anyone who will help us search. Mobile is our home. Marsh and Tina don’t know it like we do. Let’s find Miguel.”

  THIRTY-TWO

  Uncle Saul called all of his old buddies and gave them a description of Miguel and the Mercedes. When I told Chef Art what had happened, he volunteered all of his security guards to help us search as well. They had SUVs, which was good since none of the rest of us had cars. I didn’t want to drive the Biscuit Bowl all over town searching for Miguel if I didn’t have to.

  “This is developing into a large search party,” Uncle Saul said. “Maybe the four of us should split up and go with each of the teams. We actually know what Miguel and his car look like. It might save a lot of wrong guesses.”

  “That’s a good idea,” I agreed.

  “Yeah!” Ollie seconded me. “I’ve always wanted to ride in a big black SUV with a bunch of security guards. Do I get a gun?”

  “We’re only looking for someone,” Delia reminded him, her hand on his chest. “We’re not shooting anyone—at least not yet.”

  He pouted but went along with the plan.

  I stayed with Cole in the taxi. I had the feeling that he’d know Mobile better than the security people Chef Art had employed. He’d know the areas where someone might be liable to dump a car or a person. The security guards basically knew the area Chef Art needed them to know.

  At least those were my thoughts at the time.

  Cole had a cell phone to keep in contact, so I gave my cell phone to Ollie, who didn’t have one. Delia and Uncle Saul had their own phones. The security guards probably had phones, and radios, too, but I wanted to stay in touch with my team, not them.

  “Where are we going first, Zoe?” Cole asked as everyone got into their vehicles and started their engines.

  “I think we should check down by the docks. What do you think?”

  He nodded. “I’m with you. Lots of places to hide bodies down there.”

  I le
t out a little squeal even thinking that Miguel might be a “body.”

  “Oh. Sorry. I didn’t mean just bodies. Did I say that? No, people hide all sorts of stuff down that way.” He shook his head and started the taxi. “Never mind. I’ve never been good with words.”

  We drove slowly through the dark city. There were some bars and nightclubs still open, but mostly Mobile wasn’t a party town—except during carnival. There weren’t a lot of people on the street. Traffic was light.

  I wished we had a big searchlight mounted on the side of the taxi. Some of the areas were too dark to see into the nooks and crannies. Waiting until morning might have been better. But there was no guarantee that we’d be able to find Miguel alive if we waited.

  I got a call from Patti, relayed by Ollie to Cole’s phone. A police officer had stopped at a convenience store for a soda. He thought he might have recognized Tina and Marsh.

  “He said they were driving an old blue Mustang. He had the license number. The police are following up on that,” Patti told me.

  “Any word on Miguel or the Mercedes?” Not to be ungrateful for the update, but I was a lot more concerned about Miguel than what happened to Tina and Marsh.

  “I have dozens of officers checking the city,” she replied. “We’ll find him, Zoe.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Why is Ollie answering your phone?”

  “He didn’t have one. I tried to spread the phones out so everyone had one. Chef Art’s men had their own.”

  “Chef Art Arrington? What does he have to do with this?”

  I quickly explained that we thought we’d stand a better chance with Chef Art’s security team if each group had someone who could recognize Miguel.

  I thought she might be annoyed that we’d set out on our own. Instead she laughed. “Probably a good idea. But this conversation never happened, understand?”

  I agreed and thanked Cole for the use of his phone. We were driving very slowly through some terrible neighborhoods once we got close to the docks.