Crust No One

by Winnie Archer

  Miguel returned the greeting with an equally masculine, “Hey.”

  I showed Phil the oven door. “Beautiful appliance,” he said with such reverence he might have been talking about a woman.

  I had to agree. “I love it.”

  He lifted the brim of his cap and scratched his head. “Probably came in on a slow boat from England, eh?”

  From what Olaya had told me, Jackie had custom-ordered it and it had taken nearly two months for it to arrive. “I think it needed its own passport,” I said with a chuckle.

  Phil retrieved a tool from his bag and crouched down in front of the oven. The AGA had five gas burners on top, two ovens, and a broiler in front. The left door opened to the side rather than opening down like a typical oven. “Don’t find many of these ranges in the U.S.,” he commented as he set to work.

  Once again, I agreed. “The woman who owned the house before me was quite a cook.”

  “Nice piece of machinery.”

  He played around with the door latch, using his flashlight to peer at the mechanism more closely. “Looks like it’s out of alignment. I’ll have to order the part directly from the manufacturer, but when it comes in, it’ll be an easy fix.”

  Appliance repair was always a crapshoot. I sighed in relief. “Thanks, Phil.”

  He looked at me sideways until I pointed to the name patch on his shirt. He smiled. “No problem.”

  I tapped two fingers against my lips, trying my best to be casual and offhanded. I tilted my head slightly. “Rivera. Rivera. Are you related to Mustache Hank?”

  One of his eyebrows arched. “He’s my brother. I can’t believe people still call him that.”

  “I don’t think he’ll ever escape it,” Miguel said, speaking for the first time. Guess he’d been waiting for just the right moment.

  Miguel and I hadn’t strategized about how to approach Phil, so I just went with the first thing that came to mind, which was repeating what he’d just said. “He’s your brother?”

  “Yeah. I said that.” He narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “You know Hank?”

  He seemed remarkably unconcerned for someone whose brother was MIA. Unless, I reasoned, he didn’t actually know yet. “I’ve only met him once, but Miguel owns Baptista’s Cantina and Grill. Over on the marina?”

  Phil turned his gaze upward to Miguel. “Good shrimp tacos, man.”

  Miguel nodded at the compliment. “Thanks. Hank does the produce for the restaurant. I haven’t seen him in a few days.”

  Phil packed his tools up and stood, scratching his head under his cap again. “Should you have? Seen him, I mean?”

  “Yeah, I should have. He missed his last few deliveries.”

  Phil lowered his cap, adjusting the brim. Now he looked concerned. “Have you talked to Brenda?”

  Again, Miguel nodded. “Jason came to see me. He was worried when he couldn’t reach his dad.” He gestured to me, but continued talking to Phil. “Ivy and I went to Brenda’s, but she said she hasn’t seen him.”

  “Not that she would tell you if she had. As divorces go, theirs was not so pleasant.”

  By definition, I didn’t think any divorces were pleasant, but I took his point. Brenda or Hank—or maybe both, based on his implication—had presumably been difficult about the divorce proceedings. I thought back to Brenda’s response when we’d showed up on her doorstep. She’d been relatively friendly, although she hadn’t seemed concerned about Hank’s whereabouts at the beginning. It was only after a while that her emotions began to surface. She seemed mostly frustrated—about the money, or lack of it—and what people owed Hank, both before their divorce and after. Overall, I hadn’t gotten the feeling that there was horrible blood between the two of them, though. “What happened?” I asked.

  Phil shrugged. “You know. Divorce. It’s either another woman—or man—or money. For Hank and Brenda, it was a little of both. Don’t get me wrong: I love my brother and he’s a good guy, but he made a stupid decision and it ruined his marriage.”

  “He had an affair?” Miguel asked. I could tell from his expression and the surprise in his voice that the very idea seemed out of character for the Hank who Miguel knew. My mind, however, immediately strayed. And yet . . . Alice. There was something there, I was sure of it.

  But Phil immediately dispelled the notion that Hank had been unfaithful to his wife. “No, no. He came close, I’ll say that, but no, he’s wasn’t unfaith—No, it wasn’t that.”

  “Wait, you mean Brenda?” This time Miguel didn’t bother to hide the shock. He shook his head, pressing his fingers to his forehead as if he was trying to make sense of this new information. A second later he shot me a look with an expression I couldn’t quite read. It was a mixture of disgust and disbelief.

  Phil frowned, hesitating. “Um, yeah.” He turned back to the range, but stopped, facing us again. “Why are you so interested in Hank?”

  I answered with my own question. “If he didn’t cheat, what kind of bad decision did Hank make that ruined his marriage?”

  Phil hesitated before answering. “Money. What else? He’s in the hole so deep I doubt he’ll ever be able to get out.”

  Brenda had said money was an issue, but with that one sentence, his brother painted a much more dire picture of the problem. I imagined that the truth was somewhere in between.

  Phil folded his arms over his chest. “Now, once again, why are you so interested in Hank?”

  I couldn’t tell if there was any love lost between Phil and his brother, but I decided there was no point in mincing words. “He’s missing.”

  Whatever he had been expecting, it wasn’t this. If I’d had any thought that Philip Rivera had something to do with his brother’s disappearance, I’d have reconsidered based on his reaction. His response seemed utterly genuine. His jaw dropped and his eyes bugged as his head jutted forward. “Wait, what?”

  “His truck was found, but he hasn’t been seen since yesterday—”

  “Yesterday?” He scoffed and turned back to the range again. “That’s not new. He disappears every now and then. Thinks he can somehow solve his problems, or escape them, or something. Of course, that never happens and he comes back in worse shape than when he left.”

  Miguel spread his fingers and ran them through his hair. “So you’re saying he’s done this before?”

  “What I’m saying is that he’s done this plenty of times before. It’s not like he doesn’t try, or that he doesn’t have good intentions. He does. He’s always been a hard worker. He started his business with nothing. Loves the earth, you know? He’s had a garden since he was knee-high to a grasshopper. But it’s a tough business to be successful in, especially with those corporate growers taking over everything. Hank gives people the benefit of the doubt, letting them run up credit because he thinks they’re good for it. I see that in my business, too. Sometimes they pay, sometimes they don’t. With his debt, I think he sometimes just needs to . . . you know, take a hiatus from life.”

  “But he’s never—I mean never—missed a delivery before,” Miguel said.

  Phil scratched his temple, thinking about that. “He just drops it off outside the kitchen door, right?”

  “Usually. We meet once a week to talk about the order for the following week.”

  “When he checks out, he gets someone to do his deliveries. Brenda and me have both done it. His right-hand guy, Daniel. I think Jason’s even done it once or twice.”

  “He didn’t get anyone to do it this time,” Miguel said.

  Which, to me, meant that something different was going on with Hank this time around. What if he’d finally hit rock bottom? If he was in financial straits, maybe he couldn’t see away out anymore.

  Suddenly I wasn’t worried that he was off somewhere on a bender. Now I feared that he was off somewhere contemplating ways to resolve his desperate situation. “Does he have life insurance?” I asked.

  Phil nodded, and I drew in a heavy breath. It wasn’t unheard of for someone i
n Hank’s situation to think he was worth more dead than alive. For Jason’s sake, I hoped against hope that this was not the case with Hank Rivera.

  Chapter 12

  Emmaline called me within fifteen minutes of Phil Rivera leaving my house. “Ivy Culpepper, you need to cease and desist.”

  “What do you mean?” I played innocent, although I knew just what she was talking about.

  “Look, Hank’s officially a missing person. We hadn’t talked to his brother yet, so imagine my surprise when Phil Rivera called me instead of the other way around.”

  “Phil just happened to be the technician who came over to repair my broken oven door. I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to ask him some questions.”

  She scoffed. “He ‘just happened’ to be the tech that came?” She emphasized just happened with utter sarcasm. “And I have some swampland in SoCal to sell you for a dollar.”

  “Have you found out anything?” I asked, already knowing the answer. If she had, she would have led with that.

  “Nothing. I don’t want you to interfere.”

  “What you see as interference, I see as helpful assistance.”

  “But here’s the thing, Ivy. You’re not actually an employee of the Santa Sofia sheriff’s department. Nor are you a licensed private investigator.”

  “Maybe not, but I did help solve that other case—”

  “Beginner’s luck.”

  “Tenacity,” I argued.

  “Coincidence,” she countered.

  “Smarts.”

  She sighed. “Okay, okay. Look, I know you’re good at this. You have a natural curiosity and decent deductive skills—”

  My jaw dropped. “Decent?”

  She sighed. “Better than decent,” she admitted. “Look, I can’t stop you from poking around, but would you please keep me in the loop? I do not want to be blindsided again.”

  “Agreed.”

  “So what’s next, Veronica?”

  “Veronica?”

  “As in Mars.”

  “Subtract twenty years from my age, and maybe that reference will work,” I said. “She was only in high school during her prime investigative years.”

  “But just as obstinate as you are.”

  I couldn’t disagree with her there. Veronica Mars was a TV detective after my own heart. If you overlooked her age, her blond hair, as compared to my curly ginger mass, and her slight physique as opposed to my five-feet-eight inches, then we were practically twins. “What’s next?” I mused, getting to her question. “Phil told us—”

  “Us?”

  “Miguel,” I said, glancing over at him. My farm table was made with reclaimed oak from a barn, sanded and refinished, and was one of my favorite pieces of furniture. He looked comfortable sitting at it, leaning back in his chair, one leg crossed at the ankle.

  There was a pause while Emmaline weighed her response. We’d been friends so long that I could almost read her mind. I was fairly certain that I knew her thoughts and the order in which she was having them.

  1. For years, I had given her a hard time about the unrequited love between her and my brother.

  2. Oh, the irony. The tables had turned: She and Billy were finally together while Miguel and I were . . . not.

  3. Should she drive home that point with a sarcastic barb?

  4. No, she should be the bigger person and get back to the task at hand, namely Hank Rivera.

  5. Oh, what the hell. Jab, jab, jab.

  “Miguel, huh? Showing him some of that Southern hospitality you learned in Texas?”

  “Actually,” I said, ignoring her, “I have an idea.”

  “I bet you do. High time you got back on the horse. I’m sure he’d take you for a ride wherever you want to go.” She said it suggestively, double entendre fully intended.

  I rolled my eyes. “You’ve been hanging around men too long.”

  Miguel couldn’t help but overhear my part of the conversation. He arched one brow. Which made me wonder if he could also overhear what Emmaline was saying. She did have a voice that carried. I smiled, rolling my finger in the air as if to say Em wouldn’t stop talking. I played it off as if we were not talking about him.

  “Only your brother,” she said. “What did you tell me about that? Oh, yes: ‘I should get over my fears.’ ‘We only have one life to live, so why waste it without our soul mate?’ ‘Stop standing on the edge; take a leap of faith!’ You’re excellent with the cliché.”

  “It takes one to know one,” I said, cringing after the words left my mouth. Behaviorally, people often reverted to childhood family roles. The same was true with dear old friends. It takes one to know one? I thought the words again at the very same time that Miguel mouthed them, a big, laughing question mark on his face.

  All I could do was shrug. There was no way to explain our juvenileness.

  “Back to it, Ivy,” Em said. “What’s your big idea?”

  “Right. Phil mentioned that Hank has a right-hand man. Daniel. And he also said Brenda, Hank’s ex-wife, cheated and that’s at least one reason for the divorce.”

  I’d half expected a gasp, but instead I got a snort. “Now that’s cliché.”

  But I begged to differ. “No, what would have been cliché is if Hank had had the affair. Brenda hadn’t struck me as the type, or at least my brain hadn’t automatically gone there.”

  “I guess you were wrong, then.”

  “If Phil is right, then I definitely was.”

  “Still waiting for the idea, Ivy,” she said, as if her hair was going gray as the seconds passed.

  “We should go see Brenda again under the pretext of getting information about this guy Daniel.”

  I felt Miguel’s eyes on me. I turned and faced him. His expression was tense. Was he against me going back to talk to Brenda Rivera?

  “I don’t have the manpower to send someone—”

  I leaned against the kitchen counter and waved my free hand in the air as if I were warding her away. “I’m not asking you to. I want to go.”

  “I know you do, but—”

  “No. No buts. You didn’t ask me to—”

  “I should be telling you not to—”

  “Even if you did, it wouldn’t work.”

  “Don’t I know it,” she muttered.

  “So? Do I have your blessing?” Not that I needed it. I’d be going with or without it.

  She sighed, reading my mind. “Does it matter?”

  I shook my head. “You know me too well, Em.”

  “Let me know what you find out, okay?”

  Emmaline hung up. I lowered the phone to my side and turned to Miguel. “She gave her blessing,” I said, trying to ignore the sense I got that something in Miguel was brewing under the surface.

  “Yeah. She might give a little more this time.” His voice was gruff, and if I didn’t know better, I’d say it was almost tinged with anger.

  But if either of us had a reason to be mad, it would be me. He was the one who had driven away, leaving me in the dust. “Something wrong?” I asked, folding my arms as a barrier.

  He dropped his foot to the floor, put his open palm on the table, and stood. “Nope.”

  Except clearly there was. I pressed. “Miguel, I know you. Something’s wrong.”

  The look he gave me could have withered a flower. “We don’t know each other anymore.”

  My head spun. Where was this coming from? “I don’t—”

  “I’ve been trying, Ivy. I welcomed you back to town, into my restaurant. Hell, into my life.” He paced the length of the kitchen while I stared at him, trying to comprehend what he was saying. He swung his arm out toward the front of the house. “That damn Galileo’s thermometer was a peace offering, you know? But . . . I don’t want to do this again.”

  “I didn’t know we were trying to,” I said, although my insides felt like they were being crushed. “You were the one who called me to take pictures for the menu, remember?”

  He raked his hand throu
gh his hair again, his eyes darkening. “I shouldn’t have. I don’t—” He stopped, dug his keys from his front pocket, and headed toward the door. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Ivy.”

  I gaped at him. “Tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow,” he repeated. “I got you involved in looking for Hank. I need to see it through with you.”

  He said it as if it was going to be torture. “I’m perfectly capable of handling Brenda Rivera without you.”

  “I want to find Hank,” he said, making it sound final.

  “I do, too,” I said.

  He headed for the door. “Great, then I’ll see you tomorrow.” And he was gone.

  My emotions were going haywire, waffling between disappointment and anger. He acted as though I was pursuing him, as if I was trying to get back together, when all I’d done was be friendly. I shook my head, my anger growing. He’d been friendly, too. Asking me to come to the restaurant, going to see Brenda together the first time—

  I stopped, remembering. I’d invited myself to go along to see Brenda. Maybe he’d never wanted me to. Maybe he’d thought about rekindling what we had, but realized it wouldn’t work for him.

  Well, okay then, Miguel, I thought. What’s done is done. I thought again about Laura telling me to stay away from him. Well, she was going to get her wish. I’d stay away from him, and he’d stay away from me.

  After we went to see Brenda Rivera one more time.

  Chapter 13

  The phone rang bright and early the next morning. I reached for my cell, swiping my finger across the screen without looking at the name, and muttering a slightly disgruntled, “Hello?”

  Penelope Branford’s voice shot into my ear, bright and awake, neither of which I was. “Well?”

  I tried to erase the sleepiness from my voice. “Well what?”

  “I was right.”

  “Mrs. Branford—?”

  “Penny,” she corrected.

  “Mrs. Branford,” I insisted. It was as if I had to maintain the respect that came with the formality, even though we had become partners in crime. Or partners in crime fighting, I should say, “It’s too early.”