Melissa Bourbon Ramirez - Lola Cruz 02 - Hasta la Vista, Lola!

by Melissa Bourbon Ramirez

  Reilly, the part-time secretary, usually worked ten to four, Mondays through Fridays. Since it was Saturday, I expected her to be absent from her post in the corner.

  She was. I was disappointed. I could have used a laugh, and Reilly, with her flashy wardrobe and Crayola-colored hair, was usually good for one. We were kindred spirits, both overly enthusiastic, just about different things. I was obsessed with my job, while Reilly was obsessed with J.Lo and had spent a fair amount of time crushing on my brother, Antonio. Her Friday-night activities made me wonder if she was finally over him.

  I’d seen Manny’s truck in the parking lot, so I knew my boss was here. I headed straight for his office, poised my knuckles to knock, but stopped short. I heard the mumbled tones of two voices. Oooh, for once I might get some office chisme before Reilly, the gossip queen.

  With my ear pressed up against the door, I listened. Could Manny be with his Tomb Raider girlfriend? His ex-wife? Or, the horror, with Sadie in an on-again moment of their on-again/off-again office tryst?

  I heard a familiar laugh. Then I heard the even more familiar Spanglish. Spanglish that only one person I knew could pull off. I backed away, my jaw slack. Oh, wow! It couldn’t be. But it was! The person in there with Manny was… Reilly? And she was laughing?

  But that made absolutely no sense. I reasoned with myself: For one, Manny Camacho scared the bejesus out of Reilly. It was all his animal magnetism and the rogue warrior vibe he gave off. Reilly was not the kind of girl who responded to rogue warrior.

  Was she?

  I thought about that. She had been desperate to go on a date with Antonio, and he was pretty rogue—though he was a lover, not a fighter. My brother had stepped up to the challenge. He’d gone salsa dancing with her, and had even gone out for middle-of-the-night waffles. Poor Antonio. It might be a devastating blow to his ego when he learned that the woman who worshipped him for so long had moved on.

  Reilly laughed again from behind the closed door, and my phone call to her the night before came back to me. She was one of my best friends, and she was holding out on me. Before I could figure out how I felt about that, Manny’s door flew open.

  “Seven o’clock, your house,” Reilly said. She practically skipped into the conference room, gum smacking, a satisfied grin on her face. “See you then—” Her words froze on her lips when she saw me. She blew a bubble through a nervous smile.

  I threw my arms up and yelled, “Surprise!”

  The bubble popped, leaving lime green gum specks stuck to her lips.

  “Lola! I was going to call you.” She shot a cloak-and-dagger glance at Manny. He didn’t budge from his chair in his office. Reilly dragged her teeth across her bottom lip, scraping off the last of the gum; then she finally flung her arms around me in a bear hug. “El bosso—no, no, I know that’s not right,” she said. “Oh, I can’t remember! How do you say it?”

  Every day was Spanish 101 with Reilly. “El jefe.”

  “Right! El jefe just told me what happened. I don’t know what I’d do if you were really dead! You should have called me. I can’t believe I didn’t see the news, but I’m glad I didn’t. I would have been devastated if I’d heard you were dead on a news broadcast.”

  Considering she’d just made plans to meet Manny at his house, I could think of a thing or two that might have eased her sorrow. “Me, either,” I said with a frown. “What’s going on?”

  “What do you mean what’s going on? Nothing’s going on!” Her voice rose an octave. “Why do you ask?”

  She let go of me and ran her fingers across her scalp. Her vibrant red hair—a shade I hadn’t seen on her before—made her skin look paler. Or maybe it was just that the color had drained from her face because there most definitely was something going on. I dropped it, though. She couldn’t fess up with Manny watching.

  “Do they know who it is?” she asked.

  “Who?”

  “You know, do they know who the dead woman is? She had your name?” Red splotches appeared on her cheeks. “How’d she do that? Do they know who she is?”

  I shifted my thoughts away from Reilly’s life and back to mine. “Not yet.” At least not that I’d heard.

  “Oh.”

  We seemed to run out of things to say—something that never happened with Reilly. But whatever was going on between her and Manny was like a ginormous white elephant between us. Chitchat wasn’t in the cards. She snapped her gum. “Gotta run!” she said suddenly. And the next thing I knew, I was watching her round the corner to the little lobby and then—poof!—she was gone.

  I was left staring at the spot where Reilly had been standing. What in the world had just happened? Slowly, I turned around to face Manny’s office.

  He sat behind his massive desk, one long leg loosely folded over the other, a yellow legal pad perched on his knee. He looked at me with his black hawklike eyes, and said, as if nothing weird had just happened, “Holding up?”

  He was not a sparkling conversationalist. Drop-dead gorgeous in a macho I’ll tie you to the bedpost and do what I want with you kind of way? Oh, yeah. Let’s snuggle and talk afterwards? Not even close.

  I focused in on my mission. What Manny lacked in warmth, he more than made up for in competence. His past as a police detective gave him instant credibility, and he always seemed to have a favor to collect on. He was my mentor, had a girlfriend who looked like a model, had taken to calling me nicknames, taunted me with threats of a sparring match, and was pretty much despised by Jack Callaghan. And apparently on much closer terms with Reilly than I would ever have suspected. My life was actually better than one of my parents’ favorite telenovelas.

  I nodded. “Sí.” We also both spoke Spanish, something that grated on associate Sadie Metcalf’s nerves to no end. But I was a licensed private investigator and full-fledged member of the team. Sadie had no choice but to deal with me. “I’m holding up fine.”

  “Thanks for the phone call.”

  “I didn’t want anyone to worry.”

  “I assume you want to investigate this yourself?” he asked.

  Smart man. He’d assumed correctly. “I’m wrapping up the Zimmerman case,” I said, “but I have to know if I was actually the intended victim. If I was—”

  “Then you’re still in danger,” he finished. A second later he said, “Without a case, Dolores, I can’t pay you.”

  “What else is new?” I muttered. Two jobs with no pay. This is why I still live above my parents’. I needed to work fast, or I’d be living off rice and beans.

  Oh, wait. I already did live off rice and beans. And anything else I could get my hands on at Abuelita’s. Working for free at the restaurant meant my appetite wouldn’t suffer. Working for free at Camacho’s meant a lack of resources. And those resources supported my MAC products and undergarment wardrobe. Both were vital to my life.

  “No pay. I understand,” I said to him.

  He gave a single nod—we were simpatico—then moved on. “I called Seavers.”

  I bristled at the mention of the detective, but he and Manny went way back. It was one of those friendships that I just couldn’t explain. “Does he have anything new?” I asked.

  “Police got an anonymous call IDing the vic. They think her name is Rosie Gonzales.”

  I scribbled the dead woman’s name in my notebook, adding her vitals as Manny gave them to me. Five feet three inches tall, 143 pounds, shoulder-length brown hair. It wasn’t much to go on. “Cause of death?”

  “Blunt-force trauma. Looks like her head met the side of a Dumpster.”

  I cringed. That explained the dark patch in her hair. “Anything else?” I asked.

  “Not yet.” Manny put his legal pad down on the desk and uncrossed his leg. He kept his disconcerting gaze steady on me. “I’ll see what else I can find out. Dig a little, poderosa.”

  I stifled the awkwardness that rumbled through me from the nickname. “Gracias. I will,” I said, and I headed back to the conference room.

&nbs
p; Manny called after me. “Cuidado.”

  Was he kidding? Careful was going to be my middle name.

  First things first. I uploaded the photos of Mrs. Zimmerman and her yoga instructor onto the computer. Next, I documented my billable hours and e-mailed a copy to Manny. Finally, I phoned Mr. Zimmerman to discuss my findings.

  “I’m so sorry, Mr. Zimmerman,” I said, and I truly was. The man loved his wife, and she’d betrayed him.

  “How could she?”

  He wasn’t really seeking answers from me. A good thing, since I didn’t have any for him. Trust, something I valued above all else, was so easily destroyed. Jack and I hadn’t established full-on trust yet, and the road to get there seemed paved with pretty big rocks.

  I told Mr. Zimmerman that I’d drop the photos by his office on Monday, and hung up.

  Moving on. Now that I had a name, I was determined to find out everything I could about my thieving double. Googling her name brought me pages and pages of Facebook, Ancestry.com, death notices, and other miscellaneous postings. One by one, I eliminated the information. Only one bit of information seemed potentially relevant—a self-storage company with multiple branches in Sacramento. Seemed someone named Rosie Gonzales had fallen behind on her payments. Gotta love Google.

  Question is, was it my Rosie? When I clicked on the link, it took me to a registration screen. Dead end.

  It seemed like a long shot, but I pulled out the phone book and started dialing the storage company’s area branches. Each time I got a live person on the other end, I approached it the same way: “My name’s Rosie Gonzales,” I said. “I have a unit there, but it’s been almost a year since I opened it up and I can’t remember the number.”

  Each time, the answer was the same: “Sorry, you’re not in the system. Are you sure you have the right place?”

  Then I’d laugh with embarrassment, thank them, and hang up.

  Slow and steady. I made another call and went through my spiel. “Hi,” I began. “This is so ridiculous, but I hope you can help me.”

  “I hope so, too,” the man on the other end of the line said.

  At least he was pleasant. The last call had been taken by a woman who was having a very bad day. “I have a storage unit with you, but I haven’t been there in ages. And—don’t laugh—I can’t remember the number!”

  He chuckled good-naturedly. “What’s the name? I’ll look it up for you.”

  “Rosie Gonzales.”

  I heard the click click of a keyboard. A minute later, his voice was in my ear again. “Here you are. You’re on the north side. Unit thirty-four.”

  Score! I still had no idea if this was my Rosie, but it was something to look into. “Perfect!” Excitement at my success had me grinning. “Thank you so much. I owe you!”

  “No prob,” he said. “But, um…”

  Rosie had a balance! I’d have to pay up if I wanted to get a peek inside her unit. “Listen,” I said with as much charm as I could muster—considering the guy on the line probably thought I was a deadbeat. “I know I missed a payment. I’m so sorry about that.”

  “Yeah, about that. You said you haven’t been here in a while?”

  I sat up straight at the sudden change in his voice. Skeptical, with a hint of curious. “Right.”

  “But you changed your credit card information.”

  “I did?” My mind raced, landing on a possible explanation. If this was my Rosie, had she changed it to a credit card in my name? I tried to act casual, musing aloud as I took a leap of faith. “The name on the card’s different, though, right?”

  I took his mild grunt for a yes.

  “It’s my sister’s card,” I said, a lie formulating in my mind. “Dolores and I are sharing the unit now.”

  “Dolores Cruz. That’s right. She’s on the account now.”

  My heart stopped and slowly started to slide up my throat. As a criminal, Rosie wasn’t too bright. Linking her name and my name together on the same account was un poquito lame.

  “Come to think of it, I’m not sure I want that card to be billed.” Not if it would rack up debt that wasn’t mine. “Can you cancel it?”

  “Sure, if you give me another card to bill.”

  Oh, of course. Silly of me to think it would be that easy. “I think I’ll come on over to settle up, actually.”

  “Sure thing, Ms. Gonzales. We close at five today.”

  Temperatures outside were hovering in the low nineties, above average for Sacramento in September, and the brick red of my mini SUV had absorbed it all. Twenty minutes later, I was at the self-storage facility, a thin line of sweat down the center of my back. It didn’t slow me down. I marched confidently into the small office. “Hi.” I flashed a smile at the man behind the counter. “I just spoke to you. Rosie Gonzales.”

  “Hello, there,” he said, his own smile wide and flirty. He looked to be in his early twenties, was tanned and white-toothed. Apparently working in a self-storage allowed plenty of time for the tanning salon and cosmetic dentistry. “You made it here fast.”

  “Yeah. I have something I want to get from my unit. No sense in procrastinating.”

  “Right,” he said, and I got the feeling he thought I’d hightailed it over here just for him. “Did you want to switch that credit card?”

  I’d thought about this on the drive over. “I do. And I want to check to make sure you have my current address.”

  His smile grew. “Sure thing.” He went to his computer, tapped on the keyboard, and studied the page, rattling off an address on L Street in downtown Sacramento. “Is that right?”

  I committed the address to memory, repeating it in my head five times before answering him. “Yep. That’s right.”

  “No phone number, though. Can I add one?”

  He’d answered my next question without my even asking it. “I’m between phones right now,” I lied. “But I’ll let you know when I get a new number.”

  I started to dig in my purse, letting my shoulders hunch as I mumbled under my breath. “Oh no,” I moaned. “I can’t believe this.”

  The guy came from around his counter. “Is there a problem?”

  I looked up at him, shamelessly batting my lashes. “My key. It’s not here. I left so suddenly, I must have forgotten to take it from my key hook.”

  I cringed at how lame that sounded, but he didn’t seem to notice. His gaze darted from left to right. “Well, you did give us that duplicate key when you rented the unit.”

  I did, er, she did? Booya. Luck was on my side. “Right!”

  “It’s against policy, but—”

  “You mean,” I broke in, relief spreading on my face, “you mean you’d open it for me?”

  Not three minutes later, we were riding in a golf cart, heading to unit 34 at the north end of the facility. “I don’t want you to get in trouble for helping me,” I said, a tiny bit of guilt taking hold of me.

  “I won’t,” he said. “My parents own the place.”

  That made me feel better. It wasn’t likely that Mr. and Mrs. Self-Storage would fire their own son, even if he was breaking policy.

  He stopped the cart in front of our destination, hopped out, and within five seconds, he’d popped the lock and had drawn up the garage-style door. Inside, he flipped a light on for me.

  The unit was narrow and small. Two boxes, a twin bed, a cheap dining table and chairs. That was it. Nothing remarkable.

  “Do you want to walk back to the office when you’re done, or you want I should wait?”

  It wouldn’t take long to riffle through the boxes. “Thanks for opening it. Would you mind waiting? It’ll just take a minute.”

  It took less than that. The boxes were full of clothes. Petite, size 12. Rosie and I might have shared the same name for a while, but we didn’t share the same size. “Darn,” I said, for the storage guy’s benefit. “It’s not here.”

  “Not much is here.”

  That was an understatement. Had she moved stuff out of here, or
had she been planning to put more things in the unit? The storage guy took me back to the office. “I’ll take care of the credit card another time,” I said.

  He looked disappointed that I was leaving without coming back inside. “You sure you don’t wanna update your phone number? No cell? I really should have all the correct information.”

  “No, I told you, I’m between phones right now.”

  He looked like I’d just kicked him in the kneecaps. Pobrecito. He didn’t know I had Jack Callaghan under my skin. No other man could light my fire. “It’s all good,” I said. “Thanks again.”

  I drove straight to L Street and found an empty lot ridden with weeds and garbage. Run-down houses flanked either side of Rosie’s phony address. I spent the next twenty minutes picking through the brush. All I found was a worn brown blanket caked with mud, scattered cigarette butts, a rusty toaster, one knockoff Timberland hiking boot, size 13, right foot, and a three-wheeled stolen shopping cart from a nearby grocery store. Not a single clue, but I did leave with the utterly unanswerable question of how these random things ended up in an unbuilt residential lot.

  With my luck, I’d probably lose sleep wondering about it.

  Back in my car, I considered calling up Detective Seavers and filling him in on my day. I was pretty sure he’d tell me that I was interfering in an ongoing investigation, and that I might be facing an obstruction-of-justice charge if I didn’t stay out of it.

  Both, unfortunately, true.

  I didn’t want to hear it, because there was no way I was backing off. I didn’t call.

  Finally, I headed home to help my mother with the preparations for the big undead fiesta she was putting on tomorrow. My mind buzzed. I’d sniffed out a clue about the deceased fake Dolores Cruz. Luck had pointed me in the right direction, but the direction had been a dead end. What had I proved? That Rosie Gonzales, aka me, had wasted my money on a storage unit that barely held a room’s worth of stuff? That she’d recently added my credit card and a mythical Dolores Cruz to the contract? That she’d given a dummy address?