Marisela Morales 03 - Dirty Little Christmas - Julie Leto (9 page)

Unlike Marisela, who couldn’t shake the fear that she could fuck up and lose everything at any moment, Frankie embraced his new life. She respected his confidence, but it widened the gulf between them. Day by day, moment by moment, they moved in circles that spun in different worlds and didn’t intersect.

But he was here for her now, just like she would be if one of his siblings had gone missing without a trace.

“Here,” he said, tossed her the tape she’d requested before he dragged a chair beside her. He sipped his cola while she eliminated suspects one by one.

“The other women are out of the question,” she declared, tearing three strips of tape off the roll and pasting them over the female faces.

Frankie winced as she defaced his laptop, but didn’t complain. “Unless this is a love triangle?”

“Oy,” she said, wondering just how much trouble her clueless sister could get herself into. “One scandal at a time,
por favor
. It’s safe to assume none of these women got my sister pregnant. And we can eliminate this guy, this guy and this guy, too. They’re too old.”

Frankie laughed. “Men don’t need to be young to get a girl knocked up.”

“Ew,” she said, blocking their faces. “That’s disgusting.”

“To you, maybe. But what about Belinda? You don’t know what she’s into.”

“
Y yo repito
, ew.”

“Have you ever thought about what kind of man your sister might find attractive?”

“I know she never thought you were all that,” Marisela pointed out.

Just as then, he wasn’t offended. “Which proves my point. You’ve always thought I’m
all that
, so why are you so confident you can pick out the kind of guy she’d be willing to roll around and get sweaty with?”

Somewhere inside all his arrogance, Frankie had a point. And yet, Marisela wasn’t daunted. She may not know her sister’s personal tastes in men, but she was as close to an expert on sex and attraction as any Catholic girl was going to get.

“Belinda’s brain is very precise,” Marisela explained. “She’s all into finding patterns and repetition and shit. When she was little she’d separate her toys by size and color, or by little things no one could see but her, like how many joints the dolls had or the angles of their noses. She’d do it with people, too. She’d comment on the size of someone’s ears and how they didn’t fit their face. She wasn’t being rude—well, not much—she was just saying what she saw. She wouldn’t be attracted to someone whose face wasn’t like, not perfect, but even on both sides.”

She knew there was a word for this, but she couldn’t dig it out of her tired brain and it didn’t matter anyway. She knew what she was looking for.

By the time she’d handed Frankie back the tape, six faces on the screen were still visible. Each guy was approximately Belinda’s age, good looking and…
simétrico
. Symmetrical. That was the word. If she printed the pictures and folded them down the middle, each side of the face would appear identical, at least to the naked eye. If Belinda was staring at these faces every day, she’d find them attractive.

Hell, even Marisela found one or two of them hot, even if they were on the skinny, geeky side.

She asked Frankie to print out a screenshot, then X’d out the faces she’d covered in tape with a thick black marker he slid to her from across the table. These were her top choices for baby daddy…but were any of them capable of kidnapping? She was going out on a limb, following a line of investigation that could lead her nowhere, but she couldn’t sit by and do nothing.

“How do you know the baby-daddy is someone she worked with?” he asked.

Again, she was operating on a hunch. “Belinda worked twelve hour days. The company assigns someone to watch over the employees who have…challenges…like Belinda does. That’s why my parents agreed to let her work there. All the reports said she rarely socializes at all, but when she does, it’s only with people she sees daily. My sister is a,
cóme se dice
? Creature of habit. She wouldn’t stray outside of this group. Now we have to figure out how to reach each of them and find out what they may or may not know about my sister.”

Frankie scooted the laptop over and was just starting to search for contact information when Marisela’s phone—the burner she used only for business—dinged. Not a phone call, this time. Text.

She read the words, first to herself, and then aloud.

“Talked to your sister. She says she’s fine. Call ASAP. “

Frankie snatched the phone out of her hand. “Who is this from?”

Marisela scanned the number associated with the message. It wasn’t Lia. For a second, she guessed a hospital line, but the exchange didn’t match.

Then it hit her. She opened the app for recent calls on her personal phone and verified her suspicion.

“Detective Flores. Looks like I’m going to have to talk to her whether I want to or not.”

Eleven

“Sounds to me like she’s trying to scam you into calling her,” Frankie said.

Marisela shoved her phone into her back pocket. He was probably right, but was she willing to take a chance? “Think your department contact can find out?”

Frankie shifted his weight nervously from one foot to another, his gaze darting at the ceiling. The fact that he had a source of information inside the police department wasn’t so surprising. He’d worked as a snitch for the DEA while in jail, a turn that had resulted in his working for Titan.

But there was something more to this relationship than he was letting on—and Frankie only kept secrets when the truth would piss her off.

“What aren’t you telling me?” she challenged.

“I could fill a book with all the stuff I don’t tell you,
vidita
,” he said, his grin mischievous. “I’ll call. Just give me a minute.”

She thought about listening at the door, but decided that Frankie had as much of a right to his exclusive connections as she did. If Titan hadn’t been shut down for the holidays, she wouldn’t have needed his help at all, but it was and she did—so she opted not to pry, but instead hope he once again came up with something useful.

She collected the papers they’d put together, topping it all with Belinda’s passport. She thumbed through the pages again, pausing at the page with the weird Post-it note. The symbol really did look like something she’d see on the sign of an Asian restaurant. The B-shape was elongated at the bottom and the tree, a double horizontal line with a thick base and stylized branches at the top, seemed to stand for something.

But what?

She glanced at the door to Frankie’s bedroom, then at her cell. It suddenly struck her as entirely insane that Belinda would call the TPD and not her. Even the kidnappers wouldn’t have authorized such a bone-headed move. The call from the detective had likely been nothing more than a ruse to get Marisela to call in. Since she didn’t have time for games or distractions, she hit “redial.” Instead of sounding groggy taking a call in the middle of the night, Detective Flores answered with sharp efficiency.

“How do you know it’s my sister who called and said she was safe?” Marisela asked.

The detective wasted no time asking who or where she was. “I spoke with Ms. Santorini and though she was too groggy to give me many details, her mother informed me that your reluctance to speak to me stems from your sister’s disappearance. She’s a grown woman. She can leave with whomever she wishes.”

Marisela snorted, keenly aware that Flores had not answered her question. “So I’m supposed to believe that my sister, who hasn’t lived state-side in fifteen years, decided to run off with a stranger in a SUV and then instead of calling me to tell me she’s a-okay, she called the one cop who’s been trying to track me down for an interview? You don’t know me, detective, but I should probably let you know that I’m not an idiot.”

“You’re also not a criminal, not currently, and yet you’re avoiding a simple interview.”

“
Pero
, I used to be a criminal, which means I know that nothing about an interview with the police is simple,” Marisela said. “I want to hear the tape.”

“The tape of what?”

Marisela didn’t answer. Detective Flores was no more of an idiot that she was. Any and all calls into the police department would be recorded. If Marisela heard Belinda’s voice, she might be able to tell if she’d been coerced to make the call—that is, if she’d really contacted the police at all.

“I can’t release that information,” the detective answered.

“Then my need to chit-chat with you is done.”

Marisela moved to disconnect the call, but she heard Flores shout a desperate, “Wait!” and for some reason, she did.

“You have ten seconds.”

The woman on the other end of the phone sighed. “I understand that you have no reason to trust me. But I need to know what happened in that parking lot.”

“Some guys blew up my car and took my sister,” she replied, “but now you’re telling me she went along willingly, so you have no reason to be in my business.”

“A car bomb was still used,” Flores said. “Your best friend was seriously injured. Crimes were committed.”

“It was my car. My best friend.”

“So you’re the victim?”

Marisela nearly hung up. “Not in this lifetime or any other,
mujer
,
Mira
, if you’re not going to help me find my sister, then you’re wasting my time and yours trying to track me down.”

“This is a police matter,” the detective insisted. “If you find any information leading to the location of the person or persons who used an incendiary device on airport property—”

“—trust me, detective, if I find the guys who took my sister, you’ll be one of the first to know.”

“You mean when I get a call from the ME because he has a couple of John Does on his slab?”

Marisela clicked the “end” button. Detective Flores would get no calls from the medical examiner.

No one would ever find bodies.

Frankie slid back into the room just as Marisela was tucking the burner phone into her back pocket.

“No luck. Contact’s cell went to voicemail.”

“Doesn’t matter,” she said, taking a last swallow from her soda, which was warm, but still bubbly enough to tickle her nose. “I’m going to track down this symbol in Belinda’s passport. You don’t have to come.”

But to her surprise, Frankie grabbed his keys. “Where you go, I go,
vidita
. Unless you don’t need me?”

She paused at the door and stared at the grooves in the wood, grappling with his question. She didn’t want to need anyone, but if she had to pick among the host of people she could rely on in a crisis, Frankie would always be at the top of her list.

With a saucy look over her shoulder, she answered his question and seconds later, they were out the door.

* * *

Under most circumstances, Marisela wouldn’t think of visiting Mr. Tanaka at three o’clock in the morning, even if she was crazy hungry for tempura. But as it was already Christmas Eve and she knew that, like the cooks at the bodega restaurant, Mr. Tanaka would be up early roasting ducks or boning fish or whatever Japanese cooks did in the early morning before one of the busiest days of the year. As she and Frankie pulled up in front of the sushi bar, she realized her hunch was on target. Though the neon sign in a shape of a head-on shrimp was dark, the lights in the back of the restaurant were on.

“Drive around back,” she instructed.

Frankie complied, pulling up next to the Dumpster that serviced the entire strip mall, all of which was owned by the Tanakas, who lived in a suite of apartments upstairs with his father, her mother and a boatload of kids.

She was halfway out of the passenger seat when a tiny woman wielding a large knife rushed out of the back door.

“Who’s there?”

“Marisela,” she said, walking into the beam of Frankie’s headlights.

The woman frowned. She was four-foot, nine-inches of strength and determination, which had come in handy while she was raising seven kids ranging in age from six to twenty-four. With her husband, they ran a restaurant single-handedly and had interests in the adjacent businesses, including a nail salon, a restaurant supply house and a dry cleaner.

When it came to stereotypes, they had them all covered—or so Mr. Tanaka had told her once over a bottle of sake he’d shared with her and Lia when they’d come in to celebrate Lia’s new job at Titan. The funniest part? Mr. Tanaka wasn’t even Asian. He was as Cuban as Marisela’s parents, but had been raised by a Japanese stepfather.

“Marisela? What are you doing here?” she demanded. “No sushi at three a.m. unless you call first and pay double.”

Marisela grinned. She had, indeed, taken advantage of this deal once when she’d woken up with a raging sashimi craving.

“I know, I’m sorry, but you’re up and I need your help. It’s about my sister.”

Frankie got out of the car, raising his hands the minute the older woman tilted her knife in his direction.

“I don’t know him,” Mrs. Tanaka said.

“This is Frankie Vega. He’s a…friend,” Marisela assured.

She narrowed her almond-shaped eyes and jabbed the knife forward. “You look familiar. Come closer.”

“Not until you put away that machete.”

With a harrumph, she dropped the blade to her side. “Can’t be too careful. Lots of desperate people this time of year.”

She marched back into her kitchen. Marisela followed as Frankie locked up the car. Inside, it was eerily quiet, though she could hear someone rooting around in the walk-in.

“You need a big sushi order for a party?” she asked once they’d entered the deserted dining room.

“No,” Marisela said, “I need you to look at—”

Mrs. Tanaka cleared her throat. The woman had not raised over a half-dozen kids—three of whom were attending out-of-state colleges—without being a keen businesswoman.

“—we’d like two big platters,” Frankie said, joining them. “Do you deliver?”

“No delivery,” she said.

“Fine,” he agreed. “Do I pay now or when I pick up?”

Marisela could have kissed him. She had no cash on her, having lost her wallet in the explosion, something she hadn’t realized until this minute.