Melissa Bourbon Ramirez - Lola Cruz 01 - Living the Vida Lola (6 page)

“Yeah,” Reilly said. “That’s weird.”

I’d almost forgotten she was there. I nodded, hardly daring to blink for fear of breaking the connection between Jack and me. “A little
too
weird.”

Jack pulled back. “What, do you think I kidnapped her or something, and conveniently dropped my card as I left the scene?”

No, the thought had never
seriously
crossed my mind. “Did you?”

He shook his head matter-of-factly. “If I was a kidnapper, I’d be a hell of a lot smarter than
that
.”

“So, Emily’s not, say, in the back of your car? Like Greta?”

He looked at me like I was crazy. “Like Greta? What?”

“Nothing,” I said quickly, chastising myself and my mouth for spitting out the words before my good sense could kick in. “Never mind.”

“So what do you know about your missing woman?”

“Not much so far, but I’m a private investigator. I’m paid to ferret out the truth.”

“So you said on your message. Lola, PI. Catchy.”

It was more seductive than catchy, coming from his mouth.
“I go by Dolores at work.” Can’t imagine why I needed to clarify that, but I wanted him to take me seriously, and my name somehow factored into that.

“Dolores,” he muttered, my name rolling off his tongue. But he gave his head a little shake and said, “Can’t do it. You’ll always be Lola to me.”

My palms grew clammy. Would I always be Lola, as in his buddy’s little sister, or could I be Lola, the woman who haunted his dreams the way he’d haunted mine all these years?

He tapped two fingertips against the table, his gaze unwavering. “So, how’s Sergio, Lola?”

“History,” I said, bristling at the change of subject. “Ancient.”

He nodded and looked satisfied. “Ferreted out the truth about him. Glad to hear it.”

Reilly cleared her throat. “So, I take it you two know each other.”

“That’s right,” Jack said, his lips curving up. “We go way back. High school.”

I was lost in his brown hair, those amazing eyes, his swarthy Irish complexion. I suddenly questioned my motives for sabotaging Megan Crabtree’s soup. Maybe I’d wanted Jack for myself after he’d dumped Greta Pritchard.

I swallowed, tamped down my wandering thoughts, and forced myself back to business. “So you’re telling me that you don’t remember talking to Emily Diggs?”

He shook his head. Was it my imagination, or did he look a little apologetic? “I didn’t talk to her, but I’ll look into it from my end.”

I just nodded. What else could I say?
Are you dating anyone? Still single? Wanna have your way with me?
I had lots of questions for him, but not many were related to my case.

He smiled at me as if he knew just what I was thinking.

Reilly gathered up her purse. “Um, I gotta go.”

Jack notched his chin up. “Nice meeting you, Reilly.” Then he looked at me again, a little too intently.

I gulped. “Okay,” I said, standing up. Time to end this little reunion. “It’s been a blast from the past. Thanks for stopping by, Jack.”

“How’s Antonio?” he asked, rising and walking by my side toward the door.

Reilly jerked to a halt. “Antonio? You know him?” She slapped her thigh. “Of course you know him. High school buddies, right?”

Jack nodded.

“I’m going out with him, you know. Lola’s setting it up.” She threw her arms up and shimmied. “Salsa dancing.”

Jack’s smile deepened and spread to his eyes. He looked back to me. “Is that right?”

“Antonio’s fine,” I said, going back to his question. “He basically runs the restaurant now.”

“I keep meaning to stop by. I’ll give him a call.”

“Yeah, you do that,” I said, heading down the stairs behind Reilly. “See you around, Callaghan.”

“You can bet on it, Cruz,” he said, and I gulped.

When I glanced over my shoulder, he was watching me, that cockeyed grin still on his face.

W
hen I tiptoed into my mother’s kitchen a short time later, she was sifting through dried pinto beans, her back to me, completely absorbed in her task. Antonio and I shared the flat upstairs, but Mami’s kitchen was always my first stop. She was separating the good beans from the bad, pulling out any dirt clods and tiny rocks. See, our purposes in life weren’t actually so different. I just worked on helping good people stay away from bad people. For Mami, it was separating good beans from rocks.

I watched as she grew still and seemed to sniff the air. For the millionth time in my life, I wondered if she was a
curandera
or if she really did have eyes buried under her dark brown hair like she’d always told us. Even though I knew it was coming, when she whipped her head around to face me in a full-on ambush, I yelped. “I hate it when you do that!”

Her thick Spanish accent colored her speech. “You are late tonight,
mi’ja
. I thought maybe you were dead.”

My grandfather ambled into the kitchen before I could answer, the clip-clap of his cane hitting the linoleum at regular intervals. We were a multigenerational family living under
one roof. But constant company—despite an endless supply of food—was getting old.

I kissed Abuelo’s cheek before turning back toward the door to head upstairs. Turns out I didn’t want Cruz companionship or food tonight.

“Mi’ja,”
he greeted in a whispery tone. All he needed was cotton stuffed in his cheeks like Marlon Brando, and the
Godfather
image would be complete.

“Dolores,” Mami said, gearing up for her nightly rant. “I do not like this job you do. You come home so late—”

I filled a glass with ice and topped it off with water. “Mami, it’s my job—”

“You will get pneumonia drinking such cold water.” She jabbed a finger in the air, targeting the glass in my hand. “That is too much ice. Too much.”

That sounded more like a curse than a prediction. I stared at her in awe. She had a knack for beginning one conversation and switching topics midway.

I downed my ice water. If I could handle her, I could surely handle pneumonia.

She rolled her eyes to the ceiling and turned to finish sorting the beans. A moment later she was facing me again. “We have to work on Chely’s
quinceañera
. Tía Marina is panicking. She tells me Chely won’t agree on anything.”

¡Ay, caramba!
I’d forgotten. My cousin’s fifteenth birthday party was only a week away now. The
quinceañera
was supposed to symbolize Chely entering womanhood, but the planning had her acting like a six-year-old, and that’s just how my aunt treated her most of the time. And so the plans were falling apart.

They both wanted the coming-of-age party to be perfect, but Tía Marina’s idea of perfect (baby pink, hearts and butterflies)
was
un poquito diferente
from Chely’s idea of perfect (a hip-hop extravaganza with henna tattoos and classic Run DMC from the DJ).

My head started pounding. I had to learn to say no. “I have a new case. A missing person.”

Mami pointed her wooden spoon at me. “You are a missing person—from this family.”

Oh boy, the guilt was thick today. “No, Mami, I’m not.”

She rolled her eyes again. “
¿Por qué quieres ser una detectiva?”

Why do I want to be a detective? Was she kidding? “Mami, it’s all I’ve ever wanted. You know that.” I mean really, she asked the same question nearly every day.

“Yo sé, yo sé
. It has been your dream since you were fourteen.” She jabbed her wooden spoon at me. “I paid for all the—” She made a face. “—kung fu.
Pero,
why can’t you be a teacher? Like Gracie? Then you would be married instead of chasing bad men all over town, and you could help with Abuelita’s.” She waved her spoon around. “You are
una mujer
. A woman. This is not a job for a woman.”

Ay, ay, ay.
I made the sign of the cross. God, give me strength. Mami’s male-dominated view of the world made me crazy. And her memory was conveniently spotty. “First of all, Mami, I’ve always paid for my own kung fu training. And second, this is what I want to do. I don’t need to troll for a husband.
¿Entiendes?
”

“¡No! ¡No entiendo!”
She looked up to the ceiling, waving her spoon at God. “
Ay,
this one will send me to an early grave. Why does my daughter torment me?”

She jabbed a fistful of dried pintos at me. “No man wants his woman to be a—” She made another face. “—detective.
No es apropiado
.”

It wasn’t appropriate to her. To me, it was essential. But I
frowned anyway. Maybe she was right. Men probably didn’t want someone who could kick ass. If I had to choose between being a detective and being married, which would I pick?

Tough one, although I didn’t buy my mother’s theory that the two were mutually exclusive. Still, the question stumped me. I suspected a man like Jack Callaghan would want a Cinderella chick, one he could love and leave easily.

But who knows. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe he craved a warrior princess. And here I was: Xena, in the flesh.

I held my palm up to my mother, not willing to let her guilt me into doubting my career choice. “Mami,
es mi vida
.” Then I chugged another glass of ice water. It
was
my life. And I could drink ice water if I wanted to.

So there. I know, so mature.

“
Sí, sí.
It is
your
life.
Pero,
you came from my womb.”

Oh, no. I sighed. I couldn’t argue with her about the womb.

She dropped the beans and moved to the stove, flinging her hand back and forth in the air as if shooing away a fly. “We are running out of time on the
quinceañera.
”

My shoulders slumped. “I know. I’ll talk to Chely.”

“Hey.” Antonio sauntered in from the back door. Mami’s kitchen was always his first stop, too—mainly because he lacked the grocery-shopping gene and needed to fill his belly before he went upstairs to our sparse refrigerator.

Why was it men seemed inherently unable to stock a refrigerator? Antonio was genetically incapable of shopping for anything except beer or stuff for the restaurant. Aside from the fact that Abuelita’s was his passion, I still hadn’t figured out how he managed the place without running out of food.

He crunched on a
chicharrón,
grabbing a second piece of crispy pork skin before planting a kiss on my mother’s cheek.
Abuelo popped them into his mouth one after another, stopping only when Antonio leaned in to give him a hug.

My mother finally noticed.
“¡No más, Papá!”
she said, slapping his hand. “Leave some for the rest of us.”

Abuelo stamped his cane on the floor.
“Tu no eres mi madre, Magdalena.”
He reached around her and snatched another
chicharrón
before she could slap his hand away again. Then he raised his lip in a victorious smile.

They began a tug-of-war over the bowl, and I seized the opportunity to start backing out of the kitchen. Mami was in a foul mood. Definitely time to escape.

I turned the handle on the utility room door, ready to make a dash for the back door. Slowly. Quietly. I was almost through when she flung her arm out and pointed at me.
“¡Basta!”

I stopped short. “I’m tired.”

“We are not finished talking.” She poured the beans into a pot, added water, threw in half an onion, a few cloves of garlic, and turned on the stove.
“Abrazo, mi’jo,”
she crooned to Antonio.

Sure, I got lectured and he got hugs. She could overlook the string of vapid women that paraded through his life, as long as she came first in his eyes. I shook my head and tapped my foot impatiently.

Antonio gave her a quick hug back before crunching another
chicharrón
.

“You look terrible with that goatee, you know,” she said. “It is not a surprise no respectable girl wants you.” She reached up and squeezed his cheeks together, softening the criticism.

“Drop it, Mami. I’m not shaving.”

She shook her head and went back to her pintos, pouring salt into her palm and then adding it to the pot. Enough said for today, but we all knew the topic of Tonio’s goatee was far from dead. His goatee, my career—she’d rant for the rest of
her life and never give up the fight. Only Gracie was safe, bless her perfect heart.

“Hey, Lola.” Antonio grinned at me.

That Cheshire cat smile. Oooh, I knew immediately that he was up to something. “Hey,” I said.

I picked up my bag and started to back out again—for real, this time. My mother could lecture me about my career and my cousin’s
quinceañera
tomorrow.

Antonio spoke to our mother, but he looked at me. “Mami, I heard from an old high school friend just now. Jack Callaghan. You remember him?”

The hair on my neck stood up. Had Jack called Antonio the second I left the bar?

“
Por supuesto. El guapo
. Of course I remember.” She moved to the counter, picked up a ball of tortilla dough, and slapped it between her hands, flattening it into a puffy disk.

Antonio drew out his next sentence. “I invited him here for dinner Sunday.”

“What?” I wiggled my finger in my ear. Surely I hadn’t heard right. “He’s a
mujeriego,
remember, Mami? Always looking for a new woman.” And after seeing him again tonight after so many years, I was pretty sure I’d welcome the opportunity to be one of those women, given enough time.

“I am certain that he has grown up, just like Antonio.”

I held back my laugh. My brother hadn’t grown up. He was still looking for a good time and not much else. There was no reason to think Jack wasn’t still exactly the same. “No way,” I said. “He can’t come here.”

My mother threw down her tortilla dough and gaped at me. “No way?
Dolores Falcón Cruz.
What manners are these?”

Ah shit. Pissing my mother off was not the way to keep my tummy full.

“We will not turn away a friend at our door,” Mami said.
She picked up her dough again. I grimaced at her strength—I suspected that she wished it was my head she was slapping between her palms. “I raised you better than that.”