“Excuse me?”
“Oh man, this is bad. I know it. I can feel it.”
“Cookie, you have to calm down. Seriously. Let’s do a little investigative work before we call in the National Guard, okay?”
“Right. Got it.” She placed a hand over her chest and forced herself to relax.
“Are you good?” I asked, unable to resist teasing her just a little. “Do you need a Valium?”
“No, I’m good,” she said, practicing the deep-breathing techniques we’d learned when we watched that documentary on babies being born underwater. “Smart-ass.”
That was uncalled for. “Speaking of my ass, we need to have a long talk about your impression of it.” We walked to the counter. “Skinny? Really?” The retro diner was decorated with round turquoise barstools and pink countertops. The server strolled toward us. Her uniform matched the light turquoise on the stools. “I’ll have you know—”
“Hey, there.”
I turned back to the server and smiled. Her name badge said NORMA.
“Would you girls like some coffee?”
Cookie and I glanced at each other. That was like asking the sun if it would like to shine. We each took a barstool at the counter and nodded like two bobbleheads on the dash of a VW van. And she called us girls, which was just cute.
“Then you’re in luck,” she said with a grin, “because I happen to make the best coffee this side of the Rio Grande.”
At that point, I fell in love. Just a little. Trying not to drool as the rich aroma wafted toward me, I said, “We’re actually looking for someone. Have you been on duty long?”
She finished pouring and sat the pot aside. “My goodness,” she said, blinking in surprise. “Your eyes are the most beautiful color I’ve ever seen. They’re—”
“Gold,” I said with another smile. “I get that a lot.” Apparently, gold eyes were a rarity. They certainly got a lot of comments. “So—”
“Oh, no, I haven’t been on duty long. You’re my first customers. But my cook has been here all night. He might be able to help. Brad!” She called back to the cook as only a diner waitress could.
Brad leaned through the pass-out window behind her. I’d expected to see a scruffy older gentleman in desperate need of a shave. Instead, I was met with a kid who looked no older than nineteen with a mischievous gaze and the flirty grin of youth as he appraised the older waitress.
“You called?” he said, putting as much purr into his voice as he could muster.
She rolled her eyes and gave him a motherly glare. “These women are looking for someone.”
His gaze wandered toward me, and the interest in his expression was nowhere near subtle. “Well, thank God they found me.”
Oh, brother. I tried not to chuckle. It would only encourage him.
“Have you seen a woman,” Cookie asked, her tone all business, “late thirties with short brown hair and light skin?”
He arched a brow in amusement. “Every night, lady. You gotta give me more than that.”
“Do you have a picture?” I asked her.
Her shoulders fell in disappointment. “I didn’t even think of that. I have one at my apartment, I’m sure. Why didn’t I think to bring it?”
“Don’t start flogging yourself just yet.” I turned to the kid. “Can I get your name and number?” I asked him. “And that of the server on duty before you as well,” I said, looking at Norma.
She tilted her head, hesitant. “I think I’d have to check with her before giving out that information, honey.”
Normally I had a totally-for-real laminated private investigator’s license that I could flash to help loosen people’s tongues, but Cookie dragged me out of my apartment so fast, I hadn’t thought to bring it. I hated it when I couldn’t flash people.
“I can tell you the server’s name,” the kid said, an evil twinkle in his eyes. “It’s Izzy. Her number’s in the men’s bathroom, second stall, right under a moving poem about the tragedy of man boobs.”
That kid missed his calling. “Breasts on men are tragic. How ’bout I come back tomorrow night? Will you be on duty?”
He spread his arms, indicating his surroundings. “Just living the dream, baby. Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
I took a few moments to scan the area. The diner sat on the corner of a busy intersection downtown. Or it would be busy during business hours. The dead silver screen star with the fedora kept staring at me, and I kept ignoring. Now was not the time to have a conversation with a guy nobody could see but me. After a few hefty gulps of some of the best coffee I’d ever had—Norma wasn’t kidding—I turned to Cookie. “Let’s look around a bit.”
She almost choked on her java. “Of course. I didn’t even think of that. Looking around. I knew I brought you for a reason.” She jumped off her stool and, well, looked around. It took every ounce of strength I had not to giggle.
“How about we try the restroom, Magnum,” I suggested before my willpower waned.
“Right,” she said, making a beeline for the storeroom. Oh well, we could start there.
A few moments later, we entered the women’s restroom. Thankfully, Norma had only raised her brows when we began searching the place. Some people might’ve gotten annoyed, especially when we checked out the men’s room, it being primarily for men, but Norma was a trouper. She kept busy filling sugar jars and watching us out of the corner of her eye. But after a thorough check of the entire place, we realized Elvis just wasn’t in the building. Nor was Cookie’s friend Mimi.
“Why isn’t she here?” Cookie asked. “What do you think happened?” She was starting to panic again.
“Look at the writing on the wall.”
“I can’t!” she yelled in full-blown panic mode.
“Use your inside voice.”
“I’m not like you. I don’t think like you or have your abilities,” she said, her arms flailing. “I couldn’t investigate publicly, much less privately. My friend is asking for my help, and I can’t even follow her one simple direction, I can’t … Blah, blah, blah.”
I considered slapping her as I studied the crisp, fresh letters decorating one wall of the women’s restroom, but she was on a roll. I hated to interrupt.
After a moment, she stopped on her own and glanced at the wall herself. “Oh,” she said, her tone sheepish, “you meant that literally.”
“Do you know who Janelle York is?” I asked.
That name was written in a hand much too nice to belong to a teen intent on defacing public property. Underneath it were the letters HANA L2-S3-R27 written in the same crisp style. It was not graffiti. It was a message. I tore off a paper towel and borrowed a pen from Cookie to write down the info.
“No, I don’t know a Janelle,” she said. “Do you think Mimi wrote this?”
I looked in the trash can and brought out a recently opened permanent marker package. “I’d say there’s a better-than-average chance.”
“But why would she tell me to meet her here if she was just going to leave a message on a wall? Why not just text it to me?”
“I don’t know, hon.” I grabbed another paper towel to search the garbage again but found nothing of interest. “I suspect she had every intention of being here and something or someone changed her mind.”
“Oh my gosh. So what should we do now?” Cookie asked, her panic rising again. “What should we do now?”
“First,” I said, washing my hands, “we are going to stop repeating ourselves. We sound ridiculous.”
“Right.” She nodded her head in agreement. “Sorry.”
“Next, you are going to find out as much as you can about the company Mimi works for. Owners. Board. CEOs. Blueprints of the building … just in case. And check out that name,” I said, pointing over my shoulder to the name on the wall.
Her gaze darted along the floor in thought, and I could almost see the wheels spinning in her head, her mind going in a thousand different directions as she slid her purse onto her shoulde
r.
“I’ll call Uncle Bob when he gets in and find out who has been assigned to Mimi’s case.” Uncle Bob was my dad’s brother and a detective for the Albuquerque Police Department, just as my dad was, and my work with him as a consultant for APD accounted for a large part of my income. I’d solved many a case for that man, as I had for my dad before him. It was easier to solve crimes when you could ask the departed who did them in. “I’m not sure who does missing persons at the station. And we’ll need to talk to the husband as well. What was his name?”
“Warren,” she said, following me out.
I made a mental list as we exited the restroom. After we paid for our coffee, I tossed Brad a smile and headed out the door. Unfortunately, an irate man with a gun pushed us back inside. It was probably too much to hope he was just there to rob the place.
Cookie stopped short behind me then gasped. “Warren,” she said in astonishment.
“Is she here?” he asked, anger and fear twisting his benign features.
Even the toughest cop alive grew weak in the knees when standing on the business end of a snub-nosed .38. Apparently, Cookie wasn’t graced with the sense God gave a squirrel.
“Warren Jacobs,” she said, slapping him upside the head.
“Ouch.” He rubbed the spot where Cookie hit him as she took the gun and crammed it into her purse.
“Do you want to get someone killed?”
He lifted his shoulders like a child being scolded by his favorite aunt.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“I went to your apartment complex after you called then followed you here and waited to see if Mimi would come out. When she didn’t, I decided to come in.”
He looked ragged and a little starved from days of worry. And he was about as guilty of his wife’s disappearance as I was. I could read people’s emotions like nobody’s business, and innocence wafted off him. He felt bad about something, but it had nothing to do with illegal activity. He probably felt guilty for some imagined offense that he believed made his wife leave. Whatever was going on, I had serious doubts any of it had to do with him.
“Come on,” I said, ushering them both back into the diner. “Brad,” I called out.
His head popped through the opening, an evil grin shimmering on his face. “Miss me already?”
“We’re about to see what you’re made of, handsome.”
He raised his brows, clearly up to the challenge, and twirled a spatula like a drummer in a rock band. “You just sit back and watch,” he said before ducking back and rolling up his sleeves. That kid was going to break more than his share of hearts. I shuddered to think of the carnage he would leave in his wake.
Three mucho grande breakfast burritos and seven cups of coffee later—only four of them mine—I sat with a man so sick with worry and doubt, my synapses were taking bets on how long he could keep his breakfast down. The odds were not in his favor.
He’d been telling me about the recent changes in Mimi’s behavior. “When did you notice this drastic change?” I asked, the question approximately my 112th. Give or take.
“I don’t know. I get so wrapped up. Sometimes I doubt I’d notice if my own children caught fire. I think about three weeks ago.”
“Speaking of which,” I said, looking up, “where are your kids?”
“What?” he asked, steering back to me. “Oh, they’re at my sister’s.”
A definite plus. This guy was a mess. Thanks to Norma, I’d graduated from taking notes on napkins to taking notes on an order pad. “And your wife didn’t say anything? Ask anything out of the ordinary? Tell you she was worried or felt like someone was following her?”
“She burned a rump roast,” he said, brightening a little since he could answer one of my questions. “After that, everything went to hell.”
“So, she takes her cooking very seriously.”
He nodded then shook his head. “No, that’s not what I meant. She never burns her roast. Especially her rumps.”
Cookie pinched me under the table when she saw me contemplating whether I should giggle or not. I flashed a quick glare then returned to my expression of concern and understanding.
“You’re a professional investigator, right?” Warren asked.
I squinted. “Define professional.” When he only stared, still deep in thought, I said, “No, seriously, I’m not like the other PIs on the playground. I have no ethics, no code of conduct, no taste in gun cleansers.”
“I want to hire you,” he said, unfazed by my gun-cleanser admission.
I was already planning to do the gig for Cookie pro bono—especially since I barely paid her enough to eat people food—but money would come in downright handy when the bill collectors showed up. “I’m very expensive,” I said, trying to sound a bit like a tavern wench.
He leaned in. “I’m very rich.”
I glanced at Cookie for confirmation. She raised her brows and nodded her head.
“Oh. Well, then, I guess we can do business. Wait a minute,” I said, my thoughts tumbling over themselves, “how rich?”
“Rich enough, I guess.” If his answers got any more vague, they’d resemble the food in school cafeterias everywhere.
“I mean, has anyone asked you for money lately?”
“Just my cousin Harry. But he always asks me for money.”
Maybe Cousin Harry was getting more desperate. Or more brazen. I took down Harry’s info, then asked, “Can you think of anything else? Anything that might explain her behavior?”
“Not really,” he said after handing his credit card to Norma. Neither Cookie nor I had enough to cover our extra coffees, much less our mucho grandes, and since I doubted they would take my bunny slippers in trade …
“Mr. Jacobs,” I said, putting on my big-girl panties, “I have a confession to make. I’m very adept at reading people, and no offense, but you’re holding out on me.”
He worked his lower lip, a remorseful guilt oozing out of his pores. Not so much an I-killed-my-wife-and-buried-her-lifeless-body-in-the-backyard kind of guilt but more of an I-know-something-but-I-don’t-want-to-tell kind of guilt.
With a loud sigh, he lowered his head into his palms. “I thought she was having an affair.”
Bingo. “Well, that’s something. Can you explain why you thought that?”
Too exhausted to put much effort into it, he lifted his shoulders into the slightest hint of a shrug. “Just her behavior. She’d grown so distant. I asked her about it, and she laughed, told me I was the only man in her life because she was not about to put up with another.”
In the grand scheme of things, it was quite natural for him to suspect adultery, considering how much Mimi had apparently changed.
“Oh, and a friend of hers died recently,” he said in afterthought. His brow crinkled as he tried to remember the details. “I’d completely forgotten. Mimi said she was murdered.”
“Murdered? How?” I asked.
“I’m sorry, I just don’t remember.” Another wave of guilt wafted off him.
“They were close?”
“That’s just it. They’d went to high school together, but they hadn’t kept in touch. Mimi never even mentioned her name until she died, so I was surprised at how much it affected her. She was devastated, and yet…”
“And yet?” I asked when he lost himself in thought again. This was just getting interesting. He couldn’t stop now.
“I don’t know. She was torn up, but not really upset about losing her friend. It was different.” His jaw worked as he rifled through his memories. “I really didn’t think much about it at the time, but quite frankly, she didn’t seem all that surprised that her friend was murdered. Then I asked her if she wanted to go to the funeral, and my god, the look on her face. You’d think I’d asked her to drown the neighbor’s cat.”
Admittedly, drowning the neighbor’s cat didn’t really clue me in as much as I would’ve liked. “So, she was angry?”
He blinked back to me a
nd stared. Like a long time. Long enough to have me sliding my tongue over my teeth to make sure I didn’t have anything in them.
“She was horrified,” he said at last.
Damn, I wished he could’ve remembered the woman’s name. And why Mimi wasn’t surprised when the woman was murdered. Murder is usually quite the surprise to everyone involved.
Speaking of names, I decided to ask about the one on the bathroom wall. Having found no foreign objects in my teeth, I asked, “Did Mimi ever mention a Janelle York?”
“That’s her,” he said in surprise. “That’s Mimi’s friend who was murdered. How did you know?”
I didn’t, but his thinking I did made me look good.
Chapter Two
DON’T CROSS THE STREAMS. NEVER CROSS THE STREAMS.
—BUMPER STICKER
“What are you listening to?” I asked, reaching over and turning down the radio as Cookie drove home. “This Little Light of Mine” was just way too happy for the current atmospheric conditions.
She hit the SCAN button. “I don’t know. It’s supposed to be classic rock.”
“Oh. So, did you buy this car used?” I asked, thinking back to the dead guy in her trunk and wondering how he got there. I still needed to figure out if Cookie had been a black widow before she met me. She did have black hair. And she’d recently cut it. A disguise, mayhap? Not to mention her early-morning, pre-coffee mean streak that made road rage a practical alternative for a healthier, happier Cookie. The departed rarely just hung out on Earth for no particular reason. Dead Trunk Guy most likely died violently, and if I was ever going to get him to cross, I’d have to figure out how and why.
“Yeah,” she said absently. “At least we know where to start with Janelle York. Should I call your uncle on this one? And maybe the medical examiner?”
“Absolutely,” I said supernonchalantly. “So, then, where did you buy it?”
She looked over at me, her brows knitting. “Buy what?”
I shrugged and looked out the window. “Your car.”
“At Domino Ford. Why?”
I flipped my palms up. “Just wondering. One of those weird things you think about on the way home from investigating a missing persons case.”