“You mean the fake psychic was a setup?” I asked – so appalled, I was almost speechless. Almost. “I can’t believe you’d set me up like that.”
“And how does that feel?”
Again, I was almost struck speechless. Almost. “Uncle Bob, we were doing this for your own good. You needed a swift kick in the rear, and you got one. If you’d just asked her out in the first place —”
“Is this an example of that whole ‘blaming the victim’ thing you’re always ranting about?”
I shut my mouth, refusing to answer.
He turned to Cookie, who stood in both shame and humiliation. I sucked so bad sometimes. I thought for sure this would work.
“Well?” he asked her, holding out a hand.
“Well?” she asked back.
“We going out or what?”
Her mouth opened, then closed again. Then opened. Then —
“Yes!” I said for her, sidling up closer to my curmudgeonly uncle. “Yes, you are going out.”
A pink hue blossomed over Cookie’s face. “Yes, we’re going out, Robert. Right now before you change your mind.”
His grateful expression warmed the cockles of my heart. As Cookie retrieved her purse from another onlooker, I wrapped my arm in his and leaned my head against his shoulder. “So it worked, then.”
He pressed his mouth together under his trim mustache, loath to admit it. “Yes,” he said at last, “it worked. But you guys sure went to a lot of trouble for nothing.”
Cookie had stepped forward, and I handed him off to her. “Not nothing,” she said, rising onto her toes and kissing his cheek. “Not even close to nothing.”
A fiery blush suffused Ubie’s face the exact moment a wave of nausea washed over me. I took that as my cue to skedaddle.
After Garrett dropped Reyes and me off, I brushed my teeth, washed my face, and put on my favorite pair of pajamas. The bottoms were baby blue with little red fire engines all over them, and the bright crimson top read LIFE’S SHORT. BITE HARD. After forcing a goodnight kiss on Mr. Wong’s cheek, I strolled to my room and pulled back my Bugs Bunny comforter.
My room felt so big now. So open. It was weird.
I snuggled deep into the covers, adjusted my pillow until it was just right, then lay down until the top of my head rested on Reyes’s shoulder. He was in the exact same position, only upside down on his bed. We lay facing each other, nose to nose, our breaths mingling. The scent of him reminded me of rain in a forest. I raised a hand to his face, let my fingers brush down his cheek and over his mouth.
He did the same, pushing my hair back with a large hand, tracing my jaw with his fingertips. “Don’t think that just because there’s no wall between us you can take advantage of me.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t dare.”
He fell asleep cradling my head, his heat rolling over me in scalding waves, and yet I wasn’t too hot. I fell asleep wondering how that was even possible.
I could sense the sun coming up over the horizon the next morning but fought my body’s natural inclination to rise with the chickens. It was still early; I was certain of it. Surely I could get in another half hour before duty – or the need to visit the little señorita’s room – called. Then I felt it. The undeniable knowledge that someone was looking at me. Someone was sitting and breathing and fidgeting in my space bubble.
I let my lids drift open to reveal the smiling face of a little girl.
“She’s awake!” she screamed, and I bound upright, trying to blink the sleep from my eyes.
A little boy ran into the room and scrambled up on the bed beside his sister. “What happened to your wall?” he asked, his huge dark eyes wide with wonder.
But now the little girl sat with her tiny arms crossed over her chest, stabbing me with a scalding glower, albeit an adorable one. Oh, yeah, she wanted me dead.
“Why do you have two beds?” the boy asked next. He was bouncing on his knees, clearly wanting to jump. “You look older than the last time we saw you,” he added. “And you have bedhead.”
“Oh, my goodness.” A woman rushed into the room to scoop up the two children and set them on the floor. “I am so sorry, Charley.”
I waved a dismissive hand at Bianca. She was married to Reyes’s best – and pretty much only – friend, Amador. The two little munchkins at her side, one beaming and one glaring the heat of a thousand suns, were their children, Ashley and Stephen.
Amador walked in, nodding his head in approval. “Hey, Charley. I like what you’ve done with the place.”
“Thanks,” I said, climbing out of bed and smoothing my pajamas. Nothing like greeting guests in my pajamas.
Amador read my T-shirt, raised his brows playfully, then said, “Reyes told Ashley about the you-know-what.”
I walked around the bed and gave his lovely wife a hug. “The you-know-what?”
“You know,” he said, coming in for his own hug before I scooped up the rascal doing jumping jacks at my feet. “The, er, Post-it note.”
“Oh.” I looked down at her.
“No, ’jita,” Bianca said, kneeling down to scold her daughter, “you don’t glare at people that way. It’s very rude.”
Reyes walked in, two cups of coffee in hand and an impish expression on his face.
Amador slapped him on the back. “No, I do,” he said, surveying the area. “I like the blending of two cultures, the definitive lines separating the two: minimalist and, well, not minimalist.”
“Oh, heavens,” Bianca said, “you will never get hired at Architectural Digest if you don’t learn the lingo.” She glanced around my area of our connected rooms and nodded, having made up her mind. “Minimalist and lavish.”
I laughed softly. “I like it.”
She took Stephen from me so I could accept the coffee Reyes had brought me. She must know me better than I thought.
“Can we do our beds like this, Mama?” Stephen asked Bianca. “Pleeeeeease?”
I hid a look of amusement behind my cup as I took a sip. Then I stifled a shiver of delight.
“Are you going to say yes?” Ashley asked me accusingly. Her lower lip quivered as I bent down to her.
“I’m still thinking about it. What do you think I should say?”
“I think you should say no. You’re too old for him anyway.”
“How old do I look?”
“I’m so sorry,” Bianca said, her smile suddenly nervous.
“Is that yours?” She pointed to a tiny doll made out of strands of soft rope. My sister, Gemma, had given it to me when we were kids.
“It sure is.” I took it down as Reyes and Amador discussed the finer points of Reyes’s décor, or lack thereof, in his room. Clearly my side outshone his, and Amador felt bad for his friend. It probably wouldn’t take long for my stuff to leach over to his side anyway. Poor guy. He was the one who took down the wall. He removed its only protection.
“Do you like it?” I asked Ashley. Maybe I could bribe her into liking me. I was so not above bribery.
“I guess.”
“I got two words for you, pendejo,” Amador said to Reyes. “Eight ball.”
Reyes tossed me a grin before he and Amador went to his luxurious pool table in the room adjoining his living room. Barely visible from where I stood, it was carved from dark woods with a rich cream-colored top. Good thing he knew the owner of the building. Neighbors rarely appreciated the noise of a billiards table in an apartment building.
It was good to see Reyes’s friends over. His life was slowly becoming normal. Or, well, as normal as his life could become. I couldn’t say returning to normal, because as far as I could tell, he had never had anything near a normal life. I studied him from my vantage point and wondered what he would consider normal. Was it a family with 2.5 kids? He had been a prince. A general in hell. A severely abused child. An inmate. Could he adjust to what we humans considered normal?
I sat on the bed and patted the mattress beside me. Ashley climbed up and took the doll to stu
dy it.
“What if I said yes to Reyes? Would you be very mad?”
She shrugged one slender shoulder. “A little.”
“Because he is supposed to marry you?”
“Yes. He promised.”
“Well, what if I only kept him for a little while? And when you grow up and become as pretty as your mother, you can decide then if you still want someone as old and grumpy as Reyes Farrow.”
The corners of her mouth tipped up. “He’ll always be pretty, though.”
She knocked that one out of the park on her first swing. “Yes, he will always be pretty.”
“Boys can’t be pretty,” Stephen said, squirming out of his mother’s grip. She lowered him to the floor and he ran to see what the menfolk were up to.
“Can so!” I called out to him.
Bianca chuckled and sat beside her daughter. “Sometimes, God gives us something even better than what we want. You have to have faith that he will give you someone just as pretty as Uncle Reyes.”
She eyed her mother, bewildered. “There’s not anyone as pretty as Uncle Reyes.”
And another homerun for the little lady in the pink sundress. She was good. I might have some serious competition when she got older.
After a long and fruitless talk with Ashley, I took a quick shower, dressed in my best PI attire, then waited for my neighbor – my other neighbor – to make her morning appearance.
And waited.
And waited.
I made more coffee, said my good-byes to the Sanchez family, and waited some more.
“You’re worried about her,” Reyes said, accepting a cup of coffee from my side of the playground. He looked good on my side. He had dressed in a pair of jeans, white T-shirt, and heavy boots. His dark hair, still wet from his own shower, curled over his forehead and around an ear. I longed to tuck it behind said ear, but it was just an excuse to touch him, to feel him beneath my fingertips.
But Cookie was officially very late. It was almost eight o’clock. She was always over by six thirty. Seven at the latest, and Amber had to be to school in about five seconds.
“Go check on her,” he said, crossing back to his apartment. “I have an order coming in.”
“Wait a minute,” I said, my tone a little sharp.
He turned back to me, one brow hitched in question.
“That is my cup you’re taking, mister.”
His dimples appeared as he walked back to me. “I’ll give you a dollar for it.”
“It’s my very favorite cup.”
He stepped closer until his mouth was at my ear, until his warmth coiled around me and soaked my skin. “Two.”
“I’ve had it since I was a kid.”
After a quick glance at it, he asked, “Your cup predicted there would be a television show called Downton Abbey?”
“You don’t know that. Downton Abbey could be a real place in England.”
“It has the show’s logo.”
“It could be the house’s logo. Like its crest. The show used it for authenticity.”
“And a picture of the cast.”
“That could be anybody. It’s grainy.”
He set the cup down and leaned onto the counter, bracing one hand on either side of me. “Why don’t you tell me what you really want?”
“Your mouth on mine,” I said before I could stop myself.
And before I could retract my request, he bent his head and slanted his mouth across mine.
“I’m late!” Cookie barreled in, her clothes askew and her hair a tad more spiky than usual. She rushed over, took my cup of coffee, and downed it in three gulps. It was still pretty warm, so I couldn’t help but be impressed.
Then she noticed the fact that I was wearing a suit made of hunky man flesh.
“Oh, Reyes, hi.” She stumbled back.
“I’m late!” Amber said, following in her mother’s footsteps. Her hair hung in tangles down her back, her long limbs covered in wrinkled and mismatched clothes.
“Oh, my god,” I said to Cookie. “You’re wearing off on your daughter.”
Reyes straightened when Amber’s eyes alighted on him. She beamed brilliantly at him. “Hey, Aunt Charley,” she said, her focus fixed on Reyes. “Hey, Reyes.”
“That is Mr. Farrow to you,” Cookie said, realizing the depths of Amber’s attraction. “Go get your backpack. I’ll drop you off before I go to work.”
Amber lowered her head. “Okay.”
When she left, I asked, “She still hasn’t fessed up?”
“No.”
“She will, hon. I know Amber. It will eat her alive.” Cookie nodded, but before she could leave, I asked, “How was your date last night?”
A soft pink blossomed over her face.
“That good, huh?”
“It was —” She thought about her words carefully. “— nice.”
“I’m glad. You guys didn’t, like, make out or anything, did you? Because that’s just wrong. He’s my uncle, Cook. How am I going to be able to look at you?”
She turned and said over her shoulder, “I’m not discussing this with you right now.”
“Okay, but that means we’ll just have to go into more detail about it later. You’ll be embarrassed.”
Reyes chuckled. We stayed behind. Put off work as long as we could and talked. Just talked. We laughed about Amador’s poor sportsmanship when he’d lost miserably to Reyes that morning, about Ashley’s insistence that Reyes wait for her, about Cookie’s blush and Amber’s guileless adoration of him. It was nice. Everything about that morning was nice.
I knew it was too good to last. My forty-eight hours were up, and I still had no clue where Phillip’s girlfriend was. Not that I was about to hand her over to the bad guys, but I needed to talk to Agent Carson. To fill her in on my latest findings and my newest plan. Surely it would work. What could go wrong?
So, after a wonderful morning with my main squeeze, I realized time and tide wait for no man. Or woman. I called Special Agent Carson on my way over to my office. I couldn’t tell her what Phillip Brinkman told me just yet. I needed to talk to his girlfriend first, to get her side of things. If Carson pulled the plug on everything because of Emily’s testimony, the Mendozas would know that Brinkman was just trying to get out from under him. Everything would be lost.
It amazed me that he would rather go to prison than turn on them. That told me just what kind of people the Mendozas were, and that they were not to be trifled with.
Then again, I liked trifling. Trifling was my middle name. Charlotte Trifling Davdison. Let Papa Mendoza bring the fight to me. I was ready. And I had a fab supernatural entity who could sever his spine in the blink of an eye, should it come to that. So there.
“Carson,” she said when she picked up. I liked it. Clear. Concise. To the point.
I decided to try it myself. “Davidson.”
A loud sigh filtered to me. “Charley, you called me. You can’t just say Davidson.”
“What are you, the phone greeting police?”
“What did you get for me?”
“I didn’t get you anything,” I said, starting to panic. “Are we exchanging friendship bracelets already? I can go get one now.”
“What do you have?”
“I had chlamydia once. Thank God for antibiotics.”
“Did you talk to Brinkman? What did you get off him? Have you heard from his men? Have they threatened you again?”
She was so serious. “Yes, I talked to Brinkman, and no, they haven’t threatened me again. I need a little more time. And I need to talk to Brinkman’s girlfriend, Emily Michaels.”
“Charley, I told you, that is not possible.”
“Do you remember the last two – no, three – cases I closed for you? Where’s the trust?”
“I trust you implicitly. But the men who want Emily Michaels dead are not quite so trustworthy. And either way, I’m not giving you her location.”
“Then can you set up a meet?”
&n
bsp; After a long, thoughtful moment, she said, “If it will help this case, I can do that. It will take a couple of days.”
“I only have a couple of hours. I need to see her now.”
She cupped a hand over her phone, and I could only imagine the expletives flying around her. “Give me thirty minutes. I’ll see if I can perform miracles.”
“I have complete faith in you,” I said, giddy with hope. Once I had Emily’s side of things, maybe I could talk some sense into her, since it didn’t work with her boyfriend. There was simply no reason for him to go to prison for a murder that never even happened. He might have to do some time for money laundering, but I’d leave that up to Carson.
I headed down to the restaurant to grab some breakfast when Cookie came in. She seemed devastated. We sat in a corner booth so we could talk, not that anyone was in. The place didn’t open until eleven, and it was barely eight thirty.
Since none of the servers were in yet, we were served by a very sexy cook whose dimples seemed to calm Cookie down a bit.
“She broke down on the way to school,” Cook said, her heart hurting. “That incident with Quentin really scared her.”
“It scared me, too,” I said, stirring my coffee.
“I guess I didn’t realize how serious it got. I was just so upset that she would skip school and leave campus like that.”
“I was a little surprised as well, but they really like each other. It has me a tad concerned.”
“Why?” Cookie asked, surprised. “Quentin is a lovely boy.”
“And he’s four years older than she is.”
“Three. Amber will be thirteen next week.” She shook her head. “It’s so hard to believe that. She’s just growing up so fast.”
“I’m a little surprised you aren’t more concerned.”
“I would be, normally. He is too old for her, but have you seen that girl?”
Amused, I said, “She’s a knockout, I know. Which is reason enough for my concern.”
“Yeah, but again, Quentin is wonderful, Charley. I’ve never seen Amber so smitten. Except when she sees Reyes Farrow.”
“She does like them older, doesn’t she? Speaking of Quentin, what about the girl in the cable car? Miranda. What did you find out about her?”