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
“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 shoulder.
“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
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
“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.
