“Did he say what store he was working at?”
“No.”
“Thanks,” Ramona said.
Pretty Boy didn’t answer right away. He was distracted by a very attractive woman with long brown hair who hurried up the stairs and joined the just-seated party. He gave the woman a thorough once-over before returning his attention to Ramona.
“Yeah, no problem.”
“Do you know where I can find Brian Riley?”
“Nope, that I don’t know,” Pretty Boy said as he went to the end of the bar to take drink orders from a couple with Palm Springs tans.
Byers returned with the employment applications, slapped the papers on the bar in front of Ramona, and hurried away to greet arriving customers at the hostess area. Ramona copied down the information she needed and made her way to the kitchen, where she asked the executive chef and several of her assistants about Randy Velarde’s work in the kitchen. They characterized him as moody, inconsistent, and a pothead. The one cook who vaguely remembered Brian Riley put him in the same category.
Byers came bursting through the double doors just as Ramona was writing down names and phone numbers.
“You can’t be in here,” he sputtered angrily. “This is unacceptable.”
“I’m done,” Ramona said with a smile.
“Next time, come back after we’re closed.”
Ramona closed her notebook. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
Tranquilo Casitas, Space 39 was the address Randy Velarde had listed on his job application. It was a run- down trailer park on Agua Fria Street just inside the city limits, located between a sand-and-gravel operation and a small subdivision of “starter homes” on tiny lots. Hardly a tranquil place to live, it was a well-known trouble spot. Patrol officers were frequently called to the location to quell domestic disputes, break up gang fights, and investigate break-ins and burglaries that were usually drug-related.
On the way to the trailer park, Ramona ran a check on Randy Velarde. He had a clean sheet, but given the fact that he’d been fired for smoking marijuana on the job, Ramona doubted that Velarde was an upstanding citizen.
She pulled into Tranquilo Casitas and bumped her way down a paved asphalt lane that had so many potholes it resembled a bombed-out Baghdad roadway. All of the mobile homes in the park were older single-wides, and many were in disrepair. Some had plastic sheeting on the roof held in place by automobile tires. Others had broken windows covered with scrap plywood. A few were missing the skirting used to hide the concrete blocks that elevated the trailers off the ground.
The single-wide at space 39 was no better or worse than all the rest. On one side of the trailer jutted a half- finished covered porch made of plywood. Scrap lumber and construction trash littered the area. The hulk of an old Japanese subcompact pickup truck sat in the mud ruts of the parking space. Ramona climbed three rickety wooden steps that rose to the plywood front porch, and with her badge case open to display her shield and police ID, she knocked on the door. A young teenage girl, no more than five-one and a hundred pounds, opened up. She had an infant riding on her hip. The distinctive smell of grass wafted out the door.
“I’d like to speak to Randy Velarde,” said Ramona, who wasn’t at all interested in making a misdemeanor arrest on a pot possession charge.
“My brother’s not here right now. Why do you need to see him?”
Ramona studied the girl’s face. She looked clear-eyed and seemed alert to her surroundings. “I’m trying to locate someone Randy worked with last summer, Brian Riley.”
The girl pushed the baby’s tiny hand away from the front of her blouse. No more than four or five months old, the infant had a dirty face and a urine-stained diaper. “What did Brian do?”
“Nothing,” Ramona replied. “Do you know him?”
“Yeah, sort of. He stayed here for a couple nights last summer before he left town.”
“Where did he go?”
The baby started to cry. The girl pulled a pacifier from her pants pocket and stuck it in the baby’s mouth. “I don’t know. I didn’t talk to him much.”
“Why was he staying here?”
“I think he had a fight with his father or his stepmother. Something like that.”
“Would Randy know where Brian went?”
The baby spit out the pacifier. The girl picked it up, put it in her pocket, and shifted the baby to her other hip. “Maybe. Look, I’ve got to feed him.”
Ramona heard a toilet flush. “Where is Randy?”
The girl put her hand on the door. “In class at the community college. He doesn’t get home until after nine.”
“Is the baby’s mother working?”
“I’m his mother,” the girl said, jiggling the baby on her hip. “He’s my little
“Where’s
“Working.”
“What does she do?”
“She’s a housekeeper at the hospital.”
“Is there anyone here with you?”
“Javier, my
“What’s your name?” Ramona asked.
“Vanessa Velarde.”
“How old are you?”
“Fifteen.”
“Are you in school?”
Vanessa shook her head. “There’s no one to look after my
Ramona smiled understandingly. “A baby is a lot of responsibility to take on. Let me see what I can do to get you some help.”
Vanessa smirked and gave Ramona a sour look. “I don’t need any help. School sucks, so I dropped out. Next year I’ll get my GED and then I’ll get a job.” She closed the trailer door in Ramona’s face.
Ramona walked to her unit and drove away. In her years on the force she’d yet to meet any fifteen-year-olds who were mature enough to know what was best for them. On Agua Fria Street, she pulled to the side of the road, called the lieutenant in charge of the juvenile division, and gave her the heads-up on Vanessa Velarde. The lieutenant promised to contact social services and request that a caseworker make a home visit.
Ramona knew it could be days or weeks before a caseworker showed up at the trailer to determine if Vanessa and her baby needed protective services. She glumly wondered if any good would come from bringing social services into the picture. Even with help, being a low-income, fifteen-year-old dropout with a new baby was a hell of a deep hole to climb out of.
The Santa Fe Community College, a relatively new institution of higher education established some twenty- odd years ago in cramped, temporary quarters in a Cerrillos Road business park, was now located outside town on a modern campus near a rapidly growing residential area that fronted I-25.
At the administration office Ramona was directed to Ms. Carpenter’s classroom, where some twenty culinary arts students, all dressed in loose-fitting cook’s jackets, stood at a food prep area watching their instructor demonstrate how to properly bone an uncooked chicken. Ramona, a notoriously bad cook with little interest in the subject, found Ms. Carpenter’s skill with a knife impressive. Carpenter made short order of the task without slicing any of her fingers. After she’d finished the demonstration, Ramona pulled her aside and asked her to ID Randy Velarde.
