Three
Mary tried Jake’s cell phone number again. No answer.
“Dammit!” she said.
He had told her he was going on a special assignment and that communication would be sporadic, but this was ridiculous. They hadn’t talked or texted in a week, and that was almost unheard of for Jake. He contacted her every day. And who could blame him? After all, she was pure sugar to men, highly addictive.
Yeah, right, Mary.
She set her phone back in the cup holder. She didn’t necessarily want to admit it, but she was worried. He was the responsible one. Always keeping his phone charged, his clothes folded and put away, paying his bills on time. Now that she thought about it, his fastidiousness was downright fucking obnoxious.
And yet at the same time, it was so damned cute.
She pushed away worries about Jake, closed the files on the Jenkins case, and left the office.
She left Venice and in a few minutes was in Santa Monica, pulling her Honda Accord into the driveway of the house where her Aunt Alice lived. It was a nice home, a little bigger than average for most houses in this part of Santa Monica. Alice Parthum had bought the house back in the 1950s with her husband and had kept it after he died. It was a neat little Mediterranean number with a tile roof and wood shutters painted green.
Aunt Alice had raised Mary after her parents died, and now that the woman was getting up there in years, Mary made a point to stop by every few days.
When Mary let herself into the house, she found her aunt in purple spandex, bent over, while a thin, dark-skinned man in tight shorts and no shirt stood behind her. He had long, black hair pulled back into a ponytail.
His hands were on her hips.
“And open yourself, Alice, wide open,” the man said with a thick Indian accent.
Mary raised an eyebrow as she watched the man stand fearlessly directly behind her aunt’s buttocks.
“Careful there, buddy, you’re in the blast zone,” Mary said.
From her bent position, Alice glanced up at Mary.
“If you want to make my pain go away, Sanji,” Alice said, her face red and voice straining. “Get rid of her.”
The man stepped back from Alice—
a bit warily
, Mary thought.
“I think we are done for today,” he said. “We seem to have lost our concentration.”
He picked up his yoga mat and walked past Mary, nodding to her. He let himself out through the front door.
“Nice going,” Alice said, slowly rising to a standing position. “You can even stress out a yoga instructor.”
Alice Parthum was around seventy years old, a short, solid woman with naturally curly, gray hair and bright-green eyes. She was in pretty good shape for a woman her age, and the tight-fitting yoga outfit actually flattered her.
“Since when do you do yoga?” Mary said. “You’re about as flexible as plywood. I haven’t seen you bent over that far since you saw a nickel under the couch.”
Alice plopped into a wingback chair and took a sip from a water bottle.
“Oh, I just wanted to hire a man to help me out physically,” Alice said. “You know, like you do for sex.”
She took a longer drink from her water bottle, and Mary heard the ice cubes rattle inside.
“Speaking of men, I can’t get a hold of Jake,” Mary said, taking a seat on the couch next to Alice. “He’s not returning my calls.”
“Maybe he considers you a phone solicitor,” Alice said. “Everyone hates those people.”
“I thought yoga was supposed to make you more peaceful,” Mary said. “Nonviolent.”
“Once Sanji starts instructing me in more than yoga, then I’ll be very relaxed, trust me,” Alice said. She shot a wink at Mary.
“Way too much information,” Mary said. “No, Jake said he was on some sort of investigation and that he wouldn’t be in touch for a while. But still, I’m a little worried.”
She drummed her fingers on the arm of her chair.
“So what the hell do you think he’s doing?” Alice said. “Or should we be asking
who
Jake is doing?”
“Your sensitivity is admirable,” Mary said. “He could be in a ditch somewhere with a closed-head injury, and you’ve got him in a condo in Vegas with a stripper.”
“He’s got a condo in Vegas?” Alice said.
“Figure of speech.”
Mary saw movement out of the corner of her eye and looked out the living room’s picture window as a guy on an old-fashioned cruiser bicycle rode by the front of the house.
“Look, Mary. Jake is a homicide cop with LAPD,” Alice said. “He carries a badge and a gun. I seriously doubt anything has happened to him. He’s got a good head on his shoulders.”
She looked at Mary.
“Except when it comes to women.”
Four
The official office of a private investigator was a place prospective clients feared. Mary guessed, if she had to put a number to it, about seventy-five percent of new clients requested an initial meeting somewhere other than her office.
Which sort of pissed her off. After all, she paid monthly rent on the little office in a swanky building that also housed a law firm, an editorial house, and some mystery businesses that had to be tax dodges because Mary never saw anyone coming or going from them.
So, seventy-five percent of consultations involving a new client led Mary to the Coffee Bean, just across the street and down a few blocks from her office.
Today, there were only two homeless guys in the coffee shop. One of them was playing chess, the other was staring at a pile of newspapers stacked next to the garbage can. Waiting for breaking news.
She got herself a low-fat cappuccino and saved the receipt for tax purposes. She thought of adding a “one” before the $4.50 price: $14.50 for a cappuccino in Los Angeles wasn’t out of the question. But she held back. No need to commit tax fraud.
Yet.
Mary’s client walked in the door and made a beeline for the counter. Even though she’d never met her in person, Mary knew it was the woman who had called her. She was a strikingly beautiful Latina woman with long, black hair, beautiful eyes, and a figure Mary would kill for.
Armed now with a small black coffee, the woman turned and scanned the room, caught Mary’s eye, then approached her.
“Ms. Cooper?” she said.
Mary stood and shook her hand. “Elyse?” she said.
“Thank you for meeting me here,” said the woman, who Mary knew to be Elyse Ramirez.
“No problem,” Mary said. “I was having my office fumigated anyway. It always smells like bacon—not that that’s a bad thing.”
Mary watched as the woman pulled a folder and an envelope from her purse.
“How do we start?” she said. “I’ve never done this before.”
“Neither have I,” Mary said. She saw a brief flash of surprise on the woman’s face. “I’m kidding. Let’s start by talking about—if you are considering hiring a private investigator, namely me—what is it you want me to investigate?”
Elyse Ramirez let out a long breath. Mary caught the scent of coffee and mint.
“I called you about my daughter. She’s missing,” Ramirez said. “Her name is Nina. She’s seventeen years old.” She slid a photograph from a folder across the table to Mary.
“What did the police say?” Mary said, already knowing the answer. She looked at the photograph. Nina Ramirez was beautiful, like her mother, but in a softer way.
“The police will not be involved,” Elyse Ramirez said. “My husband is a very important businessman; he will not allow our daughter to shame our family.”
“So she wasn’t taken, she ran away?” Mary said, catching the meaning in the woman’s carefully chosen words.
“We don’t know. Maybe a little bit of both,” Ramirez said. “She has been dating a man involved in the pornography industry. She may have run away with him.”
Mary sighed. “There’s big money in porn. I spend a lot on those movies.”
Not again!
Mary quickly recovered.
“A lot of dangerous elements are involved in that industry, obviously,” Mary said. “Not a good place for a young girl to go.”
The woman furrowed her brow.
Mary realized Elyse Ramirez was torn between a total panic over her daughter and complete anger with her as well. Probably not an unusual emotional conflict for a parent, Mary assumed.
“All of the information regarding Nina, her boyfriend, and the last time we saw her are here,” Elyse Ramirez said. Her voice had started out a bit shaky; now it seemed to steady itself.
“I’d like to ask you some more questions,” Mary said, sensing the woman’s impatience.
Elyse Ramirez shook her head. “I don’t want talk about it. Everything you need is there,” she said, pointing at the packet. “And this is the first part of your fee.” She pushed the thick envelope across the table.
Mary raised an eyebrow.
“I’m sorry it is in cash, but my husband insisted.”
Mary nodded.
“Not a problem,” she said.
Five
Mary went back to her office and spread the paperwork from Elyse Ramirez out on her desk.
She still had the envelope full of cash in her purse. It wasn’t all that uncommon for clients to pay in cash. Usually it was to hide any record of the payment, either from a cheating spouse or any public record of the transaction.
Since Elyse Ramirez claimed her husband knew she was hiring a private investigator, Mary suspected the latter.
Still, it was a fair amount of cash. Maybe she should go to a strip club and go nuts. Those male strippers kind of grossed her out, though, all greased up and chock full of steroids. Of course, she could always take Aunt Alice with her. That would be fun. Watch the old woman spray whipped cream all over some dancer’s package. Snap a photo of it and put it on Facebook. Except Alice wasn’t on any kind of social media. Too bad.
The mental images of male strippers made her think of Jake.
Mary hit speed dial on her cell phone for him and listened as it went instantly to voicemail.
“Fucker,” she said.
There was a feeling growing in her gut, one she didn’t want to acknowledge. Because in order to admit she was actually
concerned
about Jake, she would first have to admit she actually
cared
for Jake. And ever since he’d betrayed her with his boss, the pale and frighteningly vicious Lieutenant Arianna Davies, she refused to acknowledge certain emotions regarding him.
Thinking about the LAPD gave Mary an idea. Mary knew that Jake had been moved from Homicide to Vice, so she made a call to a contact she had in that department. They agreed to meet for beers.
She put her phone back on the desk and thought about her new case.
The porn industry was the Bermuda Triangle for young women. They flew into town by the thousands and half of them just disappeared. They wound up dead or addicted to drugs, with different names and unrecognizable even to their families if they were one of the few fortunate enough to make the return trip home.
All of which posed great challenges to private investigators. Names were changed, fake addresses, fake identification. It was like trying to track a convict through a swamp without a bloodhound.
“Okay,” Mary said out loud. “Enough with the excuses, let’s get going.” Was it bad she’d started talking to herself? What next, a pair of Depends and hot flashes?
“Let’s have a look at you, Nina,” Mary said and slid the photographs from the folder.
Like her mother, Nina Ramirez was a beauty. Dark skin, hair, and eyes, beautiful white teeth, and judging from one photo of the girl in a cheerleader outfit, a knockout body.
Mary wondered how she herself would look in a cheerleader outfit. Probably pretty damn good. She could even use the pompons to make her boobs look bigger.
She waded through the documents. Mostly photos and a few newspaper articles. Mary took the time to read them, to learn that Nina was a smart, accomplished, and seemingly happy young woman. But Mary knew this meant virtually nothing. Everything was social media these days. Facebook. Twitter. And of course, the old dinosaur: email.
Mary had asked Elyse to provide her with Nina’s email, which she did. But Elyse didn’t know the password. Naturally. Parents never do. And the few times Mary knew of a child giving their parents the password to any type of social media account, it was usually a dummy account.
Kids these days, they were almost as bad as adults.
So Mary sent an email, attaching the appropriate information, to a friend who knew his way around computers and had been able to unlock email accounts for Mary in the past. This time, she wanted him to get access to Nina’s email account, and from there hopefully follow the digital trail to Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and whatever else he could find. For starters.