Abundantly flowing locks, perfectly tanned bodies, and perky breasts with enticingly rounded cleavage—these were not the things I’d expected to see walking into the Camacho & Associates private investigation office on a Wednesday morning. Pero, Dios mío, that’s exactly what I did see. Two women lounging at the conference table, each exhibiting their own take on “aloof,” stopped me dead with their blinding beauty. I was afraid I’d be scarred for life.
I could hate them on the spot, except, super-detective that I am, I knew they had to be clients. And clients meant that I remained employed as a detective. Hating them for their otherworldly beauty? Not allowed.
Manny Camacho, owner of the small investigative firm in Sacramento, ex-cop, and super-P.I., stood in the doorway of his office quietly talking with yet another attractive woman. It might as well have been the Miss America pageant—there was no escaping them. This one was older than the others by a good fifteen years or so, but she had the body of a twenty-year-old. She had a long neck, nary a wrinkle in sight, and a tall, gazellelike body. Her hair shone like black velvet and was pulled back into a severe bun. Her angular face and chiseled cheekbones intensified her exotic appearance.
Dancer. Had to be.
Reilly Fuller, part-time clerk for the agency, scowled from her desk.
“¿Qué pasó?” I asked, stopping to get the 4-1-1.
Her Spanish was limited—and often amounted to adding a strategic O to the end of a word—but she understood me and liked to use what she knew.
“No se,” she said, sounding very disgruntled that she didn’t know anything.
Reilly made a strangled noise that left me wondering if all the colorful dye she used on her hair had finally done some deeper damage, perhaps affecting her vocal cords. Reilly lived for gossip, though at the moment she was oddly silent.
I heard the zip-zip of the surveillance camera bracketed to the wall in the top corner of the room. Ah, so that was the source of Reilly’s grief. Neil, a caveman detective who could scarcely string words together in a sentence, but who was a master of technology—and Reilly’s bed buddy—was in his lair watching the Barbie show.
“Remember our motto,” I said, patting my thigh and speaking softly so only she could hear. “More to love.”
She blinked heavily and patted down her green color-washed hair. “Right. More to love, and Neil does love this,” she said, doing a subtle chair shimmy. I swallowed my laugh. Reilly was a JLO wannabe—only not Latina, pero more full-figured, and monolingual.
But otherwise, hey, they were like twins.
I noticed Sadie, fellow detective and my own personal nemesis, fidgeting uncomfortably at the table, client intake form clasped in a brown folder in front of her. Her spiky, red-tipped blond hair seemed to inch up every time one of the two women at the table moved the slightest muscle.
I’d recently surmised that Sadie and Manny had an on-again/off-again thing that defied explanation. Sadie wasn’t the lovable type. Neither was Manny, for that matter. He was tall and dark; she was petite and fair. He was bitter coffee and clipped sentences; she was Spicy Hot V8 with attitude and too much lime. He was un poquito intense and brooding, and she was, well, a shrew. What kept bringing them back together was a mystery to me, but some things were just better left unsolved.
From my vantage point at Reilly’s desk, I took a closer gander at the two women at the table. They seemed familiar somehow. I searched the recesses of my brain for answers. Were they in a breast-enhancement ad? Poster girls for plastic surgery? As much as I wanted to pull the information out of my mind, I couldn’t quite manage it.
Manny walked to the table, his barely perceptible limp altering his gait just enough to make a girl curious about what had caused it. I was plenty curious, but I had no idea. War wound from his time on the police force was my guess. His gaze caught mine. “Dolores.”
He flicked his cleft chin toward the table and I threw up my hand in an all-encompassing greeting. “Hello.”
It was my afternoon to man the agency so the other detectives—Manny, Sadie, and Neil—could be in the field. We rotated, though with my junior detective status, the ink on my California private investigator’s license barely dry, I usually pulled bonus shifts for more pay. My docket wasn’t as full as any of the three senior associates, though after my recent