a rave, she had to believe that the truth would sound worse. The truth must have sucked. They probably met at a strip club. Or a human sacrifice. Or a tractor pull.
Bobert took a table near the drinks station, while Cookie and I decided to do what we were paid to do. Weird how that was expected of us.
I rang up Mr. V’s order, feeling much better about the whole situation. A solution had come to me the moment I’d walked in out of the cold. Bobert. I could ask Bobert what to do. Cookie said he was a detective of some sort in New Mexico. I didn’t know what they called detectives in Latin American countries, but he spoke English really well. Surely he’d know who I could talk to. Who I should talk to.
And he didn’t have any ties here. He wouldn’t send the cavalry in and risk Mr. Vandenberg’s life. I could ask him who in the department would be the most likely to take my concerns seriously and keep the investigation under the radar.
Bobert normally stayed for the better part of an hour. He hung around until Cookie had a break and could eat with him. It was so sweet. Hopefully by then, the café would’ve cleared out a little and I could talk to him in semi-private.
I couldn’t decide if I should bring Cookie into it. He might be the type of officer that kept his professional and personal lives completely separate. He might not want Cookie involved in any of his investigations for her own safety. I’d try to approach him about it before Cookie took her break.
I glanced toward Reyes. He sat at a booth, eating a sub and reading on his phone. He was doing the same about five seconds later. Five seconds after that, he took another bite, then started reading again. Approximately five seconds later —
Francie sauntered up to him with the dessert plate we used to tempt unwitting customers into ordering just a bit more than they could safely stuff into their stomachs and asked him if he saw anything that he liked.
She was not talking about the dessert. She’d undone the top two buttons of her blouse and leaned in to give him a better view.
I so could’ve done that. I had fantastic boobs.
But Francie was laying it on thicker than usual, becoming more desperate. It was sad.
It was even sadder when Reyes took note, causing me to almost drop a plate of spaghetti in a customer’s lap.
After a pause that had Francie and me both in breathless anticipation, he said, “I’m good for now.”
Disappointment washed over Francie. Triumph rocketed through me. Triumph mixed with a sweet shot of euphoria. I rarely heard him talk. His voice was like being bathed in warm caramel. Not appealing to some. Scary appealing to me.
“What do you think of that one?” Dixie asked me, nodding toward the issuer of my future restraining order.
“Who?” I asked, all innocence and myrrh. “Oh, Reyes?”
“Mm-hm,” she said, refilling my customer’s iced tea.
“He seems… nice.”
A grin as wicked as my darkest fantasies spread across her face. “I think so, too.”
Saucy minx. Dixie made the rounds, often gravitating toward either Garrett or Reyes, which would explain why she was making the rounds at all. She rarely waited tables.
I started taking orders, beginning with a table of thirty-somethings. All female. All dressed to the nines. All salads and lemon water. Poor things. I took the orders of two more tables and two booths. All female. All dressed to the nines. Thankfully, not all salads and lemon water.
I wound my way back to the server’s station to put their orders in and ran into my oldest and dearest friend. Cookie was busy tapping in orders, too, her nails clicking on the screen. As far as rush hours went, this was a doozy. And they seemed to be getting doozier every day. I would’ve thought December a far cry from tourist season. Apparently not.
“Is it just me, or are there a lot of women in here?” Cookie asked, closing out her order.
I scanned the area and concurred. There were a lot of customers in general, and they all seemed exclusively focused on one customer. The tables of women. A couple of tables of men. Even a businessman sitting alone pretending not to be interested in tall, dark, and delicious. I couldn’t blame any of them, but it did up the competition.