Chapter 9
They took a taxi to Bon Ventre. Sitting in the back seat with an acreage of vinyl between him and Carlotta Osorio, Shep considered the situation.
“I figure ya either really have a thing for key lime pie, or it’s got somethin’ to do with findin’ your sister.”
She shook her head. “Why would anyone bother with a dessert that does not involve the chocolate?”
He stared at her, awaiting an explanation.
“Lime pie…Sofia favors it.”
He nodded as understanding bloomed. “She said she was doing all the things she enjoys.”
“Sí,” she agreed and hurried from the cab.
Bon Ventre was housed in a tall, narrow building painted an odd blend of purple and orange. More hostel than hotel. Miami, Shep thought as they hurried up the steps.
A young man with an upswept ‘do dyed to match—with almost perfect precision—the bi-colored exterior of the building, was manning the front desk. He was busy tapping away on his phone, thumbs flying like mad monkeys. “Be right with you,” he said but did nothing to follow up on that promise. The plastic nametag on his vested chest proclaimed him to be Rube.
“We are close,” Carlotta breathed.
“What?” Shep dragged his surprised attention from the boy’s tattoo, a quirky yellow something with the word Despicable beneath, to Carlotta’s face.
“Sofia. She was nearby. I can feel it in my soul.”
“In your soul,” Shep said and wondered if the whole world had gone mad. Rube’s left ear boasted a trio of tiny cupie dolls.
Carlotta stiffened at his tone. “Sí. Have you never simply felt something?”
“Rangers generally work on facts, darlin’.”
“So you are not ruled by your sentiments?”
“Not hardly.”
She huffed a disbelieving breath. “I am certain the helpful gentlemen on the plane, whom you all but beheaded with a suitcase, will be most happy to hear this.”
“The gentlemen on the plane were…” he began but stopped himself, pulled short by the surprisingly caustic tone of his voice. It almost sounded like jealousy. But that was ridiculous. He wasn’t jealous. Never had been. In fact, he’d always thought that particular emotion was the stupidest of the seven deadly sins. While pride was, in his humble opinion, unavoidable, and sloth simple good sense, lust was his personal favorite on the list of—
“May we get the service?” Carlotta asked and propped her elbows on the counter.
“Don’t get your underduds in a tangle. I’ll be with—“ the boy began then stopped, brows bouncing like jumping beans when his gaze landed on her.
“Hola,” she purred.
The phone plummeted from the kid’s fingers without seeming to make any noticeable connection with his brain. Shep snapped his attention to Carlotta, only to realize her arms were pressed together, causing her breasts to do things that were, most likely, illegal in a good number of states. As for him, he tried not to stare…failed…endeavored to avoid cursing…and was only marginally more successful in that regard.
“Sorry,” the kid said, eyes plumbing her maple sugar cleavage. “Can I help you?”
“I very much hope so,” Carlotta crooned. “I am look for my sister.”
“You have a sister?” The kid blinked, lost. “Honest to God?”
Shep gritted his teeth and lost the war against cursing, though he tried to keep it quiet.
Surprisingly, the boy noticed. He blushed, blinked, and seemed to find a modicum of professionalism. “Your sister. Right. What’s her name?” “
“Sofia Angelina Perdillo-Osorio.”
He scowled, fingers tapping computer keys. “When did she check in?”
Carlotta did nothing to correct his assumption. “Not more than these five days past.”
He scanned his screen like a gold miner searching for the mother lode, only to be disappointed by a vein of pyrite. “Naw. Sorry.” His tone suggested that he truly was and might, in fact, break into tears over it. “She ain’t been here.”
Frustrated but still hopeful, Carlotta leaned closer. “Perhaps she use the alien.”
The boy looked monumentally confused, but maybe that was his normal expression.
“Alias,” Shep explained.
“Oh. Sure,” the kid said as if all their patrons changed their names before checking in. “What would she call herself?”
“I do not know.”
His scrawny shoulders shrugged, clearly hating to disappoint. “You got a pic?”
“A pic?”
“Picture,” Shep translated. He was beginning to feel tired. “Of your sister.”
“Oh, sí,” she said and dug through a hundred weird items in her bag.
Holy shit. She’d brought enough stuff to sink a ship, while he’d barely managed a change of clothes and his ever-present Bowie knife. And that, of course, in a checked bag towed in the underbelly of the plane. He’d felt as naked as a spider monkey without the blade strapped to the inside of his boot. But it was back in place now, ramping up his feelings of security.
“This is she,” Carlotta said and, dragging a flip phone from the depths of her bag, showed the kid an image barely bigger than her thumb. He squinted at it.
“Maybe you should describe her,” Shep suggested.
“Oh, sí…she is more taller than me. And skinny. No matter what we do, she has always been the skinny one.”
“Okay.”
“Her hair, it is dark like mine but…” She held her hands a foot from her ears. “How you say…”
“Sexy as hell?” the boy intoned.
Carlotta shook her head in frustration. “Tupido.”
“Bushy,” Shep said.
“Sí. Bushy. And she wears the…what they are called…la copita “
Shep was stymied.
She motioned restlessly toward her stultifying eyes. “For to see better.”
“Glasses,” Shep supplied.
“And her scent…it is of peaches.”
“She smells like peaches?”
“You have seen her?” Carlotta asked, gaze hopeful on the boy.
“Sorry.” He shook his bi-colored head.
“But you will ask the others?”
“Yeah. Sure. But… hey, maybe I should get a pic of you…to…help out with the.…you know…”
Shep did know and seriously doubted it had anything to do with finding Sofia and a hell of a lot to do with time alone in the shower.
“Very well,” Carlotta agreed.
The kid retrieved his phone from the floor, fumbled madly for a few seconds then managed to snap a picture…or ten. “Hey, I should probably get your number, too, in case, like…I see her or something.”
She rattled off the digits. “You will call if you hear of anything?”
“Count on it.”
“That is kind of you. You have my many thanks. Can you now direct me to the closest garden?”
“Garden?”
Apparently, there was something about Carlotta Osorio that made men forget the definition of certain words…and how to avoid acting like morons, Shep deduced.
“Sí, plants, trees,” she explained.
“Oh, sure. With flowers and shit. Mariposa Park’s kinda pretty.”
“Mariposa. How do I arrive there?”
“I could show you the way, if you want,” he said and took an eager step forward, but Shep caught his gaze, silently discouraging.
“I found Abdul Ghafoor in a couple thousand miles of desert. I think I can manage this,” he said and hoped it was true as he turned to follow Carlotta down the skinny hall into the interior of the building.
“You do not have to be the rude one,” she said, tossing the words over her shoulder.
“I actually think I do,” he countered and remembered, with some surprise, that there’d been a time, only a few days before if he remembered correctly, that he’d been considered at least marginally charming. “Where’re we goin’?”
“To eat the pie of limes.”
“I thought you didn’t like it.”
“I do not.”
“Table for two?” Blessedly, their host was female and didn’t, at first sight of Carlotta, forget the definition of any two-syllable words, offer to sire her children, or feel the need to blather on like a mynah bird on speed.
“Sí,” Carlotta said and followed the woman’s wending path between the tables.
As for Shep, he couldn’t help but notice that though the two women carried a similar amount of weight, there was something about the arrangement of those pounds that varied wildly.
Carlotta slipped onto the vinyl booth, already waving away the proffered menu. “This we do not need.”
“You know what you want?”
“I will eat the key lime pie.”
“And you, sir?” asked the hostess, eyeing Shep with a practiced and maybe somewhat appreciative gaze.
“Half a cup of coffee.”
“Half a cup?”
“If it ain’t too much trouble. And could I get some cream? The kind that’s seen the underside of a real, live cow?”
She smiled, cracking a dimple on each cheek. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“And enough sugar to jumpstart a rhino.”
The dimples deepened. “Be right out.”
True to her word, she returned in a matter of minutes, carrying the requested items on a tray. “Anything else I can do for you?” she asked when their orders had been distributed.
“We’re looking for someone,” Shep admitted as he reached for the coffee.
“Oh?”
“My sister,” Carlotta said. “Perhaps you have seen her?”
She glanced at Carlotta, noticing, maybe for the first time, the outrageous curves: hair, breasts, waist, hips. “She must not look like you or I’d have noticed Rube passed out by the front desk.”
Carlotta scowled uncertainly and shook her head. “She does not.”
“She’s sixteen,” Shep said. “Young-lookin’ for her age. Thin, fuzzy hair, glasses.”
“Sorry,” she said and slipping another handful of sugar packets onto the table, added, “Don’t OD on that stuff.”
“I’ve built up an immunity.”
She chuckled and let her gaze glide down his chest with appreciative leisure. “Life ain’t fair,” she deduced and left.
“What does she mean by this?” Carlotta asked.
“That I’m a hell of a guy,” he said and used enough sugar to send a pachyderm into a diabetic tailspin.
Carlotta snorted and sampled the pie. “And what of this Rube passing out at the desk?”
He watched her for a moment. Maybe she was fishing for compliments, but why, he wondered, noticing the lofty cheekbones, the midnight eyes, the touch-me hair. A woman with bait like hers would never have to cast a line.
“She means she hasn’t seen your sister,” Shep said and took his first sip of coffee before infusing cream.
Carlotta licked her lips, set her fork aside, and rose to her feet.
“What’re ya doin’?”
“We leave this place.”
“The pie’s that bad?”
“It is that good.”
“Then why—“
“My sister, she has the terrible tastes in desserts. She would never like this,” she said and sashayed from the restaurant.