Bare-Naked Lola (A Lola Cruz Mystery) (3 page)

Victoria frowned. “The Courtside Dancers have a certain, er, image. No.” The force of her shaking head threatened to undo her bun. “You’re not right for the team.”

Sadie balked, but then she started to get up. “I can do the routine.”

“No.” My voice was firm. I might not want to be ogled by sports fans or dance in an arena, but there was no way Sadie was taking an assignment from me. “It’s my case.”

I doubted anyone else noticed, but she shot daggers at me, which I boldly dodged with imaginary shields. She could thank me later when she realized how I’d saved her from her own desperate humiliation.

Victoria’s lips curved up like the cat that swallowed the canary, only it felt like I was the canary. She motioned toward me but spoke to Manny. “She needs coaching.”

I cringed, indignant. Sure, I may waffle between size 8 and 10, but I was in prime physical shape. A black belt in kung fu. A yogi wannabe. A salsa fanatic.

“She’ll do whatever it takes,” Sadie said, her voice dripping with disdain.

So apparently she didn’t like my boundary lines. Which was ridiculous, since I didn’t even know what my boundaries were and I hadn’t done anything during my career, so far, that I regretted.

“What do the letters say?” I asked, getting back to the case. I reached inside my purse for my handy latex gloves, but Manny had his on before I’d even found mine. Super detective. He was my role model.

He snapped the latex at the wrists before picking up the first envelope. He carefully pulled out the paper inside, flipped it open, and examined it. It was thin and I could see it only contained two typed lines.

“They’re all the same?” Manny asked as he slid the letter over to me.

“Not identical, but all similar,” Victoria said.

With my gloves on, I picked up the letter and silently read: “
I know what you’re doing. Stop while you still can
.”

“Stop what?” I asked.

Silencio.

Sadie turned to the dancers. “
None
of you knows what it’s about? Not even an inkling of an idea?”

The women shook their heads in unison.

“No idea,” Jennifer finally said.

Ha! So one of them could speak!

If I were going undercover, I might as well take the lead in the investigation right now. Show Sadie what I was made of. I’d spent the last couple of years proving myself worthy of being a lead detective. Now I felt like puffing out my chest, preening. I was beginning to really walk the walk.

“When did the letters start?” I asked Jennifer and Selma.

Selma threw back her slim shoulders, but her voice was soft and tentative. “I got the first one about two weeks ago, but Jennifer got one before that—”

“They started about three weeks ago,” Victoria interrupted. “Rochelle was the first.” She darted a glance at her dancers. “She was seeing one of the players.”

Muy interesante
. “And you think it’s related?”

Selma pulled at the neckline of her tank top, shifting in her chair. “The letters keep coming, so it can’t be about Rochelle and Michael.”

Lance shook his head, disgusted. “
Everyone
knows about them?” he said to Victoria with a hiss.

Más silencio
.

Jennifer and Selma shot a quick glance at each other before dropping their gazes.

Victoria leveled her steely eyes at her husband. “Yes, Lance, everyone knows. Even Michael’s wife. There are no secrets with the team.”

I reached across the table, laid a flattened hand on the file folder Sadie had been guarding, and drew it toward me. “You’re Jennifer—?”

“Wallace,” the tall blonde said. “I’m the team captain.”

I wrote this down on a blank sheet of paper inside the folder.

Victoria cleared her throat, taking over. “The letters have been arriving at every home game, like I said. Jen’s received three. Selma one. Carrie, another dancer, received two letters. Some of the rest of the girls have gotten one.”

I jotted this down, shifting my attention from Victoria to Lance to Jennifer to Selma. “So you want us to find out who’s writing the notes—”

“That’s why we’re here,” Lance said, coming to stand behind Victoria.

“—and what happened to Rochelle?” I finished.

“Rochelle is gone. I don’t want her back.” Victoria shook her head, and I could almost picture her stomping her foot with finality. “You don’t shirk your responsibilities. You don’t quit a team that depends on you. You don’t break the rules. No, Rochelle is out.”

“It’s not like she’s the only one,” Selma muttered under her breath. I made a mental note to ask her about that at some point.

“Just find out who’s sending the letters and why,” Lance said. “And stop them. That’s it.”

I knew my mission, but my nerves were on high alert in the pit of my stomach. Every eye was on me. This was my first undercover case. I couldn’t blow it. I quickly opened the other plain white envelopes and found Victoria had been correct. They were all basically the same. Typed and printed on ordinary printer paper. There was no blackmail attempt in any of them.

So if blackmail wasn’t the letter writer’s motive, what was? The most obvious conclusion I could draw was that it was some unbalanced person who wasn’t targeting anyone in particular. Unless Rochelle and her affair had been the main target and the rest of the letters were just a distraction. But then why hadn’t they stopped since Rochelle was gone?

“Have the letters been read by all of you?” Manny asked Jennifer and Selma, snapping off his gloves.

“Passed around,” Jennifer said. “They’ve had us pretty freaked.”

His lips drew into a thin line. A thousand fingerprints had already contaminated the evidence. There’d be no discovery there, even if we did alert the police. Which, considering no crime had been committed—that we knew of—seemed premature, and against our client’s wishes.

“Next time one of you gets a letter,” Manny said, “try not to touch it. Getting decent prints could help.”

They nodded in perfect Stepford unison. No more muttering under their breath. No more thinking the letters didn’t mean anything. Maybe they didn’t, but until we proved that, it was better to assume that they did.

“When do I start?” I asked, getting back to business. Going undercover was expected as a detective. And I was down with it. So far I hadn’t come across anything I wasn’t willing to do, even being a Courtside Dancer. Beautiful people didn’t scare me and I had a job to do. So what if, at five-foot-six and three-quarters, I was a couple of inches shorter than the women here before me? So what if, as a dark-haired Latina (with a nice shock of highlighted hair framing her face), I stuck out like a thorny cactus in a field of wildflowers?

So what?

Híjole.
Nerves rattled my gut.
I sure hoped I’d be able to pull it off.

A thread of silent communication passed between Victoria and Lance. After however many years of marriage, I guess you could read your partner’s mind. Jack and I had been seeing each other for a few months now—give or take twelve years or so. But the time in high school—and all the years he’d spent in San Luis Obispo with Sarah, his ex—meant we didn’t have that kind of connection. I envied them.

Victoria broke her gaze away from Lance and sighed, deep and put-upon. “You’ll come to practice this afternoon.” She glanced at her watch. “One-thirty. We have a game Friday night. I’ll work with you until you’re ready, if it takes a twenty-four-seven schedule.”

I pressed my hands flat on the table and clamped my teeth down on the inside of my cheek. “
This
Friday?” I choked out.
¡Ay, caramba!
There was no way I could be ready to perform in front of a huge crowd in a few days’ time. Which meant that my public humiliation on Friday would be seen far and wide. Damn. Maybe I should have considered letting Sadie take the case, after all. Sexy and curvy were overrated. I mean, I had to work double hard to be taken seriously in a male-heavy profession. After Friday, would Manny or Neil be able to look at me the same, or would they always see a cheerleader?

I wasn’t sure I actually wanted to know the answer to that.

Victoria seemed to zero in on my doubt. She threw up her hands and turned back to Lance. “See? She can’t do it.”

Manny stiffened. “Yes, she can,” he said as I forced a smile and replied, “I’ll be there.”

I could do this. I’d imagine I was salsa dancing. Only without Jack Callaghan as my partner, and without salsa music. And on the sidelines of a basketball court with zillions of people watching. But otherwise, it would be practically the same thing.

“I’ll make sure you’re ready. I’m never wrong about people.”

“Mrs. Wolfe.” I stood to face her as she rose. “There is one problem. If I’m going undercover, none of the other dancers can know who I am or why I’m there. How are you going to explain a new person on the team? I didn’t go through tryouts. The season’s well under way.” Not to mention the fact that I’d grown up in Sacramento, often worked at my family’s
muy
popular Mexican restaurant, and had been on the news recently thanks to a stolen-identity case where I was the victim. I wasn’t a local celebrity, but I was familiar to some people.

She waved her hand. “Not to worry. Rochelle’s gone, remember? You’ll take her spot.”

Victoria made it sound so simple, but somehow I doubted the dancers would buy it. I sidled up to Jennifer and Selma as they gathered their purses and bags, making my first attempt at camaraderie. No dice. They didn’t flash a single pearly white.

Victoria turned to Manny. “You’ll be in touch, I assume?”

“
Por supuesto
,” he muttered, his lips curving up.

Sadie and I both stared at him. I checked my watch to be sure it was still ticking, then I pinched myself. And grimaced from the pain. Nope, this was not a dream.

I was pretty sure Victoria didn’t know he’d said
of course
, but she’d gotten
something
from his tone. She batted her eyes, just once, then glided away after her husband and the dancers.

Manny walked them to the door, the surveillance camera
zipping
along as it recorded their departure. A moment later, Manny sauntered into his office, the almost nonexistent grin still lingering. He closed the door behind him without another glance at me or Sadie.

“
Son locos
,” I muttered as Sadie shoved back her chair and marched out. I waved at the boxy camera in the corner. “Did you get all that? Enjoy the entertainment?”

As if in response, the camera
zipped
up and down. Yep, in his lair, Neil was laughing his ass off.

Chapter Two

After spending the next ten minutes writing down information on one of the whiteboards that hung around the conference room, I dubbed the case
Operation: Dance
. I finished by putting the lines of the mysterious letters the dancers had received across the top of the board, then I stood back to think.

Being a detective was like being a scientist. Manny had taught me to come up with a hypothesis and then work to prove or disprove it. Most of the time that was easier said than done. Still, I studied the facts, such as they were.

• Victoria Wolfe: director of Courtside Dancers
  
• Lance Wolfe: co-owner of the Royals basketball team and married to Victoria
  
• Rochelle Dupre: former dancer; had been having an affair with a player
  
• Selma Mann: current dancer — one letter
  
• Jennifer Wallace: current dancer — two letters
  

• Letters began arriving three weeks ago
  
• Thin and fit is out as a body type; sexy curves are the preferred for Courtside Dancers
  

I stood back to survey my progress. No great stroke of brilliance surfaced in my mind.

After another minute of perusal, I capped the dry-erase marker and wiped away the last bullet. My curves weren’t pertinent to anyone but me. And maybe to Jack Callaghan.

Definitely to Jack Callaghan.

Except that Jack’s ex-girlfriend was holed up at his sister Brooke’s house and he was helping her—and not nearly as indignant about Brooke helping his ex as he should be. And what were they helping her with, anyway? So Jack had no claim on my hips, boobs, or any other curvature right now.

I’d been as patient as I could be,
pero
enough was enough. If he wanted to see any of my curves again, he had to make some choices.
Muy difícil
choices,
pero
choices. My disastrous relationship with Sergio had early destroyed my faith in love, but Jack—Jack showing up again after so many years of being gone—he had restored it.

My mind drifted back to when Jack had told me the truth about Sarah. I’d solved a case and when the dust had settled, he’d taken me to meet her. We’d sat in his sporty silver Volvo in front of his sister’s house.

“You ever see the movie
Fatal Attraction
?” he’d asked me.

I darted my eyes toward him. Did a double-take. “As in Glenn Close psycho rabbit killer
Fatal Attraction
?”

He tapped the tip of his index finger to his nose. “That’s the one.”

My eyes narrowed. “Yeah, great movie.”

If you like demented, obsessed, murderous adultery cinema.

“Remember how Alex—”

I arched a questioning brow.

“—Alex is the character Glenn Close plays,” he clarified.

“Oh. Right.” Jack had a keen knack for movie trivia, it seemed.

“Remember when Alex spies on Michael Douglas’s family?” Jack asked.

“Vaguely,” I said, suddenly connecting the acting dots between Michael Douglas and Kevin Bacon. My brother Antonio was the master at the game, but I did pretty well. My mind wandered. Michael Douglas to Glenn Close. Hadn’t she been in some pseudo-romance movie with Christopher Walken? I was positive she had been. I couldn’t name the movie, but I went to see Christopher anyway.

I kept at it. Self-preservation, I think. It was better than facing whatever Jack was trying to tell me about his ex.