Controlling Interest (10 page)

Natalie gasped. “Really? She was here?”

“Pretty sure it was her. She came in here and sat in a corner by herself. Conrad, our cook, felt sorry for her and gave her a bowl of soup, then she left. Not much business then.”

“What time was it? What was she wearing?”

“Child, I don't know what time it was. Me and Killian was just taking out the trash and restocking the tables before lunch. Might've been about eleven. Maybe earlier.” He scratched the goat under its chin. “Don't know what she was wearing. Eyesight's not so good no more.”

Natalie's excitement fizzled. The old man might not have seen Yasmine at all. “Could I talk to the cook? Maybe he'd recognize the picture.”

The old man squinted. “Don't see why not.” Giving the bearded goat a fond pat, he reached for a battered walnut cane leaning against the wall. “Come on.” He heaved himself out of his chair.

Natalie followed as the old man hobbled through the kitchen door.
Please, Lord, let it be Yasmine he saw. She might really be in danger, wandering around this place by herself.

The kitchen was a noisy hive of activity: platters clattering, steam hissing on the stove, metal spoon clanging on metal pot. The odors of grilled meat, seafood, and grease hung heavy in the air. Hands behind her back, Natalie looked around in fascination. The culinary arts didn't figure into her talents.

Her tour guide stood in the middle of the room and bellowed, “Yo, Conrad! Where you at, brother? Come over here and see can you help this young lady find her friend.”

A sweaty, coffee-colored face peered around a steel door. “Ray, can't you see I'm busy?”

Muttering, Ray stumped across the kitchen with Natalie in his wake like a duckling following a particularly grumpy old drake. “Busy, like — ” He cut himself off, glancing guiltily over his shoulder. “You remember that little lady come in here this morning, the one that ate a bowl of gumbo and fished all the okra out of it?”

“Yeah-huh. So?” Shutting the steel door, Conrad wiped his face on his apron. “You always bringing some kind of strays in here. If it ain't goats, it's little girls. This one hungry too?”

“No, I already ate.” Natalie presented the photo of Yasmine. “I'm looking for this young lady.”

Conrad plucked the picture from Natalie's fingers and fumbled for a pair of reading glasses. He put them on while Natalie held her breath. “Mmm. Yep. That's her.” He handed the photo back to Natalie. “Only she was wearing jeans and a black Elvis T-shirt. Said she got 'em at the Salvation Army store down the street. Quiet little thing. Ate her gumbo — ” he chuckled — “except for the okra, then skedaddled when a couple of cops came in for early lunch.”

“Which way did she go when she left?” Natalie put the picture in her purse, barely refraining from jumping up and down. An Elvis T-shirt. That ought to be easy to spot.

Conrad stuck his glasses back in his apron pocket. “Had to see to a truckload of meat just then, so I couldn't say. Looked around and she was gone.”

“Likely scooted out the back door and down the alley.” Ray pointed. “Thataway.”

Natalie's gaze followed the arthritic finger. The open kitchen door revealed a pitch-black, muggy Memphis night. She gulped.

CHAPTER
SIX

M
att looked across the street, hoping Natalie was having better luck on her side of Beale. Two doors down, an outdoor café was lit by a street lamp around which moths fluttered like a waking dream. A big silver moon floated in the east, painting dusky shadows on the broken sidewalk and streaking the old brick walls of ancient storefronts.

Man, he loved this city. Beale was home, and he never tired of the raw musical energy pulsing under its sleepy surface. He'd heard some wailin' good sounds as he scoped out bars, cafés, and clubs like the Blues Hall Juke Joint he'd just left. But right now he could've done without the odd angles and dark alleys. He'd seen neither hide nor hair of one small Pakistani oil princess.

Splitting up from Natalie had seemed like a good idea at the time. But as he showed Yasmine's picture to group after group of increasingly drunk blues enthusiasts, he began to doubt the wisdom of leaving Natalie on her own. Granted, she had charm oozing from every pore and could talk her way out of a straitjacket. But she was also young and pretty and naïve. The more he thought about it, the stupider his plan to divide and conquer seemed.

Making up his mind, he charged across the street, digging his cell out of his pocket as he went. He must've been out of his mind to agree to this crazy partnership in the first place. Hadn't he just told God, in all caps, “NO MORE WOMEN”? A temporary fast from romantic entanglements. Not that Natalie was in any way likely to be interested in romantic entanglements, particularly with him.
Or me with her, come to think of it.

But theoretically she was a female, and he was a male who couldn't help looking at a well-made specimen plunked right under his nose.

Oh, yeah, he'd noticed. That cornsilk hair and the perfect little chin and the dimpled mouth. Just what he needed. Distraction.

Shake it off, Hogan
. Back to business.

He pushed Natalie's speed dial. It rang four times, then went into a Spanish voice mail message.
“La persona que usted ha llamado . . .”
He listened, impatient. The first time he'd gotten her voice mail, he'd almost hung up, thinking he had a wrong number. Then he heard “Natalie” in the middle of the mumbo-jumbo. When he'd asked her later why the Spanish voice mail message, she laughed and told him she was experimenting to see if she could learn a second language — and then couldn't figure out how to change it back.

Ditz.
He smiled.
But cute.

It wasn't so cute thirty minutes later when he couldn't find her and she still wouldn't answer the phone. He'd told her to put it on vibrate and hold it in her hand, so he could reach her over any loud music. Where was she?

Steaming, he yanked open the doors of Silky O'Sullivan's oyster bar and literally felt liquor and cigarette fumes permeate his skin. Back in the day, this had been one of his favorite haunts. At the moment he was way more interested in locating one green-eyed blonde. When he found her, he was going to —

Something told him to stop. Just stop. She wasn't dilly-dallying; she wasn't lost. A cold, creepy chill walked up both arms and collected at the back of his neck. She was in danger. He stood for a frozen second inside the warm, humid noise of O'Sullivan's and tried to imagine where Natalie might have gone. He'd already been in every club along both sides of the street. This was his last shot.

The knot in his gut tightened as he approached the bartender. “Hey, man.” He slid a five across the bar. “A friend was supposed to meet me at nine, and I'm late. Little blonde named Natalie. She may have been looking for a Pakistani girl — ”

“Oh, yeah, she came through here about fifteen minutes ago.” The barkeep jerked a thumb toward the back of the room. “She went off that way to see the goat.”

Okay, that was the last straw. Here he'd been all worried about her, and she was wasting time gawking at the local menagerie.

Stiff with indignation, he headed for the back of the bar. He recognized old Ray, dozing beside the goat pen with his feet propped on a stool. Matt slapped the bottom of the old man's tennis shoe. “Ray! Hey, long time, no see.”

Ray awoke with a start and blinked up at Matt. “Hey, boy, where you been?”

“Here, there, and yonder, as they say.” Living upstairs from Tootie Sheehan had significantly altered his vocabulary. “How're you feeling these days?”

“Felt any better, they'd put me in jail.” Ray grinned.

“That's good. Listen, I'm looking for a friend, blonde girl named Natalie.” He measured shoulder-high with his hand. “About this tall, with glasses. Have you seen her?”

Ray nodded. “Um-hm. She came through here looking for the little Pakistani lady we fed this mornin'. You know her too?”

Natalie found Yasmine? And didn't bother to call me? I'm going to kill her.
“Yes, sir. Where'd she go?”

“Last time I saw her she was heading out the kitchen door into the alley.”

Fear slammed Matt in the chest. “You let her go out there alone?”

“Wasn't no ‘let' to it. She just took off without a — hey, where
you
goin'?”

Matt looked over his shoulder. “Thanks, Ray. Check you later.”

He ran through the kitchen, which was swarming with activity, moist heat, and a symphony of clanging metal, toward the open back door. He burst out into the sudden dark silence of the alley.

“Natalie!” He stopped and listened. A cat yowled nearby, and a horn honked somewhere over on Union Avenue. The dumpster reeked of shellfish. “Natalie!”

His heart felt like it was pumping tar through a plastic straw. The single bulb stuck in a broken fixture by the door cast a blob of saffron-colored light at his feet; beyond was black dark.

“Natalie?”

“Oh, no!”

Every hair on his body lifted. That was Natalie, and she sounded frightened.

“Where are you?” The voice might have come from the corner of the building to his left. But maybe not. “Natalie?”

“Matt, come help me!”

“Hold on, I'm coming.” He ran toward the last place he'd heard her voice, eyes adjusting to the darkness as he skirted dumpsters, cars, and motorcycles parked in the alley. Finally he saw a small shadow, darker than the darkness, crouched against a chain-link fence. He reached Natalie and tried to lift her up. “Are you okay? What happened?”

She wriggled to get away. “I'm fine. But this man needs help.”

He glanced down. “What man?” All he saw was a pile of rags at his feet.

“Matthew!” She gave him an indignant look and laid her hand on the rags. “This poor man — I was asking him if he'd seen Yasmine, and he just keeled over and passed out. ”

Matt looked down. There was indeed a human torso under the pile of mismatched clothing. “What do you suggest we do about it?”

“We've got to take him to a shelter. We can't leave him here!”

They certainly could. Every minute they wasted, Yasmine was getting farther and farther away. But Matt could tell by the expression on Natalie's face that she wasn't budging unless he played Sir Lancelot. Or Don Quixote. Or one of those clanky dudes in chain mail.

“Alright.” He sighed. “Move out of the way.”

She did, making sympathetic little noises that for some reason tugged at Matt's heart a lot more than the smelly, undoubtedly lice-ridden specimen he lifted in his arms.
Almighty God
, he thought, trying not to breathe.
Here but for your grace . . .

“Don't drop him!” Natalie cautioned as Matt staggered under the lanky weight of Homeless Harry.

He grunted, shifted his burden, and headed for the alley between Silky's and the cappuccino bar next door. “I think there's a men's shelter over on Jackson Street. Did he have anything useful to say before he passed out?”

“No, but the cook at Silky's saw Yasmine earlier in the day. Ray, the old man with the goat, took her to the kitchen to get her something to eat, and she stayed nearly an hour. They said she had on jeans and an Elvis T-shirt she'd bought at a thrift store. She got scared when some cops came in, and she left.”

“Is that what you were doing behind the bar?” He turned down the sidewalk toward the shelter. Fortunately, by this time, the crowds had dwindled. Still, they got some strange looks. Probably not many guys would entertain a date by toting around a street bum.

Natalie didn't look the least embarrassed. She glanced at the man's young-old face as if to make sure he was still alive. “The cook said she went out the back door, and I looked for her all over that alley. But of course it was too dark to see anything. Then this poor guy asked me for money — ”

“What if he'd tried to hurt you?” Matt's feelings suddenly boiled, but he wasn't sure who he was mad at.

“Hurt me?” Natalie looked up at him incredulously. “He can't even walk by himself.”

“Still, don't you ever wander off in the dark by yourself like that again.”

She just snorted.

“You didn't give him money, did you?”

“I didn't have time.” She looked guilty.

Matt shook his head and clamped his lips together, not trusting himself to be civil. She was a certifiable airhead. A kind, compassionate one, but an airhead nonetheless. Her father needed to know what kind of danger she'd put herself in.

Fortunately for Natalie — and fortunately for Matt, whose arms were beginning to ache — they reached the shelter and awakened a sleepy attendant, who settled their homeless protégé with little fuss. Matt and Natalie scrounged up twenty bucks between the two of them, handed it to the grateful attendant, and beat it back outside.

Natalie put her hands on her hips. “Now what? We still don't know where Yasmine went.”

“Let's go to that cafe next to Silky's and strategize. I'll buy you a cappuccino.”

“Okay.”

Natalie followed close on his heels. Matt noticed she didn't object when he put a protective hand at the small of her back. The lights had begun to go out along the street. “I'm serious about being more careful around here at night. This isn't the suburbs.”

She looked up at him. “You should see some of the places I've patrolled in Tunica. Except for the strip where the casinos are, it's so rural the mailman can't find half the addresses.”

“You went out on patrol?”

“Occasionally. Most of the time I worked as dispatcher. I did a lot of the clerical work the ‘boys' didn't want to do.” She sighed. “It was frustrating.”

“Why didn't you interview for the Memphis PD? You could've worked your way up to detective.”