It was nice to share my bed with another warm body, even if this one was around twenty pounds and not good for much except licking my feet.
Mendoza nodded.“If you change your mind, let me know.”
“I won’t change my mind,” I said.“And if something happens to me, I’m sure Rachel will step up.Or Zachary.Once he gets out of the hospital.”
The nightclub was coming up on the left, and I pointed it out to Mendoza.
He flipped on his turn signal.“It might be a while until he’s ready for active duty again.You’ll have to go easy on him.”
“No undercover assignments for a while?”
Mendoza’s lips quirked.“Better not.And don’t expect him to walk the dog for you.It’ll be some time until his lung is healed and he can breathe as well as he did.”
He slotted the car into a parking space outside Stella’s.
“I feel terrible about what happened,” I admitted.
Mendoza put the car in park, twisted the key in the ignition, and turned to me.“You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I sent him out to look for information.”
“He’s an adult,” Mendoza said.“And if I know him, he was probably excited about it.”
He had been.But— “If I’d realized what would happen…”
Mendoza nodded.“You wouldn’t have done it.That goes without saying.But you couldn’t have known.It isn’t logical that someone would do that to him just for asking questions.”
“So maybe he did something else.Hit on someone’s girlfriend or something.”
“Zachary?”Mendoza said.“I don’t see that happening.Do you?”
I didn’t, now that he mentioned it.Zachary is cute and freckled, and a nice kid, and smart and funny with a lot of other good qualities—plus, he’d saved my life—but I didn’t see him as any kind of a Don Juan.
“Maybe there’s something about the girl we don’t realize.”
“That’s what I’m thinking,” Mendoza said.He pushed his door open.“Are you coming in, or staying here?”
I looked at the building.It was large, and looked like it might be an old mattress warehouse or something, that someone had morphed into something else.The exterior was painted black with purple trim, and next to the steel door was a mural of three scantily clad women dancing among shooting stars.It looked weirdly familiar, but it took me a full minute to place it.Then it clicked.
“Xanadu!”
“Bless you,” Mendoza said.
“No, no.Xanadu.The movie.It looks like the mural from the movie.”Somewhat.Enough that the comparison had struck me.
Mendoza looked at it.His face stayed blank.
“You’re too young,” I said, disgusted.“It probably came out a decade before you were born.”
He shrugged.“Coming?”
I opened my door.“Yes.”
From the outside, at least, it didn’t look like a strip club.The women in the mural were scantily clad, perhaps, but they wore more than pasties.And there wasn’t a pole in sight.At least not in the picture.
Mendoza led the way to the door and twisted the knob.Nothing happened.
“I guess it’s before business hours,” I said.
