Murder on Bamboo Lane Read Free Page B

ramen’s finally cool enough, so I start eating while Rickie continues. “It was Susana’s twenty-first birthday a couple of days ago. They were apparently planning to go to Vegas, but Jenny didn’t show up.”
    “What? She was stood up?” Nay is appalled. When she turned twenty-one, she expected a full-on flash mob show on campus. I was in my third month of training at the academy, learning how to infiltrate a drug house. I had no time to coordinate a hundred-person dance number to Usher’s “OMG.” She still hasn’t forgiven me for that.
    “Yep. Jenny’s been totally incommunicado. Doesn’t answer calls, texts, Facebook, Twitter.”
    “Didn’t show up to class?”
    “She was taking the quarter off. Ran out of money.”
    Nay’s concentrating on her Osaka ramen special, leaving me to concentrate on Jenny.
    “Does she live at home?” I ask Rickie.
    “No. I don’t think she’s from around here.”
    “No roommates?”
    “No. I think she lived by herself. Actually, Susana was kind of hazy about that.”
    Strange, I thought. Why would this so-called best friend be vague about such an important detail? “If this Susana is so concerned, why isn’t
her
information on the flyer?”
    “I don’t know. She just kept telling me that it’s all complicated and she can’t get too involved, but she knows that something bad has happened to Jenny. So I told her I’d do what I could to help her out.”
    “She needs to file a missing-person report.”
    “Oh, we did. I mean, not Susana, but Benjamin and I did.”
    I feel myself inadvertently blush at the mention of my ex, and hope that the alcohol flush already on my face masks my feelings.
    “We called up the police, gave them what info we had—kind of spotty and all—and it was all ‘Don’t call us again, we’ll call you.’ Something about being missing is not a crime.” Exactly what Tim had told me.
    “You should have called me,” I say. “I may be able to help. Maybe my aunt can do something.”
    Rickie then rests his hand over mine beside the steaming bowls of ramen. “Ellie, my dear, you’re among friends. Let’s be honest. You can’t help. You’re just a bicycle cop.”
    • • •
    I go home that night in a foul mood. Since I live in Highland Park, just over the hill from Dodger Stadium, I take the Gold Line light rail. My father has spent his whole life doing engineering for the Metro Rail system, so my brother and I are anomalies among most of our friends in LA—we actually know how to work mass transit.
    Of course, this being LA, I do also own a car. And what a car it is: a 1969 Buick Skylark. It’s bright green and the size of a small cargo ship.
    The car is a gift from Lita, short for
abuelita
, or
grandma
in Spanish. She’s my grandmother on my father’s side. She’s white but was a high school Spanish teacher for forty years. Instead of Dr. Seuss, she read the poems of Pablo Neruda to me as a baby. She’s the one who passed on to me a love for the Spanish language, much to the disappointment of my mother. (“Spanish? Why not Japanese? What are you going to do with a Spanish major? Teach high school Spanish like Lita?” I don’t mention anything to Mom about how
she
never really learned Japanese, and hasn’t had a day job for more than twenty years for that matter, because I don’t want to be disowned.)
    The Skylark was actually my grandfather’s, my dad’s dad, whom I’ve never met. In fact, I don’t know whether he’s dead or alive. Lita just refers to him as her
indisgression
. Dad, who’s curious about most things, says that he doesn’t care to know anything about his bio dad. Lita filled the shoes of both parents, he claims, and there wasn’t room for anyone else. Knowing how Lita is, I believe him.
    It doesn’t make any logical sense to keep the Skylark. It gets about thirteen miles to the gallon and that’s freeway driving. I keep having to get multiple smog checks and pay for multiple adjustments to pass