I went inside. Miguel’s office was on the second floor. I took a deep breath and went up the stairs to give myself time to decide what I’d say to him. Even by the time I got there, I wasn’t sure. I hoped to be inspired when I saw his face.
The office door was open. I walked in, but there was no sign of Miguel. There were only two rooms in the office. He was gone, but his cell phone was on his desk. All the lights were on. The desk phone was off the hook. A weird voice kept telling me what to do if I wanted to make a call.
Nothing looked out of place besides that. Maybe he’d gone home.
I was about to leave when I noticed a small amount of blood on the carpet near the front of the desk. Examining it closely, I could see the blood was fresh. It was still pooling on top of the carpet fibers—still time to clean it without staining.
There was something under the desk, too. I used a pen from Miguel’s desk to pull it out. It was an empty pack of Marlboro cigarettes.
Marsh! Detective Marsh had been there.
Why had he been there?
A terrible thought crossed my mind.
Was it Marsh from the beginning? Was he the one who’d killed McSwain because he’d asked questions about Alex’s partner in crime? Had he been the one who’d killed Alex, too?
I took out my cell phone and used it to speed dial Patti Latoure. I was shaking with fear and hoping nothing horrible had happened to Miguel.
Patti finally answered after a few tries. “Zoe. We were just talking about you.”
“We?” My heart was pounding, hoping Miguel was with her.
“Detective Macey Helms came down from Birmingham. She has some interesting information.”
“Can it wait a few minutes?” I kind of cut her off. “Miguel Alexander may be missing. I think Detective Marsh from Charlotte might be responsible for the things that went on during the food truck race.”
Patti chuckled. “Funny you should say that. Macey was telling me her story about her partner shooting her right after she saw him kissing Tina Gerard.”
“Kissing Tina? She’s involved in this, too?”
“It seems that way. Where are you?”
I skimmed over the reason I’d come to look for Miguel and told her what I’d found at his office. “Could you look up Miguel’s home address and meet me there? Maybe you could put out an APB, or whatever you call it, for his Mercedes. I don’t think it’s here. Tina and Marsh may have hurt Miguel.”
“Take it easy, Zoe. Calm down. I’ll look up Miguel’s home address—although I would’ve thought it was something you already had. It’s possible nothing has happened to him. He might not even know those two are the real culprits.”
I waited impatiently for her to find his address. My fingernails tapped on the backside of my phone. I had a bad feeling about this.
“Here’s his address. It’s only a few blocks from where you are,” she said. “But don’t meet me there. You stay where you are. I’ll let you know if anything is going on over there.”
Like that was going to happen.
I wrote down Miguel’s address. The minute I was off the phone with Patti, I ran out of the office and into the street.
“What’s going on?” Cole asked as I got back in the taxi.
“I’ll tell you on the way,” I answered as I dialed Uncle Saul’s cell phone number.
Cole raced to the address I gave him. Miguel lived in a small apartment building that was mostly covered by hanging moss from a few large live oaks. Huge, old azalea bushes obscured the front windows.
The Mercedes wasn’t there, either. There were no lights on inside.
Cole got out with me this time, grabbing a baseball bat he kept under his seat. We searched the mail slots. There were four apartments. Miguel’s was on the second floor.
I tried the buzzer over and over again. Either he wasn’t there or couldn’t answer. Both answers were bad in my mind.
“We should try to get someone else down here to open the door,” Cole said.
I reasoned with a man on the first floor who answered his buzzer. I told him that we thought Miguel could be in danger. The man, dressed only in his underwear, finally came and opened the door for us. I could hear sirens in the distance. Patti wasn’t far behind us.
We ran up to the second floor. The building was a little shabby, but you could see this had been a nice place at one time. I wondered if Miguel had lived here with Caroline, or if they’d had a house that he’d sold.
Thousands of crazy thoughts raced through my mind as we reached the door to Miguel’s apartment.
“I can knock it down with my bat,” Cole enthusiastically volunteered.
“You might break your arm before you break it in.” I held him back.
“So what do we do?”
Patti was coming up the stairs with two uniformed officers. “Zoe, didn’t I tell you to stay where you were? What part of that didn’t you understand?”
I ran and hugged her, tears in my eyes. “I’m so glad to see you. I think they did something with Miguel. I don’t think he’s here, either.”
She hugged me back, a little stiffly, but I didn’t care. I was really happy to see her.
“You’re determined to get into trouble, aren’t you? You have to leave the police work to the police. Let’s get someone to open this door for us.”
She roused the building manager. By that time, Macey Helms was up there, too. She was moving very slowly, painfully, to join us.
“Hello, Zoe.” Her arm was in a sling, and she was very pale. “I hope Miguel is all right. I understand we both came to the same conclusion about Tina and my partner.”
“I guess so,” I answered. “It occurred to me on the way home from Birmingham that Tina could’ve been setting up everything to cover Alex’s murder. She had a lot to gain.”
She nodded and winced. “I don’t think she realized that paying Miguel that money and meeting with him would throw her onto our radar. On the other hand, when Miguel looked innocent of any wrongdoing, so did she. What can I tell you? Bad guys do stupid things sometimes. I’m glad it works that way for our sake.”
“How did she and Detective Marsh get involved?”
“I don’t know yet. Right now, we’re working on the assumption that Marsh probably killed McSwain because McSwain started looking too close. He may have killed your friend, Reggie, as a decoy for what he was about to do to Alex.”
The more she talked about what Tina and Marsh were willing to do to kill Alex, the more anxious I became about Miguel.
The apartment was small. The officers who were searching it came back only a few minutes later. Miguel wasn’t there. There was no sign of a struggle.
Patti sent them over to take a look at the office. “I don’t want to make a big deal out of Miguel’s disappearance and find out he was out all night with a client and hasn’t thought about anything else.”
Helms agreed with her. “We definitely don’t want to lose Marsh and Tina.”
“I have everyone looking for the Mercedes, but if they took Miguel’s vehicle, the chances are they’ve ditched it. They could already be out of Mobile.”
“Can’t you call the FBI or something?” I asked.
“It doesn’t work like that, Zoe,” Patti said. “We have to take care of this one step at a time. We’ll find Marsh and Gerard, and we’ll figure out where Miguel is. Just take a deep breath and go on home. We’ll call if we hear anything.”
I thanked her again for her help. Ollie, Delia, and Uncle Saul were there, waiting downstairs with Cole. One of the old churches nearby was chiming midnight. The air was hot and sultry with a little hint of rain that might have been coming from Mobile Bay.
“Now what?” Cole put away his baseball bat.
“It’s Zoe’s call.” Uncle Saul hugged me. “I have a feeling we’re not going home yet.”