“Now all we have to do is prove it,” Pete said.
Uncle Titus frowned. “You be careful, you hear? Car thieves are nothing to fool with.”
“We’ll be careful, Uncle Titus.” Jupiter finished his cottage cheese. “I’ll go and open up the yard. We’ll be over in Headquarters, then we’re going out. Aunt M, if Ty gets his bail set, would you leave a message on our answering machine? We’ll call in every hour or so and get our messages.”
“All right, Jupiter. I’ll just call the lawyer again, then be right over to open the office.”
Pete and Jupiter crossed to the gates and opened the electronic lock with Jupiter’s belt control. In HQ, Jupe told Pete what had happened last night. Pete laughed at the description of El Tiburon and the Piranhas in the tiny and almost empty cafe. He was excited when Jupiter got to the appearance of Joe Torres at the car wash.
“So Torres did know someone named Tiburon!”
“Clearly.” Jupiter nodded. “Now all we have to do is prove it’s the same Tiburon who asked Ty to drive the Mercedes down from Oxnard, and that he knew the car was stolen.”
“That’s all?” Pete said. “So where do we start?”
“We take what we’ve found, make a hypothesis, and work from there as if it were true.”
“Make a what? Give it to me in English, Jupe.”
“A hypothesis, an assumption, a theory, Pete. In this case we’ll assume that Joe Torres is a member of a gang of car thieves. Then the best way to prove Tiburon’s involvement is to watch Torres and see where he leads us.”
“Sounds good,” Pete agreed. “When do we go back to that bodega?”
“As soon as Bob gets here.”
“I’ll do some work on the Corvair for a while.”
“Which reminds me, when do we find me a car?”
“I told you. As soon as I get the Corvair in shape. That won’t be long. Anyway, now we’ve got to wait here for Bob, right?”
“Excuses, excuses.”
“Okay, okay! We’ll go now. I know a lot where people sell their own cars. We’ll start there.”
“We can’t go yet.” Jupiter sighed. “Bob should be here any moment.”
Pete left HQ muttering to himself. Something about people making up their dumb minds.
Alone, Jupiter opened the bottom drawer of his desk, reached all the way into the back, and took out a candy bar. He munched it eagerly, with one eye watching the door for Bob to appear any second.
Bob did not appear.
Not that second or the next minute or the next half hour.
Jupiter went outside and looked into the workshop. No one was there. He continued on around HQ to where Pete was once again buried inside the engine of the Corvair.
“He’s late,” Jupiter said.
“So what else is new,” Pete answered from inside the engine.
“It’s that job,” Jupiter decided. “He likes working for Sax too much to keep his mind on the Investigators. ”
“It’s those girls,” Pete’s muffled voice corrected him. “He likes all the girls after him too much to keep his mind on anything.”
“Girls can’t be that important,” Jupiter said.
Pete’s head emerged from the engine to stare at Jupiter — just as the girl with the VW Rabbit, Karen, drove into the yard. She called out, “Is Bobby here?”
Jupiter shook his head. Pete said, “Sorry, we haven’t seen him.”
Karen drove out with a smile and a wave. Moments later a Honda drove in. This was the short girl who had talked to Jupiter the day before.
“Have you seen Bob this morning, Jupiter? It is Jupiter, right?” She smiled at him.
This time Jupiter couldn’t even shake his head. “We haven’t seen him, Ruthie.” Pete smiled back at the blond girl.
Ruthie looked at Jupiter once more before she drove out of the yard.
“She likes you, Jupe,” Pete said. “Why don’t you ask her for a date?”
Jupiter stared after the Honda. “You really think she likes me?”
“She couldn’t show it more unless she asked you out herself, and most girls won’t do — that.”
“I know,” Jupiter said. “Why won’t they? Then it’d be easy.”
“Well, they won’t. You’ll have to do it.”
Jupiter groaned. “Maybe later. Now, as soon as Bob — ”
A third girl drove into the yard. It was the redhead, Lisa. She wasn’t smiling. “Bob sent me to tell you Sax did come back and he has to work. We’re going out later, so he’ll be busy all day.”
She turned the car and left without looking at the guys again. Pete shook his head as he watched Lisa leave.
“She doesn’t like us, you know? Thinks Bob hangs around with us too much. She’s gonna be a problem.”
“Bob’s the problem,” Jupiter said. “We’ll have to go to the bodega and watch Torres without him.”
They checked with Aunt Mathilda, but she had heard nothing from her lawyer. Then they drove in Pete’s Fiero to the barrio and parked around the corner from Torres’s bodega.
“We stand out too much,” said Jupe as they approached the grocery. “Where can we hole up?”
He didn’t feel noticeable just because they were Anglo. The Rocky Beach barrio wasn’t like the large barrios of Los Angeles or New York or other big cities, where everyone was Latino. Here, while there were mostly Latino people — many from families that had been here since the days when California was Spanish and Mexican — there were also many Anglos.
But Jupe and Pete were strangers in the neighborhood. Sooner or later they’d be noticed if they stood in the open.
Pete pointed. “There’s a doorway that’ll hide us. We can still see the bodega.”
“Perfect,” Jupiter agreed. “The building even looks empty.”
In the shadows of the doorway they settled to watch. The morning passed. This was the hard part of detective work — the dull, slow, boring watching and waiting for something to happen. But it was a big part of being a detective.
At noon Jupiter came alert. “Pete!”
Three of the Piranhas had driven up in a lowrider, raised now for highway driving. They went into the bodega.
“They could be buying groceries,” Pete said.
But when the three came out half an hour later, they carried no groceries.
“It sure looks like Torres and the Piranhas are in something together,” Pete said.
“It could be just neighborhood stuff,” Jupiter cautioned, but his voice was more excited now.
Another two hours passed.
Then a bright orange Cadillac appeared and parked in front of the bodega. The driver hurried inside. Seconds later Joe Torres came out and got into the Cadillac.
“Come on!” Jupiter cried.
They ran from the doorway to Pete’s Fiero and scrambled in. Pete started the motor just as the orange Caddy passed them at the corner. Pete pulled away and turned into the cross street to follow.
The orange Caddy was two blocks ahead and driving slowly. Pete hung as far back as he could. Torres had seen the Fiero yesterday, before Jupiter had thrown him.
After leaving the barrio, the Caddy turned left and entered a maze of dusty streets behind the freeway. There it drove among construction material yards, warehouses, automobile body shops, and other commercial buildings. Pete followed, hanging even farther back, now that there were few cars on the narrow streets.
Up ahead, the Caddy turned right. Pete reached the corner just in time to see the Caddy stop in front of a large three-story red-brick building down the block. It was almost under the freeway and was close to a better section of office buildings.
“We’d better park,” Jupiter said, “and walk.”
Pete turned the corner and slid into a parking spot. They heard the Cadillac honk. It was an odd honking: one long, two short, a long, and a short. They saw large doors swing open, and the Caddy drove into the building.