Metro Girl (Alex Barnaby 1)

“This is a mess,” Rosa said. “Maria would die if she saw this. She was real organized. That’s why she was so good with the cigars. She was neat. And she had good fingers.”

“You won’t really get fired, will you?” I asked.

“Nah. They’re already down Maria. And there’s not many people can roll a cigar. Most young people don’t want to learn. Rather work at Burger King. When my generation retires they’ll probably close down the factories.”

I was combing through the clutter, looking for anything interesting, anything that might tie Maria to Bill. Rosa was doing the same. Judey, Hooker, and Brian took the rest of the apartment.

Judey danced into the bedroom and waved a little leather book at me. “I found her address book,” he said. “I am the master detective. I am the Magnum of South Beach.” And he handed the book over to me with a flourish. “I also found bags of chips and boxes of crackers in the microwave. And you know what that means.”

I had no idea. “What?” I asked.

“Cockroaches,” Rosa said. “They got roaches as big as a barn cat in here. They keep the chips in the microwave so the roaches don’t get them.”

Damn. “Do they fly?”

“I’ve never seen them fly,” Rosa said. “But I wouldn’t be surprised. We’re talking major mutant roaches.”

Hooker ambled in. “What’s up?”

“Judey found an address book. Rosa and I didn’t find anything.”

Hooker looked around, his attention focusing on the small desk. “She has a laptop. Let’s see where she goes on the net.” He turned the laptop on and studied the icons at the bottom of the screen. “No AOL. Looks like she uses Explorer as her browser of choice.” He went to the top of the screen and clicked on the phone connection. When he had a connection he hit the Explorer icon and the home page came on. He had several choices at the side of the page. He hit history and a chronology of Maria’s Internet use appeared.

“Wow,” I said. “I’m impressed.”

“Not that impressive,” Hooker said. “I have a lot of downtime, and I kill time by surfing. I lucked out here. Maria uses the same browser I use, so I sort of know where to go.” Hooker started working his way through the dates. “Okay, I’m getting a little freaked,” he said. “She’s pulling some nasty stuff up. She started out with Cuban history. To be more specific, the Kennedy Missile Crisis. From there she went to sites detailing Soviet munitions brought onto the island. She looks at nuclear warheads. And then she goes to sites detailing chemical agents.”

“Maybe someone else used her computer,” Rosa said. “Like her roommate.”

We all stared at Rosa.

“You’re right,” she said. “What was I thinking?”

“She’s also been reading up on gold,” Hooker said. “Weights and measures stuff.”

“Anything else?”

“Nothing interesting. As you can see, the rest is more typical. Mostly eBay and weather.”

Hooker shut the computer off, and we all trooped out of Maria’s bedroom. We called goodbye to Barbie and let ourselves out. We silently entered the elevator and dropped to the ground floor. No one said anything until we were out of the building, at curbside, standing next to the Porsche.

Judey had been holding Brian the whole time. He put Brian down and Brian lifted his leg and peed on the Porsche’s right rear tire.

“What a good boy,” Judey cooed to Brian. “He had to go pee, and he held it all that time.”

“You know there are places where they eat dogs,” Rosa said.

I thumbed through the address book. “Bill’s name isn’t in here,” I said.

We were on a corner, and just for the hell of it, I took Bill’s keys out of my purse and pointed the automatic lock gizmo down the street. Nothing. I turned and tried the cross street. A red-and-white Mini Cooper, two cars away, beeped at me.

“Do it again,” Hooker said.

I pointed the gizmo at the Mini and got the same response. The Mini flashed its lights and beeped.

“I don’t get it,” Rosa said. “What’s with the car?”

“It’s Bill’s,” I said. Leave it to Bill to drive a Mini Cooper.