Chapter 31
AFTER CHECKING IN, Justine and Cruz left the Hotel Francis in the city’s Zona Central. The temperature hovered in the low eighties. The breeze smelled of simmering chicken, probably a mole, Justine thought. In the distance, she could hear music playing. Brass horns.
“We should make contact with the local police,” Cruz said. “See if any reports were made regarding the Harlows.”
“Why not go right to the horse’s mouth?” Justine replied. She’d changed into a light summer shift, blue and conservative, covering her knees.
“And whose mouth would that be?” Cruz asked.
Justine fished in her pocketbook, found her iPhone, opened the notes app, said, “Leona Casa Madre, the blogger who made the claim on her site.”
“She never saw them personally, right?” Cruz said.
“No, but she claimed to have interviewed two people who saw them.”
“Drunk.”
“That’s what she wrote,” Justine said.
“No, I meant her, the blogger,” Cruz said. “I looked her up as well. Two years ago, she got fired from La Prensa in Mexico City when her love of tequila overcame her ability to perform her job as one of the newspaper’s court reporters. So she’s hardly an unimpeachable source. We really should go to—”
“No,” Justine said, standing her ground. “I have a gut feeling about this. I mean, if she can lead us to the people who actually saw the Harlows, it doesn’t matter what her past is.”
Cruz hesitated, then said, “Jack said you lead. I follow.”
“I like that,” Justine said.
“Figured you would. You have an address for her?”
“As a matter of fact,” Justine replied.
A short cab ride later, they pulled up in front of an apartment building on the Rio Panuco, east of González Gallo Park. “Number eight,” Justine said when Cruz went to the security phone by a locked steel front gate.
He buzzed, got nothing. He buzzed again. Nothing. A woman pushing two children in a stroller came to the gate. She opened it, looked at them suspiciously, spoke to Cruz in blisteringly fast Spanish.
Cruz smiled, flashed his Private badge, and replied. Justine got most of it. The woman had asked who they were looking for, and Cruz had given her the blogger’s name, which the woman obviously recognized because her head lagged to one side in a gesture of What are you going to do?
“Leona always sleeps in late, two, three in the afternoon, then up all night, that one, writing her book, she says,” the woman said. “She’s up there. Just pound on her door. She’ll hear you eventually. Maybe she’ll even answer.”