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blocked them for months now retracted. When Teddie had left, I’d turned the light out and moved into the hotel—I had a small apartment next to my parents’.
    A place to sleep, it wasn’t home.
    Romeo followed my gaze. Looking up, he pursed his lips. “The top floor, that’s Teddie’s place, right?”
    “Hmmm.”
    “Looks like somebody’s home.” The detective turned and looked at me.
    A deer caught in the headlights of an onrushing life, I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. “Teddie.”
    Romeo let his gaze drift upwards. “I’m glad I don’t have your problems.”
    “Thanks.”
    “It had to happen at some point. I mean, the guy couldn’t stay gone forever.”
    “Why not?”
    Romeo laughed as if I wasn’t serious. He hooked his arm through mine. “Come on. Maybe giving me a hand with the dead girl will help.”
    “Homicide. Just what the doctor ordered.”
     

Chapter Three
     
    T he food truck was easy to find. Squatting in the middle of a circle of floodlights, surrounded by crime scene technicians, with the whole area cordoned off by the yellow tape used to delineate the boundaries of horror, the scene looked like a CSI location shoot.
    Alas, no cameras. No make-believe. This was real.
    Reality—not something most Las Vegans were equipped to deal with.
    And it had happened in my backyard. Even worse, the noose of suspicion encircled people I cared about.
    Romeo ducked under the tape, then held it up for me. He paused to talk with one of the technicians and I circumnavigated the truck, getting my bearings. A typical food truck, it was already several years old when Jean-Charles bought it a month ago. I knew that because I’d helped him find the thing.
    My job offered me almost limitless pies to stick my fingers in. As a result, I was the go-to gal when anyone needed anything done—not as much fun as it sounds, but then again, I’d lost my smile.
    Vegas boasted a cadre of gourmet food trucks serving everything from fancy sliders to high-end tacos—which sounds like an oxymoron but isn’t—to full-fledged creations by multi-starred chefs. Especially those chefs who, like Jean-Charles, used the trucks as platforms to not only attract a new and younger clientele, but also to try new recipes that might not please the palates of their established followers.
    From time to time, the Babylon hired the food trucks and their cast of flamboyant culinary wunderkinder to provide an interesting twist to a promotional party or a fun slice of West Coast hip for patrons hailing from somewhere lacking a cool factor. Because of my love of food, I usually volunteered to ride herd on the truck vendors. Sometimes I even had to play my rung on the corporate ladder as a trump card to get the gig. When it came to food, I lost my ability to play well with others . . . sharing was not in my gastronomic repertoire. And when Jean-Charles had floated the idea of using the food truck as a combination billboard and test kitchen, I thought it brilliant.
    Boy, had that idea backfired.
    Like everything in Vegas, the truck had a light coating of dust. Here in the Mojave, we have such a problem with dust the city bought billboards to remind residents to refrain from off-roading. Of course, there wasn’t much the city fathers could do about the wind, and it regularly blew hard enough to sandblast all in its path.
    As I eased my way around the truck, I made mental notes: dented right fender, headlight rim also dented, the rear bumper had a scrape of black paint. Nothing stood out—and it would be impossible to tell when and how any of the bumps and bruises had happened. The tires, down to their last millimeter of tread, wore a halo of crusty mud. I couldn’t remember the last time it rained . . . sometime in July, I thought. The monsoon season—a moniker that made me laugh. Monsoons conjured jungles—trees laden with vines, humidity, and man-eating felines. While Vegas had all three, all of them were kept indoors and had