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“Do we know anything else about it?”
“Nope.” Harris pulled over and parked. When she turned to Cassie, she had a huge smile on her face. “Let’s go change that.”
Cassie envied Harris’s endless energy and ability to walk up to a person and start chatting. Her badge must give her some of that confidence, but in the short time they’d known each other, Cassie had noticed the way Harris read people. She had the uncanny ability to get under someone’s skin and force them to open up. Whatever she couldn’t do one on one, she could do in an interrogation room.
But they didn’t have that kind of pull here.
Carrera Moving Co. was nothing impressive, but Cassie knew how difficult it was to build a business from the ground up. The left half of the building looked more like a house than a shop, and she had a feeling the family lived where they worked. The right side of the building was a four-car garage, but much larger than anything Cassie had seen before. All the stalls were shut except one, and when she leaned to the side to get a better look, she spotted the tail end of a truck. It was dark outside, even with the porch light on, but the vehicle matched what they had seen earlier in the day.
Harris knocked on the front door, and within seconds, a plump woman with curly brown hair and heavy makeup opened the door. She was beautiful and carried with her a presence that could knock Cassie on her feet. However, Cassie could tell the woman was tired—of work, of family, of life. Her exhaustion turned to weariness as she took in the two strangers on her doorstep.
“Can I help you?” Her voice was heavily accented. If Cassie had to guess, she’d say Spanish was the woman’s first language. “We book appointments over the phone.”
“Actually, we’re not here to book an appointment.” Harris kept her voice gentle and even. This was a good lead, and they didn’t want to spook the older woman. “We have some questions about your drivers.”
The woman hesitated, looking Harris up and down and then casting a glance at Cassie. She must not have liked what she’d seen because she replied in rapid-fire Spanish and started to close the door. Cassie’s heart dropped to her stomach.
But Harris put a hand out, stopping the door from shutting all the way. When she spoke, Cassie’s brain couldn’t keep up with the words. It was a moment or two before she realized Harris was speaking a foreign language. Spanish.
“Necesitamos su ayuda, por favor.”
Cassie slow-blinked through the exchange, trying to absorb as much as she could. In high school and through some of college, she had studied Spanish, but she’d never been fluent. Her reading level was as basic as it came, but she could usually parse out a general meaning.
Spoken Spanish was a different story. Harris’s tone of voice dropped and became softer and rounder. It had a gentle, flowing edge to it that Cassie had never heard before. It was like the detective had become a different person and Cassie was seeing her again for the first time. Did she know Harris could speak Spanish so naturally? How had it never come up before?
“Señora, por favor.” Harris tried to gently hold the door open, but the woman was shaking her head and backing away into the house. “Por fa—”
When the door slammed shut, Harris hung her head. Cassie looked between the door and the detective. “I didn’t really follow that.”
“Yeah, sorry.” Harris stared at the door as though she could will the woman to change her mind. When nothing happened, she slipped her card through the tiny gap at the bottom and stepped back onto the sidewalk. “I thought if she knew I could speak Spanish, we’d have an easier time of it. Let’s just wait here for a minute in case she comes out again.”
“When did you learn Spanish like that?”
“About the same time I learned English.” Harris grinned when Cassie’s mouth dropped open. “My mom’s Puerto Rican.”
“Oh.”
“That gonna be a problem for you?”
Cassie blanched. “No! Of course not. I just didn’t know. I’m sorry—”
“I’m joking.” Harris barely contained her laughter. There was a sparkle in her eye that Cassie had missed earlier. “What are you apologizing for?”
“I, uh, don’t know.” Cassie added her own laugh to the mix. “For not knowing?”
Harris shrugged. “I look white. Even other Latinx people try to talk shit about who they think I am and don’t realize I can understand them.”
“That must be fun for you.”
“The best.?
?? Harris’ smile faded, but the twinkle remained. “I don’t tell a lot of people. David knew.” The sadness in her voice diminished the last of the spark. “But I never told anyone else. I’m not ashamed. It just makes life easier if people think I’m white.” The bitterness in Harris’s voice took Cassie by surprise. “The guys at the precinct have enough to say about me being a woman. Imagine if they knew I was Latina. Or a—” She broke off suddenly, the smile back on her face. “You know what, I’ll save that one for later.”
Cassie didn’t want to push. “What did the woman say?”
Harris cast a glance back at the house. “She said the truck had been stolen a few days ago. She didn’t report it because she figured it was her son who did it.”
“The kid I chased down.”
