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and went into the shower. I didn’t hear what they were, and I ignored him.
    How could he think I looked fine to go anywhere? Had I looked that bad yesterday?
    I turned on the shower. Immediately, I knew what the problem was. We’d mostly seen each other in the dark last night. There was only that brief time in the diner with the painful overhead lighting. He’d forgotten what I looked like, or was too intensely occupied with his defense strategy to pay attention. That had to be it.
    The hot water gushed out of the showerhead. Crème Brûlée had crept into the bathroom, leaving the door wide open to the kitchen area. He was meowing for his breakfast, poor kitty. He was used to eating much earlier. He had to be starving.
    In answer, my stomach growled. I hadn’t eaten dinner last night. I was used to being up and grabbing a snack at four A.M. I was hungry, too.
    I turned off the water and moved aside the goldfish-covered shower curtain. Miguel was trying to lift Crème Brûlée. He looked up at me—naked as the day I was born—and smiled.
    “The cat sounded hungry,” he explained. “I didn’t think about you being in there—you know—like
that
.”
    Words had clearly failed him. Time seemed to pause for an instant and then started back up again.
    I grabbed an orange towel and quickly wrapped it around the most important parts. All of me had to be red with embarrassment. I looked okay naked, but I wasn’t prepared for an audience.
    “Well, turn away or something! I told you I was going to take a shower!”
    “Sorry!” He turned away, a little red-faced himself. “I made coffee. Hurry up. It’s not good to be late for your first interview in a murder investigation.”
    I closed the bathroom door behind him, and looked at my face in the misty mirror. I was breathing hard and my heart was pounding. Miguel had to be one of those seriously laid-back kind of people. If that had been Tommy Lee, he would’ve reacted much differently. Of course, Tommy Lee wouldn’t have offered to feed my cat, either. And Crème Brûlée wouldn’t have let him hold him.
    I dried off quickly, and did what I could with my hair. Curly hair does what it wants to do. It’s like an entity all its own that happens to live on my head. I get my curly hair from my father, who wears his in a crew cut so you can’t tell it’s curly at all.
    I chose to wear something dressier, one of the suits I normally wore to the bank. It was peach colored, a good hue on me. By the time I’d put on my makeup and matching shoes, my face wasn’t so red. My heart had stopped beating so quickly, too.
    Ollie was making breakfast on the old grill while Miguel set out coffee cups.
    “That smells good.” I sniffed and smiled. I already knew Ollie was good at cooking the basics—pancakes, eggs, and toast. “I’m hungry.”
    “You’re going to have to roll up eggs in a pancake so you can eat on the way.” Miguel poured coffee into paper cups. “Where are the lids for these things?”
    “Under the counter.” I sat down as Ollie heaped food on a plate for me.
    “She has to eat,” my large friend maintained. “Who knows how long the police will interrogate her. She has to be prepared.”
    “She’s not a suspect right now,” Miguel said. “Only a person of interest. The police are also talking to Terry’s taco truck partner. The two had a fight yesterday over some missing cash. The police will probably like him better for the murder than they do Zoe.”
    “Why are we going at all then?” I sipped some coffee. “Maybe we should skip it and let the police get on with questioning Terry’s partner.”
    Miguel did exactly what he’d said and wrapped my plate-sized pancake around my eggs. “It’s not nice to stand up a police investigation. Believe me, Detective Latoure wouldn’t like it. We have to get you cleared of this completely if you want your food truck back.”
    Ollie was already eating his pancakes and eggs. “Do what he says, young