Ganor walked over to the next setup of weights in his home gym. He started adding a few forty-five-pound weights to the bar. Spitz helped him.
“Why would he do that, Spitz?” Ganor asked him. He flexed his arms and then got under the straight bar filled with weights and prepared to bench press while Spitz spotted him.
Spitz helped him lift the bar.
“I think he still has a thing for her.”
Ganor pressed the bar upward, and on the fourth press he placed it back onto the bar and exhaled.
“Cornero and Lois hooked up?”
“I don’t know if they ever did. I just know that the way that guy looked at Lois even though she had a kid was hard to ignore. Word was that Caden was pretty pissed off about it, but Cornero had a lot of shit on him, I think from the service. So when he told Caden to make sure that Lois delivered the small fee while the package of drugs and the money were exchanged, Caden was fucking fuming mad. Don shouldn’t have been there. That bitch got my brother killed,” Ganor stated, his blood boiling.
“Hey, him and I may not have been blood, but I considered him my brother. I would do anything for either of you. It was Caden I couldn’t stand.”
Ganor shrugged his shoulders. “He was okay. He never fucked up before. Caden and Cornero didn’t get along, and I’m sure if Lois was screwing Cornero or flirting then it got under his skin that Cornero demanded Lois make the delivery. I don’t even know how Caden got Lois to do it. Caden didn’t even go see his kid, ever,” Ganor said.
“You think that’s why he fucking lost it and went to Lois’s apartment? What a fucking shock he and Don got that Lois’s cop sister was there.”
“Don’t remind me. What a fucking mess. You heard from our inside guys. Crazy fucking Caden was raping Lois in front of the kid and Don. No wonder her cop sister kille
d them both.”
“Valentina took two bullets. She almost died.”
“Yeah, well if she did, it would have been a lot easier to locate Lois now and find out what she knows. They disappeared and that sister Valentina of hers is the reason why we can’t find Lois.”
“Which brings us back to the fact that Lois has to know where the drugs and guns are,” Spitz said and sat up and then went to the dumbbells to do a few sets of curls with Ganor.
“You really think Don and Caden were fucking stupid enough to bring the guns and drugs to the apartment?” Spitz asked Ganor.
“They didn’t deliver them to Cornero’s guys.”
“But Lois got the money to Cornero and Cornero said the exchange never happened between his men and Don and Caden. Which means the drugs and guns were in their car or placed somewhere, and since they were killed, they never got do the exchange.”
“Then who took the fucking guns and drugs from the car or from their location?”
Spitz shook his head.
“Those guns and drugs could be anywhere. Maybe Lois doesn’t know,” Spitz stated.
“It’s either we find her and ask her to make sure, or Cornero does. He wants the drugs and the money and we’re out a hundred grand that Lois gave to Cornero that night. We work for him and he wants to find her. We need to expand our search and start pulling in some favors. It’s been months,” Ganor added.
“I don’t think Cornero even cares about the drugs and the guns as much as he cares about finding Lois. He wants her, especially now that Caden is dead. It’s like the ultimate revenge to get Caden’s woman. That’s the bottom line,” Spitz said to him.
“Then we find her and get her to Cornero, or let him get her. Then we’re done with this deal, with this fucked-up situation, and maybe we take this little business across the country. Cornero mentioned some friends in Dallas that work the clubs and dancehalls. Maybe we take a little trip and check it out for ourselves. I’m sure if we find Lois and hand her over to Cornero, he’ll be more than happy to give us a piece of that action in Dallas.”
“Sounds sweet to me. Hell, maybe we can just bring Lois to him either way and then take the guns and the drugs for ourselves. I’ll make some calls. We’ll find her no matter what it takes.”
* * * *
Lois was adding the sugar and pectin to the strawberries before she placed the concoction into the pot to boil. She added a little lemon juice and Dora’s secret ingredient, a butter mixture. As the strawberries cooked, she looked at the display of jars they’d already made and watched Dora add homemade labels to the jars.
“The jellies came out delicious,” Lois said as she prepared the next set of jars to be sterilized and used for storage.
“Thank you. I was going to say that your cookies are incredible. You have your own recipes?” Dora asked her.
“I have a lot of different recipes. Just some things I learned over the last couple of years. I would run the bake sale at the nursery school Kenny attended,” she said and then lifted up one of the labels that Dora was using to place on the jars. They were simple, and yet the design drew Lois in. It had the Brazos Farm name on it, a vine of strawberries, and the list of natural ingredients on the back, as well as a place to stamp the packaging date. Dora had the stamp on the table, too.