Authors: Laura DiSilverio
Albertine changed tacks. “What’s Charlie think of this?”
“I haven’t told her yet, but you know she’ll be in favor of it. Charlie doesn’t believe
in discriminating against clients based on anything other than their ability and willingness
to pay.”
Shaking her head slowly, Albertine said, “She might surprise you.”
For a few minutes, we speculated about why Les might’ve left Heather-Anne, with Albertine
suggesting it was because Heather-Anne wanted them to join a nudist colony so she
could show off her hot bod. I choked on my third beignet, and she pounded my back,
grinning.
“How’s your diet going?” Albertine asked.
I stuck my feet farther under the desk, feeling guilty about my new shoes. Albertine
was helping me with my finances and had put me on a spending diet. The Louboutin pumps
were not supposed to be on the menu.
“Gigi…”
“It’s hard,” I confessed. “I’m not used to having to watch every dime. I’m no good
at it.” I’d been good at it, as a girl, when there’d been six of us kids and Daddy
hadn’t held on to jobs very long, what with his drinking and all, but then I’d met
Les not long after I got out of beauty school. When we got married, well, it was a
relief not to have to pinch pennies so they squealed like a stuck pig anymore.
“You won’t get good at it if you don’t try,” Albertine said. She wagged a finger at
me. “How’re you gonna send Dexter to college if you don’t quit buying every pair of
designer shoes that calls your name?”
I jumped. Albertine guessing about the shoes spooked me, but the thought of Dexter
and college bothered me more. If Dexter didn’t get his grades up I wasn’t going to
have to pay for college because he wasn’t going to get into one. I tried to consider
that a silver lining but hated to think of my son eking out a living as a Walmart
greeter.
“Girlfriend.” Albertine shook her head. “You’re supposed to call me when you get the
spending urge, right? Like an AA sponsor.”
“I will. Really.” I truly wanted to change my spending habits.
She let it drop and mentioned that her sister was sending her youngest daughter to
Colorado Springs to work for Albertine. “I just hope she’s got more brains than Sissy,”
Albertine said, heading for the door. “Otherwise, I’ll be losing customers faster
than Tony Stewart drives a quarter mile.”
As soon as she’d left, I picked up the phone to call Charlie. Then I put it down again.
It’d be better to give her this news in person, especially since I needed her advice
on how to go about finding Les. Locking the office, I took my notes and the two documents
Heather-Anne had provided and drove to Charlie’s house. She lived a couple of miles
west of the office, in a small house located behind St. Paul’s Episcopal Church. When
I knocked on the door, she called, “Come in,” and I entered hesitantly. I’d only been
here a couple of times.
“Charlie?”
“In the kitchen.”
I followed her voice and found her on her knees grouting a section of slate tile in
the breakfast nook. Glancing over her shoulder, she said, “I thought you’d be the
tile delivery guy.”
“Should you be doing this?” I asked.
She slicked her mink-dark bangs aside and pushed to her feet, lurching a bit to her
weak side. She’s only five foot three, five inches shorter than me, but she seems
taller. Maybe because she works out and is so athletic. Unlike me. I thought guiltily
of the expensive treadmill in my living room that I hadn’t used since Christmas.
“I’d go stir-crazy if I stuck to the doc’s list of approved activities,” she said.
“Pepsi?”
“No, thanks.” I knew better than to ask for an iced tea or a Coke; Charlie only kept
Pepsi and beer on hand. I guessed that came from being raised in parts of the country
that didn’t understand hospitality the way we Southerners did. She got a Pepsi from
the fridge, popped the top, and took a long drink.
“What brings you out this way?”
Putting on a bright voice, I told her we had a new client. When I gave her the name,
she was silent for a moment. “Heather-Anne the home wrecker?” she asked finally.
“Yes,” I admitted in a small voice.
“Are you insane?”
I stared at her. “A paying client is—”
“She stole your husband, deprived your children of their father—and God knows they
need a disciplinarian around—and made it necessary for you to work for a living. In
my
PI firm. You can’t tell me you want to work for her.”
“She gave us a thousand dollars to start with. Cash.”
Charlie paused only the briefest moment before saying, “Tell her to put it where the
sun don’t shine.”
Her support surprised me, and I smiled. I suddenly felt better about tracking down
Les for Heather-Anne. “It’s okay, really.”
“No, it’s not.” She stomped to the recycle bin and slammed the Pepsi can into it.
The movement caused her to wince, but I knew she’d snap my head off if I suggested
she sit down.
“She said Les is in danger, that one of his former partners might be out to get him.
I can do this without getting all emotional. I already—”
“Gigi, you can’t visit a Hallmark store without getting all emotional.”
“Some of those cards are so
moving
. The people who write them must—”
“What story did our new client feed you?”
I sat at the maple-topped table Charlie had shoved to one side while she tiled and
told her everything Heather-Anne had said. When I finished, I watched her think, waiting
for her to tell me where to start.
“If one of Les’s partners is looking for revenge, why would Les run to Colorado?”
Good question. I wished I’d thought to ask Heather-Anne.
Charlie let it go. “Here’s what we’ll do. We know he flew into Denver two days ago.
I’ll get on to the rental car companies and see if he rented a car. I can do that
from here. You make a list of places he might go, people he might call here in Colorado.
We don’t know he’s still here—he might’ve boarded another flight after landing at
DIA—but we’ve got to start somewhere.”
“He always used Avis.”
“Good to know. This is why Heather-Anne hired you. Us. She’s definitely not a dummy.
You wouldn’t happen to have his Avis loyalty card number?”
I hefted my purse onto my lap and dug through it for my wallet. Piling the can opener,
mini curling iron, pepper spray, six lipsticks, and other stuff on Charlie’s table,
I found my old Avis card behind the two pieces of a Nordstrom’s card the clerk had
scissored the last time I tried to use it. Charlie copied down the Avis number.
“What about the cell phone bill?” I asked.
Charlie nodded. “Use a reverse directory and track down names and addresses.” She
scanned the pages. “A lot of these numbers are international—Costa Rica, most likely—and
a lot are cell phones. If we don’t get a lead on him some other way, we can start
calling these numbers and see who answers and what they know about Les. I hate to
do that up front because someone might warn him we’re looking for him.”
I sighed with relief. Even though I’d watched Charlie hunt several missing persons,
and I’d helped her with a couple of them, I didn’t really know how to go about it
on my own. I was better at process serving and doing background investigations. “Thanks,
Charlie. I’ll get started on that list right away.”
“We’ll find him,” Charlie promised. “I just hope you’re not sorry when we catch up
with him.”
3
After Gigi left, Charlie wiped the grout haze off the section of floor she’d tiled
and cleaned up for the day. The prospect of digging her teeth into a new investigation
was more enticing than another few hours on her knees forcing grout into the gaps
between tiles. Absently massaging her butt cheek, she swallowed the horse-pill-sized
antibiotics the doc had prescribed and reached for the phone.
The Avis clerk who answered was perfect for Charlie’s purposes: young and gullible.
Deciding that her best bet was to impersonate Gigi, Charlie introduced herself as
Georgia Goldman and gave the clerk Les’s loyalty card number.
“I’ve done the stupidest thing, and I hope you can help me,” she said, not attempting
Gigi’s heavy southern accent. “My husband and I rented a car in Denver two days ago,
and I left my sunglasses in it when he dropped me off. They’re prescription and they
cost a fortune. He was going to make a few sales calls around the state and then fly
to Costa Rica, and I can’t catch up with him. You wouldn’t happen to know when he’s
bringing the car back, would you? I can drive up to Denver to get my glasses back.”
Keyboard clickings told Charlie the clerk was buying her story. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Goldman,”
the young woman said, “but I don’t see anything about your glasses. Your husband turned
the car in yesterday, and there’s no note about sunglasses. I can call our office
in Aspen to make sure, if you’d like?”
Aspen. Bingo! “Oh, silly me,” Charlie said. “Here they are in my
green
purse. I was looking in the pink one.” Gigi’s purses were large enough and heavy
enough to contain supplies for a monthlong Himalayan trek, and Charlie figured she
could misplace a Subaru in one of them, never mind a pair of glasses. “I’m so sorry
to have bothered you.”
“No problem,” the clerk said sunnily.
Hanging up, Charlie drummed her fingers on the table. No way could she drive to Aspen:
Her ass wasn’t up to the trip, and the doc would kill her for trying. However, the
Embassy Suites where Heather-Anne Pawlusik was staying was less than half a mile from
Charlie’s house. Charlie itched to suss out Swift Investigations’ newest client for
herself; Gigi saw people through rose-colored glasses and was apt to give someone
the benefit of the doubt—even the woman who’d run off with her husband. She slipped
on her Nikes. The doc was encouraging gentle exercise now that they’d zapped the infection,
and it struck Charlie that a walk to the Embassy Suites would let her kill two birds
with one stone.
* * *
The Embassy Suites sat perpendicular to I-25. A small perimeter of grass and trees—shades
of midwinter brown, tan, and gray—surrounded three sides. It backed onto a ravine
where a creek roared after thunderstorms but sludged gently along the rest of the
time. Three or four other hotels and a spattering of chain restaurants were its nearest
neighbors. Slipping into the building through its restaurant at the I-25 end, Charlie
strode confidently into the lobby and angled toward the ground-floor guest rooms.
She turned into the corridor and passed the elevators as a door midway down the hall
banged open. Heather-Anne’s room? Charlie wondered. A man barreled out, and she got
an impression of height and a gray cowboy hat as he strode away from her, disappearing
into the atrium. Too young, dark, and skinny to be Les Goldman, she thought, looking
over a planter of greenery to see the back of the man’s hat bobbing toward the front
entrance. She continued down the hall to 115, and it was, indeed, the room the man
had slammed out of. It seemed Miss Heather-Anne Pawlusik had brought a boyfriend with
her to look for the missing Les. Interesting. Of course, it could be a brother or
cousin, Charlie thought, trying to give their client the benefit of the doubt, or
even a hotel employee checking on a malfunctioning television or counting bottles
in the minibar, but the man hadn’t worn a uniform or the kind of friendly expression
that hospitality workers had surgically applied when they first started the job.
Drawing even with the door, Charlie noticed that the man had slammed it open so hard
that it had failed to latch on the rebound. Tempting. Too tempting. A glance up and
down the hall showed no one in sight, although a maid’s cart sat outside a room four
doors down. “Heather-Anne?” she called, in case the woman was inside. When there was
no answer, Charlie nudged the door wider with her shoulder so she didn’t leave fingerprints
and slipped inside, letting the door clunk closed behind her.
A scan showed the standard Embassy Suites sitting room: couch, TV, coffee table, chair.
A laptop case, open, sat to the right of the couch, and Charlie eyed it longingly …
but no. Powering up Heather-Anne’s laptop was too big a risk for potentially no reward;
in all probability, her files were password protected. Charlie made for the bedroom,
elbowing the closet door open on her way. A pair of women’s jeans, two blouses, and
a slinky dress hung on the rod, and strappy sandals and athletic shoes were tossed
on the floor. No men’s clothes. Hm. Maybe Mr. Cowboy Hat really was a hotel employee …
or maybe he had no more business in Heather-Anne’s room than Charlie did.
The unmade bed told Charlie she needed to hurry; the maid could come in at any time.
Starting with the nightstand, she stooped to read the data on a prescription bottle
and discovered Heather-Anne was taking Zoloft, which Charlie thought was an antianxiety
med. A half-read copy of a historical romance lay facedown on the table, and a hotel
notepad lay next to the phone. Ripping off the top sheet, Charlie stowed it in her
jeans pocket. She might be able to raise impressions and read what had been written
on the page above.
Conscious of time flitting by—she’d been in the room four minutes already—Charlie
ducked into the bathroom. Without touching any surface, she noted the litter of toiletries
and high-end cosmetics on the counter and a wet towel crumpled on the floor. A faint
smell of sandalwood hung in the air. The room told her nothing about Heather-Anne
except she had enough money to afford expensive lipstick and wasn’t a neatnik.
Passing the closet again on the way out, Charlie halted. Lots of hotels had safes
these days … she spied the safe, its door closed, on a shelf beside a stack of extra
pillows and blankets. She reached for the ridged dial set in the middle of the door,
knowing fingerprints wouldn’t show on the corrugated surface. As she gave it a twist,
she heard the snick of a key card going into the door lock. Damn! She didn’t know
whether to hope the maid or Heather-Anne came into the room.