Authors: Laura DiSilverio
“Thank you very, very much for driving Charlie to Aspen, honey,” I said, reaching
out to brush a strand of hair off his forehead. He shook his head like a horse getting
rid of flies, and my hand dropped. “I’m sorry you had to miss school. I called your
principal and explained the situation. Well, I didn’t tell them I was in jail, of
course, but I said there was a family situation and—”
“So you saw Dad,” Dexter interrupted.
I shot him an uncertain look. “For a little bit.”
“I suppose he’s going back to South America soon?” Dexter gazed straight ahead. “Did
he mention if he might stop by … Never mind.”
“Oh, honey—” I reached over to touch his shoulder.
“It doesn’t matter,” Dex said, shrugging my hand away.
I was as mad at Les right then as I’ve ever been, and mad at myself for falling into
bed with him—not that we’d used a bed—instead of kicking him in the balls like he
deserved.
* * *
After showering off the jail stink, I styled my hair, put on makeup, and began to
feel a bit more cheerful. Right up until I remembered Les and the way he’d walked
out on me again. Disappeared. Maybe I should give Heather-Anne her money back and
tell her she was better off without him. I was angry with myself for getting my hopes
up. I should know better by now. Finding the happiest sweater in my drawer—a lemon
yellow angora blend with purple pansies embroidered on it that was long enough to
cover my behind—I pulled it on, then had to redo my hair. Then, since it was only
about one o’clock, I called good-bye to Dex (who didn’t answer) and drove to Swift
Investigations.
I listened to the messages off the answering machine and called everybody back. I
hated having to tell the people who wanted us to find lost pets that we didn’t do
that kind of detecting, but Charlie flat-out refused to look for pets. “No one will
take us seriously as investigators,” she said, “if we spend all our time hunting for
Fido and Fluffy.” I gave the unhappy pet owners the Humane Society’s number and suggested
they consider microchipping.
After the pet owners—there were two of them today—I called a man who wanted us to
find his runaway teenaged daughter and set up an appointment with him. I offered to
meet him that very afternoon, but he said she’d already been gone three months and
he wasn’t canceling his tee time for an appointment with me. Next week would do fine,
he said. I started to tell him that if it was my Kendall gone missing I’d be out there
looking for her morning, noon, and night till she was safe at home again, but I remembered
in time that Charlie thinks it makes potential clients irritable when we say things
like that. Once I’d typed the appointment onto the calendar, I looked around, not
sure what else to do. Charlie had finished off the background checks for Danner and
Lansky, so I decided to drive those down to the law firm. After that, I returned to
the office and made the call I’d been putting off: I phoned Heather-Anne to give her
an update.
I hoped she wouldn’t be in her room and I could leave a message. She picked up on
the first ring.
“This is Gigi,” I said, “from Swift—”
“I know who you are, Gigi, for God’s sake. Have you found him?”
“Well…” I told her about tracking Les down in Aspen and talking to him briefly. I
didn’t mention sleeping with him, although I wanted to, or the police arresting me
for breaking into Cherry and Moss’s.
“So you chatted with him a bit and then he disappeared—poof!—like Glinda the Good
Witch?” Heather-Anne sounded annoyed and skeptical both.
“Um, yes.”
“Of all the incompetent— What are you going to do now?”
Ooh, good question. “We have other leads we’re following,” I said, reciting the line
Charlie gives folks when she’s completely stumped. “I’m sure we’ll pick up his trail”—that
made us sound like hounds on the scent of a possum—“in a day or so.”
“That’s too long,” Heather-Anne snapped. “Tomorrow is—”
When she didn’t finish, I asked, “Tomorrow is what?”
“Important.”
I thought she was hiding something. “Why?”
She sighed like I’d pushed her to the limit. “If you must know, it’s the anniversary
of our first date. I didn’t want to have to say that, given that you were married
to him at the time, but—”
I hung up. My hands trembled and I clasped them together. I was not going to cry;
tears would melt mascara all over my face, and I’d end up looking like a rabid raccoon.
Then, ashamed of my rudeness, I dialed her back and got a busy signal. Maybe she was
still spilling the details of their first date, not realizing I’d hung up. I called
again and asked the hotel operator to connect me with voice mail, where I left a very
nice message about being sorry we got cut off and promising to be in touch as soon
as I had more information. Nasty task completed, I locked the office and headed down
to Albertine’s. I needed a drink.
Albertine’s sits at the far end of the strip mall from Swift Investigations, and it’s
the cutest little place; it brings back memories of the one and only time I was in
New Orleans for Mardi Gras. I went with my friend Lacey and her brother the year after
I graduated from high school, while I was still at beauty school and before I met
Les. I still have some of the green and gold beads the Mardi Gras king and queen tossed
from the float, and I can still remember throwing up in an alley behind some bar after
Lacey’s brother bought me one too many Southern Comfort and Cokes. Mostly, Albertine’s
smells like New Orleans, all shrimpy and spicy, although it sounds like New Orleans,
too, with Dixieland-type jazz playing in the background and a live combo on Saturday
nights. It was crowded at happy hour on a Friday evening, and I was happy for Albertine,
who’d been wondering before Christmas if she might have to close up. Of course, Mardi
Gras was coming up on Tuesday, so that might explain some of the crowd.
Albertine saw me come in and motioned me to a stool at the bar. By the time I got
there, she had a chartreuse margaritatini, her special concoction, poured into a sugar-rimmed
glass and garnished with a lime wedge. Yum. Sinking gratefully onto the stool, I took
a long drink and licked my lips.
Albertine smiled widely. “Now, what was that almost shopping spree this morning about?”
“I got arrested,” I said, finishing off the drink in record time and licking sugar
from the rim.
“Say what?” Albertine’s eyes bugged out, and she pulled up a stool on her side of
the bar and summoned one of the waiters to take her place at the cash register. Enjoying
having such a wild tale to tell, I told her about tracking Les to Aspen, finding him
at Cherry and Moss’s, and getting arrested the following morning. I left out the bits
that happened after the Scotch and before the cops arrived. She exclaimed at all the
right places and insisted on seeing my photo of Charlie Sheen’s jail cell. Then she
fetched us both another drink, studying me closely as I sucked on the lime wedge.
“Oh, no,” she said, narrowing her eyes till I could see the silvery apricot shadow
on her lids. “Oh, no, you didn’t.”
“Didn’t what?” I could feel myself blushing, so I lowered my head to sip from the
margaritatini.
“You did! You slept with that no-good louse who tossed you aside like last week’s
newspaper—and for that blond bee-otch.”
I bit my lip.
Noticing that she had attracted attention from the two thirty-something men on the
stools beside me, Albertine scowled at them and lowered her voice. “What were you
thinking?”
“Well, there was Scotch. I never thought I liked it, but I was cold and scared—that
was because of Knievel jumping on me—and then Les—”
Albertine held up a hand. “I don’t want to hear it, girlfriend.”
“But you asked!”
“I asked what you were
thinking,
but it’s clear you weren’t.” Albertine balled her hands on her hips. Her bangles
clinked. “I’m going to call Charlie right now so we can stage an intervention.”
“No, don’t!” I put a hand on her arm, even though she hadn’t reached for her phone.
“Charlie doesn’t know, and believe me, it’s not going to happen again. I am totally
and completely over Lester Goldman.” I made myself think of how bad I’d felt this
morning when I found he’d disappeared in the night, and how mad I was that he’d hurt
Dexter again.
Apparently, it worked, because Albertine’s face lost its stern expression and she
said, “Are you okay, Gigi?”
I sniffled and drained my second margaritatini. “Um-hm. Peachy.”
“You shouldn’t be okay. You should be mad. M-A-D … mad.” Albertine scowled.
“I’m angry that Dexter’s all—”
“Not mad for the kids, Gigi—mad for you.”
“I can’t blow up at him, Albertine. I’ve got the kids to think about. Les is still
their daddy, and he and I … we need to get along so that Kendall and Dex aren’t …
don’t end up in therapy for years. Dr. Phil says kids can think it’s their fault when
parents divorce. It’s not all Les’s fault…”
“Say what? The man cheats on you, steals from his partners, and boogies off to Costa
Rica in the dead of night and it’s not his fault?”
“Sounds like his fault to me,” offered the total stranger on my right.
I stared at him, and he gave me a friendly smile over the lip of his martini glass.
“This is a private conversation, Nico,” Albertine told him. “Do you mind?” He grinned
at her, obviously a regular, and wandered off to join a group near the window. After
studying me for a moment, Albertine relaxed against the stool back. “Well, okay then.
I can see that we need to find you a new man, a rebound fling, to help you move on.”
She swiveled to survey the room, and for one dreadful moment I thought she was going
to beckon Nico back. My heart seized up, but she was only watching her waitstaff to
make sure they were doing a good job. When she turned back to me, I said apologetically,
“I’m not really the fling type.” Besides, what man was going to be interested in a
chubby, earlyfifties, former stay-at-home mom who was so uninteresting her husband
ran off to Costa Rica with a blond bimbo?
“We can fix that,” Albertine said confidently.
I didn’t know whether to be encouraged or scared.
10
Saturday morning, after a brisk walk on the Santa Fe Trail, which ran behind her property
and which was frequented by bikers, joggers, and walkers, even on a brisk February
morning with the path mucky from melted snow, Charlie decided she needed a plan of
attack for making headway on the Les Goldman case. With Les playing least-in-sight
after giving Gigi the slip, their client, who had apparently sprung fully formed into
existence when she arrived in Colorado Springs two-plus years ago, was the natural
source of more information. After giving brief consideration to following Heather-Anne,
Charlie decided a full-frontal assault would be the best bet. Surveillance took too
long and didn’t guarantee results; in addition to which, she couldn’t face the prospect
of another day sitting on her ass in her car or the hotel lobby.
She dialed Heather-Anne’s number at the Embassy Suites and introduced herself when
the woman picked up.
“Charlotte Swift?” Heather-Anne’s voice was wary. “What happened to Gigi?”
“She’s still on the case,” Charlie said reassuringly, “but we’ll make progress quicker—which
I understand is important to you—with both of us working it.”
“That makes sense, I guess,” Heather-Anne said. “Thank you.”
“It would be helpful if we could talk.”
“I already told Gigi everything I know.”
“Sometimes you know things you don’t realize you know. I won’t take much of your time,
maybe half an hour. If you could come to the office, or I could meet you—”
“I’m doing a training session for an old client,” Heather-Anne said, a note of impatient
acquiescence in her voice. “At the downtown YMCA. I need the money. I could talk to
you after that.”
“Great.”
* * *
Arriving twenty minutes early for her ten o’clock meeting with Heather-Anne, Charlie
parked the Subaru in the garage off Kiowa Street and showed her Y membership card
to get in. Charlie tried the cardio area first, scanning the treadmills, stairsteppers,
and spinning bikes for anyone who might be Heather-Anne. At least three women fit
the description Gigi had given her: early thirties, slim, blond, tanned. None of them
appeared to be guiding a client through a fitness routine.
Charlie made her way to the adjacent free weights area and immediately spotted her
quarry. Heather-Anne, blond hair in a long ponytail, wore black bike shorts with green
piping and a matching midriff-baring bra top that exposed a small gold ring in her
navel and a significant amount of cleavage, much appreciated, apparently, by her client.
From what Charlie could see, he was in his midsixties, portly, and gray-haired and
had his gaze fixed on Heather-Anne’s cleavage as she demonstrated dumbbell flies.
Getting off the bench, she gestured for him to take her place and stood at the head
of the bench as he began the exercise. He kept his head tilted back and his eyes on
the trainer’s taut, tanned midsection.
Charlie had deliberately worn a pair of blue sweats from her air force days and a
long-sleeve T-shirt to blend in. To remain unobtrusive while keeping an eye on Heather-Anne,
she selected light dumbbells from the rack and began a series of biceps curls. The
pull in her muscles reminded her how out of shape she was since getting shot and made
her vow to get back in the gym as soon as the doc gave her the all clear. As Heather-Anne
directed her client to an exercise ball, Charlie moved to the lat pulldown machine
near them, straining to overhear their conversation.
“It was a sad day when you disappeared last year,” the client said with a roguish
smile. “I hope you’re back to stay.”
“I didn’t ‘disappear,’ Hollis,” Heather-Anne said, her hands resting on his abs as
she counted crunches. “I fell in love and moved to be with my sweetie. You’ve got
to be willing to make sacrifices for true love.”