by Liz Bradbury
“Funny, I can’t remember.”
“Piper Staplehurst,” said Kathryn pointedly, leaning out of the bathroom. “I should google her to see what she’s published. You can give her your crime report.”
Minutes later I was staring out the window as eggs poached, trying to recall a dream I’d had in the night. Dreams have always played a significant part in my life. When I was a child, I’d dream whole scenarios with me as an observer. My dreams often helped me figure things out, and now and then they could be prophetic. I could only get the tail of the one I’d had the night before. It was Red disappearing as he ran toward the yew bushes.”
Suddenly there was Kathryn, elegantly dressed in tan linen pants, cashmere top, and a soft gray kimono style jacket with mauve silk lapels.
“Coffee,” she said, turning for a cup from the maker on the counter.
I was dressed in my typical private eye uniform, black jeans, dark gray sweater, polo shirt (blue this time), and black running shoes.
Toast popped up. She buttered both pieces and put them on plates. We ate at the little table by the window in companionable silence.
“What are you going to do about that person who was killed?” she said.
“Mm,” I said, putting down my coffee mug. “Carbondale fired me.”
“What?”
“Well, he didn’t really fire me; the case is over. Someone being killed in the cemetery pretty much confirms there’s crime in there. The whole thing seems, I don’t know, strange somehow. I don’t like it. I’m going to work on it anyway.”
Kathryn said in an amused voice, “We’ve established that trust is one of my issues. Perhaps not wanting to give up control is one of yours.”
“I think that’s one of yours too. But shall we call it tenaciousness? Then it’s more like a virtue.”
*******
“Hi, Maggie,” said Nora Hasan waving.
When Kathryn left for work, I’d commuted downstairs to my office, and there was Nora at the front desk on the landline phone in the shared reception room of Gale Investigations and Martinez and Strong, Partners at Law. I did a double-take, smirked, and waved back to Nora, then went directly into Sara’s office.
“¿Tuviste suerte, eh?” I teased as I closed the door. Sara was dressed for court in a dark tailored suit and white silk blouse. She swiveled toward me in her chair and smiled.
“No tuve suerte en el sentido que tú piensas, cerebro de cisterna.”
“Ay hombre, ¿ni siquiera la besaste?” [2]
“Well, yes, I kissed her, but we decided after that we’d be better as colleagues.”
“So you hired her? So much for an equal decision.”
“Emma likes her. She met her before she had to go to court.”
“And then there’s Gale Investigations.”
“Seriously, Maggie, you like her, don’t you? She’s very smart. She fixed the fax so that it doesn’t jam; she reorganized the billing system so it sorts by a dozen categories. She speaks Arabic fluently, and French too. She figured out how to enhance the picture on the surveillance cameras. And she can type faster than I can talk. She can take client statements.”
“That’s a reason to hire her in itself, but I’m seeing some problems.”
“What?”
“Well, she’s a grad student. If she’s working on an advanced degree, that’s going to take all her time.”
“She isn’t really working on a degree. She’s more like a part-time fellow at the college, working on research. So we hired her from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., and then she has the rest day to work on her other stuff. She says she can handle it.”
“We hired her,” I said dryly.
“Pending your approval.”
“I think we better ask Kathryn if Nora really has time for another job.” Oh, geez, Kathryn, I thought, What’s she going to think about Nora working as my assistant? I wasn’t enthusiastic about having to face Kathryn’s suspicious ire again even though the make-up sex was fun.
“I had Nora call Kathryn and I asked her. Kathryn seemed fine about it. By the way, do you fully understand how Nora feels about Kathryn?”
“Kind of in awe?” I asked.
“Yeah, there’s an understatement,” said Sara.
“I’m more worried about you sexually harassing the employees. I can see the headlines: Local Law Firm Sued by Student — Secretary Says Solicitor Solicited Her.”
“She’s too good an assistant to lose for a quick roll in the hay. Maggie, she understands Evie’s filing system!”
“OK, OK, we can give her a try. But no more kissing her and she doesn’t have a green card so that might cap how much she can earn.”
“We’re done with kissing. Its just business now. Maybe we can sponsor her. I’ll look into it,” mused Sara.
“We’ll have to check her references. Let’s have a little probationary period before you start calling in favors from senators and the INS.”
“OK, fine, you check. We’ll start the paralegal search once she’s trained. It can be Nora’s job to set up the ads and interview schedule. Meanwhile I gave her one of the office cell phones with all the bells and whistles on it so she could keep in touch and manage things when she’s off-site.”
I liked Nora and she was smart. It’s not easy to find someone for a position like this. There are so many skills involved, and frankly, while Evie was very good at some things, she was dismal at tech. I was confident that Sara wouldn’t hit on Nora once we’d hired her, but how Kathryn was really going to react to this might turn out to be a little more complicated than a phone call.
I went back into the outer office and sat down in the client chair next to Nora’s new desk. She was on the phone ordering some printer toner. She hung up and said, “Hoist by your own petard?”
I said,
A darting fear—a pomp—a tear—
A waking on a morn
To find that what one waked for,
Inhales the different dawn.
“Em... crikey, I’m rubbish at anything other than the Bard.”
“It’s by Emily Dickinson.”
“And she’s meaning I might not find this job to my fancy?”
“Aye,” I nodded.
“But then again, I may.”
“Aye to that, too.”
“Are you going to give me the nod then or have me naff off?”
“Yes to the nod, but we’ll have to check your references.”
“Well, Sara said she’d pay me by the hour for a wee bit and then we’ll see. And Dr. Anthony said it would be all right.” Nora stated this as though it should seal me on the deal.
I nodded and smiled and sorely hoped this all wasn’t a major mistake. Oh crikey, indeed!
“You won’t be sorry,” insisted Nora. “Look, I’ve already taken a message. You had a ring this morning from some lady who wants to see you later today. I didn’t have your schedule so I said I’d ask you when you came in. Shall I ring her back for you?”
“Yes, please call her and then put her through to my office. Nora... I have a feeling you’ll work out fine here.”
I showed her how to access my appointment schedule on the office phone she was now carrying and gave her all my contact numbers. She smile-dazzled me, and I went into my office thinking she was probably going to be a good addition to our work team, hoping that this wasn’t going to tax my love life, and marveling that Sara wasn’t really that attracted to her.
*******
“Lois? This is Maggie Gale returning your call.”
Lois Henshaw’s brassy voice echoed over the phone so loudly that I had to hold it a foot from my ear.
“I don’t want to talk about it over the phone. Little pitchers has big ears.” she said obscurely.
“There’s a child there?” I asked.
“No... my cat, he has big ears, and his name is Little Pitchers,” she strained a laugh and I agreed to meet her in a half hour.
The Mews Gossip Network had postulated that the pro
blems at the Henshaw digs were domestic. The network is seldom wrong.
Infidelity is the reason private investigators have steady employment. After I’d “retired” from the Fenchester police force, and figured out I still wanted to be in the superhero crime-fighting biz, I trained to be a P.I. by working with an already established company called Discreet Investigations. The only thing I learned from the head dick, Seamus A. McFinn Jr. (Yes, his name really was Seamus and yes he really called himself the “Head Dick.”), was: Being a private investigator is much more like being a therapist than being a cop.
*******
A gust of wind swirled frosty air around the Mews like a dry ice demonstration at the science museum. I zipped my jacket to my chin and yearned for the warm days I’d spent in Florida with Kathryn. At the moment I’d gladly settle for a few hours in a warm bed... with Kathryn.
Chez Henshaw was an exceptional example of Queen Anne Style architecture. Clearly this house was “born” in about 1890, when the Mews was losing the last vestiges of its stable yard roots. The little brick row houses at the east end of the Mews, where Evangeline Fen had found cheap lodging for her family and where Gabriel and Suzanne Carbondale, and Amanda Knightbridge lived now, had been built back-alley-size for servants, tradesmen, and stablehands. They’d faced the stables while the mansions, with their landscaped front lawns, had faced eastward toward growing downtown Fenchester. But by the end of the 19th century the mansions were gone to fire and the neighborhood of new, stately brick row homes had turned inward to face the Mews Park.
The Henshaw’s row house at 11th and Liberty had bay windows and a rounded tower crowned with an ornate copper lightning rod. It was even fancier than Farrel and Jessie’s place on the other side of the Mews.
I walked up the steps to the wide porch with its heavy doric columns and glanced in the broad front window but the shades were drawn. The entryway was a jewel. Both the door and its flanking windows featured ornately cut glass in a swirling arc pattern. When the afternoon sun shone through, it must have cast a thousand rainbows around the living room. But today was too gray to even flicker a sun dog.
Lois Henshaw answered the bell key before I’d finished one twist. A little white cat with the biggest ears I’d ever seen wove around her legs.
Lois often insisted that she was not the brightest bulb in the string of pickle lights. She’d found her place in the neighborhood pecking order in the role of class clown. But at the moment she was an incongruous cross between the dictionary illustration of stress and a young Carol Burnett.
Lois’s thick red bangs framed her animated face. Her movements were broad and exaggerated. She smiled and greeted me, but there was a brittleness in her tone. Though she was giving it everything she had clown-wise, the best she could muster was Emmet Kelly.
“What a beautiful house,” I said a second before I had a chance to get a full gander inside. The interior architecture was delightful. Dark oak moldings with fascinating structural details. The furnishings, however, screamed, What was I thinking? It was an ebay nightmare.
The Danish Modern motif couldn’t have clashed more with the house’s style. The most serious problem was the colors. The orange and avocado would have rocked a 1970s retro but were a design school bad joke in this space. I suddenly had a craving for a Tab.
On the walls were three large specimens of the worst mass-produced dreck I’d seen in a long time. Wishing-Well Scene over the fireplace, Venetian Gondolas over the couch. And I swear I’m not making this up,—Clown Portrait over a blond-wood sideboard in the dining room.
Lois saw me looking and sighed. “I know, everything’s ghastly. These gosh-awful paintings! I picked them on purpose at one of those parking lot tent sales. I figured, choose something that makes a sensitive person barf and maybe Samson would notice and help me.”
Or cringe, I thought. “Did it work?” I asked.
“Nuh uh. Um, let’s go in the kitchen.”
It was magnificent and therefore uncommon to Queen Anne row houses. In that era, inconvenient kitchens were built unsympathetically for the help, but this space would have thrilled Jessie Wiggins. It was spacious, tiled, and had everything a serious cook could ever want. They could have shot a promo for the Iron Chef in there.
Little Pitchers the cat ran into the kitchen and played frantically by herself the entire time we talked. Lois watched her rather than looking at me.
Lois said, “Samson’s really the chef. I’m... Would you like a snack? I just took these out of the oven.” She pushed a plate of dark brown cookies across the counter toward me. “Go on, I just made them.”
I dutifully took one. I’m rather devoted to good cookies, but this one was as hard as dried clay and amazingly tasteless. As though it was made solely of water and some kind of fiber-heavy grain. Actually, I couldn’t tell if it was grain or burlap. No, burlap would have more flavor.
“You hate ’em, don’t you?” She bit into one herself and shook her head. “Oh geez, I do too. I must have left out some of the ingredients. Honestly, if I’d been the cook for the Donner Party, they still would have eaten each other. I’m clueless about food; I thought Edith Piaf was a rice dish before I met Samson. I’m better at the cleaning up.” Lois snagged the cookie plate, fiercely dumped the cookies into the garbage can, and went to the sink to scrub the plate.
As she did I noticed that any lingering cooking aromas were masked by the odor of cleaning products. They made the place smell like a swimming pool... in a hospital.
“There are worse obsessions,” I suggested.
“Maggie, I’m kind of the obsessive type, but I don’t have any illusions. I’m not smart. Like, when they started doing opposite side of the street parking all I could think of was that both sides are the opposite side. I’m a goof, but...” She turned to me and said sadly, “I love him.”
“You’re being kind of hard on yourself, Lois, and you’re being hard on that plate too. You’ll wash the flower pattern off it if you keep scrubbing like that.”
“Oh!” said Lois speaking to the object in her hands. “I’m sorry little plate.” She began patting it dry. “I have a report from another investigator I guess you should see.” She was still talking to the plate but she meant it for me.
I said, “Why don’t you just tell me about it.”
“Well, it’s just that I want to know why he’s always out.”
I said, as gently as possible, “Have you considered asking him?”
“Every one of the investigators says that,” she whined.
“Every one? How many have there been?” I stood up and took a step back. “Lois, I’m not trying to be rude, but you’re going to have to answer a few questions if you want to employ me. That’s the way I work. It doesn’t make much sense for you to pay me to ferret out information from you.”
Lois nodded silently.
“Usually when a woman feels this way about her husband it’s because she doesn’t trust him. Or is it communication? Maybe couples counseling is a better choice than a P.I. with a big magnifying glass.”
“I asked him to go to counseling, but he says there’s no reason to. He used to be an architect, but that kind of dried up. We have rental properties. We live off those. We used to work together fixing them up. But he says he doesn’t need me to help any more.”
My mind ran over a variety of reasons a middle-aged man might not be spending every waking hour with his wife. There were even a number of innocent ones.
I opened the yellow envelope that held reports from two other investigators and scanned them quickly. “These say Samson is just working and walking around the Mews.”
A folder of photos showed Samson driving his pick-up truck, carrying tools into a rental property, fixing the hinges on a door, carrying paint cans. There were several of him drinking coffee in the window of an empty apartment, standing on the sidewalk with his hands in his pockets, sitting on a park bench staring into space, walking the Mews streets and back alleys. There were no p
hotos of him going into any inexplicable buildings or talking to hot women.
“Well, Lois, you wanted to know where Samson was during the day and this file details the answer.”
“I don’t think... This isn’t conclusive,” said Lois shaking her head.
“You expected to find out he was seeing someone? Or was it something else?”
“Maggie, I’m not pea-brained. It’s not about where he goes; it’s about why. There’s something distracting him. Right now he wouldn’t notice me if I drove through the living room in the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile. I want to know why.”
“OK, I might be able to find out why he stays away. But if you’re banking on me getting him to come back, you’ll need a different kind of help.”
“A head shrinker?”
“Yes.”
“Oh Maggie, I don’t want to go to rehab. No, no, no,” said Lois.
Chapter 8
I tried to convince Lois Henshaw to just ask Samson what was going through his head. I was guessing she may have known and just didn’t want to hear it coming out of his mouth. This wasn’t the kind of job I enjoyed.
Back at Gale Investigations, Nora Hasan was hard at work creating an automated billing system. It was amazing to me that a young woman so apparently dedicated to the theatre arts was so skilled at computer data management. In short, YAY! Now I won’t have to do any of this stuff.
Nora smiled. “Did you meet with that woman? So... em... do I get to discuss cases with you? Like a side-bloke?”
“Did Sara explain the confidentiality rules?”
“Aye, she did. Discretion is the better part of valor, and all that.”
“This isn’t really a case yet, so there isn’t much to discuss. But it’s still confidential.”
“Shall I keep all the files in code? We could assign everyone secret drag queen names. Let’s see, we could file her under a dodgy last name like... em... Lois Common-d’Nominator?”
