“Uh-uh, honey. No way. First time a customer complained to you, you’d dump a bowl of jambalaya on his head. You’re not cut out for the customer service business. Or for working for someone else, either. Think I don’t know what’d happen if I tried to boss you around?” She boomed a laugh that had early diners turning to stare.
As far as I was concerned, that response just proved her business savvy.
Seeing her now with Gigi, I felt a pang of jealousy. Albertine could’ve been any age between fifty and sixty-five, but any way you sliced it she was more Gigi’s contemporary than mine.
“I haven’t had a chance,” I said, crossing to my desk. I sniffed. “What’s that smell?”
“Butterscotch cake,” Gigi said, pointing to a platter on the file cabinet.
“This woman can bake!” Albertine wiped crumbs off her mouth with one beringed hand and stood. “If this private eye thing don’t work out for you, Georgia, you just wander down to Albertine’s and I’ll put you to work making desserts.”
She winked at me, and I glared, knowing she was remembering her refusal to hire me in any capacity.
“Thanks, Albertine,” Gigi said, clearly flattered, “but I’m just getting the hang of the PI business. Did you see me on TV last night?”
“I don’t get home from the restaurant until Letterman time,” Albertine said. “I’m sure you looked great.”
“She looked like a buffalo.”
“Charlie!” Albertine looked truly annoyed at what she took to be my mean-spirited crack.
I pointed to Bernie’s head, leaning drunkenly against the wall. “She was wearing that.”
Albertine’s delighted laughter trailed her out of the office. “Come on down for a drink after work,” she called over her shoulder. “On the house.”
I was going to need a drink by the end of the day, and free ones tasted better than any other kind. “You’re on,” I yelled as the door swung shut.
“You got a fax a few minutes ago,” Gigi said.
Her voice sounded funny, and I looked up at her. She handed me a sheaf of papers. I glanced at them and understood her reaction.
“Is . . . is that girl dead?” Gigi asked, as I spread the photos Montgomery had faxed on my desk.
Even though the photos were head shots and there was no visible trauma to the face, the girl was clearly dead. Even in smudgy black and white her skin was too pale, her lips not much darker. I read Montgomery’s typically brief note: Will let you know when ID confirmed.
“Yes,” I said sadly. “She’s dead.”
“Did you know her?” Gigi sank into the chair in front of my desk, stilling her trembling hands by clasping them on the plump knees revealed by a green and white striped skort.
“No. I was hired to find her.”
“We’ve got to find out who killed her!” Gigi said, righteous indignation flaring in her eyes.
“What makes you think someone killed her?” I asked in a damping tone, sliding the photos into my file marked LLOYD.
“You can just tell. She doesn’t seem peaceful,” Gigi said. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “She’s not at rest.”
“It doesn’t get much more restful than that.” I kept my tone detached, not wanting to admit the photos had affected me much the way they had Gigi. “Besides, even if she was murdered, it’s not my case. That’s the CSPD’s job. I was hired to find her.”
As I talked, my fingers flew over my keyboard and I brought up an e-mail from Aurora Newcastle. My finger hesitated on the mouse, but then I clicked on the attachment and stared at the photo of the beautiful young teen that filled the screen. Defensive brown eyes, a tight smile, cascades of mink-colored hair, and the flawless complexion Aurora had raved about. A full-color, living version of the girl in the morgue photos.
I swung the monitor so Gigi could see it. “Case closed.”
5
An hour and a Subway tuna sandwich later, I waited at Designer Touches for Melissa Lloyd to finish with a customer. A small storefront in Monument, Designer Touches had some furniture, work areas with computers where customers could construct their virtual dream room with help from an interior designer, fabric samples, and a large inventory of accessories ranging from lamps to clocks to pillows. I read the tag on one floor pillow. Who buys a dry-clean-only white silk pillow with tassels to put on the floor? Someone without kids or pets, I decided. Someone with a maid service.
I sat on a settee—a practical plaid Dacron—and thought about Gigi dashing to the bathroom to vomit when she saw Elizabeth Sprouse’s photo. I’d hovered outside the door, listening to the retching noises, feeling absolutely useless. Maybe she’d gotten food poisoning from the butterscotch cake.
“You okay?” I called when I heard the toilet flush.
Gigi emerged, dabbing at her lips with a piece of toilet paper. “My daughter’s only a couple of years younger than that girl,” she said. Without another word, she walked to her desk and dug in her purse for a breath mint. Popping it in her mouth, she gave Bernie a pat on the head and walked out the door. I stared after her. Was she quitting or merely keeping her nail appointment? I knew which I was hoping for.
“You found her?”
Melissa Lloyd stood in front of me, a look of wary expectation on her face. A large barrette restrained her sandy hair at the nape of her neck, and her minimalist makeup did nothing to conceal the weariness in her face. A pale smudge that might have been spit-up stained the shoulder of her olive green suit jacket. I rose and shook her hand.
“Yes. It’s not good news, I’m afraid. Is there somewhere private we could talk?” I glanced around the showroom, my eyes catching on a pair of lamps shaped like flamingoes. No customers, but someone could walk in anytime.
Melissa strode to the door, her heels tap-tapping on the hardwood floor, and flipped over the CLOSED sign. “What do you mean? She won’t take the baby back?” A note of panic flared in her voice, and I saw how close she was to the edge. A few days with an infant can unhinge anyone.
“Ms. Lloyd, I’m afraid your daughter’s dead.”
She stared at me, uncomprehending.
“I was able to trace the blanket left with your—with the baby—and discovered the names of your daughter’s adoptive parents. She lived here in Colorado Springs but had run away several months ago, perhaps when the pregnancy became evident. Her father is, by all accounts, a highly religious man.” That sounded better than “religious whack-job.”
She was still staring at me, glassy-eyed, and I wondered if she’d gone into shock. “Ms. Lloyd, why don’t you sit down?” I put a hand under her unresisting arm and led her to the settee. She sank onto it.
“But she’s dead?”
“The police found her body last night. Her parents identified it today.” I’d gotten a cell phone call from Montgomery while I ate my lunch. “I’m so sorry.”
“Then who will take the baby? I’ve got to get rid of the baby.”
It was my turn to stare. Okay, the woman had never met Elizabeth Sprouse, but the girl was her daughter. Her expression showed no grief, just the drawn brows and thinned lips of someone who’s been grossly inconvenienced. I found her reaction rather chilling and selfish. I tried not to let my thoughts show on my face; it wasn’t part of my job to judge my clients. Heck, if I only worked for people I liked, I wouldn’t be able to afford birdseed for the bear. Instead, I withdrew the photo I’d printed from Aurora Newcastle’s e-mail, the live, vibrant Elizabeth, hoping that actually seeing her daughter might evoke a more compassionate response in Melissa Lloyd.
I got a different response, all right. She took one look at the photo, put her hand to her throat, and gasped, “That’s Lizzy!” Then she crumpled sideways in a faint.
Shit. I’d never had a client pass out on me before. Unless you counted Bo Remington, who drank so much Wild Turkey and soda the evening I presented him with photos of his wife canoodling with the church choir director—a woman—that he slipped under the table and the bar staff had
to pour him into my car so I could drive him home. Divorce work left me feeling slimy, and it’s an area I don’t go for anymore, unless I’m really, really desperate for income. Like now. As I pulled a bottle of water from my purse to splash on Melissa’s face, I wondered how Gigi would do on long stakeouts with a camera. She probably didn’t know an f-stop from a bus stop.
I patted Melissa’s face gently. She groaned and rubbed a hand over her cheek. I helped her to a sitting position and handed her the water bottle. “Are you okay? Who’s Lizzy?”
She gulped half the bottle, her hand shaking so badly that some of it dribbled down her chin. She swiped it away with the back of her hand. “Where’s the photo?”
I handed it to her, ready to catch her if she pitched over again. She tapped it with one finger. “Lizzy Jones. She worked for me off and on. She sewed curtains, slipcovers, stuff like that on a per-piece basis. You’re sure she was . . . was . . . ?”
I stared at her, watching the implications sink in. “Your daughter tracked you down and persuaded you to hire her,” I said. “How long did she work for you?”
She took a deep breath. “I guess she first came in last November. I’d have to check my records.”
“Do you have a lot of high schoolers working for you?” It didn’t seem plausible to me, not with an interior design business. Maybe if she’d owned a Wendy’s franchise.
“She told me she was nineteen, that she was married to a soldier at Fort Carson who was deployed to Iraq and she wanted to keep busy while he was gone, make a few extra dollars so they could afford a down payment on a house when he got back. She brought in several samples of her work. She was a talented seamstress,” Melissa finished angrily. “How could I know?”
I eyed her skeptically. “How could a sixteen-year-old named Elizabeth Sprouse cash paychecks made out to Lizzy Jones? Didn’t you have a Social Security number on her?”
Melissa squirmed. “I paid her cash.”
The light dawned. “Lizzy” was an off-the-books employee. Melissa was probably paying her well below the going rate. The IRS might have a bone to pick with Melissa, but I had bigger fish to fry. “When did you last see her?”
“Maybe six weeks ago. She told me she was taking a few months off to have the baby. She was pregnant.”
News flash. “And you never suspected? Not even when Olivia turned up on your doorstep?”
“Why would I? It’s not like Lizzy was the only pregnant woman in the world!” Her face flushed. “She lied to me, took advantage of me . . . I gave her a hundred-dollar savings bond for the baby!”
Anger, hurt, and humiliation twisted her face. I could only imagine what she was going through. Somewhat bothered by guilt for giving her child up for adoption, but unwilling to have a relationship with the nearly adult girl, she finds she’s had one for months with someone she treated as a casual employee. Lifetime Channel movie material starring a B-list has-been as Melissa and an up-and-coming teen actress as her daughter. In the movie, however, the daughter would reveal herself to the mother and they’d cling together in a tight embrace and raise the new baby together. That wasn’t going to happen here.
“Did you never suspect anything?” I asked. “Did Lizzy ever ask questions you thought were strange?”
“I didn’t spend that much time with her,” Melissa said. “I’d give her material, a pattern or photo of what I needed, and she’d bring the finished product back ahead of the deadline. Wait . . .” She held up one finger as a memory surfaced. “When she started wearing maternity clothes and the pregnancy was evident, she asked me if I had children.”
I knew what she’d told Lizzy.
She paced past me. “Well, I don’t! I’m not anyone’s mommy. My motherhood was nothing more than a biological accident.”
There she went, projecting again. “You don’t have to explain it to me,” I said. “Do you have an address for her?”
She shook her head. “She came here to pick up work and drop it off.”
“How’d you let her know you had something for her?”
She looked at me like I was a moron. “I called her, of course.”
“Can I have that phone number?”
She crossed to a desk in the corner of the showroom and clicked through an online contact file. “Here.” She wrote it on a yellow sticky and handed it to me.
I could use a reverse directory to get an address. Although I wasn’t sure why I wanted one. I’d pass it along to Montgomery. My work was done. Missing person found. I said as much to Melissa, and she stared at me.
“What? But what about the baby?”
“Turn her over to CPS.”
“I can’t. They’ll put her in a foster home. She’s my gran—” She cut herself off and massaged her temples with her fingers.
Maybe caring for Olivia had activated some latent maternal hormones or something. Turning her daughter over for adoption hadn’t bothered her. Or maybe it had. “Then give her to Elizabeth’s parents.”
“Right. To the people she ran away from.” She bit her lower lip. “You could check them out, see what kind of parents they are. Or, what about the baby’s father?” Her eyes lit up. “You could find him. He’s the one who should have the baby.” She bent over her desk and began to scribble on something.
Yeah, assuming he wasn’t a teenager, a rapist, or the married father of one of her friends. Not to be pessimistic, but I had a feeling Elizabeth was on her own for a reason. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to look into it, I decided, as Melissa Lloyd ripped out a large check and handed it to me.
“And hurry. I really, really need this settled before Ian comes home. He just wouldn’t understand.”
What, that she’d gotten pregnant as a teenager? Or that she’d lied to him for years on end? Call me cynical, but I figured chances were good he had something murky in his own past he hadn’t fessed up to. Experience—those divorce cases again—taught me, though, that two wrongs didn’t add up to long-lasting marital harmony. They more frequently added up to large sums for attorneys and PIs.
And who was I to complain about that?
I returned to the office shortly after five to find it dark and locked like I’d left it when I’d gone to see Melissa Lloyd. However, I’d reluctantly given Gigi keys, so maybe she’d returned but then left again. I unlocked it and crossed to my desk to make the phone call I’d been dreading since Montgomery confirmed Elizabeth Sprouse’s identity. Tears choking her voice to a whisper, Aurora Newcastle thanked me for letting her know. I felt like shit: When she’d asked me to hurry up and find Elizabeth, this wasn’t what Aurora had in mind. I’d debated not calling her, figuring it might be merciful to let her pass on without knowing Elizabeth was dead, a homicide victim, but she hadn’t struck me as the sort who wanted life sugar-coated.
“That poor baby,” she said.
I didn’t know if she meant Elizabeth or Olivia.
“I’d really like to meet her,” she added after a long silence, and I found myself promising to try to arrange for her to meet Olivia.
“No guarantees, though.” I couldn’t see Melissa Lloyd interrupting her schedule to do a baby show-and-tell in Denver.
“I understand, and thank you.” Aurora sounded considerably weaker as we hung up than she had only that morning, and I hoped the news of Elizabeth’s death wouldn’t hasten her own end. Sometimes this job sucked. I sat for a few quiet minutes before relocking the office and walking down to Albertine’s for my free drink. Creole spices, shrimp, and beer scented the cozy room decorated with Mardi Gras masks and beads and populated with a few early diners and Happy Hour hopefuls. My spirits lifted. Sitting alone on a barstool with a Heineken—Albertine was subbing in the kitchen for a chef who hadn’t shown up for his shift—I called Montgomery and told him I had some information pertaining to his case. Hearing the bar noises in the background, he told me he was just coming off shift and would stop by and get it in person.
He arrived twenty minutes later, as I was ordering my second beer
. Just over six feet tall with broad shoulders and the edgy allure of Clive Owen with silver flecks in his dark hair, Montgomery turned female heads as he threaded his way through the tables to where I sat. He leaned over to kiss my cheek, and the hopeful women turned back to their friends and cosmopolitans, disgruntled. The rasp of his five o’clock shadow against my cheek and the spicy scent of his aftershave stirred something inside me, but I squelched it. Gorgeous men who like to live on the edge are a bad bet. I knew: My ex-husband, the fighter jock, was Exhibit A. As if that weren’t enough, I figured, premature gray notwithstanding, he was at least five years younger than me. So I controlled my breathing, passed him the phone number Melissa had supplied, and explained that Elizabeth Sprouse had worked for her as Lizzy Jones.
He thanked me for it, then added, “You’re remembering this is a police case, right? You’re not poking around in a homicide investigation.” His dark eyes met mine as he lifted the bottle to his lips.
The last was an order, not a question. “Of course not,” I said. “You have such a suspicious mind, Montgomery.” I gave him my wide-eyed Miss Innocent look that hasn’t worked on anyone since I was five.
“I’ve known you a long time, Swift. You’re not passing along that number out of the goodness of your heart. You want something.”
“You wound me,” I said, smiling. “I’m not looking for the murderer,” I assured him. “I’ve got a client who wants me to locate the baby’s father.”
“The Sprouse girl’s baby?” He chucked a handful of peanuts in his mouth.
I nodded. I could see him turning that information over in his mind, trying to decide if he was interested in the baby, if it had any bearing on the homicide. “Just stay out of my way,” he finally said, “and if you find out anything that links to the girl’s death, you let me know pronto. That includes the father’s name.”
“You didn’t get it from the hospital?”
“Nope. We can’t find a record of her giving birth in any hospital in the area.” He relaxed against the back of the bar stool, and his sport coat gaped to show the shoulder holster beneath.
Swift Justice: A Mystery (Thomas Dunne Books) Page 6
