“You’re looking a little friendlier this morning,” I said, reaching out a hand to pat his head.
He danced back a few steps, trotted halfway toward the door, then looked over his shoulder at me. I recognized the routine: It’s just what Nolan does when he needs to do his chores. I sat up, and the plaid afghan over me slipped to my lap, reminding me I was naked. “Just a minute,” I told an impatient Knievel, wondering where Les had gotten to. Memories of the night before brought a smile to my face. I’d forgotten how sweet he could be when he wanted to, and he certainly remembered how to push my buttons.
“Grrr-rowr.” Knievel scratched impatiently at the door.
I found my bra under the coffee table and put it on. My panties had disappeared—hadn’t we made love the first time in the kitchen?—so I pulled up my leggings, shrugged into my sweater, and padded barefoot to the door. The floor was cold. When I opened the door, a blade of sunlight magnified by brilliant snow cut into my aching eyeballs, and Knievel shot out before I could worry about whether or not he’d run off. He was a black blur against the snow, and a flock of small birds twittered upward as he charged toward them, barking. He disappeared into a row of evergreens, and I hoped he knew better than to run into the street. “Knievel?”
He didn’t come back, even though I held the door open for another two minutes until my freezing feet and hands forced me to close it. He’d scratch when he wanted back in. I visited the powder room, wishing I had a toothbrush, and then wandered toward the kitchen, looking for Les and a bottle of aspirin.
“Les?” The kitchen was cold and deserted. The iron stove had gone out. My brow puckered, and I searched the ground floor, not finding any sign of Les in the formal dining room, the theater room, or the gated wine cellar with its cute little bistro table and chairs where Cherry and Moss and Les and I had played spades until the wee hours one night while drinking wine nonstop so I woke up feeling a lot like I did right now. Les must be sleeping upstairs. I climbed the stairs, my cold feet grateful for the plush carpet.
“Les?” I called again. No answer. My tummy began to hurt. Where could he be? I poked my head into the beautifully decorated guest rooms to the right of the landing. The tropics-themed decor in one room beckoned me in, and I wondered where Cherry had gotten the cute little monkey sculptures on the dresser. I was running my hand over the bamboo-patterned duvet when my headache reminded me I hadn’t found any aspirin yet. Les wasn’t in the master bedroom, either, but I found some painkillers in the medicine cabinet and swallowed them, feeling guilty about invading Moss and Cherry’s room and stealing their aspirin.
Tiptoeing down the hall the other way, I found an office, a room full of exercise equipment and mirrors that reflected my ash blond hair sticking out stiffly—oh, my heavens—and another bedroom with attached bath. A damp towel was crumpled on the floor of the bathroom, but there was no razor or deodorant on the sink. I picked up the towel, folded it, and laid it over the towel bar. Les had showered this morning, and then …
I moped toward the large window that overlooked the front yard and leaned my forehead against the cold pane. It felt good. I looked down, hoping to spot Les or Knievel or I didn’t know what. Nothing moved except a magpie gliding from the tippy top of a spruce tree to the snowy lawn. He landed in one of Knievel’s paw prints and pecked at something. Then the bird hopped toward the driveway, where car tracks made ugly ruts in the snow. It took me a moment to realize. Tears pricked at my eyelids. Those tracks hadn’t been there last night when I came up the driveway. Someone had driven out … and the only someone around here besides me was Les.
I ran back downstairs, as if it were still possible to keep Les from leaving—again—and stopped in the foyer. Not thinking it through, I opened the hall closet beside the front door, planning to grab a coat. An alarm panel met my startled gaze, a red light on it blinking angrily. Uh-oh. I knew what that meant because we had a similar security system at home; at least, we’d had one until I discontinued the service because I couldn’t afford the monthly fees. Forgetting about the coat and Les, I opened the front door a crack and peered out to see an Aspen Police Department car charging up the driveway, lights flashing.
8
As Charlie puzzled over Heather-Anne’s unusual lack of history, the door opened, and she looked up. Albertine entered, saying, “Gigi—” before noticing Charlie.
“Charlie!” She bustled forward, her coral and turquoise tunic top molding to a massive bosom and full thighs. She enveloped Charlie in a huge hug. “I thought you weren’t coming back until next week.”
“Gigi had to go to Aspen on business, so I thought I’d return a day or two early,” Charlie said with a smile, cheered by Albertine’s greeting, the long fingernails painted turquoise to match her top, and her brisk, no-nonsense demeanor.
“She’s chasing after that no-good ex-husband of hers, isn’t she?” Albertine asked. “More fool she.”
“We’ve got a client,” Charlie said, slightly taken aback by Albertine’s disapproval, “although I did tell Gigi I thought we should turn down the case.”
“Damn right, you should’ve.” Albertine shook her head, her towering pile of braids, whorls, and curlicues tilting dangerously, despite enough shiny hair shellac to prevent wispies in gale-force winds. “Gigi’s not really over that larcenous jackass, and I’d hate to see him take advantage of her again. As for that skank he took up with … well! If my Tyrone brought home someone like that, I’d take him by the ear and beat some sense into him with a broom.”
Charlie laughed. She’d only met Albertine’s son once when he visited from New Orleans, but he was a six-foot-three former LSU offensive lineman. Still, she didn’t doubt Albertine could cow him into submission. “Gigi said she can handle it.”
“Hmph” was Albertine’s only response. She gave Charlie’s shoulders another squeeze, then said, “I’m expecting a delivery of okra, so I’ve got to get back. Come on down for a bowl of the best gumbo this side of the Big Easy later on.”
“Will do,” Charlie promised. Just the thought of Albertine’s rich gumbo made her stomach growl.
Albertine had barely walked out the door when the phone rang. “Swift Investigations,” Charlie answered.
“Oh, oh, Charlie! I tried you at home and you weren’t there and then I thought maybe, just maybe, you’d gone into the office, and I’m so happy I caught you!”
“Calm down, Gigi.” Charlie struggled to make sense of her partner’s words through the Georgia accent that got more pronounced whenever Gigi was agitated. “What’s wrong?”
A gulping sound came over the phone. “Well, there’s good news, bad news, and worse news,” Gigi said, sniffling.
Charlie suppressed a growl. Gigi’s inability to relay information succinctly drove her crazy. “Just cut to the chase.”
“The good news is that I found Les.”
“That’s great! So—”
“The bad news is that he’s gone again.”
“Well—”
Gigi drowned Charlie out with a wail. “And the worse news is that I’ve been arrested!”
By the time Charlie got Gigi calmed down enough to get a coherent story from her about finding Les at her friends’ house, she’d made it halfway through a new Pepsi.
“So then I noticed the alarm had gone off—Les must’ve set it when he left and I set it off when I let that evil Knievel out to do his chores—”
“There was a stuntman staying at the house? I thought he was dead.”
“What?” Gigi asked, sounding totally bewildered. “I’m not talking about a movie. This is real.”
“You just said something about Evil Knievel shoveling the walk or something.”
“Knievel’s the dog,” Gigi said, sounding as testy as Charlie had ever heard her.
“Right.” Charlie knocked back the rest of her Pepsi, figuring she would need the caffeine in her system to make it through the rest of the day.
“Anyway,” Gigi continued, “the poli
ce came and they accused me of breaking in and of stealing things—you know I would never steal anything—and then they brought me down to the police station and, oh, Charlie, I don’t know what to do. Please come up here and fix it!” Gigi ended on another wail.
Charlie couldn’t ignore Gigi’s plea. “Of course I’ll come. I just need to figure out how I’ll get there since I can’t drive that far yet.” She cycled friends through her head. Albertine had a restaurant to run and couldn’t spend the day jaunting off to Aspen. Dan might be able to do it if he didn’t have any parish commitments. She thought about Connor Montgomery, the Colorado Springs Police detective she had some sort of relationship with. The confusing sort that occurred when one party was wary of involvement due to memories of an adrenaline-junkie fighter-pilot ex-husband who had too much in common with a certain gorgeous four-years-younger-than-her homicide detective whose kisses lit her up like every star in the Milky Way compressed into a snow globe. Maybe Montgomery wasn’t working—
“Did you hear me, Charlie? I said Dexter could drive you.”
That jolted Charlie out of her reverie. “Dexter? Your son?” She tried not to sound appalled but wasn’t sure she’d succeeded. She’d only met the seventeen-year-old Dexter twice, but on both occasions she’d had to restrain herself from slapping the kid or pulling a gun on him because of his air of entitlement and the way he treated Gigi.
“Of course my son,” Gigi said, sounding so relieved to have come up with a solution for Charlie’s transportation difficulties that Charlie didn’t have the heart to tell her she’d rather walk to Aspen. “I’ll call him and have him pick you up at your house. If you leave right now, maybe you can get me out before I have to spend the night in jail. I’m not cut out for prison life, Charlie.”
Charlie had no trouble believing that and did her best to reassure Gigi before driving home to pack an overnight bag. She’d barely tossed her toothbrush in when a honk from out front made her peer out the window. A shiny red BMW 325i sat in her gravel driveway, the lanky blond Dexter leaning on the horn. With a growl, Charlie finished packing, locked the house, and stalked to the car. Rap music with an insistent bass beat vibrated the Beemer and was probably scaring away every bird, bunny, bobcat, and bear in earshot, Charlie thought sourly. Dexter didn’t emerge as she approached and yanked open the back door to toss her bag in. “You’ve never heard of knocking?” she asked as she opened the front door and slid into the passenger seat.
Dexter Goldman gave her a sullen look. Wearing a ratty T-shirt advertising a band Charlie had never heard of but was sure she would hate, he slouched in the driver’s seat. His streaky blond hair brushed his earlobes. Psychedelic jams hit just below his knee, the lime and puce and orange reminding Charlie of some of Gigi’s more lurid clothing combinations. The poor kid had inherited his mom’s fashion gene. Despite the near-freezing temperatures, he had flip-flops on his feet. He was handsome in a way Charlie was sure appealed to foolish teenaged girls; he reminded her of a young Brad Pitt, à la Thelma & Louise. She reached over to click off the stereo.
“My tunes!”
“Drive,” Charlie ordered.
The teen put the car in gear and stomped on the gas, spewing gravel as he tore out of Charlie’s driveway. Charlie shut her eyes briefly; it was going to be a long trip.
* * *
Dexter’s passion for speed and his total lack of consideration for other drivers made the drive shorter than Charlie had anticipated. She spent the trip on her cell phone and laptop, trying to locate Gigi’s friends in Singapore. It seemed to her that the quickest way to get Gigi out of jail was to have the Fitzwaters tell the police she had their permission to be in the house. Accordingly, Charlie had dialed their home number to hear their message for herself and then the cell phone number Gigi had given her for them, without much hope. She was right; apparently the Fitzwaters’ cell plan didn’t include coverage in Southeast Asia. She was reduced to Googling hotels in Singapore and calling them to see if Cherry and Moss were staying there. Since the time difference made it early morning in Singapore, she dealt with a variety of sleepy desk clerks who took a long time to deliver the news that the Fitzwaters weren’t registered at Hotel X or Y or Z. She didn’t even want to consider the possibility that they were staying in a private home or rented condo. She shifted uncomfortably in the seat, her wound complaining.
It wasn’t until they approached the outskirts of Aspen as dusk was settling that Dexter suggested, “Why don’t you just send them a message on Facebook?”
“What?” Charlie gave him a startled look; the teen had been silent for most of the trip, earbuds blasting the rap music that Charlie refused to listen to, fingers tapping the steering wheel in time to the beat.
“Huh?”
Charlie yanked out the earbud closest to her. “I said, ‘What do you mean?’”
“They said they were posting photos on Facebook, so they must be checking it. Send them a message and tell them about my mom.” The boredom in his voice said he’d long ago given up hope of finding intelligent life in the generation that preceded him.
“Can I do that without a Facebook account?”
Dexter sighed ostentatiously and talked her through the process step by step. Within half an hour of Charlie sending the Fitzwaters a Facebook message explaining the situation and urging them to contact the Aspen police as soon as possible, Dexter was pulling into a handicapped slot in front of the Aspen Police Department. The police were housed in an imposing two-story redbrick building fronted by a bushy evergreen that soared above the roofline, with a long set of steps leading to wooden doors. Piles of snow were mounded on either side of the neatly shoveled sidewalk.
Charlie was about to suggest to Dexter that parking in a handicapped slot was asking for a ticket when the doors opened and Gigi emerged at the top of the steps, fuchsia parka practically glowing in the dusky light, champagne blond hair fluffed around her face like a halo. “You did it,” she cried, spotting the Beemer. “I’m free!” Hurrying down the stairs, she flung her arms around Dexter, who pushed her away after a nanosecond.
“Let’s not act like you escaped from Alcatraz,” Charlie said, clambering stiffly out of the car and stretching her legs. “I take it the Fitzwaters called?”
“Oh, yes!” Gigi beamed. “They told the police I was a friend of theirs, not a thief, and said they should let me go. So they did. The police were very sweet, really, and very polite.”
“Did the Fitzwaters say anything about Les?”
Gigi nodded vigorously. “I asked,” she said proudly. “They said he called them over the weekend and asked if they minded if he stayed at their place for a few days. Cherry said it sounded like he had business in the area. Their caretaker broke four ribs and his wrist snowboarding, so they were happy to have someone to take care of Knievel. Oh, no, what will happen to him now?” Her brow creased with concern. “We could take him with us, but I don’t know if he and Nolan would get along.”
“I’m not having a dog in my Beemer,” Dexter announced, and Charlie found herself sympathizing with the kid for the first time that day.
“I’m sure the police will stick him in a kennel until the Fitzwaters get home,” Charlie said quickly, not wanting to get roped into providing a temporary home for a mangy mutt named after a daredevil. “The kennels around here are probably nicer than most apartments in Colorado Springs.” Aspen was a ritzy enclave that catered to the super-rich, and its amenities and prices were legendary. Charlie was sure kenneled pets dined on venison fritters and drank Perrier. “Where’s my car?”
“It’s still at Moss and Cherry’s,” Gigi said. “They gave me the alarm code and said we could spend the night.”
Charlie was relieved; her ass was not up to another four hours on the road. She slid into the Beemer’s backseat and stretched her legs out on the seat as Gigi bundled herself into the front.
“Guess what,” she said, turning around to look at Charlie, eyes alight. “They put me in the very cell t
hat Charlie Sheen stayed in.”
9
Dexter and Charlie didn’t have to be so rude about Charlie Sheen, in my opinion. He wasn’t convicted, after all. Calling him a “dubious, wife-beating, prostitute-patronizing, profanity-spewing celebrity” was a little harsh. Still, I had a photo of the cell on my phone and was planning to post it on my Facebook page until Charlie told me that publicizing my arrest might not be the best advertisement for Swift Investigations.
We all spent the night at Moss and Cherry’s, but Les didn’t come back as I was halfway hoping he might. Charlie searched the room he slept in but didn’t find anything that would tell us where he went or why he’d left Costa Rica. She asked me if he’d said anything that might be helpful, and I didn’t have the nerve to tell her we hadn’t talked much, that a little Scotch and kissing had led to other activities I was embarrassed to confess to, especially with Dexter standing there. It was bad enough that he found my panties under the kitchen table. I said they must be Cherry’s and was glad he’d never met her, because she’s smaller than a midge and definitely wouldn’t own a pair of size sixteen pink lace undies. Thank the good Lord Charlie wasn’t in the kitchen right then or she would have put two and two together and come up with five, like she always does.
Knievel showed up all wet and mud-covered as we were sitting down to eat the KFC we’d picked up on the way to the house, and Charlie let me put him in the Subaru when we were leaving the next morning so we could drop him at a kennel on our way out of town. Dexter took off while we were loading up Knievel and locking the house.
“Why do you suppose Les set the alarm before leaving?” Charlie asked as I was arming the system the next morning.
3 Swift Run Page 5
