“Habit?” I suggested. “He always set our alarm, even if he was just running to the 7-Eleven for milk.”
“Or he wanted to slow you down,” Charlie suggested. “Make sure you weren’t on his trail again.”
It took me a couple of seconds. “You mean he deliberately got me arrested?” I was indignant.
Charlie gave me a “could be” shrug.
I was still huffing and puffing about Les getting me arrested when we arrived at the kennel and handed Knievel over to a slim redhead who cooed at him. Charlie made out like it was a big deal, taking time to drop off the Doberman pinscher, but I could tell she was just as concerned about the dog as I was. He was really pretty sweet when he wasn’t knocking you into the snow and threatening to rip your throat out.
I dropped Charlie off at her house round about eleven o’clock. She looked pooped, and I was afraid she had overdone it, but she wouldn’t let me come in and make her lunch or anything. I moved my overnight bags to the Hummer, said good-bye to Charlie, who said a long soak in her hot tub would cure what ailed her, and headed for home. On the way, I had to pass the turnoff for Chapel Hills Mall, and somehow I found myself in the parking lot, pulling up in front of Macy’s. After the encounter with Les and being arrested, I deserved a new sweater or pair of shoes. I felt anxiety draining from me as I breathed in the smell of the store, a mix of fibers, cosmetics, and stale air from the heater. Oh, yum. I’d gained two pounds, according to the scale in Cherry’s bathroom, so I steered clear of fitted clothes it would depress me to try on and headed for the jewelry counter.
Rows of sparklies tempted me, and I found myself trying on earrings and bracelets and necklaces. On sale, they weren’t any of them more than a hundred dollars. Letting them drip through my fingers made me feel better, helping me forget how stupid I’d been to sleep with Les and the humiliation of getting arrested. I particularly liked a pair of drop earrings set with Swarovski crystals in pink, yellow, and blue. I didn’t have anything to wear them with, but I was sure I could find something in the cocktail dress section. As I was headed to the cashier with the earrings and matching bracelet in hand, I thought about what Albertine would say, and my footsteps slowed. The earrings weren’t on my financial diet. Scrunching my eyes closed, I practically flung them back at the display and dialed Albertine’s number.
“Help!” I squawked when she answered.
“Gigi?”
“I’m in Macy’s.”
“Get out now,” Albertine commanded. “Don’t touch anything. I’ll meet you in the food court in ten minutes.”
“Thanks.” Hanging up, I almost giggled at how much she’d sounded like a 911 operator giving instructions to someone reporting a fire. Get out of the house. Don’t go back for anything. Still smiling, I made it out of the store without checking a single price tag or running my hands down a silky blouse or fuzzy sweater and marched the few steps to the food court without ducking into any other stores. To reward myself, I drifted to the new Baskin-Robbins counter and ordered a scoop of jamoca almond fudge ice cream. Only one scoop, and in a cup, not a cone, so I wouldn’t blow my diet. I got Albertine a cup of mint chocolate chip, which I knew she liked.
As I was paying, Albertine arrived in a swirl of scarlet and gold caftan that she definitely hadn’t found in Chapel Hills Mall, and I handed her the cup and a spoon. She looked from her ice cream to mine and burst out laughing, a rich sound that made several people look around and smile. “Gigi, you are something else,” she said.
“What?”
“You did good to call me.” She spooned up some ice cream as we settled at one of the tables.
“Thanks for coming.”
“You didn’t buy anything, did you? Because if you did, you can take it right back.” She peeked under the table, looking for shopping bags.
I shook my head. “Nope. Just the ice cream.”
“Good. That’s progress. Come on. It’s the lunch rush and I’ve got to get back. I’m walking you out of here, though, to make sure you get out safely. And you’re coming down to the restaurant after work to tell me what triggered this.”
“Okay,” I said meekly, licking the last of the coffee-flavored ice cream off my spoon and putting the cup in the trash.
We parted in the parking lot, and Albertine watched until I made it through the mall exit to Briargate Boulevard.
* * *
Dexter’s BMW was in the garage when I got home, and I found him in the kitchen, glugging orange juice from the container. Nolan greeted me with shrill yips of joy and demanded to be let into the yard, which made me wonder if Kendall had remembered to let him out before she left for school.
“Dexter—”
Without answering, he put the juice carton back in the fridge and slouched past me, probably planning to disappear into his bedroom or meet up with some of his friends at the mall.
“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?�
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“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.
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