Blast From The Past 2

by Faith Winslow

  “Hello?” I asked.

  “Trish?” J.R. asked back. “I was worried about you. I tried calling a few times.”

  “I know,” I replied. “Sorry I missed your calls… But there was no way I could call back.”

  “I’m sorry for that,” J.R. said. “But, obviously, I have to call you from cloaked numbers.”

  “I figured,” I said.

  “But anyway, I’ve got something to tell you,” J.R. said—and, this time, it was his film noir pose I could see through the phone lines.

  “Is it about how Stephanie’s brother used to work as a programmer for rEcore?” I asked. “Or about how your girlfriend, Gigi, fired him?”

  “Actually, yeah,” J.R. said, sounding a little defeated. “But she’s not my girlfriend… never was.”

  “I know,” I chimed back. “But it sounds more dramatic that way, doesn’t it?”

  “I guess,” J.R. replied. “But can’t you give me more credit than that? You really think I’d date someone who turned out to be so ruthless?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted, trying to be snarkier than I should have in the conversation.

  “I guess you’d know better than anyone,” J.R. shot back. “You were pretty ruthless to me, you know… the way you left me that morning.”

  “I thought you didn’t want to talk about that,” I said, feeling my hangover then more than ever.

  “I don’t,” J.R. said. “But if you’re going to say shit about me and Gigi, I get free range. You obviously think you know a lot about me—but, I assure you, you don’t.”

  “That may be the case,” I told J.R., trying to dig myself out of whatever ditch I was in. “But, right now, that doesn’t matter, now does it? You made that abundantly clear when you said you didn’t want to talk about our mistake.”

  The way I said that last word was a little different than how I’d said every other word in my statement, and J.R. could sense that.

  “So what do you want to do?” he asked with a sigh. “Wanna dwell on the past, or get together to discuss this new information?”

  “Julie will be here in an hour or two,” I responded without much emotion. “You’re welcome to join us if you want to.”

  “I will,” J.R. said without hesitation. “Is there anything you and your bodyguard would like? I may stop at the store or get some take-out along the way—so if there’s something you want, you might as well just tell me.”

  I decided to pass on J.R.’s comment about my “bodyguard,” but elected to take him up on his offer. “Some Chinese would be nice—maybe some Thai, if you’re daring. I am a little hungry, and could use something with flavor.”

  “Done,” J.R. replied promptly. “I’ll be there—with some food—in a couple hours.”

  ~ Chapter 11 ~

  When I heard a knock on my door approximately one hour later, I didn’t know who to expect… I knew it was probably Julie or J.R., but, with the way things had been going the past few days, it wouldn’t have surprised me to see anyone one the other side of my door, including Elvis.

  “Where’s the food?” I asked, when I saw that it was J.R.

  “Wow, you cut straight to the chase,” he replied, stepping in. “I guess you really are hungry, huh?”

  “I told you I was,” I said with a smile, locking up behind him.

  “Well, no worries,” he replied. “It’s on its way… I’m having it delivered.”

  “Fair enough,” I told him. “Obviously, Julie isn’t here yet, but she should be here soon.”

  “All right,” J.R. said. He walked over and sat on my couch, and as he walked, I watched him. It looked like he was walking through molasses—and his words sounded like they were traveling too.

  But there was nothing wrong about the way J.R. was acting: it was how I was responding. I felt a nervous tension in the room, and it was so thick you could… spoon it, like molasses.

  “So I guess Julie and I both stumbled upon the same secret last night,” J.R. started, sitting back and making himself more comfortable. “About Stephanie’s brother… I can see how I missed it at first. Their last name is Smith, you know… I don’t know how Julie found out about it, but I found out by reading his original application, which was buried deep in his file.”

  J.R. looked to me for some type of explanation. I shrugged my shoulders. “I don’t know how she found out either,” I admitted. “All she did was tell me about it.”

  “Oh,” J.R. replied. “I guess we’ll both have to wait until she gets here then.”

  The tension didn’t get any less severe as time passed. If anything, it only got worse. Within a matter of minutes, the molasses we were wading through starting to solidify and harden. It was like we were stuck in a crystalizing conversation that was going nowhere. I wanted to tell J.R. that I’d gotten nowhere with my lead on Gretchen and Tommy, but telling him would require mentioning Tommy—and, in addition to wanting to keep my promise of secrecy to Tommy, something just didn’t feel right about telling J.R. about my night out with another man.

  Luckily, we didn’t have to endure our awkward silence for much longer. There was another knock at my door, followed by an unfamiliar voice. “Delivery,” the man said in a thick accent.

  “I’ll get it,” J.R. said, rising to his feet. “I have to sign for it anyway.”

  J.R. walked over to the door, opened it, and greeted a small, older man with dark skin.

  “Sir,” the old guy said, handing J.R. a sales slip. J.R. signed it and handed it back to him. The old guy’s eyes widened when he looked at the paper J.R. had given him—either he was impressed by the name on the signature line or the amount of the tip, or both.

  During this transaction, I kind of just stood back and watched—and it wasn’t until the old man’s eyes widened that I realized there was something strange about it… Where’s the food? I asked myself, asking the same question for the second time in less than an hour.

  Just as I was wondering where our grub was, the old guy turned and said a few words in another language. A moment later another, much younger man was standing beside him, holding a big box and two bags. He handed J.R. the foodstuffs, smiled, and said something to his older companion before the two of them walked away making what sounded like happy chitchat.

  “Give me a hand with this, will you?” J.R. asked, holding onto the box and bags, trying to kick the door shut with his foot. I went over and grabbed one of the bags from him, then shut the door properly.

  “Dear God, J.R.,” I said. “There’s enough food here to feed an army… What’d you do, order everything on the menu?”

  “Actually,” he said, carrying his loot to my kitchen, “I did. I didn’t know what you liked, so I ordered one of everything on the menu.”

  My jaw couldn’t help but drop when J.R. said that. I’d only asked him the question to be silly and didn’t really think that he—or anyone—would have actually ordered everything on the menu. But, given his words and the amount of food before us, it was obvious that he had. There was so much food on hand that, even if he, Julie, and I ate from it all day, and even if I held on to leftovers to feed me for the next few days, there’d still be enough left over to feed an Irish Catholic family.

  “What do you like?” J.R. asked, removing some of the take-out containers from the box. “Looks like we have some lo mein, some sweet n’ sour chicken, fried rice… Mmm, walnut shrimp, beef and broccoli.” As J.R. extracted the containers, I noticed that they’d all been labeled, and some of the words were making me very, very hungry.

  “It all sounds good,” I said, moving closer to him to examine the food for myself. The smell of it made my taste buds water. “Any egg rolls to start with?”

  “Let’s see here,” J.R. said, sifting through the box. “Eggrolls! Here you go… Chicken or shrimp?”

  “Whichever,” I said, reaching my hand out to grab the first eggroll-looking item I saw. The wrap around it was still very warm, and I cracked one side to vent it.

&n
bsp; “Julie better get here soon,” J.R. said, pulling out a tub of what turned out to be cashew chicken. “If she doesn’t we might just eat all this food before she gets here.”

  “Fat chance of that,” I said, tapping on my eggroll. It was still too hot to eat.

  Julie’s ears must have been ringing, because, a moment later, there was knock on my door, and she was the one knocking.

  “You’re just in time for the biggest lunch ever,” I said when I opened the door. “And, no need to ask, he did order everything on the menu.”

  Julie looked at me a little strangely.

  “J.R.’s here,” I clarified. “He got take-out… a lot of it. So I hope you’re hungry.”

  “I could eat,” Julie said, looking around me toward the kitchen.

  “Well, come on in, and help yourself then,” J.R. called out. He’d found my plates and was making himself a sampler of Golden Gate’s finest vittles.

  Julie and I went to the kitchen and each put heaping helpings of food on our plates. Then we all went to the living room to sit, casually dine, and discuss our progress.

  “You found out about Stephanie’s brother too?” J.R. asked, slurping a noodle into his mouth.

  “Yeah,” Julie replied as she cut a huge chunk of chicken in half with her fork. “I decided to look into Stephanie a little, to make sure we had different bases covered… I had to dig pretty deep into her social networking past, but I found out that she had a brother—he simply goes by “Evan G.S.” online—and after I did my snooping on him, I found out about his connection to rEcore… Seems he worked there for about two years and was fired just under a year ago. He was really bitching about that online.”

  “Did he say anything useful?” I asked, chewing on a mixture of Chinese dishes.

  “If you’re asking if he went online and declared revenge on rEcore or Gigi, then no,” Julie said. “It was just your average ‘can’t believe I got fired,’ ‘their loss not mine,’ kind of thing. But, he did go on and on about it for a few days.”

  “It’s a good lead,” J.R. said, making his way back into the conversation. “I don’t know where it’ll take us, but it’s a good lead.” He looked a little sad as he said this, and then I knew why.

  “I guess there’s been a lot going on at rEcore that I didn’t know about,” he went on. “And, unfortunately, it’s put my company and my employees at risk… I don’t know how long any of this has been going on—or how long it would have continued—but I’m glad that things happened with you when they did, or else I might have never known to even look beneath the surface.”

  I appreciated J.R.’s words, though I thought they were a bit premature, and a touch melodramatic. I was still suffering from the loss of my job and the blow to my reputation, and I, personally, wasn’t willing to look at this entire situation as a “good thing” just yet.

  “Well, if we can all keep our eyes on the prize, we actually might get to the bottom of this soon,” Julie said with a smile that made J.R. look at her curiously.

  “What’s that mean?” J.R. asked. “We all need to keep our eyes on the prize?”

  “Right,” Julie replied, approaching J.R.’s questions from an awkward angle. “While you and I were digging up dirty on Stephanie last night, our friend Trish here was out gallivanting.”

  “Gallivanting?” J.R. asked, looking to me.

  “Shut up!” I shouted at Julie, throwing her a look that, by all measures, was meant to kill. “I wasn’t out gallivanting… I simply went out for a drink.”

  “Yeah,” Julie huffed under her breath, “and you didn’t come home until this morning.”

  I felt a flush of heat run over me—and it wasn’t a good heat. I was embarrassed and couldn’t believe Julie had decided to discuss my personal life like that in front of J.R.

  “It’s not what you think,” I said to both of them. I still couldn’t tell them about Tommy, and I really didn’t want to. I was already being judged, and I couldn’t bear the idea of any extra scrutiny.

  “I’ll tell you what I think,” Julie said. She was obviously more invested, and pissed off, than I’d originally gauged. “I gave up my Friday night to help you… and you went out and tied one on. That’s not really fair, is it?”

  “Is that what this is about?” I asked Julie. “You’re talking trash about me going out last night because you’re jealous?”

  “I guess you could put it that way,” Julie said, pushing the food around on her plate.

  “Like I said,” I went on, “it’s not what you think… I didn’t go out to party, get drunk, or get laid. I went out to follow a lead, and it took me nowhere.”

  “I wouldn’t say nowhere,” Julie replied, still agitated. “You went home with someone last night, didn’t you?”

  “You went home with someone?” J.R. asked, echoing Julie’s question. It was the first thing he’d said since this new chapter of discussion started, and, for the first time, I noticed how uncomfortable he seemed.

  “Not someone,” I quickly responded, though I didn’t know what else to say. I wracked my brain to come up with a viable lie.

  “I ran into my cousin,” I said, grasping at the first straw I could.

  “Your cousin?” J.R. asked. For such a talkative man, he was rendered speechless.

  “Yes, my cousin, Lilah,” I answered. “She moved out here a few years back, and I completely forgot she lived here. We were never really that close… But, I ran into her last night, toward the end of the night, and I ended up hanging out with her for a while, and then ended up spending the night at her apartment… It’s no big deal.”

  Actually, it was a big deal. I didn’t like lying to my friends and allies, but I saw no way around it. Tommy was right that it was in my best interest to keep our friendship—or whatever it was—a secret for the time being, and I wasn’t about to open that can of worms right now.

  “Oh,” J.R. said, looking down at his plate. I could tell that he didn’t quite believe me. Julie, on the other hand, looked like she took the bait hook, line, and sinker.

  “Well, I hope you had a good time catching up,” J.R. said, talking more like himself, “and I hope you didn’t tell her too much about what we’re doing.”

  “Not at all,” I replied. “I just told her the basics of my situation, and that I want to make it right.”

  “Then let’s do that,” J.R. said.

  We shifted the subject back to Stephanie and her brother and went on to speculate and conduct further research. We’d been together about two hours when J.R.’s phone started buzzing. “I have to take this,” he said, staring down at the screen.

  “Okay,” I replied, nodding my head toward the kitchen.

  J.R. went into the kitchen and started talking on the phone, and Julie turned toward me.

  “I know you weren’t with your cousin last night,” she whispered. “But, whatever, I’ll buy it… I’m sorry I called you out like that in front of J.R.—I don’t know what I was thinking… I was just jealous, I guess.”

  “Obviously,” I said, shaking my head at my friend. “But, really, isn’t my personal business my personal business?”

  Before Julie could answer, J.R. was back in the room.

  “Sorry to cut this short,” he said, “but I’ve got to get going now… I’m planning this year’s corporate event, and that was someone from the venue. They need me to come out today and approve a few things—and, for the sake of us all, I’ve gotta do it. It’s got to be business as usual while we’re working on this.”

  “Makes sense,” I said, trying to avoid making eye contact with J.R., just in case he’d heard any of Julie’s or my comments. “Let’s try to get together again tomorrow night to review things… Okay?”

  “Sounds good to me,” J.R. said, gathering his belongings. “Enjoy the rest of your Chinese feast, and I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “See you then,” Julie and I said in concert.

  ~ Chapter 12 ~

  “Who’s that?” Julie as
ked, staring at me as I swiped my fingers across my cell phone, replying to a text. “Your lover from last night? What—is he ready for round two?”

  “Julie,” I said firmly, like a mother would say to a child. “I told you before, I was with my cousin last night.”

  “And I told you before,” she said, “I don’t believe you.”

  The fact of the matter was that it actually had been Tommy who had texted me, and he was indeed looking to get together. But, of course, as with so many things that happened in the past twenty-four hours, I wasn’t going to tell Julie about it.

  “I still get emails, alerts, and requests online, you know,” I said, setting my phone down and trying to brush off the situation. “So just because I get a ping, that doesn’t mean someone’s trying to hook up with me.”

  “All right,” Julie said in resignation. “But, whoever’s texting you, for whatever reason, keep whatever you’re gonna go about it off the clock. You got to go out and have fun last night—tonight’s my night. You stay home like a hermit tonight, conducting research.”

  “If that’ll make you happy, Julie, I promise I’ll stay home,” I said. I didn’t feel too bad about telling Julie this, because I wasn’t really lying. When I’d texted Tommy back to let him know if I wanted to get together tonight, I told him, Yeah, and invited him to my place. Part of pursuing what it was I was pursuing with him—be it friendship, dating, or help with my investigation—meant keeping things secret, and my apartment seemed like the perfect hideout. We’d already risked a lot being seen together in public.

  So Tommy was slated to come to my apartment in just a couple hours, and, now, it was just a matter of getting Julie out of there before then. Seeing as how she’d just mentioned going out, I saw an opportunity to entice her. I started asking her where she was planning on going, what she’d be wearing, and who, if anybody, she planned on—or wanted to avoid—seeing.