C T Ferguson Box Set

by Tom Fowler

  I had to think. On the one hand, I didn’t enjoy being stonewalled and didn’t want to leave. On the other hand, I didn’t know if Corey Dunn would have much to tell me even if he were cooperative. Regardless of his attitude, nothing compelled him to talk to me. I needed to remember that, now and in the future. Picking a fight wouldn’t benefit anyone, and word could get back to Alice about what I had done. I wanted to avoid this coming back on me.

  I stood. “Fine. I’ll go.”

  “I thought you might,” Dunn said with a smug smile. Prick.

  “I’ll walk you out,” the guard said.

  “I can find my own way,” I said.

  “I’m sure you can, but you’ll find it faster if I’m with you.”

  I didn’t doubt his words. A few people, including Erica Sousa, watched what happened in Dunn’s office. I needed to get out of here without making a further ruckus. Office gossip about the handsome PI arguing with Dunn couldn’t reach Alice Fisher. “Fine,” I said and started toward the door. “Let’s go.” The guard opened it for me. I readied myself for some macho display from him, but he simply held the door as I walked through it. I smiled to the crowd of four people watching in the hallway and walked back to the elevator with the guard in tow.

  I sat in the parking lot at Digital Sales. Alice Fisher wasn’t cheating on her husband, if her coworkers and jackass boss could be believed. I also hadn’t learned anything about why Alice lied about their mortgage situation. For all I knew, they could have been underwater at one point. The housing market had been interesting, in the ancient Chinese curse sort of way, for almost a decade now.

  Each time I pondered a question in this case, it spiraled into more questions. When it started, I thought I might solve a simple case of infidelity. So far, it proved anything but. I didn’t have the foggiest idea if any infidelity even took place. Here I waited on the dingy asphalt of a business I would never patronize trying to see if I could gain any insight into the Fishers’ situation. Perhaps Paul would grope a coworker in the doorway and settle everything.

  I told my father “hackers are the new detectives,” but I didn’t feel like much of a new detective now. Maybe on the way home, I could get fitted for a grimy trench coat and fedora. They couldn’t serve me worse than database exploits right now.

  I watched a bunch of people leave Digital Sales from my vantage point near the back of their lot. Paul Fisher’s office light remained on for a good fifteen minutes after the mass exodus. Then it went out. I followed the lights on the elevator down to the first floor. A few seconds later, the light at the far left end of the building went on. Whatever Paul Fisher was doing, he did it at work, though not in his own office. That would explain why Alice couldn’t reach him. What happened on the first floor? If he needed overtime, why not put in more hours as an account manager? Maybe there was only so much managing of accounts a body could do in a week before realizing his job didn’t really mean anything.

  In the future, I would need to contact Digital Sales and find out what happened on the first floor, west end of the building. Now, though, I had a dinner planned with Jessica Webber. She roped me into taking her to Le Petit Louis. French didn’t top my list of places to go, but if dinner and dessert (and, I hoped, a nightcap) with the lovely Miss Webber kept the more salacious details of my life out of the paper, I would pay the price.

  The Fishers’ situation bugged me the entire drive home. I knew I would be distracted over dinner, and I hoped Jessica wouldn’t notice.

  Chapter 4

  Jessica Webber wore an outfit made for prime-time news, and it showed off a body made for late-night cable. We sat at the bar at Le Petit Louis while waiting for our table. I sipped a glass of French red wine while Jessica drank a Toblerone. I had never heard of it, and neither had the bartender, but he and Jessica (mostly Jessica) figured out the ingredients on the fly. It looked like chocolate milk that yearned for more chocolate syrup. Jessica smiled when she drank it and said it tasted good.

  I sat at the bar and watched the other patrons. About half the barstools were occupied, and a couple of stragglers stood around—men trying to pick up the girls who sat by themselves. I watched the girls for their reactions. The subtle eye roll, the smirk I could see in the mirror but the guy standing next to her couldn’t, keeping her hands and arms close to her body. Those guys weren’t getting anywhere. I looked over at Jessica, who studied me with an amused smile.

  “People watching?” she said.

  “I’m a detective,” I said, “I need to keep the keen edge on my powers of observation.”

  “Of course.”

  “Besides, watching guys strike out with girls is always funny.”

  “You’ve never struck out?” Her eyes shined as she sipped her drink through the straw.

  “Everyone strikes out; I’m no exception. But I keep swinging, and I think my batting average is solid.”

  “I don’t doubt it.”

  “Oh, really?” I checked for a reaction.

  Color Jessica’s makeup couldn’t hide came to her cheeks. “Yes, really.” She twirled a lock of her blond hair around her left index finger. The hair on the other side of her face hung down past her shoulders, settling nicely around her top, which had a low and open neckline.

  “Most people are afraid of striking out,” she said, “so they don’t bother getting in there and swinging the bat.”

  “Never let the fear of striking out keep you from playing the game," I said. "Something I read on a motivational poster somewhere.”

  The maitre d’ came and led us to our table. Le Petit Louis is aptly named: it’s a small restaurant. I don’t know if anyone named Louis has ever been involved with the place, but the restaurant bearing his name certainly favored the petit. We had a table for two, sized exactly for two average people. I took the seat against the wall, which also put me close to a post on my right side. Jessica sat on the aisle, which was barely wide enough for one person to walk up and down. The waiter came, took our drink and appetizer orders, and left.

  “Have you been here before?” Jessica said.

  “A few times during high school and college,” I said. “My parents live pretty close, and they always liked the place.”

  “What about you?”

  I shrugged. “It’s pretty good. French isn’t my favorite. I’m more of an Asian guy.”

  “With a name like Ferguson, I figured you for English.”

  I smiled in spite of myself. “Guilty as charged.”

  The waiter brought our drinks and appetizer. We put in our dinner orders: Truite Almondine for Jessica and steak Bordelaise for me. We noshed on the aubergines croquantes and downed some of our drinks in silence.

  “So how’s the business?” Jessica said.

  “It’s OK, I guess,” I said. “I have a case.”

  “You do?” She leaned forward in her seat. “Tell me about it.”

  “It’s not very exciting, but it’s confusing. A woman suspects her husband of infidelity.” I told her the details, including Alice Fisher lying, but left out the names.

  “Sounds like it might get interesting,” she said.

  “Maybe. Right now, it’s convinced me I don’t want to handle any more adultery cases. Who people sleep with isn’t any of my business. Unless they’re sleeping with me, of course.”

  “Of course.” I saw the color fade back into Jessica’s cheeks.

  The narrow walkway barely allowed our waiter to carry a tray full of food and not whack anyone in the head. I figured his circus act should earn him another five percent on the tip. He set the tray in a space barely large enough for it, served us our food, promised to bring more drinks, and did the dexterity dance back up the walkway.

  Jessica looked at her food and inhaled a deep breath of it. “It smells really good,” she said. She picked up her silverware and cut. I did the same. Conversations came and went. I couldn’t focus on any particular one because of all the ambient noise. Instead, I settled for people watching as
I ate. The wait staff moved carefully around the room, but they only slowed if a collision was imminent. When Jessica looked away from her food to engage in some people watching of her own, I took in her outfit. How did this woman not have her own TV news show? She simply needed a wardrobe full of plunging necklines to ace the ratings.

  “Let’s talk about your past,” Jessica said when we had both eaten most of our respective dinners.

  “What about it?” I said. “I think I told you the juicy bits already.”

  “I meant what it will take me to keep those bits out of the story.”

  “I thought dinner and dessert were enough.”

  “Maybe I want a little more.”

  “Like what?” I said.

  “You’re a private investigator running a free business,” Jessica said. “I’m curious how this case is going to turn out. I’m sure the people would be, too.”

  I said, “So in order to forget about printing my past, you want a peek into the present and near future.”

  “That sounds about right.”

  “Well, Miss Webber, since you have me over the coals here, I suppose I have to go along.”

  “I was hoping you’d agree, Mr. Ferguson.”

  “Then we’ll start tomorrow . . . after breakfast.”

  Jessica regarded me with a spark in her eyes. “After breakfast?”

  “It wouldn’t make much sense to start before breakfast, would it?”

  The waiter came back to collect our silverware and ask about dessert. Jessica looked at me. “I have dessert taken care of,” I said.

  “I’m sure you do,” Jessica said.

  And I did. Fresh strawberries (with the ends already sliced off), whipped cream, and a light and fruity wine. I got everything out of the refrigerator (including the wine, always better chilled) and set it on the small island in my kitchen while Jessica freshened up in the bathroom. I popped the cork, fetched two wine glasses from my cabinet, and filled each glass. Jessica came out, walked into the kitchen, and smiled when she saw the dessert spread. “You weren’t kidding, were you?” she said, approaching the island and standing beside me.

  “Dessert is serious business,” I said. I took a strawberry from the basket and held it toward Jessica. She ate it off my fingertips.

  “You don’t seem like the type to be too serious about things,” she said.

  “I’m probably not.”

  “Wouldn’t that hurt you as a detective?” She grabbed a strawberry, added a bit of whipped cream, and fed it to me.

  “I don’t know yet,” I said. “It hasn’t been an issue so far. I’m tenacious, though. Once I start something, I finish it.”

  “Cheating husbands of the world, beware.” Jessica took a drink of her wine.

  “This is my last infidelity case.” I fed Jessica another strawberry, this time with a small dollop of whipped cream atop.

  “Tell me something,” she said.

  “I’ve told you a lot already.”

  “Something specific this time. Why be a detective? You’re a smart guy. You have skills. You have a masters in computer science. How does all of that lead you to becoming a detective?”

  Before I could answer, Jessica offered me another strawberry, which I ate. “Off the record?” I said. She nodded. I thought about the best way to sanitize my story before I answered. “I tried to help people overseas, mostly keeping the Chinese government off their heels. When I got back from Hong Kong, my parents insisted I get a job helping people. I had gone through most of my own money living abroad, and they knew it, so they threatened to cut me off from the family money unless I did what they said.”

  “So you go from hacker and pirate to crusading detective?”

  “I don’t know about the crusading part.”

  “But you’re in this for the long haul.”

  “At least for a while,” I said.

  Jessica grabbed a strawberry and fed it to me, then ate one herself. “I think you’ll do well at it,” she said. “I’ve noticed you looking around at a lot of things.”

  I downed the rest of the wine in my glass. “I do try to be observant.”

  “You’ve definitely observed my chest at several points this evening.” She smiled and picked up her glass, taking a sip of the wine.

  “Guilty as charged again.”

  Jessica drained the rest of the glass in one swig. She reached up and undid one of the buttons on her shirt. “You’ve been looking at these all night,” she said. The overhead light reflected and danced in her eyes. She undid another. I didn’t blink. With her shirt two-thirds undone, Jessica stopped, ate a strawberry, dipped another in whipped cream, and gave it to me. She undid another button, another, then the last. Jessica pulled her shirt back. Her low-cut bra matched her shirt almost exactly in color, and the breasts it half-hid did not disappoint. They combined with her toned stomach to make me want to rip off the rest of Jessica’s clothes right here in the kitchen.

  She walked up to me, stopping inches short. I felt her breath on my face and neck. Her eyes bored into mine. “If you want to see anymore, you’ll have to take me to your bedroom,” she said.

  I held out my hand. We went to my bedroom.

  The next morning, I worked in the kitchen while Jessica remained asleep. We left the strawberries and whipped cream on the island overnight so I threw them away. I had a container of blueberries in the refrigerator ready to go in case I needed to cook breakfast for a lovely young woman. I also had the usual pancake ingredients and started making blueberry pancakes. While I whisked the batter, I heard Jessica walking down the hall.

  She padded into the kitchen wearing my bathrobe and looking much the same as she had before undressing in this very room last night. Jessica rubbed at her right eye, walked up to me, put her hand on my chest, and planted a big minty kiss right on my lips. “I love the taste of mouthwash in the morning,” I said.

  “Me, too,” she said, looking at the mixing bowl. “Blueberry pancakes?”

  “Your reporter’s eye is keen.”

  “Years of practice as a journalist. I didn’t peg you as the type who knew your way around a kitchen.”

  “I went to college. No one else I lived with knew how to cook worth a damn.” I added a handful of blueberries, then a few more, and gently whisked the mixture. “I’m not a gourmet or anything, but I do pretty well.”

  “A pro bono PI, and he makes breakfast the morning after.” Jessica smiled. “Don’t put that in your next ad.” She opened the refrigerator and looked for something to drink, settling on orange juice.

  “I don’t plan to,” I said.

  I had the skillet already heated. It fit two pancakes at a time. As always, I cooked them a little too long on one side but I never thought it affected the taste. While the pancakes cooked, I got butter and maple syrup out of the refrigerator and set them on the table. Jessica sat at the table with her glass of orange juice. “Real maple syrup,” she said. “And you say you’re not a gourmet.”

  “Corn syrup is for philistines,” I said. I put two pancakes onto a plate and poured the batter for two more on the skillet.

  “Now you’re just showing off your education.”

  A kettle of hot water heated for tea, and it whistled as I flipped the pancakes (again, a few seconds too late—this would serve as my culinary trademark). Jessica got up and walked to the stove, putting the kettle on another burner and turning the hot one off. “Where are the mugs and tea?” she said. I told her, and she pulled two mugs down and looked at my vast tea collection. I never kept fewer than five varieties in the house at a time. Some things are important.

  Jessica kept considering teas while I worked on more pancakes. “I’ll surprise you,” she said, taking two teabags down. I couldn’t see what flavor they were.

  “You surprised me last night,” I said. “I don’t know if I can handle any more.”

  I watched the color rush back into Jessica’s cheeks. “I think you’ll manage,” she said as she added teabags to
the mugs and filled each with hot water. She carried them to the table and sat again. “Now I’ll wait for your pancakes to surprise me.”

  A few minutes later, after slathering her pancakes in butter and adding a dash of maple syrup, Jessica admitted they were good. She didn’t even comment about one side of each being browner than the other. I put the darker sides down out of habit. “Can I run something by you?” I said as we ate.

  “Is it about your case?” she said.

  “Yes. Something bugs me about it, and I want another perspective.”

  “Go ahead.”

  I told her (still omitting names) about Alice Fisher hiring me to look into her husband’s suspected infidelity, her general shiftiness, the lie about the mortgage, and what I learned at each of their workplaces—which I had to admit wasn’t much. Jessica pondered these new facts over a few bites of pancakes.

  “You’re wondering why the wife lied,” she said.

  “It bothers me. Would it bother you?”

  “Inconsistencies always bother people in my line of work. In yours, too. But I don’t think that means you look into her.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you shouldn’t investigate your client. Besides, it may not be important. Maybe there’s something she doesn’t want you to find. That doesn’t make her wicked.”

  “Why lie about it, then?” I said.

  “I don’t know.” Jessica ate another bite of her pancakes and pursed her lips. I noticed how cute she looked when she got contemplative. “She’s using the lie about the mortgage to cover up something she doesn’t want you to know.”

  “What would it be?”

  “Is her credit bad?” I nodded. “Probably something related to money.”

  “She doesn’t want me to know.” I took another forkful of pancakes and stopped in mid-chew. “She doesn’t want me to know.” I finished my mouthful of food and swallowed. “I wonder if it means she doesn’t want her husband to know, too.”