I stood at the curb, hearing her voice as I scanned the endless rows of cars bathed in the afternoon sun. I might have jumped a full foot in the air when my phone buzzed in my pocket, great rivers of relief rushing over me. I fumbled it, dropped it, picked it up, and sank into disappointment when I didn’t recognize the number.
“Hello?”
“Hello, this is Sushi Den. You had a reservation at five thirty?”
“Oh, yes. Hi. Sorry.” In my worry, I had forgotten I even had a stomach much less that it was very empty and actively aching with hunger.
“Are you close? We can’t hold your table much longer.”
I pictured our usual table just beyond the door, next to the bubbling blue expanse of the tropical fish tank, chairs empty, awaiting our arrival. It felt as far away as a parallel universe, one in which this day had gone exactly as I had planned it.
“No. Go ahead and cancel our reservation.”
“Okay. Bye now.”
“Bye.”
One by one, the explanations I had given to myself were peeling away like layers of skin, leaving raw, unexposed fear open to sting in the sun.
Salt sprinkled down upon the wound in the form of a familiar, feminine giggle.
Melanie Beidermeyer, accompanied by the whole towheaded Beidermeyer clan, was sashaying down the sidewalk in my direction.
I spun on my heel and walked as if I were leaving the scene of a crime.
“Jane!”
“Kill me now,” I grumbled, knowing there was no use pretending I hadn’t heard. With her thirty-six inches of legs, Melanie would make quick work of catching up to me.
“Jane! I want you to meet my parents.”
I took a deep breath and turned, plastering a smile on my face.
“My God,” the Beidermeyer matron gasped. “What happened to your eye?”
“Is it bad?” I asked, fighting an instinctive need to cover it with my hand.
Melanie dug through her oversize Prada purse and withdrew a compact, which she handed over.
Bad was an order of magnitude too mild to describe what was happening beneath my right eyebrow. The eye was swollen and puffed, the area around my iris an angry red. What remained of my makeup had migrated down my cheek like spring runoff.
“You want to borrow some mascara?” Melanie offered, already up to her shoulder in her bag.
“Unless you have a fairy godmother or a priest hidden in there, I think I’m SOL,” I said, clipping the compact closed and handing it back.
“Jane Avery, this is my mother, Grace, and my father, Garland.”
Grace and Garland. Of course they were.
“Mother, Father, this is Jane.”
“Shame about those three points,” Garland said, offering me a large spray-tanned paw and a car salesman’s oily grin. “Hope there’re no hard feelings.”
“Three-tenths of a point,” I said, enduring his cool, moisturized grasp.
Melanie’s platinum-haired mother clasped the leather strap of her equally cavernous bag with one hand and fingered her necklace with the other. She must have had thirty-six-inch biceps hidden under her lilac suit jacket to haul that hand upright. The diamond fastened to her nimble claw was roughly the size of a cat.
“Jane Avery, at last.” Grace Beidermeyer squeezed my knuckles and offered me a smile as tight as her grip, which, I had to admit, was pretty impressive for a biochemist.
“Melanie has told us so very much about you.”
“Like what?” True, it was a very impolite response to a very polite conversational beach ball, but morbid curiosity got the better of me.
“When you’re as bright and as beautiful as our Melanie, it can be exceedingly difficult to make friends.” Mrs. Beidermeyer reached out an affectionate hand and stroked her daughter’s hair. “Real friends, like you.”
Friends? Is that what Melanie thought we were? Or was Momma Beidermeyer subtly guilting me for all the not-so-subtle snark I’d served up to her offspring over the years?
“Speaking of friends.” Melanie’s mother scanned the area in our immediate vicinity with eyes the same shade of sapphire blue as her daughter’s. “What are you doing all alone in the parking lot?”
“My mother just stepped away to summon our driver.” The lie spilled from my lips without effort.
It was often like that for me. I could be having a conversation about something as mundane as the methodologies of proper sock folding, and boom.
Lie.
They didn’t even surprise me anymore. I’d come to think of them more as overprotective relatives who showed up uninvited to rescue me from the frequent discomfort of social situations. It was a wonder a whole herd of fibs hadn’t shown up for a meet and greet with the Melanie Beidermeyer.
“Ugh.” Melanie’s pretty face creased with affected commiseration. “I hate it when our driver goes missing.”
That was the moment when I noticed that given the angle and slope of Melanie’s upturned nose, it would take less than a pound of pressure to fold it back into her brain.
My mother had shown me how.
Just then, a long black Rolls pulled up to the curb, and a man in a dark suit unfolded himself from the driver’s seat. He walked around the front of the car and opened the door.
“After you, darling.” Garland Beidermeyer swept an arm toward the open door in an overly theatrical manner.
“Shouldn’t we wait here with Jane?” Mrs. Beidermeyer turned back to me wearing a carefully calibrated frown. “At least until her mother turns up?”
She hadn’t bought my story about the driver. Not for a minute.
“That won’t be necessary,” I insisted. “I’m sure she’ll be along any minute.”
“I’m sure she’s right,” Mr. Beidermeyer agreed. “And if we don’t get going, we’ll be late for our cocktail hour. We don’t want to keep the dean waiting, now do we?”
“The dean? You’re meeting Dean Koontz for cocktails?” A pang of jealousy rattled through my brain. I couldn’t even get the man to let me snitch one of the candies from the giant apothecary jar he kept on his desk. And here he was having cocktails with Melanie and her family? “Did he not get enough of a chance to heap praise on you at the graduation for your slim victory?” I asked.
Bitter? Who, me?
Grace Beidermeyer’s wooden smile slipped from its moorings. Not that my own mother would have been pleased, had someone minimized my scholastic accomplishments.
“Heavens, no.” A vivid blush drew rose petals to the surface of Melanie’s cheeks. “Dean Koontz is a family friend. He and Father have been golfing together for years.”
“How very fortunate for him,” I said. “It’s a good thing he has friends like your parents to lean on. I’m sure Mrs. Koontz’s recent passing has been very hard on him.”
“Yes,” Mrs. Beidermeyer agreed. “It has. Prolonged illness is a misery unto itself.”
“Which is all the more reason why we shouldn’t keep him waiting,” Mr. Beidermeyer said, nudging his whippet-thin wife into the car. “Pleasure meeting you, Jane.”
“Likewise,” I said.
Lie.
Melanie hung back on the curb, glancing from me to the waiting car. “Will I be seeing you at Dawes on Monday?”
Dawes was short for Dawes, Shook, and Flickner, Denver’s most prestigious law firm. Melanie and I had both worked summer internships there last year and been offered jobs upon our graduation.
“You sure will,” I said.
“Here’s hoping your eye is looking better by then,” she said.
“And your face,” I muttered.
“Thanks, sugar.” She blew me a kiss before disappearing into the back seat of the limo with her parents.
The car pulled away, leaving me in a wake of exhaust as expensive and pungent as caviar farts.
In the sudden gap the limo left behind, I saw through a newly empty parking space to a gray Honda Civic, neither too new, nor too old, with no distinguishing features save on
e.
The driver’s side window had been shattered.
Chapter Two
“Jesus. What happened to your eye?”
Officer Bixby was younger than me, and by the looks of it, a first-class bro in his time off. Hair that had been artfully sculpted with product, the gun in his belt no match for those straining the sleeves of his blue uniform, a goatee that required at least three different electric razor attachments to shape. Probably had a fridge full of Denver’s finest microbrewery beers and precooked egg whites for extra protein.
“Pink eye,” I said. “My doctor tells me it’s wildly contagious. We might want to hurry this along before I infect you.”
Lie.
After the third time running through the day’s events to the best of my recollection, I was beginning to see exactly why my mother hated cops.
Okay, maybe hate was too strong of a word. Detested? Resented? Frequently wished a virulent case of the clap upon?
Oh, the boys in blue are super helpful, I heard her say in my head. Once you’re already dead.
Over the years she’d worked too many cases the police wouldn’t touch, one of those being a girl they’d stamped runaway but who my mother discovered had really been abducted by an online predator and sold into sex slavery.
Letting a cop paw through her car now felt a little like giving him free access to her panty drawer. She would have hated this.
Will hate this, I corrected. She’d grab me by the scruff of my neck and aim me toward the kitchen table and say, Let’s discuss this over pudding, the way she did whenever we had something serious to talk about.
Like sex.
“Could you back up?” Bixby asked. “You’re in the shot.”
“Not you too.”
“Me too what?” He looked from above the camera with one eye squinted.
My hand flew to my face. “Are you mocking me?”
“No. I was just—the camera. It helps me focus.”
“Whatever. Just get on with it so you can get back to your doughnuts and coffee.”
“That’s a hideous stereotype, you know. I don’t even like doughnuts.”
“Let me guess. Creatine shakes?” My gown had officially become a personal sauna. I hauled it over my head with one hand and tossed it on the hood of my mother’s car, picking up my discarded tam to fan my face.
Bixby’s mouth dropped open.
I looked down.
Right. I’d decided to forgo a shirt after the gown kept catching on the collar. I’d asked my mother to bring one for me to change into.
Through the glittering maw of the broken window, I spotted the blouse in the back seat.
“So, this is my bra.”
“I see that.”
“My shirt’s in the back there.” I stepped around him and reached for the car door.
His hand closed over my wrist. “I’m afraid I can’t let you do that.”
“Excuse me?”
“This is a potential crime scene. Everything in this car has to be documented.”
I looked behind him and gasped, throwing my arms up in the air. “He’s got a gun!”
Bixby pivoted on the heel of his department-issued shoes, hand swinging expertly to the sidearm holstered at his waist.
He turned back around just in time to see me shrugging the shirt over my shoulders. The skin around his lips turned a fascinating shade of white.
“You mad, bro?” I asked.
“Miss Avery—”
“Look, when your chief puts you on suspension for failing to secure the H&M eyelet lace blouse that would have broken this whole case wide open, I’ll buy you a beer. Until then, make with the pictures, clicky-click, do what you have to do.”
He shook his head, showing the first signs of the long-suffering sigh that eventually every male in my life adopted.
“At least take your robe off the hood of the car so I can get some pictures.”
The black cloth was warm in my hands, having sucked in every ray of light the sun overhead could discharge. I folded it into a bundle and tucked it under my arm, not willing to wrinkle what my mother had so carefully ironed.
Hearing Bixby whistle under his breath had me peeking over his shoulder.
“Your mother always keep a police-issued Taser on the dashboard?”
“Clearly you’ve never waited through a Starbucks drive-through at eight a.m. on a Monday.”
“You’re right about that,” Bixby said. “I make my own coffee.” He reached in and depressed the latch for the glove compartment, jumping back a full foot when an arm fell out. “Holy Christ!”
“It’s plastic.” I picked up the arm and demonstrated, slipping the accompanying sling over my shoulder. The real arm beneath it was then free to manipulate the tiny state-of-the-art video camera peeking out from a daisy drawn on the fake cast.
“Tasers, fake arms. What? Your mother was some kind of spy?”
“Is a private detective. And these,” I said, patting his mounded shoulder with the fake arm, “are some of the tools of the trade.”
He shrugged it off and shuddered. “You are not a normal person,” he said.
“Now that just hurts my feelings.” I used the fake arm to gesture to the general vicinity of my heart.
I took a moment to admire the payoff of Leg Day as he stalked back to the patrol cruiser blocking my mother’s car. He returned with a large paper bag and held it open while I dropped the arm in.
Next he opened the back door of my mother’s car and dubiously eyed the duffel bag resting on the seat.
“More body parts?” he asked.
“Snacks and disguises.”
He unzipped the bag, and when he opened it, a puff of air worked its way upward, carrying with it the concentrated scent of Mom. Thousands of childhood tickle fights, gentle hands braiding my hair before bedtime, and most recently, her scratching my back while I bawled the night before my final exams, convinced I would fail.
“You want a tissue or something?”
I hastily wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. “I’m fine.”
“Look, it’s okay to be upset. But I gotta tell you, this doesn’t look like an abduction to me. It looks like your everyday, run-of-the-mill smash and grab.”
“But they didn’t grab anything,” I said. “The stereo is still there. There’s even change in the change cup.”
“Could be someone spotted them before they could finish the job.”
“Then how come the witness didn’t call the police?” I asked.
The officer shrugged. “Lots of times people don’t want to get involved. Especially on a day like today. Once they call something in, they have to stick around and wait for the police. Miss their dinner reservations.”
“I hate people,” I said.
The officer raised a gently manscaped eyebrow.
“Well, I do. Everyone and their greyhound has been in this parking lot today. And not one of them called the police, because they didn’t want to be late for their steak dinner?”
“Human nature,” he said. “Most people have no idea what’s going on around them ninety percent of the time, and the other ten percent of the time, they don’t care anyway.”
“My mother likes to say something like that.” Only her rendition included a buffet of four-letter words.
“Smart lady,” Bixby said, plunging a latex-gloved hand into the side pocket of the duffel bag. “And smart ladies have a good chance of turning up once they go missing.”
“I hope you’re right.”
“I am,” he said. “I’m also charming and I can cook.” A business card came with his hand when it emerged from the pocket. He looked it over and grunted, holding it up for me to see. “This mean anything to you?”
I scanned the creamy linen finish and blinked at the name moving across its face in lurid cursive script.
Archard Everett Valentine.
Prickles crawled down the back of my neck like a stampede of tiny insects.
Below the name, my mother had written two things: today’s date, and 1:30 p.m.
My mother—Alex Avery, private eye—had met with uberwealthy architect and scandal lightning rod Archard Everett Valentine exactly one hour before she’d disappeared.
Chapter Three
“That’s disturbing,” Bixby said.
“Tell me about it. I didn’t know my mother knew Archard Everett Valentine. What’s she doing with his business card?”
“I meant your eye. I’ve never seen anything twitch like that.”
“Are you actually trying to make my day worse, or have all the ’roids dissolved your verbal filter?”
“Sorry.” He smoothed a quick hand over his dark locks, which, I hated to admit, had taken on the panty-dropping tousled quality I had a particular weakness for. “Who’s this Valentine guy?”
“You live under a rock or something?”
“Under a house. A basement, if we’re being specific.”
“As long as it’s not your mother’s,” I said.
His eyes skated to the side.
“Oh.” My imaginary panties rocketed back up so quickly I gave myself a mental atomic wedgie.
“It’s temporary. Until we can find in-home care for her.”
“Uh-huh.”
“You’re awfully judgy for a cyclops.”
“Judginess is my career path. Law school and all.”
“Right,” Bixby said. “Tell me about Valentine.”
“He and his old lady have been going through a crazy-ugly divorce. You know the drill. Billions of dollars at stake. He alleges she’s cheating, she alleges he’s the Antichrist, yada yada. Before you know it, she has him followed and gets pictures of him snorting coke off a hooker’s boobs, and it’s all in the papers.”
Bixby blinked rapidly at me.
“Sure, rub it in. You have two working eyelids.”
“And you have a combative attitude.”
“Thank you,” I said, knowing he hadn’t meant it as a compliment.
“Have you heard from any of your relatives? Anyone in town for the graduation she might have gone off with?”
“No,” I said.
“No you haven’t heard from anyone?”
“No, there isn’t anyone in town for the graduation.”
Private Lies (Jane Avery Mysteries Book 1) Page 2