by Roxie Noir
Ellie frowned.
“People are still mad about that?” she said, incredulously.
Garrett shrugged.
“There has to be some other reason,” she said, her eyes narrowed.
“If there is, I wish I knew it,” Garrett said.
Ellie looked at her note paper like she wasn’t sure what to write down.
“Were they mad enough to murder your parents?” she asked, skeptically.
“I don’t think so,” Garrett said. “But it’s all I’ve got.”
She leaned her head on one hand and tapped the pen on the desk again.
“I’ll see if I can turn up some evidence,” she said. “A police report, a hospital file, something. But don’t get your hopes up, okay?”
Garrett reached into his pocket and pulled out a flash drive, then placed it on the desk in front of Ellie.
“That’s got everything I’ve been able to find,” he said. “Maps to the crash site, articles, press releases from the police, the hospital, the whole thing.”
Ellie closed it in her hand.
“The password is ‘Obsidian15,’ but the O is a zero,” he said.
“Thanks,” she said. “Very secure.”
“I try,” Garrett said.
“I’m not sure how long this will take, but I think at least two days,” Ellie said. “I charge fifty dollars an hour, plus expenses.”
“Sounds good,” Garrett said. He stood from his chair and stretched. “Let me know what you find.”
Ellie tore a post-it note from a pad on her desk and handed it to him.
“Give me your number,” she said.
Garrett wrote it down, then tossed the pen on the desk and pushed his hair out of his face again.
“It was nice meeting you, private investigator Ellie,” he said.
“Same,” Ellie said, and stuck out her hand.
Garrett shook it again, fighting the urge to pull her toward him, to feel her body underneath his hands.
Then he let go, turned, and walked back down her stairs.
Chapter Two
Ellie
As he closed the door, Garrett turned and, Ellie could swear, gave her a little half-smile before closing it. Then she heard his steps retreating down the stairs until they were gone.
Ellie flopped back into her chair, the force of it rolling the big leather thing a couple feet backwards. For a few seconds she just stayed there, motionless.
That was like a cliché from an old movie, she thought. Only with the genders reversed.
She swallowed and finally sat up straight, rolling herself to sit in front of her desk again.
I didn’t even think I liked disheveled men, she thought, staring at the notes in front of her. She couldn’t read a word of them, because every time she started trying to formulate a list of what to do, all she saw was Garrett, smirking and saying I brought trouble.
It was all Ellie could do to stop thinking of how he could trouble her, with his dark hair and gold eyes, his thick, ropy arms, his dimples when he smiled.
There were lots of ways. Ellie was imaginative.
After a few minutes of getting nowhere, she stood up and went to the windows. Main Street was below her, and for a few moments, she watched the people below. It was three, so the high school had just let out and there were plenty of teenagers walking around, eating candy or drinking coffee and horsing around. Some parents with kids. A smattering of people who looked like tourists, though Grand Junction wasn’t exactly a tourist attraction.
Okay, she thought. Quit thinking about how much you want Studmuffin McMurdered Parents to toss you around, and think about how you’re going to help him.
Below, in the doorway of a closed shop, two teenagers tried to suck each other’s faces off. Ellie crinkled her nose and left the window.
Right now, her workload was pretty light. There were two divorce cases, her least favorite. She took them because they paid the bills, but figuring out what someone’s soon-to-be-ex spouse was lying about was never much fun.
There was one missing jewelry case, which sounded more interesting than it probably was. Ellie wished there had been a big jewelry heist in Grand Junction, but instead, she was pretty sure that this woman had left her favorite earrings in a hotel room. Instead of tracking down jewel thieves, she was going to have to call every hotel on the woman’s two-week itinerary, ask about their lost and found, try to figure out which housekeeper had cleaned the room the woman had stayed in.
The last thing besides Garrett’s parents was a collection agency who wanted her to find someone for them, because the person owed money. As much as she hated it, that was Ellie’s favorite kind of case. Even though she felt bad finding someone for loan sharks, she loved the thrill of figuring out where and how the person had eluded them.
I wish I could do those, except not turn them over at the end, she thought, looking at the file on her desk.
Hands down, Garrett’s case was the most interesting thing going on right now, and hands extra-double-down, Garrett was the most interesting thing that had walked into her office... well, ever, in the five years since she’d set up shop.
He’s your client, she thought to herself. Quit it. Be a professional.
Well, the faster she solved this case, the faster he wasn’t a client anymore.
Ellie inserted the flash drive into her computer and fired up her billing clock.
* * *
At 4:45, Ellie felt like she’d made a good start. She’d gone over the information on the flash drive — Garrett hadn’t lied, there wasn’t much — and made an extensive list of possible leads to follow.
Experience told her that most weren’t going to pan out, especially sixteen years after the incident. People died, they moved away, they just didn’t remember what happened on a day that didn’t mean much to them.
Ellie did her best not to have preconceived notions about cases, but this one seemed pretty simple: a bunch of rural cops had fucked up. If there was a cover-up, they’d been covering up how much they’d screwed up, not foul play.
Occam’s razor and all that, Ellie thought. It’s way more likely that someone messed up than that they successfully covered up a murder for sixteen years.
She pulled the flash drive back out of her computer, tossed it into a drawer, and locked the drawer.
As she pulled the key out, she heard footsteps coming back up the stairs. For a moment, her heart beat faster.
Maybe it’s Garrett again, she thought. Maybe he forgot something, like to ask me to dinner.
There was a polite knock on the door, and then the door opened without waiting for a response.
“Howdy,” said the woman standing there.
Ellie almost burst out laughing, remembering her professionalism at the last moment.
“Hi,” she said. “How can I help you?”
The woman looked like a cartoon cowgirl from a Saturday morning cartoon: plaid shirt with western designs stitched over the pockets, tight jeans with a big belt buckle, blond pigtails, brand new cowboy boots.
Snakeskin, Ellie thought automatically.
The woman smiled, came in, and shut the door. Something about her made the back of Ellie’s neck prickle the tiniest amount, and she thought of the pistol in her desk.
“Are you taking on cases right now?” the woman asked, still smiling.
“I am,” Ellie said, automatically.
Maybe someday she could decline a case, but not now. She had bills to pay.
The woman sat in a chair, facing Ellie.
“I’m wondering if you could look into a fellow for me,” the woman said. “I can give you a photo. I just need to know where he is, where he goes, what he does for a couple of days.”
Ellie raised her eyebrows.
“Divorce?” she asked.
“Sure,” the woman said, her smile never wavering for a moment. “He’s a real piece of work, and he thinks he can put me out on the street and live in our house with his mistress.”
There was something weird about the way the woman spoke. She didn’t sound quite upset enough to be hiring a private investigator for a divorce — Ellie saw a lot of tears, angry and otherwise, in her office.
Besides, Ellie thought. I’m not sure anyone’s ever called their husband’s lover a mistress before, at least in front of me.
The woman kept smiling, then dug through her enormous purse.
I’ve heard ‘whore,’ ‘slut,’ ‘new fucktoy,’ and even ‘tart,’ she thought. Never ‘mistress.’
“Here he is,” the woman said, handing over a photo. “James Wilson. The asshole himself.”
She slid a photo across the desk, and Ellie nearly did a double-take.
It was Garrett.
Ellie summoned every ounce of will she had and kept her face carefully blank, simply scanning the photo for details. It had been taken from some distance, and Garrett had his hands in his pockets, a leather jacket on, as he walked somewhere.
“Where was this taken?” she asked, carefully.
“Outside their love nest,” the woman said, cheerfully. “The address is on the back.”
Ellie flipped it over and read the address. She forced herself not to think anything, afraid that her face might give away that he’d been there only a few hours ago.
“I see,” she finally said. “What kind of information are you looking for?”
“Just anything,” the woman said. “You just gather data and my lawyer can decide what’s useful. You know how it is.”
Ellie nodded, and the woman stood.
“Keep the photo.”
“My rate is seventy bucks an hour plus expenses,” Ellie said — this woman looked like she could afford it.
“Sounds fine,” the woman said, and held out a card in one well-manicured hand. Marlene Robinson, it read.
“Call me when you’ve got something?”
“Sure thing,” said Ellie. “It’ll be several days, I’ve got a full case load now.”
The woman smiled again and walked for the door. Ellie noticed she was walking a little gingerly, like maybe her new boots had given her blisters.
As she left the office, Ellie spotted the rhinestones on the back pockets of her jeans.
Then the door shut again, and she was alone with the picture of Garrett. Or James. Whatever the fuck his name was.
“What is going on?” she said out loud to her empty office.
* * *
Ellie twirled spaghetti around her fork as her sister-in-law extolled the virtues of the single, educated, high-earning lawyer she’d shown houses to that day. As a real estate agent, Krissy was always meeting people she deemed suitable for Ellie.
Well, as long as the main requirement was that a man owned a house.
“He was telling me that he went to UCLA Law,” Krissy gushed. “And now he’s a junior associate at Banks, Banks, and Jackson, and I hear personal injury law is a goldmine.”
Not what I hear, Ellie thought.
“Most of the personal injury lawyers I know aren’t particularly happy,” Ellie said. She sucked the end of a spaghetti noodle into her mouth.
Or interesting, she thought.
Unbidden, her mind went to Garrett / James. Again.
Too interesting, she thought. Mysteriously dead parents, an ex-wife, and a mistress? Too much.
Not that she necessarily believed the cowgirl. One of the newspaper articles Garrett had scanned onto his flash drive had had a picture of what was clearly himself at fifteen.
Ellie just didn’t know what to think.
“So anyway, since he bought the house, I’ve got his number,” Krissy said, winking at Ellie.
Ellie had forgotten to pay attention.
“Okay,” she said.
“Great!” said Krissy. “You know, my friend’s brother also has a friend who just moved here from Denver, and he’s — “
“Hon, maybe give Ellie one suitor at a time?” her brother said, smiling gently at his wife.
“I’m sure she can handle a few men at once, Cody,” Krissy said, winking.
Ellie’s parents were notably silent.
Cody patted his wife’s hand and looked at Ellie.
“Anything good today?” he asked the table at large.
“We had a kindergarten student fall into a toilet,” Ellie’s mom said, matter-of-factly.
Cody snorted, trying not to laugh. Their mother was the principal of an elementary school in town.
“He okay?” Ellie asked, also trying not to laugh.
“Just upset,” her mom said. “Very, very upset.”
“One of the guys caught someone doing one-twenty on the interstate,” her dad said. “That’s close to the department record.”
He was the chief of the Grand Junction police.
“What’s the record?” Ellie asked.
“One-twenty-four,” he said. “Set on that straight stretch outside town in nineteen eighty three. How about you?”
Ellie took a sip of wine and considered for a moment.
“I had a weird day,” she said. “First, a guy came in wanting me to investigate an accident that happened fifteen years ago.”
“That sounds exciting,” Krissy said. “What kind of accident?”
“Car crash,” Ellie went on. “Then, right before I closed up shop, this rhinestone cowgirl comes in, asks me to follow her ex-husband for a divorce case, and hands me a photo of the guy from earlier, but with a different name attached.”
Everyone at the table frowned.
“You’re sure it’s the same guy?” Cody asked.
Ellie nodded, chewing spaghetti.
“Rhinestone cowgirl?” Krissy asked.
Ellie told her what the woman had been wearing, all the way down to the snakeskin boots.
“Those are expensive,” Krissy said.
“It was weird,” Ellie said. “Maybe she was trying to blend in, and thought that’s what people wear in Colorado?”
Krissy just shrugged.
“I meet people like that sometimes,” she said. “They’re always from Texas. Every single time.”
Cody laughed.
“Maybe the rodeo’s in town,” he said.
“Do women ride rodeo?”
“Women do all sort of things these days, Ellie,” her mother said.
“The guy didn’t say anything about getting divorced?” her father asked.
“Nothing,” Ellie said.
And believe me, I was paying attention, she thought.
“It’s probably just two people who look a lot alike,” her father said. “Happens sometimes. There are a couple of cases where people have wound up on death row for looking too much like someone else.”
Ellie’s eyes widened.
“Not that this will end with someone on death row,” he said quickly. “I’m just saying, people look alike sometimes.”
“You’re probably right,” Ellie said. “That makes the most sense.”
“Life is rarely that interesting,” her father said. “Who wants ice cream for dessert?”
* * *
Over the next few days, Ellie kept looking at the photo of the rhinestone cowgirl’s ex-husband. It really did look like Garrett, but the more she looked, the less sure she was.
Did Garrett’s nose have that very slight crook in it, like it had been broken once? Were his eyebrows quite shaped like that? Wasn’t his hair a little darker?
Other than looking at the photo, Ellie didn’t work on the rhinestone cowgirl’s case at all. She finished up the other divorce cases and found a man who’d been hiding out from credit card companies in Montana.
She also looked into Garrett’s case. That one was the hardest by far, mostly because sixteen years ago, almost nothing had been digitized. It seemed like the internet hadn’t really come to Obsidian until recently, so she kept hitting that wall.
Kane County hadn’t digitized anything more than five years old: not death records, accident records, police reports, nothing. Ell
ie had to go to Google Earth to find out that the road where his parents had died had been washed out by a mudslide in 2009, and was now completely closed to traffic.
What little she did find suggested she wasn’t going to get very far by calling the police and asking nicely, so she decided to call the hospital in Blanding first and ask not-nicely.
She spoofed her number to a Washington, D.C. Area code, and after twenty minutes of battling her way through a phone tree at the hospital, she finally reached someone in management.
“Yes?” said a bored, harassed-sounding man.
“This is Agent Clarissa Sampson from the Department of Homeland Security,” she said, her voice sounding official even to her. “I’m calling because we believe an incident that happened May 3, 2000, may be linked to a current investigation.”
The other end of the line was silent for a moment.
“Did you say Homeland Security?” he asked.
“Yes,” Ellie said. “We’re currently investigating a group that may have been involved with this incident.”
One hundred percent lies, of course, but Ellie had found that invoking Homeland Security was far and away the fastest route to get information.
“Terrorists?” the man said, sounding breathless.
“I can’t give out any information, I’m afraid,” she said. “The nature of the investigation demands the utmost secrecy.”
“Of course,” he said. “What can I give you?”
It took another forty-five minutes, mostly due to technological wrangling, but by the end of the phone call Ellie had scans of all the paperwork she’d requested up on the screen: death certificates, admission records for the Monsons, pages and pages of forms, and a list of hospital personnel who’d been working that day.
Even though it was a small hospital, that was a long list, and Ellie sighed inwardly.
“Thank you very much, Mr. Porter,” she said, trying to finish the call.
“Please, call me Tom,” he said. “I’m only sorry I didn’t work here then and can’t help you more. It sounds like it was a terrible crash.”