by Nancy Skopin
He was also was taking guitar lessons now and feeling the normal childhood frustration about not being able to play well after only a couple of weeks. J.V. told me he practiced every day.
J.V. was taking Scott with him on low-risk, weekend surveillance jobs and said he showed a lot of potential. He’d also taken him window-shopping a couple of times, which is an old PI training tool. You take the trainee on a walk, stopping at store windows. They have thirty seconds to look at the items displayed in each window, then have to close their eyes and tell you what they saw. J.V. said Scott got all but two items on his first try. I envisioned a name change for J.V.’s agency ten years down the road—Trusty & Son.
Scott had called me once since moving, to thank me for everything and to tell me he’d received his mom’s life insurance. He wanted to pay me. I told him the bill had already been settled by his uncle, and that he should put the money in a college fund. J.V. and I had discussed this when the insurance company cut the check.
They still had a few issues to work out. Whenever Scott misbehaved and J.V. found out about it, Scott would cower, expecting a beating. I knew J.V. would never hit a child, but Scott still needed a lot of reassurance. They were going to a family counselor once a week and things were improving. I was sure they would work everything out in time.
In mid-January Jack McGuire and Elizabeth Gaultier had their official engagement party at Jack’s estate in Hillsborough. Bill, Buddy and I, Jim Sutherland, Lily, and Joachim and Ilsa Richter were the only guests. Jack and Elizabeth had written beautiful toasts to each other and I got a little choked up during this romantic ritual.
Bill tended bar at the party, and the food was set out buffet-style, because Jack insisted that Joachim and Ilsa were guests.
There were a few Buddy versus K.C. skirmishes, but no antiques were broken and after K.C. took a swipe at Buddy’s nose with his razor sharp claws, Buddy decided chasing the cat wasn’t such a great idea.
Since I was going to be the best man at the wedding, still seventeen months away, I knew I would be invited to toast the future bride and groom. I’d thought long and hard about what I wanted to say. I stood near the fireplace, raised my champagne glass, consulted the index card I’d had in my pocket all evening, and said, “Slainte mhor agus a h-uile beannachd duibh. Mille failte dhuit le d’bhreid. Fad do re gun robh thu slan. Mo ran la ithean dhuit is sith. Le d’mhaitheas is le d’ni bhi fas. Meal-a-naidheachd.”
Roughly translated into English that means, “Good health and every good blessing to you. A thousand welcomes to you with your wedding veil. May you be healthy all of your days. May you be blessed with long life and peace. May you grow old with goodness, and with riches. Congratulations.”
Jack nearly horked champagne out of his nose at my attempt to pronounce Gaelic, and Elizabeth burst into tears.
It was a perfect evening. Watching the stolen moments of intimacy between Jack and Elizabeth almost made me reconsider my resolution never to marry again. Almost, but not quite.
Once K.C. had established his dominance over Buddy, he’d curled up in a ball at Buddy’s side, cuddling up to my big dog like they were old friends. Buddy was initially nonplussed by this change in behavior, but after giving K.C. a thorough butt-sniff, he quickly settled into the new relationship.
Chapter 49
On February 25th Nina Jezek, currently known as Sandra Ellis, boarded an airplane at Tijuana International Airport, bound for San Francisco. She wore brown contact lenses and her shoulder length hair was honey-blonde. Her nose had been widened, her cheekbones plumped, and her fingertips permanently scarred.
She took her seat in first class and placed her carry-on bag on the empty seat beside her. Nina had traveled to Paris, Guizhou, Chittagong, Lisbon, and Burma before stopping in Tijuana. Prior to this she had never even ventured out of the United States, and she was looking forward to going home. Returning to her beloved cottage would be impossible, of course, but at least she’d be in a country where almost everyone spoke English.
Nina knew that Interpol was hunting for her, but after all the surgical changes they would never be able to identify her. Her own mother wouldn’t recognize her now.
The blood test she had finally subjected herself to revealed that she was, in fact, HIV positive, but she felt fine, just a little tired.
She glanced at her list. There were eight targets left to dispatch in California. If she managed to kill them all without getting caught maybe she could rest for a while.
~THE END~
About the author
Nancy Skopin is a native of California, and currently lives on the Oregon coast with her husband and their dogs.
While researching her mystery series she spent two years working for a private investigator learning the intricacies of the business. She also worked closely with a police detective who became both a consultant and a friend. She lived aboard her yacht in the San Francisco Bay Area for thirteen years, as does her central character, Nicoli Hunter.
If you’d like to be notified when new Nikki Hunter mysteries come out, email me at: [email protected]