“You haven’t even tasted your burger yet…sure you need it?”
Archie gave him a double-take. “Since when did you become the Grand Guardian of the Salt?”
Barely suppressing a smile, Mike pulled a wad of salt and ketchup packets out of the bag and set them on the table.
“Good, you remembered to get extra ketchup. I take back that salty comment.” Archie helped himself to several packets. “So, what’d you learn from her micro-looks?”
His grandfather was referring to micro-expressions—the brief, involuntary expressions that occur within a second or two, too quickly to be contrived, which made them excellent barometers of a person’s emotions. Although agents were trained to detect micro-expressions, it was near impossible to see them with the naked eye as they occurred within a fifth of a second. However, they were discernible while slowly replaying a digital recording of a person, such as one taken during an interview.
Mike didn’t really catch micro-expressions, either, just by looking at someone—it was more like the person sometimes leaked emotions he picked up on. Today he’d picked up on some of those, aided by her body language.
As they ate, Mike told his grandfather about her being surprised when she first opened the door and how she later touched the hollow notch in her neck, which indicated discomfort.
“Hell, who wouldn’t be surprised and uncomfortable finding a federal agent on their doorstep,” Archie said. “What’s important is, did she like you? If yes, she’s not going to take legal action against you.”
Mike took a bite of his burger, remembering how she’d placed her tongue at the corner of her mouth, followed by a flick of the tongue along her top lip, which indicated sexual interest. At one point, she jutted out her hip, another sign. Or maybe he was looking for such signs to see if he was affecting her the way she was him. Even now, recalling the scent of coconut in her hair and the shape of her luscious lips was enough to heat his blood.
But mentioning any attraction on his part, or what he interpreted in her body language, would just encourage his grandfather to put her on the shortlist as a candidate for “Miss Right.”
“Nah, she hated my guts.” He took a slug of his shake.
Archie studied his grandson’s face. “I think you’re lying. Your eyebrows did that tee-pee thing, causing those crinkle lines.”
Mike hadn’t been aware that he’d briefly lifted his eyebrows, specifically toward the middle of his forehead, which caused short lines to crinkle the skin of the brow. All of which had happened in less than second. Who knew the old guy’s eyesight was that good? Had to be how close they were sitting.
Mike leaned back in his chair and casually wiped his mouth with a napkin. “The tee-pee thing is also an expression of distress…and I’ve definitely had a stressful day.”
“You also covered your mouth by swigging on your shake. Which you’ve told me before is a sign of lying.”
Whoever said mental acuity diminished with age needed to meet his grandfather.
“Let’s not make things more than they are. Like Einstein said, ‘Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.’”
“Freud said that, not what’s-his-face.” Archie helped himself to the last packet of ketchup. “I think she liked you, so you’re off the hook. There’s not going to be any lawsuits. What’s her name?”
“Joanne Galvin.’
“Like my favorite actress, Joanne Woodward. More important than just liking you, was she taken with you? A man can be good-looking and smart, hold down a decent job, but is he regal? The kind of man who would always put a lady first, treat her like a queen? Women can tell these things by a man’s shoes.” He darted a look at Mike’s flip flops.
“I was interviewing her, Granddad, not courting her. Anyway, I doubt women put that much meaning into a man’s shoes.”
“Try wearing my white leather slip-ons for a day and you’ll be singing a different tune. So what’s Joanne like?”
He forced himself to slip past memories of her lips, scent and that peek of pink bra, and thought instead about her freckles, those green eyes that shifted color with her moods, and a splotch of what he guessed to be tomato sauce on her top.
“Innocent,” he finally answered. “Well, except when she’s not,” he quickly added, thinking about her imposing look after he’d tossed off that dumbass comment about humming a few bars. “She’s a redhead—that probably sums it up best.”
“Like my Millie,” his grandfather said quietly, the look in his eyes softening.
“Yeah,” Mike agreed, remembering his grandmother’s feisty, but endearing personality. “Joanne’s hair is curlier, though, if you can believe that.”
Curly was an understatement. More like an army of rebel ringlets, which he’d liked. So much of his work was about reading between the lines and sensing someone’s real story, so it was nice to see something, even curly hair, just be itself.
“One-person law office, right?”
Mike nodded.
“Maybe you should ask her out to dinner or something.”
“You’re incorrigible. Anyway, I was wearing flip flops so obviously she wasn’t all that taken with me. Which is beside the point...this is about business, not pleasure.”
Although when he’d stood next to his vehicle, watching her watching him through the crack of the open door, he got the clear sense she was interested in him. Just as that door was slightly ajar, so was her invitation to see him again.
Can’t think this way. He had already waded into the gray zone by coming to Vegas to conduct his own investigation…didn’t need to make things even more complicated by mixing up Joanne the lawyer with Joanne the woman.
“Can’t remember the last time you asked a girl out,” his grandfather continued. “When you’re not at work or training Maggie, you seem to spend a lot of time mulling over Paula’s death. I don’t judge you, Mike, you know that. Took me a long time to come to terms with my Millie’s death, especially as it happened so quick, you know.”
Mike had been twelve at the time. His grandmother, while undergoing a minor surgical procedure, formed a blood clot that blocked a major blood vessel and stopped blood flow to the lungs. The surgeon told Archie they did everything they could, but it was too late. Millie died on the operating table.
For several weeks after her death, Archie shut himself off from the world, refusing to leave his and Millie’s home. When he finally re-emerged he was thinner, but still the no-nonsense, opinionated Archie Day, especially when it came to matters of the heart. When Mike’s sister Christina miscarried, Archie told her to call him anytime, even if she couldn’t talk, and he’d stay with her on the phone. When Catarina was upset about Beatrice falling in love with Alice, Archie said love was love and to get over it.
Sometimes Mike wondered if his grandfather’s real reason for wanting to be roommates was to guide his grandson through the fire of self-blame over Paula.
Archie slapped his palm down on the table. “Kid, we need to cheer ourselves up. There’s some dollar blackjack tables downstairs, and I’m ready to make me some money.”
“Okay, big spender.” He stood. “Let’s go rock this joint.”
The older man pointed at Mike’s feet. “After you change into some real shoes.”
* * *
Joanne stood in the open doorway of her office, cradling her crying sister.
“Shannon, let’s get you inside.”
She managed to extricate her sister off her shoulder and gently shut the door behind them, then guided her sister around the boxes and pieces of furniture to the tufted leather swivel chair behind the desk.
Sitting down, Shannon slipped off her sunglasses. "How do I look?"
Her fake eyelashes were about the only thing intact. Mascara had merged with her metallic-gold eye shadow, creating sparkly charcoal smudges around her eyes. Add the black streaks down her face, and she looked like an Alice Cooper groupie.
"Fine," Joanne lied.
Shannon, her chin qui
vering, looked at her fuzzy reflection in the computer screen. “Ish that a black streak on your screen…or on my face?”
"You just need a little cleaning up, that’s all,” Joanne murmured. “Not sure where I packed my tissues, but you always carry some in your purse, right?”
"I was so upset when I left the house, I forgot to bring it.” She sniffed loudly. “Thank goodnesh that lovely man at Lotus Blossom let me put my Buddha’s Primrose Delight on a tab. Forgot to tell him to hold the MSG. Makes you fat, you know.”
No, Joanne didn’t know. Nor did she care. But now that her sis had calmed down enough to discuss food additives, she needed to address something.
“Shannon, you know better than to drink and drive.”
“My bad,” she said, her bottom lip trembling.
“How many drinks?”
She held up her index finger...then added the middle one. “Strawberry daiquiris.”
“Which are economy-sized at the Lotus Blossom, so it’s more like three.” Joanne released a heavy sigh. “You’re lucky you didn’t cause an accident. I don’t care how upset Josh was with your recent shopping adventure, that or anything else is never an excuse to drink and drive. You hear me?”
She nodded. “Next time I’ll drink at home.”
“Oh, yeah, that’s a solution,” Joanne muttered.
It surprised Joanne her sis had drowned her shopping sorrows in alcohol as Shannon had never been much of a drinker. A few glasses of wine at parties or special dinners out, otherwise she stuck to zero-calorie sodas or ice tea.
“Now you know how out there I was,” her sister whispered shakily, looking out the window at two laughing teenage girls walking down Graces Avenue. “I’m going to be thirty-five soon…where’d my youshgoo?”
Had to mean where’d my youth go. "Where everybody else’s goes. Somewhere between Circus Circus and the Hard Rock Hotel,” she answered, naming two Vegas casinos. “Let me get a towel and I’ll clean up your face.”
A few minutes later, Joanne gently wiped the tip of a moistened towel on her sister’s cheek. Funny how easily they fell back into their childhood roles at times. Shannon being needy. Joanne taking care of her. Their mother had always been attentive to their physical needs, sometimes to the point of suffocation, but had paid less attention to their emotional wants.
Joanne had always figured their mom was just wired that way. After her own mother died when she was twelve, Rosemary became a mom to her four younger siblings while their dad worked twelve-hour days at his small gas station in Colby, Kansas. She cleaned house, cooked meals, and washed clothes. At eighteen, her dad became engaged to his bookkeeper, a divorcee with two children of her own, Rosemary decided it was time to leave the nest. “My brothers and sisters were old enough to take care of themselves, and my dad’s new wife needed to make the home hers.” After reading that the Flamingo was hiring showgirls eighteen to twenty-eight, slim, no dancing skills required, she took a bus to Las Vegas, but failed the audition. “I got nervous and kept tripping over my feet.” While working as a waitress in a coffee shop, she met a young college student named Larry Galvin. “We fell madly in love.” Considering how her mother cautiously chose her words, that was a powerful statement.
Joanne got her emotional nurturing from her dad, a sensitive man who wasn’t ashamed to tear up over a beautiful sunset or write love notes to his wife and leave them on her pillow. She grew up a daddy’s girl whereas Shannon always strove to be a clone of their mother. Sometimes Joanne wondered if her sister strove to emulate their mom because she didn’t know how else to be close to her.
“Do I smell…cookies?”
Shannon slid a heat-seeking-missile glance around the room, locking in on the enemy cookie plate within nanoseconds. Alcohol might slow others’ response times, but not her sister when it came to detecting evil calories.
“They were a housewarming gift.”
“Jo-Jo! That plate is half empty. Do you know how much fat—”
“Shut up,” Joanne said as gently as her tense jaw allowed. “We’re both going through difficult times right now, so how about we play nice. I won’t quote drunk-driving statistics if you don’t quote cookie calories. By the way, I’m driving you home in your car when you’re ready to leave. You can treat me to a cab ride back.”
Shannon’s bottom lip protruded a little. “I’m sorry. Please don’t tell Josh. It’ll never happen again.” She raised her fingers in a Girl Scout salute. “Promise.”
Joanne sat on the edge of the desk, thinking how funny that was as she had been the Girl Scout, not Shannon who refused to join because she hated the uniforms.
But looking at her sister’s sad face, and those big eyes welling with fresh tears, she couldn’t help but feel sympathy. So what if her sister drove her crazy most of the time, right now she needed a friend.
“Okay, I won’t tell him. So what happened?”
In a rush of words, Shannon explained that she’d gone shopping yesterday for a “super-cute” metallic gold Prada mini-shoulder bag that was on sale, adding that she also picked a make-up kit for Joanne. “It’s called Red Hot, with make-up for redheads with freckles, but that’s not what made Josh angry.”
“Good, but you know I’m not the make-up type.”
Her sister made a you-poor-thing face that reminded Joanne of that pink-haired juror a month ago. “But men like bright, shiny girls.”
“Then maybe they should buff them with silver polish.”
A comment Shannon didn’t hear as she was continuing her shopping tale.
“…the most darling set of ceramic plates, perfect for a brunch, which I couldn’t resist buying…”
Soon the story devolved into a tale of woe where that evening Josh cut her plastic credit card in half in front of the children followed by his calling the credit card company and ordering them to terminate her account.
“He actually told those credit card strangers that I needed interests other than shopping. Like I’m not a good mother.”
As Shannon fussed with the gold-braid trim on her sleeve, Joanne said gently, “I think you’re comparing apples to oranges. You are a good mother, a terrific one, in fact, which is a world apart from Josh’s comment. He wants you to…get a hobby, I guess. Have something to do that’s more constructive than shopping.”
“Hobby,” Shannon repeated, as if saying a foreign word. “You mean learn to knit or something?”
“C’mon, Shannon, you know what I’m talking about. There’s things you might enjoy doing like...coordinating people’s wardrobes…or diet counseling.”
“I like volunteering at my daughters’ school, but that’s not really a hobby. Plus they’re growing up so fast…I need to figure out shomething…” She cleared her throat. “Something that I can do on my own.”
Her gaze wandered around the room, finally landing on the tufted leather armrest of the swivel desk chair. “Oh my…this is an exquisite piece of furniture. You found this in a second-hand store?”
“No, my landlords loaned me the chair and desk.”
“Cherry wood,” she murmured appreciatively, running her manicured fingertips over the desk surface. “Look at that carved dragoon border and the sinuous curves on the sides of that desk…handcrafted in the late eighteen hundreds, I would guess. People will see this desk and know you’re the kind of lawyer who deserves big retainers.”
Joanne snorted a laugh. “Wish it could also ask for those retainers.”
“I’ve never understood how you can stand in a courtroom and eloquently ask for things for your clients, but when it comes to asking for things you want…”
“I know.”
She straightened, her eyes sparkling with a thought. “You need someone to negotiate for you.”
“No, it’s a problem when clients know their attorney’s fees before the attorney even knows they’re a client.”
Shannon frowned in confusion. “What’s the part after before the attorney...no, wait, I get it. You need your n
egotiator with you so it seems like your idea.” She smiled. "Gosh, we haven’t had a girly-girl chat like this in years…reminds me of those nights in my bedroom when you'd help me with my homework. And I’d help you with styling recommendations.”
Which obviously I paid a great deal of attention to. Joanne thought about her sister’s appraisal of the desk. "Ever think about studying interior design? You know a lot about furniture, lighting, what colors to paint walls….”
She hiccupped a laugh. "That means going to school...need I say more?”
“You can earn a certificate in interior design. I had a client who did that, took her a year. Then you could work for an interior designer or be a personal consul—“
Shannon bolted upright and jabbed a tangerine-tipped fingernail at some region over Joanne’s shoulder. “Home invasion,” she croaked.
“What?”
“Burglars!” Her sister ripped loose a scream worthy of a horror film. “Get a gun!”
Adrenalin skyrocketing, Joanne reached in her pocket for the phone...not there. Screw the phone. Grab a weapon. As her sister shrieked like an eagle giving birth in the wild, she snatched a mini-stapler in one hand and Colossus: Hoover Dam and the Making of the American Century in the other, ready to staple and whack the literary bejesus out of these office invaders…
Who were awfully quiet.
Her heart pounding behind her eyeballs, she turned slowly.
There stood a paunchy guy with frizzed-out hair in a T-shirt with the words Hey Hey Mama, his eyes pinker than a strawberry daiquiri. Next to him stood a twenty-something woman whose black bobbed hair, green jacket and red shirt made her look like a seven-layer-cookie.
“Lenny” Joanne rasped. “Dita.”
“Whoa,” Lenny said. “That was like…totally heavy.”
As her heart relaxed to a near-regular beat, she realized Gloria had unlocked the dead bolt on the adjoining door when she made her speedy exit, which left the door open between her place and Fossen-Chandler’s. Still…
“You could’ve knocked.”
“Next time I will,” Lenny said. “Like, guns kill, man.”
Mistletoe and Murder in Las Vegas Page 8