by Lori Avocato
I leaned next to Donnie’s ear. “Sh. Don’t say a word to Tina or especially Linda. I think he’s married, and we were going to … you know, Donnie. You know.”
Thank goodness that he was a doctor with a brain and could figure out my message. He looked from the janitor, who was now vacuuming and making noise so he couldn’t hear us, and back to me. Thank goodness the janitor couldn’t hear.
“Gotcha, Pauline. You of all people.” He grinned like a sex fiend. “But next time use the examining room instead.” He winked at me and went into his office.
I let out a sigh and collapsed against the wall, glad that men thought of sex at the drop of the proverbial hat.
Maybe their brains really weren’t their biggest … asset.
Then it dawned, why the heck would Donnie think, “me of all people!”
After I got home from the office, I soaked in lilac bubbles and tried to forget the day I’d had, that I had to insinuate that I was fooling around with the janitor, what Goldie had said earlier and everything about Jagger. Soon the water cooled so I rinsed, got out, toweled myself off and slipped into my white silk undies and lace bra.
I didn’t choose them in any special way. They were on the top of the pile and just happened to be my sexiest. Not that I thought anyone would see them tonight! After changing outfits about seventy-five times, I settled on cream-colored wool slacks, and a cream-and-tan sweater with sparkly thingies on it that Miles had given to me last Christmas.
At first I worried the color would make my Polish, year-round pale complexion more washed out, but then I’d used the makeup tips Goldie had taught me. Came out damn good. Looked healthy and sexy.
As I slipped into black pumps, I wondered if Miles’d had Goldie in mind when he’d bought the sweater. It looked like him. But I loved it since my friend had given it to me. I swirled my hair up into a French twist-type do and looked into the mirror. Nope. Leave it down, I thought. Made me look younger and not so sophisticated. I didn’t want to do sophisticated on a “date” with Jagger.
He’d probably wear jeans and leather anyway.
“You about ready?” Miles called from downstairs.
I gave myself a once-over in the mirror and looked at Spanky perched on my bed. “What ya think?”
He opened one sleepy eye and shut it.
“Men.” I hurried out the door and left him to fend for himself after that. He was tiny, but quite capable of bounding off my white ruffled comforter if he chose to.
At the base of the stairs I stopped. Miles sat on the leather couch, sipping his white wine, dressed to perfection in a navy suit. Looked gorgeous. Hair neatly combed into place with his sideburns just below his ears. The room smelled of his Polo cologne yet the scent wasn’t overpowering. Miles had too much class to overpower.
Goldie tapped a sparkly silver spike shoe on the carpet while he sipped on something. I guessed Scotch. He’d draped a white fur shawl of sorts over his shoulders, which went fab with his winter white pantsuit, trimmed in silver. I couldn’t imagine the salary Goldie pulled in, but the clothes horse sure had taste.
But that was it. The two of them.
No Jagger.
I stepped off the last step and nonchalantly looked toward the door as if that’d make the bell ring. If he stood me up, I was quitting the ortho practice nursing job on Monday.
Miles got up. “What’ll it be?” He looked at me and I started to say Jagger would be here soon, but then realized Miles was talking liquor.
“Same as you’re having.”
The phone rang as Miles headed into the kitchen. A few seconds later, he called out, “Jagger will meet us at Madeline’s.”
I blew out a breath.
Goldie took a sip and looked at me over the glass’s rim.
“What?” I said. “He’s meeting us there. Probably got tied up.” I sat with a thud. Spanky ran down the stairs and jumped at my legs. I scooped him up and gave him an extra hug. He promptly jumped down and ran to Goldie.
“It’s just that I don’t want you—”
“Cocaine. I know.” I didn’t mean to be so testy. “Sorry about the tone.”
He held up his glass. “I can be a pain in the ass sometimes.”
Miles came through the door and handed me my drink. “I can vouch for that.”
“Stop it, you two. Goldie, you have a heart of gold, like your name.” I was dying to ask about Jagger but didn’t want to seem too anxious.
He said, “He’s tied up at the police station. He’ll run home, change and meet us at the restaurant. Reservations aren’t for another half hour so we’ll be fine.”
My friend knew me so well.
I took a sip of beer and let myself relax.
When we walked into the restaurant, several people stared. For a few seconds, I felt jealous that Goldie looked a hell of a lot more gorgeous than I. I don’t think a customer here thought he was a man. His pantsuit covered his wrists.
I smiled at my two favorite people as the hostess ushered us to our reserved table with a view of the river. Tiny white Christmas lights glowed like fireflies outside the window. In the background faint ruffles of waves floated along with the night’s breeze.
Speaking of breeze, in came Jagger.
My heart leaped to my throat. No jeans. No leather.
This time it wasn’t a disguise. His hair still touched the nape of his neck but it’d been combed into a style, less flyaway. He had on a suede tan jacket with a lighter shade turtleneck and darker brown trousers that fit to perfection. My fingers shook as I took my water glass to my lips and pretended to drink. Couldn’t risk choking or spewing water on my outfit. Goldie already put me to shame.
Jagger came closer, nodded and sat. “Sorry.”
Miles and Goldie stared.
I know they were looking at Jagger’s eye. He hadn’t even tried to conceal it, although I think I would have been disappointed to see any form of makeup on him.
Goldie said, “No problem, man. Business is business. We can all relate to that.” He really had class not to mention the shiner.
I was dying to find out what Jagger’d learned at the police station, but couldn’t ask in front of Goldie and Miles.
The waiter came over and Jagger ordered a beer. He looked at me. “Refill?”
My wineglass was still full. Either this “date” made him so uncomfortable that he wasn’t himself (which would also disappoint me) or his eyesight might have been affected. Geez, I hoped not.
I thought I’d do him a favor and get the subject out in the open and over with so I said, “Where’d you get that beauty of a shiner?”
He glared at me. Took a sip of his water and said, “Work related.”
Goldie laughed. “Once I got bopped on the head by a suspect. He was lifting a huge mother load of lumber onto the back of his pickup. Back injury my derrière. I got a little too close with my camera—this was back in my ‘green’ years—”
“I hear you,” I said and laughed.
Goldie toasted me with his Scotch. “—and the guy chased me six blocks with a hammer. Hit me with the handle. Bled like a stuck pig.”
Miles gasped and touched Goldie’s hand. “Head wounds always look worse than they are, sweetie.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Jagger. Although usually hard to read with his mysterious stone-faced expressions, that look was pure “what the hell am I doing here?” I smiled and made sure he noticed.
The dinner progressed without incident. Jagger remained polite although I got the feeling that if he were a little kid’s balloon he would be ready to pop.
By the time my tiramisu arrived, Jagger did look really ready to pop. Didn’t take any talent to see that. But he’d been friendly enough to Miles and Goldie, so I could only assume he was in a hurry to end our “date.”
I ate the dessert quickly, declined coffee and said, “Guys, I’m bushed. I think we’ll head off now.”
Jagger was up and out of his seat, paying the hostess, who I
guessed would pass it on to the waiter, before I could sling my purse over my shoulder. I was sure Jagger had been polite enough and said proper goodbyes to Goldie and Miles, but it was such a blur I couldn’t picture it in my mind. Besides, I was feeling a bit down that he wanted to end this night so fast.
Once outside, he yanked off his coat and pulled the turtleneck as if it were choking him. Damn, but the sweater clung to the muscles of his arms. Just the right size to say he worked out, yet not gigantic enough to imply that he did steroids like Popeye did spinach.
“You’re going to stretch it out.”
“Doesn’t get much use anyway.” He hit the button on his key chain and the door locks popped open.
I opened my door and got in. He’d started the engine and was already backing out before I could fasten my seat belt. “Thanks,” I said.
“For what?”
“Being … polite to them.”
He stopped at the entryway and looked over. “Hey, they’re both great guys. Besides, even if they weren’t, I’m not in the habit of hurting others’ feelings.”
I nodded but thought, What about hearts?
I sipped on the decaffeinated Hazelnut coffee Jagger handed me from the drive-thru at Dunkin Donuts. He then parked the car in the rear of the parking lot, making me wonder why we hadn’t just gone inside. It would get cold out here. I knew that from my surveillance of Tina.
For several minutes he sat there sipping at his coffee. I couldn’t stand it any longer. I decided to try to make conversation, and the first thing that popped into my head was, “Did Eddy commit suicide? I thought maybe that he got worried, you know, ’cause someone suspected him of ratting them out. And then I thought, if he were so worried that things might get ugly, maybe he drove into the river—”
He turned the car off, looked me square in the eye and said, “Eddy was murdered.”
My hand shook, spilling droplets of Hazelnut onto my beige wool coat. Jagger didn’t blink an eye, but reached down and pulled a Puffs tissue out of the container on the floor. He handed it to me while I said, “Murdered. How … how do you—”
“Police blame the air bag.”
I wiped at my coat not even caring if it got stained. I mean, a man, a man I knew had been murdered. I’d dealt with death and dying throughout my nursing career, but I’d never even known anyone who knew a person who’d been murdered. I looked at Jagger. “So the air bag didn’t deploy? Wasn’t he wearing a seat belt?”
“Had on his seat belt.”
I really didn’t know why I was asking so many questions. Eddy was dead. Why did it matter how? But I couldn’t help myself. “Then he was killed because the air bag didn’t deploy?”
“It deployed all right. Crushed just about every bone in Eddy.”
“That’s why Vance was called out. But I don’t understand. I thought the air bag would save—”
“Someone had tampered with it. Put in a much larger, more powerful one. Thus Eddy …”
I said a prayer for Eddy’s soul. How awful to be killed like that. Of course, getting killed any way would be awful. The results would be the same.
“So, where does that leave us?” I asked.
Jagger looked out the front window, sipped his coffee and said, “Right where we were.”
I quickly told him that Trudy and Linda never had the injuries the Workers’ Comp claims had indicated. He looked at me as if he already knew. Then why did I need to go back there? I was hoping he’d say I could call in sick and drop that job. But then again, Eddy might have died because of this case and as I’d told myself before, I owed it to him. Well, maybe not owed, but in his memory I’d do all I could to help. I knew very little about investigating medical insurance fraud and even less about investigating murder. But I would try my damnedest—about the fraud thing! Murder was to be left to the professionals. Still, if I could help with that …
“But,” Jagger said, “you have to be extra careful in searching around the office. You can do it though.”
I wasn’t sure if he meant I could do a good job investigating, or I could be extra careful. Hell, I’d try for both. “What am I supposed to be looking for to help find Eddy’s murderer?”
Jagger had been taking a sip of coffee as I asked. The coffee spewed onto his dashboard. “Shit, Sherlock. You are not getting involved in that.”
The emphasis on “you” and “that” made him sound like my father telling me I couldn’t do something like join the air force right out of nursing school. Daddy was right back then as I would never have made it by moving away. Pauline Sokol was a stay-at-home-gal. At least a stay-in-the-same-town gal.
“I mean it, Pauline. Leave murder investigating to the pros.”
“Like you?”
He looked at me. “What’d you find out about the doctors’ cars?”
Touché. He wasn’t going to give me a clue if he had anything to do with helping find Eddy’s killer. Damn. Well, I had to remind myself it didn’t matter who Jagger was or whom he worked for. The end result had to be the same. Bring criminals to justice.
“Oh, with all that about Eddy, I forgot.” I set my coffee cup on the dashboard and reached for my purse.
“We don’t have all night for you to rummage around in that thing if you want to go see what Tina is up to.”
“Oh, yeah. Sure I do.” I rummaged around without results. “I almost forgot about—”
Jagger grabbed my purse. “What the hell are you looking for?” He tipped it over onto the floorboard.
“Hey!”
There on the floor sat my cell phone, address book, tissues, used and clean, lipstick, scraps of paper with phone numbers on them—whose, I mostly had forgotten—and, gulp, a Tampax. It looked gigantic. The size of a column on an antebellum plantation house.
“Didn’t your mother ever tell you not to look in a woman’s purse?”
“I’m not looking in your purse.”
“Semantics.” He didn’t address the mother issue, which made my inquisitive mind all the more inquisitive. “Oh, there.” I reached down and picked up the paper I’d been looking for. It was pretty much a smudge of Starlight Pink.
Jagger took it from me. “Great job, Sherlock. This should be very helpful.”
I grabbed it back, ripping off the top corner, which more than likely wouldn’t matter. “I couldn’t find a pen.”
“Let me get this straight. You go to do surveillance to see what kinds of cars the docs drive without a pen. And”—he looked at the paper—“you have to use a canceled check for paper. And, the damn thing is a fucking Picasso in lipstick.”
I had no recourse for that one.
“I remember what I wrote.” Least I hope I did. I shut my eyes for a few seconds to picture the doctors getting out of their cars. Good thing I’d learned so much about cars from Uncle Walt. The pictures came clear. Then I told Jagger who drove what.
“Interesting.”
“What is? The fact that they all drive such expensive cars—”
“Except Doc O’Connor.”
“Guess that eliminates her,” I said.
Jagger took another tissue and wiped off the coffee splashed dashboard. He turned to me. “Does it?”
“I … I … Doesn’t it?”
“Don’t always go for the obvious, Sherlock.” He shoved his empty coffee cup into the bag on the floor and turned the ignition on.
I leaned back, took my last sip of coffee and wondered if that was true. Was Charlene involved and just driving an old rattletrap to avoid suspicion? Or was one of the other doctors—all males with inflated egos—driving an expensive car that the insurance company unwittingly paid for?
Or was Jagger yanking my chain?
Damn. This wasn’t easy.
Jagger turned the car in the direction of the river. Oh, no. I didn’t want to go back to the scene of Eddy’s death. But Jagger turned right instead of left and soon we were outside the Macalusos’ smaller—but not cheap by any means—house. He pulled over
a few houses away and killed his lights.
This is where I first saw Jagger.
The thought didn’t have time to percolate before the garage door opened and Tina’s car backed out. “How do you do that?” I asked Jagger, sounding much too much in awe of him.
He chuckled, turned on the car and started to follow Tina.
“That was just dumb luck,” I argued even though he hadn’t said a word.
“Not so dumb, I’d say.”
“By the way, did you call the cops on me the first day I was—”
He merely turned and looked.
Shit. I knew it. Oh, well. Guess he didn’t want me messing up his big case.
We turned left onto Elm and headed toward the shopping mall. A bit disappointed, I didn’t think I’d get much film on Tina shopping. Unless she kept stooping to get things on lower shelves. I thought of Eddy’s comment about her picking up a penny. Poor Eddy.
Tina turned into a little strip mall a few miles before the big mall. Jagger slowed, turned into the next parking lot, which was a Burger King. He faced the Suburban toward the strip mall.
There was Tina, big as life, getting out of her car. She had on a full-length brown mink coat, which made me think of a grizzly. I’m sure the mink folks wouldn’t want that image of one of their obviously expensive coats in any ad though. She was just too large of a woman to make mink glamorous.
I heard a click and turned to see Jagger standing outside the door. Geez. He could give me some warning. I grabbed the contents of my purse from the floor and started to shove it back inside. It took several minutes. When I looked up, Jagger was gone. Shit.
I quickly got out of the car. When I shut it, I heard the familiar click, and knew he was within range to electronically lock his doors. The wind kicked up, sending my hair flying about like millions of kites on my head.
Snow covered the ground above the curb, and I noticed footprints the size of feet that I guessed were Jagger’s. They headed toward the strip mall, so I followed along, my darn pumps getting soaked in the snow, not to mention my toes freezing like ten tiny ice pops.
I slipped three times but caught myself on nearby branches or cars, whichever was closest. When I got to the parking lot of the little mall, I stopped. Now what?