Swift Edge

by Laura Disilverio

  Holding on to the sink, I staggered to my feet and surveyed the damage in the mirror. Blood trickled from a cut over my eye where a lump the size of a Ping-Pong ball would soon turn purple. Great. I’m not particularly vain, but I didn’t want to scare small children when I walked down the street, either. With my fingertips, I probed under my hair at the back of my skull and found another lump where I’d smacked my head on the sink. At least it didn’t seem to be bleeding. I helped myself to some Tylenol from the medicine cabinet and scanned the rest of its contents from habit. Nothing more interesting than prescription bottles of oxycodone and Vicodin, along with shaving cream, deodorant, and a sunless tan gel. Dampening Dmitri’s white washcloth, I dabbed at the cut on my forehead, then held the cold cloth to the lump as I looked around. I didn’t see the attacker’s weapon, but when I bundled the shower curtain into the tub, a long-handled back brush fell out. Clearly, he’d used the first weapon that came to hand. I was lucky it wasn’t the gun in the bedside table.

  On the thought, I hurried back into the bedroom and opened the drawer. The gun was gone. Mega-shit. Now my attacker was armed. I sank onto the bed and closed my eyes, trying to see him in my mind’s eye. I had an impression of height—the back brush had clearly descended down onto my forehead—and the blurred image of a white face. I couldn’t focus on a hair color—maybe he’d worn a hat? There’d been a smell, too, something familiar, but I couldn’t place it. I gave it up after a moment.

  With effort, I pulled myself free of the bed’s embrace and stood, feeling wobbly. As I took a step toward the door, the unmistakable sound of footsteps sounded on the stairs. What was this place—Grand Central Station? Wishing I’d had the foresight to bring my H&K 9 mm, I ducked into the closet. With no time to slide the door closed, I wiggled my way backward through a layer of hanging clothes until my back pressed against the wall. Just in time. The footsteps paused at the doorway. The door squeaked wider. I felt rather than heard the vibrations of footsteps crossing the room.

  Soft cottons and scratchy wools pressed against me in my hiding place. The scents of mothballs and Dmitri’s aftershave tickled my nose. I breathed shallowly, afraid a deep breath would set the wire hangers jangling and betray me. I strained my ears to hear. The footsteps had stopped. What was the newcomer doing? Maybe it was the old intruder, come back to finish me off. A sighing sound puzzled me until I realized it was the same sound the mattress made when I sat on it. Who the hell broke into someone’s house to take a nap? Goldilocks?

  I stretched cautiously to the right, trying to see into the bedroom. From my vantage point, all I could see was the end of the bed and a slice of window. My neck was getting a crick from the strange angle, but as I watched, a pair of legs, visible only from midshin down, settled onto the bed. Wait a minute … I knew those pink cowboy boots. I had seen them earlier that morning. Uncaring of the noise I made now, I pushed past the jangling hangers and popped out of the closet.

  “What the hell are you doing here?”

  Kendall Goldman sat upright with a shriek. Both hands went to her mouth, but she lowered them when she recognized me. “I was … I was just…”

  I glared at her, partly because she’d scared me and partly because I knew she must have gone through the notes I’d made after my conversation with Dara Peterson. I’d created a Fane folder and stuck them in there.

  “I got the address from the file,” she admitted, swinging her legs off the bed, “and I came over here thinking I could help, that maybe he’d be here.”

  “How is it helping to break in and snuggle up on his bed?”

  “The door was open!” she said.

  She didn’t try to explain lolling on Fane’s bed, and I realized she must have a crush on the skater as big (and unrequited, if Dara was right about his sexual preferences) as the one I had on Tom Cruise when I was her age. I was his from the moment he rocked out in his Fruit of the Looms in Risky Business. “Unlocked?”

  “No, standing wide open.”

  My attacker must have been in a real hurry after he bopped me with the back scrubber. “How’d you get here?” I asked. “Is your mom outside?” Just what I needed—Gigi camped out front in her yellow Hummer, the equivalent of a flashing neon sign to draw attention to the condo and our illicit presence.

  “Nah. Dex dropped me.”

  Dexter, Gigi’s seventeen-year-old son, did not commonly go out of his way to help anyone. I raised my brows.

  “I paid him five bucks,” Kendall admitted. Her sheepishness gave way to a narrow-eyed stare as she regained her sangfroid. “How did you get in? And what happened to your face?”

  I ignored the first question. “I was in the bathroom”—I didn’t mention the part about pawing through the medicine cabinet—“and someone jumped out of the tub and hit me.”

  “Here?” Kendall squeaked. She looked toward the bathroom as if expecting a dripping ax murderer to emerge with a hatchet.

  “He’s gone,” I said, “and we’d better follow suit. I’ll give you a ride back to the office.” On the way we could have a nice chat about how she was never, ever to peek at a client folder again, much less use the information to stalk the object of her adolescent desires. I smiled grimly.

  Perhaps catching the intent behind my smile, Kendall sidled past me to the bedroom door. “Dexter’s waiting for me at the 7-Eleven on the corner. He’ll give me a lift back. Bye.”

  She disappeared down the stairs before I could frame a response. Chances were, she’d grab the opportunity to play hooky from the office. Fine with me. I sighed, feeling achy and old, and started to follow her. It made me feel even older to realize she could be my daughter if I’d started at twenty-three. Good God. At twenty-three I’d been an air force cop for five years, had completed my degree at night school, and earned a commission as a second lieutenant. I was still a year away from marrying the fighter pilot who couldn’t spell monogamy with the help of a dictionary, and having a baby had never crossed my mind. The only bright side to this incident, I decided, was that it gave me a rock-solid reason for refusing to hire Kendall for the summer.

  Slightly cheered by the thought, I decided to do a quick search of the closet while I was there. Surely it couldn’t keep being Monday, could it? I was due some good luck after all the day’s mishaps. Skipping the handful of shirts, I turned out the pockets of Dmitri’s four or five pairs of slacks, finding nothing but lint and a couple of receipts. I shoved those in my pocket. It didn’t look like the other searcher had bothered, so maybe he’d already found what he wanted, or maybe it wasn’t something small enough to fit in a pocket. Maybe I’d interrupted him before he’d had the chance to search the closet. That thought spurred me on, but the collection of skating costumes at the back of the closet were useless, mostly skintight spandex or romantic pirate garb without a pocket in sight, and the shoe boxes on the floor contained only shoes. I didn’t come across a suitcase. Emerging from the closet with a lock of dark hair hanging in front of my eyes, I brushed it back and looked at my watch. I’d been here almost half an hour, what with letting intruders use my head for batting practice and arguing with infatuated teens. Past time to go.

  Stripping off the latex gloves, I tucked them in my pocket. My eyes swept the room one more time, lingering on the dresser, but I knew I couldn’t afford the time to search it. I left the room and started down the stairs, the draft telling me Kendall had left the door as she’d found it—wide open. The wind had swirled a few dead leaves into the hall and I bent to pick them up. As I straightened, I found myself staring into the barrel of a gun held at arm’s length by a stern-looking policeman.

  “Freeze,” he said.

  5

  I talked my way out of a possible arrest by telling the officer that I was a friend of Dmitri’s who had happened to stop by. Finding the door open, I had rushed in, afraid Dmitri might be ill or injured. Thanking God I’d already removed the incriminating latex gloves, I produced ID for the cop’s inspection, mentioned my good friend Detectiv
e Connor Montgomery (who would make me pay when he heard this story), and displayed my forehead with its lurid mogul. I was brutally attacked, I said, by a criminal ransacking Dmitri’s condo. Thank goodness the police had responded so quickly, I added dramatically.

  Young Officer Knowlton, a compact five foot ten with a sandy crew cut, put his weapon away and took copious notes, looking disappointed by my meager description of my assailant. He called in the incident, then asked if I could tell if anything was missing. I hadn’t had time to look around, I lied, and probably wouldn’t know anyway, since I wasn’t all that familiar with the place. Did I have a number they could use to get in touch with Mr. Fane? I wrote down the cell phone number Dara had given me.

  As I was edging away from the condo, congratulating myself on getting out of a tight corner, an unmarked Buick pulled up and a familiar figure got out. An involuntary tingle shot through me at the sight of Connor Montgomery’s long legs, broad shoulders, and handsome face. Too handsome, I reminded myself for the umpteenth time. The man couldn’t have been more than thirty-two or -three, several years my junior, and the devil-may-care glint in his eye reminded me too much of my ex-husband and his fighter pilot brethren. I walked to meet him, bracing myself for an interrogation I knew would be far more suspicious than Officer Knowlton’s.

  “Charlie,” he said with a crooked smile. “Imagine my surprise to hear that you were at the scene of a B and E. What prompted you to break into this place, may I ask?”

  “I merely entered,” I said, my expression challenging him to prove otherwise.

  “Sir, she’s the victim of an assault,” Officer Knowlton put in helpfully. “The perp got away.”

  “An assault?” Connor reached out one finger and lightly traced the bump on my forehead. “Are you okay, Charlie? Need a doctor?”

  His unexpected gentleness confounded me, and it was a moment before I could speak. In my defense, I’ll reiterate that it had been a hard day. “It’s nothing,” I said.

  “I could kiss it and make it all better,” he offered in a low voice, “and then we could—”

  I suppressed the surge of warmth his offer elicited and manufactured a glare. “I’m fine.”

  He put an arm around my shoulders and steered me down the sidewalk, out of Knowlton’s hearing. “Want to tell me about it?” he asked, in a tone that said I’d better. “Don’t feed me whatever fairy tale you dished out to Knowlton, either.”

  I gave him a wounded look but filled him in on everything except Kendall’s appearance. “Dmitri Fane,” he said when I’d finished, a thoughtful look in his eyes. “That name’s familiar.”

  “He’s an Olympic skater,” I said.

  “Yeah, but there’s something else. It’ll come to me.”

  “Could you let me know if there’ve been any John Does admitted to local hospitals recently? Or the morgue?”

  “Anything else?” He raised a mocking brow.

  “Yeah, the car. Can you check and see if a silver Mustang’s been ticketed or towed? I’ll get you the plate number.”

  “I can get it,” he said. By this time we had reached my car, and he backed me up against it, his body almost, but not quite, pressed against mine. The frozen metal of the car against my back made an unbearable contrast with the heat pulsing between Montgomery and me. “Now, what do I get in return for all this information, not to mention for not running you in and charging you with breaking and entering?”

  “My undying gratitude?”

  He pretended to consider that. The scent of soap and spice and warm skin coming off him was driving me crazy, and I fought the urge to pull him against me. “I think something more substantial’s in order,” he said, his eyes darkening as they lingered on my lips.

  My breath caught in my chest as he lowered his head. His lips grazed mine, very lightly, and lingered for a moment. “Let me know when.” He pushed himself back, gave me a two-fingered salute, and headed back toward Fane’s condo and the gaping Officer Knowlton. I slid into my Subaru and started it with shaking fingers. Damn the man. He always managed to slip under my guard.

  I deliberately banished Connor Montgomery from my thoughts as I headed back to the office. Pondering Officer Knowlton’s appearance at the condo, I wondered who had called him. It could have been a neighbor, of course, someone who had noticed the open door and been disinclined to investigate on his own. The timing was awfully coincidental, though. My fingers tapped the steering wheel. It was time to explain the facts of life, Swift style, to Kendall Goldman.

  * * *

  “We’ve got new neighbors next door,” Gigi said when I walked back into the office. She bounced in her chair.

  “Whoop-de-doo.” I beelined for my fridge and the Pepsi I needed desperately.

  “Next door” was the retail space that had formerly housed Ecolo-Toys, a shop marketing ecologically sound toys for politically correct youngsters to “engage” with. There’d been an incident a couple of months back with a Goliath bird-eating spider—a hairy sucker as big as a dinner plate—leaping out of a toy chest made from some kind of wood I’d never heard of and imported from Belize. The environmentally sensitive purchasers had reduced the critter to spider mush with a diaper pail without a thought as to whether or not the species was endangered. Tsk. The resulting publicity had closed down the store faster than Simon Cowell could hurl an insult.

  “What are they selling?” I broke down and asked after swallowing half my soda.

  “I don’t know,” Gigi admitted, “but I saw a woman going in there. She must own the place, because she had the key. Maybe she’s Domenica?”

  For the past two weeks, carpenters had been refitting the space, and a sign painter had applied a discreet DOMENICA’S in gold script on the door. Closed blinds kept the shop’s contents hidden.

  “We should take her cookies or muffins as a house-warming gift,” Gigi said, making a note.

  I stared at her. “It’s not a house. It’s a business. And we’re not neighbors—we’re strangers who happen to have an office in the same strip mall.”

  “Being neighbors is an attitude, not a location,” Gigi said. “I think—”

  “Has Kendall come back?” I interrupted.

  “No,” Gigi said, looking apprehensive. “Why?”

  Sparing no details, I filled her in on her daughter’s activities, including my suspicion that she’d called the cops on me.

  “Maybe she was worried that the man who attacked you was still there?” Gigi suggested doubtfully.

  I snorted.

  “Well,” she tried again, “I think it’s super that she’s taking such an interest in the business. I’ve been trying to encourage a stronger work ethic—why, when I was her age I was already doing my friends’ hair and some of their moms’, too. It looks like it’s finally paying off. I’ve been worried, you know, because generally I can’t even get her to put her bowl in the sink after breakfast. Maybe this summer—”

  “No.”

  “But she—”

  “Hell, no.”

  “You don’t need to curse.” Gigi gave me that sad puppy look.

  “She’s not interested in the PI business, Gigi,” I said, exasperated. “She’s gaga over Dmitri Fane. She was draped all over his bed, for God’s sake!”

  “His bed?” Gigi’s mouth fell open.

  “It’s beside the point. The point is that Kendall can’t rifle through our files and use the information for her own purposes.”

  My anger finally got through to Gigi. “I’ll talk to her,” she said. She made another note. Her list must now say: 1. Bake cookies. 2. Chastise daughter.

  “Do more than talk,” I said. “Ground her. Better yet, fire her.”

  Gigi sat up straighter and said with dignity, “I said I’d talk to her.”

  I held my tongue, but I didn’t place much faith in Kendall giving a damn about one of Gigi’s talks. However, I had a case to solve and a paying customer to satisfy, so I let it drop. For now.

  “I’m
going over to Czarina Catering to see what they can tell me about Fane,” I told Gigi. “What have you got going this afternoon?”

  “Another process to serve,” she said, waving the paperwork in the air. “Then I thought I’d do some background research on Fane in the databases, check out his financials.”

  “Good idea.” The courses Gigi had attended since joining me in the business, especially the one on computer searches, had been money well spent. She was still a disaster at surveillance, but she’d done some skip-tracing via computer that had resulted in some nice fees. Even though I still wasn’t thrilled that she’d horned in on Swift Investigations when her husband, my silent partner, had abandoned her for a love nest in Costa Rica, leaving her no choice (she said) but to make the partnership an active one and drain my profits by pulling a salary, I had to admit she was almost pulling her weight.

  “Albertine has invited us down for a drink after work,” Gigi said as I pulled on my navy peacoat.

  “Can’t.”

  Gigi’s eyes lit up. “Do you have a date?”

  I rolled my eyes. For some reason, Gigi and Albertine, my friend who owned the eponymous Cajun restaurant at the south end of our strip mall, were convinced that my love life was lacking. They kept trying to fix me up and practically applauded any time I had a date—which wasn’t often. “No date. Just helping Dan with a project.”

  Gigi slumped back in her chair, looking disappointed. Father Dan Allgood was the priest who was my closest neighbor. He lived in the rectory belonging to St. Paul’s, the Episcopal church on the corner, and we were buds. “Tell Albertine I’ll take a rain check.”

  My cell phone rang, and I recognized Montgomery’s number. Maybe he’d found Dmitri, or at least his car. “Swift.”

  “I know why the name Dmitri Fane seemed familiar,” he said. “He’s pulled this before, four years ago.”