Snoops in the City (A Romantic Comedy)

by Darlene Gardner

  She’d chosen a blouse in a lovely shade of gold which she’d paired with cinnamon-brown slacks. Even her lipstick, with its brownish undertones, was perfect.

  This was a woman with a sense of style and color, which the world had far too few of to Margo’s way of thinking.

  A woman who would look good while kicking ass!

  Margo had a feeling the young woman would do. Oh, yes, she would do very nicely.

  ***

  TORI CONSCIOUSLY SLOWED her momentum so she wouldn't rush over to the Woman in Black’s table.

  Now that she was on the case, she was eager to get started. She needed to view this as an opportunity rather than an ordeal. Not only would the advance payment help toward proving she could make it on her own, but Tori might discover she had an aptitude for private detecting.

  She doubted she was a natural, owing to the fact that she'd always been a bust at the board game Clue. She was, however, a fast learner.

  After she'd read the writing on her magic disco ball, she'd headed straight for the bookstore for help. She hadn't yet read So, You Want to be a PI cover to cover, but felt more secure with a reference book in her purse.

  “Are you Victoria Whitley?" the Woman in Black asked in a stage whisper when Tori got to within a few feet of the table.

  Her face was fine-boned and beautiful, the lines bracketing her mouth the only giveaway that she was probably on the down side of sixty. Her dark hair was salon-perfect and her makeup was not only expensive but expertly applied to bring out her large, wide-set dark eyes.

  "Y—," Tori began, but didn't get the word out.

  "Quick. Sit down," the woman ordered in a quiet voice that managed to pack an authoritative punch.

  Tori sat in a chair catty-corner to the woman.

  “I was going to say that everybody calls me Tori," Tori whispered back. “I’m sorry. Eddie didn’t tell me your name.”

  “I know.”

  Tori waited for her to expand on her reply. She didn’t. “What is your name?”

  The Woman in Black cast a furtive glance around the room before lifting her menu and shielding her face from the diners at the next table. She peeked at Tori from around the side of the menu.

  “You can call me... Ms. M,” she said, still in that loud whisper. “Yes, I like that. It’s a good name for a PI’s client. It reminds me of James Bond’s colleague. He goes by the one letter, too.”

  “James Bond isn’t a private detective,” Tori said slowly. “He’s a secret agent.”

  “Close enough,” Ms. M said.

  Tori nodded, as though this wasn’t the oddest conversation she’d had in, oh, forever. She leaned forward. “Why are we whispering?”

  “I know how you private eyes operate. I don’t want us to attract attention,” Ms. M said.

  Too late, Tori thought. They possibly could have gotten away with the stage whispers, but the other diners had started staring when Ms. M hid her face behind the menu. Not to mention the only other person Tori had ever seen wear an expensive black suit on a sunny day at the beach had been carrying an urn.

  “I think we should stop whispering and that you should put the menu down,” Tori said in her regular voice. At the woman’s crestfallen expression, she added, “Sometimes you’re more conspicuous when you try not to be.”

  Ms. M brightened. “Oooo, I didn’t think of that but it’s brilliant. I knew I was doing the right thing when I hired an expert like you.”

  Tori stopped herself from cringing. She was a PI now. She had a reference book. She could claim a little expertise.

  “I hope you won't be disappointed," she began, then stopped. That was lame. How could she inspire confidence in her client if she didn't have any in herself? Tori tried again. "I mean, you won't be disappointed."

  Ms. M leaned forward, her gorgeous eyes narrowed as they focused on Tori. "Can I ask you something?"

  Oh, Lord. She'd want Tori to recite her credentials, which was within her rights. Tori managed to nod while she tried to come up with a way to make her non-existent experience seem impressive.

  "What brand of makeup do you wear?" Ms. M asked.

  Makeup? O-kay.

  “My foundation and powder are by Lazenby. My eye makeup is from Revlon,” Tori said slowly, wondering where Ms. M was headed with this. Would she shift into a discussion of the use of makeup in various disguises?

  Ms. M sat up straighter, like she had a board at her back. “Revlon’s a drugstore brand. What’s wrong with Lazenby’s eye makeup?”

  Okay, Tori could play along.

  “It’s not worth the price difference. Revlon has a wider choice of colors and a smoother texture, not to mention a softer brown shade of mascara.” Tori registered the woman’s intent expression. “Why do you ask?”

  “I was interested.”

  Tori waited for her to elaborate. Instead Ms. M waved off an approaching waitress and bent to lift an expensive-looking calfskin briefcase off the floor. She pulled out a piece of paper with a photograph printed on it and set it down on the table between them.

  “Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to get information on this man,” Ms. M said in a dramatic voice.

  Tori thought she recognized the line from Mission: Impossible but couldn’t puzzle over it now. They'd reached the purpose of their meeting: Her assignment.

  She dropped her gaze to the paper and felt her mouth gape open. She closed it quickly, before drool escaped.

  She imagined somebody ordinary when Eddie told her she'd be trailing a businessman around town. This man, who peered out from the piece of paper with eyes as blue as the shimmering ocean, struck her as extraordinary.

  Probably in his late twenties, he wasn't handsome so much as he was striking.

  He had a square, clefted chin and a no-nonsense slant to his mouth. The tan and the blond streaks in his sandy-brown hair attested to time spent outdoors. Combine those features with hollow cheekbones and a nose that appeared to have been broken at least once, and masculinity emanated off him like reflected sunlight.

  He looked, in short, like Prince Charming’s more rugged, more intelligent brother.

  Except that was ridiculous. If the mysterious Ms. M wanted him investigated, he couldn't be a modernized version of a fairy-tale prince. More likely, he was a frog in disguise.

  “His name is Grady Palmer. He graduated from Florida State with a degree in business seven years ago and took over the operation of Palmer Construction a year later when his father retired. In the last nine months or so, his company’s won a number of prestigious city contracts.”

  Tori kept her gaze on the photo, imagining the man vying for business. She couldn't envision him coming in second best.

  “Seems to me you already know quite a bit about him.” Tori tried to sound nonchalant, like she imagined a good PI would. She couldn't let Ms. M guess she thought the man in the photo was a hunk, especially because his hunkiness was immaterial. “What do you want me to find out?”

  “Anything and everything,” Ms. M said. “I printed this photo off his company's website, where I got the other information. I want to know more than typed words on a page. I want the measure of the man.”

  Tori lifted her head and met Ms. M’s intent stare. If the Mysterious One were turning a PI loose on Grady Palmer, that intriguing face could be hiding something ugly.

  "Why do you want him investigated?" Tori asked.

  "You boss and I agreed I wouldn't have to divulge my reasons," she said enigmatically. "Otherwise, I wouldn't have hired your firm."

  “Is there something... shady you suspect him of?”

  “Let’s just say that if there’s any dirt on him, I want you to dig it up.” Ms. M smiled. "I have to confess I was a little nervous about this meeting, but I have a good feeling about you."

  "You do?" Tori asked in surprise.

  Ms. M nodded. "I do. You remind me of Pierce Brosnan."

  "The actor who used to play James Bond?”

  “
Exactly. Maybe I should call you Jane.”

  As in Bond, Jane Bond.

  A fit of honesty seized Tori at the undeserved admiration in the other woman's eyes. “I can't claim to be in his league," she said.

  “Nobody is, but you'll do fine,” Ms. M said. “I didn't get where I am today without trusting my instincts.”

  Ms. M’s clothes and mannerisms screamed success. Tori wondered what she did for a living but thought it a waste of breath to ask.

  “If your instincts are so good, why don’t you take Grady Palmer’s measure yourself?” Tori asked.

  “I have my reasons.”

  Reasons she obviously didn’t intend to share.

  “You’ll keep me informed of your findings, of course,” Ms. M said in a breathy, excited voice. “I’m rather anxious for the information, Jane.”

  Tori had a moment's misgiving about what she was getting herself into. She considered whipping her key chain disco ball out of her purse for another consultation, but that was silly. The magic ball had already told her to take the case.

  She looked down once again at the picture of Grady Palmer. He seemed to dare her to find out what kind of a man he was. Her heartbeat quickened. The assignment wasn’t really so hard. Ms. M wasn’t the only one with good instincts about people.

  Within a day or so, maybe sooner, she’d have figured out whether Palmer was one of the good guys.

  "I can't wait to get started," Tori said.

  She might not have any experience, but neither had Sherlock Holmes before he embarked on his first case. And she was smart and resourceful. Some of the time.

  How hard could it be to follow Mr. Blue Eyes around?

  CHAP TER THREE

  The woman in the floppy hat who was keeping conspicuously behind the fat man was following him.

  Grady Palmer had noticed her the instant she’d joined the gallery on the seventeenth hole of the Seahaven Golf & Country Club course. Every one of the spectators in the gallery stood out, considering only five of them had showed, but none so much as the woman.

  Not only wasn’t she related to somebody in Grady’s foursome, like the other four, but she was the kind of woman a man noticed.

  He’d seen her several times in the last few days. Once at the stamp machine while he stood in line at the post office and again in a silver Volkswagen Beetle convertible parked across the street from his construction office.

  Today she'd gone to some lengths to appear unobtrusive, covering her reddish-brown hair with the hat and her eyes with large, dark sunglasses.

  But she had that extra bit of oomph, that intangible something, that made her stand out in a crowd. The sun shone from a cloudless blue sky. It seemed to shimmer most brightly on the woman.

  Grady noted her hat was neither black nor white but tan, which figured. His life would be less complicated if the people around him subscribed to the rules of the old Westerns.

  Black hat: Bad guy. White hat: Good guy.

  Who was he kidding? In Seahaven, a good man —­­­­ or woman, for that matter — was hard to find because there weren't many. He didn't need John Wayne to help him figure out what a tan hat tied with a dark-green ribbon signified.

  Somebody had gotten suspicious of him.

  Which proved once again that nothing was exactly what it seemed.

  Take this so-called charity golf tournament, in which Grady was part of a foursome that included Mayor Honoria Black. The profits were earmarked for a Domestic Violence Hotline, but the tournament was about increasing the mayor’s chances to win re-election in November.

  The woman in the hat stood off to his right, clear across the fairway, not far from Mayor Black and the City Tax Assessor. If the fat man would move a little to the left, Grady might be able to—

  “Hey, Palmer. You gonna hit that ball or wait for it to sprout wings?”

  Grady tore his gaze from the woman in the hat and focused on the portly, chain-smoking City Clerk of Seahaven. Pete Aiken stood in the rough in the shade of a giant palmetto tree. Aiken was probably near his own ball but Grady couldn’t see much through the haze of smoke surrounding him.

  “The way things are going today, it’d fly into the sand trap.” Grady kept his smile so firmly in place that the muscles on the sides of his mouth ached.

  He'd been told as a kid that his features would freeze in place if he made funny faces. He wondered if the same warning applied to insincere smiles.

  Nah. If it did, he wouldn’t be able to bend his lips. He’d smiled more in the fourteen months since he’d let the FBI rope him into a sting operation to weed out corruption at Seahaven City Hall than a villain in a B Western. He recognized the irony, because a black hat was exactly what he was portraying.

  Grady’s role in Operation Citygate consisted of amassing evidence against corrupt city officials. He couldn’t do that without ingratiating himself with them.

  “Don't look at me for golf tips," Aiken said. "I'm not letting you beat me."

  Grady fought to keep his smile in place. Assholes like Pete Aiken made him rue the day he’d listened to the loud whispers about corruption at Seahaven City Hall and contacted a college-friend-turned-FBI-agent. He intended only to relay that his construction company’s low bid to build a city office complex had been suspiciously passed over.

  Instead he’d gotten sucked into an ongoing investigation that had him carrying bugs, paying bribes and watching his back. He'd almost refused — until he asked himself what one of the Old-West characters played by Clint Eastwood or John Wayne would have done.

  The right thing, came the answer.

  But doing the right thing was fraught with pitfalls. If his friends in city government saw through his act, he could be in danger.

  The woman in the floppy hat could be a harbinger of that danger.

  He selected a club from his golf bag and tried to block out everything but the ball as he positioned himself over it. He hit a serviceable shot that barely reached the green, then climbed into the golf cart. The fat man now completely obscured the woman, so he focused on Aiken.

  A swing and a miss. Strike— who knows what number. Aiken had piled up so many air swings that Grady lost count hours ago. Even though the wind was blowing like the Big Bad Wolf on steroids, Aiken’s round of golf still represented a spectacular display of ineptitude.

  Aiken looked furtively around, spotted Grady watching, took his cigarette from where it dangled in his mouth and gave a hearty laugh. “You don’t mind if I take a mulligan, right?”

  A mulligan was golf parlance for a do-over, considered taboo in tournament play. At least Aiken had asked this time instead of merely shaving his score at the end of the hole.

  Grady gritted his teeth but made it look like a smile. Aiken would get his due soon enough. Grady was about to bid on the construction of a multi-million dollar community center. City bylaws required the bids be sealed but Aiken had claimed he could make sure Grady submitted the low bid — for a fee. Grady had Aiken on tape accepting the bribe.

  “Go right ahead," Grady said.

  His cigarette once more hanging limply from his mouth and his hips jiggling as he eyed the ball, Aiken took a mighty swing. A clump of dirt and grass sailed into the air along with the ball, which shot sideways across the fairway at roughly a ten-degree angle.

  “I lost the sucker,” Aiken complained. “Do you see it?”

  Grady followed the speck of white as it veered a few feet above the ground across the immaculate green fairway straight at. . . the mayor.

  “Fore!” he bellowed a warning as Mayor Black, her back to them, lined up a shot. Behind the mayor, the people in the gallery lifted their heads.

  “Fore!” Grady shouted again, louder this time.

  The gallery scattered but the mayor looked around helplessly. The ball was set to bean her when the woman in the floppy hat rushed her, wrapped her arms around the mayor’s waist and knocked her to the ground.

  The errant golf ball sailed over the two prone women
and careened off the mayor’s golf cart with a loud ping. It rolled to the dead center of the eighteenth fairway, about one hundred yards shy of the green.

  “Aw, shit,” Aiken remarked as he and Grady took off across the fairway. In a louder voice, Aiken yelled, “Sorry, mayor. Grady didn’t mean it.”

  Grady shot a look at Aiken over his shoulder. “You hit the ball.”

  Aiken pointed at him with his rapidly diminishing cigarette. “The mayor doesn’t know that, buddy o’ mine.”

  Grady swallowed his protest at Aiken's descriptive phrase and focused on the scene of the incident. The mayor got to her feet, waving off everybody rushing to her aid. Grady slowed his steps to a walk. Aiken did the same.

  “I’m okay,” Mayor Black announced in her loud baritone. She raised her arms and shook her large, square hands for emphasis. Beside her, Wade Morrison, the Tax Assessor, helped the mayor’s savior up from the ground.

  The woman’s floppy hat had come off, revealing a head of pretty red-brown hair that was parted slightly off center. Her nose was long, her lips luscious, her chin small, her features familiar. Grady had been right. It was the same woman.

  “Hot damn,” Aiken said. “I’d let a golf ball knock me out if it meant getting up close with a woman like that."

  The woman shoved the hat Morrison held out to her back on, then turned and stared at Grady, who was fifteen yards away and closing. Her shoulders stiffened, her mouth grew pinched and her body went still an instant before she turned and bolted.

  Determined to get some answers, he gave chase and might have caught her if the mayor hadn't stepped in front of him. He stopped abruptly, barely avoiding careening into her.

  He probably wouldn't have knocked her down. Tall and athletically built with short, thick hair the color of her name, Honoria Black gave the impression she could take care of herself. Her stare was direct and, owing to one eyebrow that was slightly higher than the other, disconcerting.

  “Tell me, Grady, should I hire a bodyguard or give you the name of my golf pro?” she asked, swinging her index finger back and forth like a metronome.