Instead, she stood in the exact place I’d left her.
‘Sorry,’ she said quietly. ‘I know you meant for me to leave, but . . . Well, I’d ask if you could recommend anyone else, but I’m thinking I’m going to get the same response from them.’
‘Yeah, thinking you’re right.’
‘It’s just that I’ve had Rudy for five years. He spends the majority of the time on my cousin’s farm out on Long Island, but I bring him in especially for the holidays. The thought of him wandering the busy streets, no food to be had, no one to look after him . . .’
I didn’t even want to think of what could have possibly happened on those busy streets, but the word ‘roadkill’ came to mind for the second time in as many days.
I shuddered.
Rosie had somehow climbed down from the chair and the box in those heels without serious injury and leaned back to stare into my office.
‘Tell you what,’ I said. ‘Why don’t you leave whatever information you have, like a photo, and I’ll see if there’s something I can do.’
Her face lit up like the Christmas lights Rosie was even now inspecting at her desk.
‘I can’t promise anything. Chances are I won’t be able to do anything.’
But I just couldn’t let her walk out of the office looking like someone had just crumbled her sugar cookies.
Or, rather, pissed on her stockings.
I couldn’t help looking again. Only I couldn’t make out the yellow stain.
Muffy got closer and sniffed then looked up at Mrs Clause as if he, too, were puzzled.
He began lifting his leg again.
‘Muffy, don’t!’
I shooed him away with a Manila folder I took from the corner of the desk even as Mrs Claus rattled off details, apparently completely oblivious to the Jack Russell terrier’s designs on her leg.
I gave a mental shrug. Could be worse. He could have been trying to hump it.
She pulled out a photo from the pocket of the white apron edged in red. ‘Here he is.’
I took the shot and began to put it down without looking at it but found myself looking closer instead.
Was that a red nose?
I shook my head and tossed the photo to the desktop. Since the shot had apparently been taken in the dark, probably it was red eye that had transferred to the nose.
‘I’ll call if I see anything.’
‘Is there a number I can reach you on?’
Rosie did her leaning-back bit again and shook her head in stern warning.
‘I think it would be better if I called you if I come up with anything, OK?’
There was that scent again. Only this time, it smelled like . . . peppermint?
I led her from the office and out on to the sidewalk.
‘Thank you so very much, Miss Metropolis. I can’t tell you how much this means to me and the kids.’
I nodded and mumbled something I hoped was appropriate, my attention already diverted to the hot Australian still leaning against his truck across the street.
Damn.
Jake gave me a brief nod, pitched his cigarette to the street, then climbed into his truck and pulled from the curb.
Hunh.
‘I can’t believe you let that poor old woman believe you’re going to help her,’ Rosie said, hanging the lights in the front window.
‘Shoot me, but I think kicking her to the curb is just a wee bit crueler.’
She tsked. ‘No it ain’t. Letting her believe you’re going to find her stupid reindeer is crueler.’
‘Whatever.’
‘When do you think you’ll get to that info I asked for?’
She walked to the printer, pulled paper from it and held it out, her ever-present gum popping.
There was no way she’d done all that . . . when? She’d been in my line of sight since I put the list on her desk. It was impossible. There was no way . . .
‘I think we should talk about Christmas bonuses,’ she said.
‘I think you should stop making this place look like a Christmas shop and get back to work.’
She raised a brow.
‘Sorry.’
And I was.
Kind of.
‘You’re not the only one allowed to have a bad day,’ I told her.
Bad day? Hell, the rate I was going, I was having the mother of all years.
‘I don’t never have no bad days.’
I gave her a long look.
‘I don’t.’ She went back to hanging her lights. ‘I get . . . moody.’
‘Oh. Is that what they’re calling it now?’
‘Whatever.’
I didn’t have to see her eye roll in order to know she was giving me one.
I scanned down the information she’d compiled, noticing a couple of names I didn’t give her.
‘Why’d you run these?’
‘New program. Gives you associates, et cetera. Thought you might need it.’ She popped her gum. ‘What’s going on with Abramopoulos? You working for him?’
Probably I should tell her. Probably she could help.
Probably I was a little miffed at her and didn’t feel like it at the moment.
‘You gonna leave that damn dog in here all day like you did last time?’
I looked to see Muffy had grabbed a hold of a piece of garland and was running it around and around my ankles.
Great.
All things being equal? I’d prefer to eat Christmas turkey, not be trussed up like one.
‘Maybe,’ I answered non-committally as I clumsily extricated myself from the garland and went back into the office.
‘Oh, call your mom,’ Rosie said. ‘She left at least five messages.’
‘I will.’
‘Now.’
‘Soon.’
‘Call her or I tell her all about that hot Australian guy always hanging out here looking for you.’
I stared at her over the paper. ‘You wouldn’t dare.’
She flashed a dimpled grin. ‘Try me.’
I closed the door, leaving both her and Muffy to do to the outside office what they would.
Then I went to my desk and called my mother.
Five
‘Hey, watch it! You’re going to scratch baby Jesus!’
I grimaced. Lord forbid I should do irreparable harm to baby Jesus.
A half hour after I ushered Mrs Claus out of the office I reviewed the list Rosie had printed up, my mother’s voice still echoing in my head (how did mothers do that?), my morning agenda roughly sketched out, and I made myself my second frappé of the morning. In order to do so, I had to move a couple of Rosie’s manger animals from the top of the filing cabinets to make room.
‘Is there an inch in this place that isn’t taken up by Christmas decorations?’ I muttered under my breath, deciding to wait for my frappé until after the client Rosie was talking to left.
‘I don’t understand how no one’s been able to find anything,’ said a woman I guessed to be somewhere around thirty-five to forty said, seated in the chair next to Rosie’s desk. She wore nice tan slacks and a beige sweater, her blonde hair revealing a recent visit to the salon. I resisted the urge to touch my own neglected brown hair and listened as she said, ‘Five PIs and a shitload of money. And now you guys. It’s been two months. Surely you should have found something by now.’
I was familiar with the case. I also knew that up until this point, all of our efforts had been for naught. Lois Kent would call, we’d follow her husband Clark, and get no more than her husband sitting in a bar having a drink or five.
I briefly caught Rosie’s gaze as I headed back to the office as she said, ‘You know, there is a chance he’s not cheating on you, Mrs Kent. Have you considered that? I mean, I know, right? We women are pretty good with this stuff. We can smell another woman before he’s even touched her . . .’
I went into my office.
‘I know he’s cheating. I just know it.’
The agency had a h
igh success rate when it came to both serving court papers and cheating-spouse cases. Rare was the occasion when we didn’t deliver the goods.
The front door opened and I watched the star server enter.
Pamela Coe gave me a wave and I waved back. She was tall and blonde and attractive and had a track record no one could match. Well, up until recently, that is. She’d worked for the agency long before I signed on, and while I sometimes wondered why she didn’t appear interested in expanding her duties at the agency, I respected that she’d chosen her job and did it well. And, the truth was, even though I met up with her at the firing range from time to time for target practice, I had no idea what she did outside serving, but I was guessing she was doing something . . . and was no doubt very good at that as well.
‘What if you were to tempt him into doing something?’ the wife was saying.
I looked at her, Rosie looked at me, and Pamela seemed oblivious where she thumbed through the documents waiting to be served on the filing cabinets near Rosie’s desk that didn’t bear any delicate Christmas decorations that could be damaged.
‘Like set him up, you mean? With a prostitute or something?’ Rosie asked, glancing at me again.
Truth was, we’d half-heartedly talked about doing just that with some of the more challenging cases. Would land the client what they wanted with minimal fuss and time investment. Hey, if the guy was going to cheat, he was going to cheat. Right?
I looked at Pamela Coe, wheels turning.
‘I don’t know,’ Rosie said. ‘That seems a little like cheating.’
I snorted at her choice of words and all three women looked at me.
‘Sorry,’ I said, clearing my throat. ‘I’m just going to close this . . .’
I slowly began shutting the office door.
‘Trust me,’ Rosie was saying. ‘If he’s cheating, we’ll catch him.’
‘Oh, he’s cheating all right.’
‘Then we’ll catch him.’
Fifteen minutes later, the client was gone and so was Pamela and I could finally make that second frappé I was craving.
Thankfully, Rosie was busy at her laptop and didn’t engage me when I opened my door and made a beeline for the filing cabinets, careful not to do any harm to her baby Jesus.
Listening to ‘I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas’, which was playing on her iPod, I shook a generous tablespoon of instant coffee along with a couple of spoonfuls of sugar and a little water in my travel cup, then replaced the jars of both in the top filing cabinet where I’d extracted them with my other hand. I eyeballed the other decorations and considered tipping a lamb or a goat or two inside with them but decided against it when I caught Rosie staring at me as if she expected me to.
‘I don’t know how you can drink that iced coffee stuff in this cold weather,’ she commented, leaning in to stare at something on her laptop screen between clacks. A state of the art piece of technology I’d gotten her when things at the agency had been going very well.
Not that they weren’t going well now. It’s just that, well . . .
No. I was stopping there. The last time I tempted the Fates by wishing for a more interesting case, I’d nearly been turned into a creature of the night.
Besides, the supposed kidnapping of Abramopoulos’ kid was interesting. It might be more so if every other PI in New York wasn’t also working the case.
I added more cold water and a little milk to my frappé and closed the small refrigerator door.
‘If you score on any additional whereabouts of Abramopoulos’ ex-wife, call me,’ I told Rosie.
‘Did you call your mom?’
‘You know I did.’
She smiled at me.
I growled.
Funny, my mother. Last night I got an earful not about putting my life at risk by being a PI, but rather about how I’d missed the saranta.
I’d expected the same today. At the very least, to be bugged about picking up my saranta bag, an eerie reminder put together for those unable to make the event.
Instead, she’d told me Grandpa Kosmos was looking for me.
I’d scratched my head and checked my cell. It wasn’t like I was hard to find.
Rather than call him, as I promised my mother I would, I decided I’d wait until he contacted me.
I’d begun to tell her I wouldn’t be able to stop by today to get the bag or whatever bland, fast-inspired meal she planned to prepare when she told me she wouldn’t be home.
‘Anything from the CIS?’ I asked Rosie after shrugging into my coat.
She momentarily looked as if she’d been hit in the face with my icy frappé – as she did whenever I mentioned the CIS, I thought maybe because she had a few relatives who were illegal. Then she got it together.
‘Nope. You expecting something on that Dino case?’
‘Yeah. If the agent calls, forward it to my cell.’
Probably he would try my cell first, but I wanted to make sure I talked to him if he called. I was still working out what my next step should be since I obviously wasn’t getting anywhere here, no matter how nice Agent David Hunter appeared to be.
I understood my mother had spoken to Dino a few times. He hadn’t called me. Not that I expected him to after that disaster of a date. But still . . .
‘You’re not leaving him here again, are you?’
I eyed where Muffy had curled up on my old office chair at the desk next to Rosie’s and he eyed me back.
‘Yeah. Just let him outside to terrorize the neighbors every hour or so and piss on the hydrant and he should be fine.’
She tsked loudly, causing us both to stare at her.
‘What? I’d like to know when I added “pet sitter” to my job description.’
‘Look at it this way: he’s protecting you.’
‘From what? Women dressed like Santa Claus’ wife?’
Something like that.
‘You know he don’t like Waters.’
Eugene Waters. One of my latest hires, the circumstances surrounding his employment a story that always inspired a smile if not an outright laugh.
OK, so the vertically challenged African-American pimp wannabe’s promotion from someone on whom I’d tried to serve eviction papers to one of our process servers maybe rated a spot on the strange scale. But, in some twisted way, it made sense. Who better to get to serve than someone who knew all the ways to avoided being served? And, truth was, he was proving even more effective than Pamela Coe on some occasions, whose success rate had gone untouched by anyone before now.
Pamela had a problem? She handed the case off to him and he delivered.
‘Yeah, well,’ I responded to Rosie. ‘That’s because Waters don’t like Muffy. I suspect Waters doesn’t like many dogs.’
At the mention of the name, Muffy raised his head and growled.
I could relate, but for different reasons.
‘Call if you need anything,’ I said.
‘Whatever.’
For a split second, as I stood there with my hand on the door ready to open it, I considered telling her what my next-door neighbor, Mrs Nebitz, grandmother to Seth, Rosie’s heartbreaking ex, had shared with me. Something that went beyond leaky kitchen faucets and expensive plumbers and made my being late to pick up my mother worth it beyond the fact I’d wanted to be late picking up my mother.
Then my gaze settled on the cheerful Happy Holidays sign on the glass.
Shoot me, but no matter how foul her mood, I just didn’t have it in me to tell Rosie that Seth was getting married.
Brrrr . . .
However hard I tried to prepare myself, that first step out into the cold always shocked me. As I walked to my car, hunkered forward against the skin-chapping wind, I put my gloves on one by one, trading off on holding my cup of iced coffee.
‘Metro.’
Of course, it would stand to reason this was the one time I should have been paying attention to my surroundings. Or, more specifically, others who might inhabit my
surroundings.
I looked up to find Pimply Pino Karras getting out of his NYPD police cruiser where he was parked behind Lucille.
Now what?
‘Pino.’
He appeared about to hike his pants up, but caught himself. I gave a little smile. It was nice to imagine I didn’t know what color his socks were. Of course, I did know; they were navy blue to match his pants since he was a stickler for rules and codes. Still, I held out hope that one day they might be purple . . . with sequins.
There was a time not too long ago when Pino seemed hell bent on taking me into the precinct on something, anything, he didn’t care what. Littering would have done the trick. Murder? Jackpot! Think it went back to when we were in grade school at St Demetrios, when he was pimply and I never let him forget it. Not for a minute.
But recently things between us had improved substantially.
Hungry wood chippers and neighborhood serial killers had a way of bonding people together.
‘So, what’s up?’ he said, as if this were a summer day and we were just coming across each other, indulging in a bit of catch up.
I raised a brow. ‘Other than every hair on my body ’cause it’s freakin’ freezing out here?’
I knew this was the way Pino operated. Why come straight to the point when you could work your away around to it? I imagined he thought he was some uniformed version of Columbo trying to get a suspect to incriminate themselves because they judged him somewhere below incompetent.
Unfortunately I was guessing most of the people Pino questioned had nothing incriminating to say.
I unlocked the driver’s door of my Mustang and put my purse and travel cup inside.
‘You planning on sharing what’s on your mind? Or are you going to make me leave you standing here?’ I asked.
‘Your car.’
‘My car.’ I gestured for him to continue.
‘You left it in the middle of the street last night.’
‘Ah.’ So he must have been the one to park it.
Shit.
‘I was in a hurry.’ I got into the car. ‘Like I am now.’
He caught the door when I tried to close it. ‘Right.’
I grimaced at him. I supposed I should at least thank him for saving me the towing money and hassle. So I did.
Queens Ransom (Sofie Metropolis) Page 4