“Look at your dad. He’s done more embarrassing things than I can count and it doesn’t follow him around.”
“He has you for cover, like I had Bev. Both you and Bev were enablers.”
“So what? We were partners. And partners do for each other. Your father was a pain in my ass, but he was my partner.”
Josie didn’t know what to say to that. She stood and picked up her camcorder. “I really have to go, Stan.”
“Of course,” he said, standing with her. “If there’s anything you need, any help I can offer, please call me or knock on my door.” He put his arm around her as they walked into the outer office. “I mean that, Josie. I’ve always had my eye out for you.”
Here was another of those goddamned moments when she felt a tear springing forth because someone genuinely cared for her. Wasn’t it supposed to be pain that brought on tears? Her feelings were upside down.
They said their good-byes and Josie scrambled down the back steps, anxious to get to her paying job, desperate to get away from Stan.
Chapter Fifteen
Josie loaded up her Corolla with the camcorder, binoculars, water, a sandwich, and two cups of coffee from Starbucks and headed out to her assignment. Bill Swanson lived in one of the northwest suburbs, on a street filled with identical trilevel houses from the ’60s. The challenge in staking out a location like this was to avoid being noticed by the owners of the others houses on the street, all of whom parked their cars in their driveways or garages. Since Josie hadn’t gone so far as renting the proverbial white paneled van with a “Bubba and Wayne’s Sewer and Drain” sign on the side, she hoped most people would be at work. Sitting in her Corolla for hours would draw attention.
She pulled up and parked across the street, slightly angled away from the giant picture window in the front of the Swanson home. The house was painted an aggressive blue, as if it were trying to be a Swedish flag without the yellow. The property seemed reasonably well cared for. A late-model black Ford Explorer sat in the drive, so she guessed Swanson was home. Josie took a peek through her binoculars to make sure she could see inside the picture window, then got herself settled in for a few hours of stultifying boredom.
She’d been on plenty of stakeouts. She and Bev often dealt with serial robbers—perps working either on their own or in groups. The thieves usually concentrated on one area of town before moving on to another. It was almost as if they’d mapped their campaign of cat burglary—start in Wrigleyville, hit Lincoln Park, and then invade the Gold Coast. Omaha Beach to Paris.
As Josie grew more manic the previous fall, keeping herself in one spot for any length of time made stakeouts intolerable for both her and Bev. Josie’s racing thoughts far outpaced her ability to communicate them, and when deprived of the freedom to move about, she talked constantly. It was impossible for Bev to keep up. No one else saw how ferocious Josie’s appetite was for everything, how certain she was she could do anything—catch criminals, pick up women, spend money, drink insatiably, climb Kilimanjaro. Her energy was infinite. Before Bev finally decided to take her concerns to her lieutenant, Josie was suspended for insubordination, in the form of that ill-advised pass in the ladies room. The superior officer in question, Commander Margaret “Tank” O’Neil, could also have played on the front line of the women’s professional football team, were she not sixty years old and fifty pounds overweight. The fact Josie tried to pick up O’Neil was her first clue something wasn’t right in her head.
During the drive to the suburbs, Josie picked up her phone and called Gabby to ask her to meet. She was a paramedic with the city and worked odd hours. She could meet Josie for an interview the following morning; she sounded like she’d expected the call. Then Josie tried Lauren’s office for the umpteenth time and got the same response from the centurion guarding her door—Ms. Wade would not be granting interviews to the press or anyone else. Getting to Lauren would take some stealth on Josie’s part. She opened her sandwich and settled back in her seat.
It was close to two hours later when she saw a figure clad in white enter the living room of the Swanson house. Josie grabbed her binoculars and saw a man dressed in martial arts clothing, lifting and moving furniture around to create more space in the center of the room. Too bad she didn’t have her camcorder on for that. By the time she’d started the camera and zoomed in, she could see him start exercises of some sort, his arms and legs blazing out from his solid stance. Josie glanced at the photo in the open file she had on Swanson and confirmed it was him. She figured the Bruce Lee imitation alone would do the job for Acme Insurance, but she decided to keep the camera on him a while longer. Swanson walked to the window and reached for the blind.
From the right side of the big window, Josie caught sight of someone entering the room. She swung the camera and saw a woman thirty to thirty-five years old and very attractive, except for the look of terror on her face. Before Josie could swing her camera back on Swanson, his bare foot entered the view and caught the woman square in the chest, throwing her against the wall behind her, where she sank to the floor. Without thinking, Josie threw down the camcorder, grabbed the Glock in her glove box, and ran toward the house. She could see Swanson picking the woman up off the floor as if setting her up for another knock-down blow.
Josie flew to the side door off the driveway and slowed enough to make her entrance as silent as possible. She could hear the woman screaming as Swanson made a loud guttural sound, followed by the thud of another blow finding its mark. She raced through the kitchen, into a short hall, and swung into the living room with her gun in both hands, steadily aimed at Bill Swanson’s chest.
“Get down on the floor, hands behind your head. Now!” barked Josie. She could see the incredulous look on Swanson’s face. He wasn’t able to process what was happening. Josie yelled out her order again and took one step closer. Swanson snarled.
“Who the fuck are you? You can’t come into my house.”
The woman was creeping backward, taking cover behind Josie.
“If you can get to a phone, call nine-one-one,” Josie said, not taking her eyes off Swanson. “And you get on the floor, facedown. I won’t ask again.”
This time Swanson took a step toward her. Josie moved her gun slightly and shot to his right, exploding a china cabinet full of Hummel figurines. It stopped Swanson in his tracks.
“Down on the ground or next time I won’t miss,” she said. Swanson quickly assumed the position. As far as she was concerned, he was a deadly weapon once he was close enough to hit her with a foot or hand. If she had to shoot him, she would.
Josie was without a lot of the things that made police work safer than the position she now found herself in. Handcuffs to disable the suspect, a radio, a Taser, and most of all, a partner. She kept her distance from Swanson but made sure his face was to the floor and his hands on his head. Then she glanced toward the door and saw the woman she assumed was Mrs. Swanson standing with a phone in her hand, looking like she was going to throw up. “They’re coming,” she managed to say before limping down the hall to a bathroom. Josie held her gun on Swanson, listening to her throw up and wondering how long this form of martial art domestic abuse had been going on. Finally, the local police showed up.
The Schaumburg police took her statement as well as her video of Bill Swanson in action, which pissed her off. She’d have to come back with a jump drive to get a copy to submit to Acme. She wanted the money and she wanted them to keep giving her work. There was a ruckus over the fact she’d fired her weapon, but the video confirmed her story, as did Mrs. Swanson. She was licensed to carry a gun, and being an ex-cop didn’t hurt. Being a private investigator didn’t help, since most cops distrusted them, but eventually they cut her loose.
Josie muttered to herself as she steered her car back to the city. It was midafternoon. Her agency had been open for four days and she’d already been hired in a murder case and discharged her weapon in a routine insurance matter. Greta would have a fit, though Josie had n
o intention of telling her of the day’s events. Nor would she mention how short on sleep she was. It’d been impossible to fall asleep last night, her excited mind moving back and forth between lining up her approach to the entire Lauren Wade case and to the pleasant evening she’d spent with Lucy. She contemplated the word “pleasant,” a word she sneered at as boring when in a manic state. Last night, pleasant felt exactly right as she and Lucy talked about their backgrounds, laughed a lot, and moved on to flirting by the end of the night. Josie felt for the first time her life might be more than battling her disease and working.
It wasn’t lost on her that this had come about suddenly. Her experience with meeting new women while manic was to have sex as soon as possible. Sometimes over consecutive days with the same woman, but usually only the once. When depressed, she had no interest in women at all. She barely had interest in living. All the talking she and Lucy had done the night before was a first, as far as she could remember. She wanted more of it. She picked up her phone and called.
Lucy picked up after what seemed like forty-nine rings of her phone.
“Hi. It’s Josie. I was beginning to think you had the only cell phone in the world without voicemail.”
Lucy laughed. “My phone’s always as far away from me as possible, or in the bottom of my purse. I set it up to give me a chance to take a call now and then. I would’ve missed yours.”
“I’d have called you back,” Josie said. She was drumming the steering wheel as she drove. “I thought I’d check in and thank you for the nice time last night.” She cringed. “Nice” always sounded like a backhanded compliment to her.
“It was a great time,” Lucy said, with some enthusiasm. “I’m so glad you called.”
“It’s been a strange day. I got into the middle of a situation and had to fire my gun.” She heard a soft gasp, which felt very satisfying.
“Are you okay?” Lucy asked anxiously.
“Yeah, I’m fine. Everyone’s fine. It was weird, though. I’ll have to tell you about it sometime.”
Josie swung onto the Kennedy Expressway toward downtown, which was already clogged with cars. “I’m really sorry your day involved shooting guns. That’s not something most people get to say,” Lucy said. “Is there anything I can do?”
There was the opening. Josie paused and then said, “I guess I wouldn’t mind some company this evening.”
“Do you mean my company? It’s hard to tell if that was even an invitation.” Lucy sounded like she was teasing, but Josie felt a little stung. She was really terrible at this.
“Yes, I meant you. Sorry for putting it so badly. Again.”
“Don’t be. I’m happy you asked. Let me bring some dinner over and you can tell me all about it,” Lucy said.
Bingo. “That would be nice.” There was that damn word again.
“Is there anything you don’t eat?” Loaded question. A year ago she’d have to say no, based on the fact she was ready to give Tank O’Neil a go.
“Raw oysters,” Josie said. “Though it’s unlikely you’d be bringing those over.”
“Not on the second date, anyway. It’s a little too suggestive, don’t you think?” Lucy was flirting. Josie was wondering about the concept of being suggestive. She’d never proposed anything as subtly suggestive as raw oysters. A hand up a skirt seemed to get the job done. Also, was this a second date? A horn blared as she absently cut into another lane. What happens on a second date?
Chapter Sixteen
“You’re not getting a ten-thousand-dollar advance on a book about towel origami,” Lauren said, giving her phone an exasperated look. She listened for a moment. “Okay, seven thousand. But I’m done.”
It was at least the fifth difficult negotiation she’d had that day. Her assistant Eva came through the door with a cup of tea in hand. Lauren moved to the sofa and coffee table where Eva put the tea down.
“Eva, does it seem like everyone is a son of a bitch lately?” Lauren kicked off her sensible heels and put her feet up. “I used to love negotiating.”
Eva pulled a chair closer to the table. “They’re trying to take advantage of your troubles.”
Lauren looked worried. “My troubles?”
“Yes, well, the trial, you know. The jail time.”
“That’s ridiculous. I was acquitted. I’ve moved on.”
“They are businessmen, Miss Wade. They’re by nature like wolves.”
“So they’re testing for weakness,” Lauren said, as if she weren’t perfectly aware of it. “Bastards.”
“Hmm.” Eva stood and turned to the door. “You keep doing what you’re doing. It’ll all blow over eventually.”
She left Lauren alone in the office. Sitting on the coffee table was a letter-sized envelope containing a request from the company’s board of directors for a public relations plan to minimize the impact of her trial for murder. No one seemed to understand the word “acquittal.”
She shut down her computer and got ready to leave for the day. It was five thirty, an absurdly early hour compared to her past schedule, when she loved nothing more than to work late into the evening. As she gathered her things, Eva opened the door.
“That private investigator called again. Third time today.” She sounded disgusted, as if she were getting robocalls from the Tea Party.
“You told her no interviews?” Lauren asked.
“Of course I told her no interviews,” Eva said, exasperated. “Those have always been your instructions.”
Lauren gave her a raised eyebrow but said nothing. She trusted Eva implicitly, but following instructions was perhaps not her strong suit. Eva’s devotion to Lauren was her main job skill.
Her VP of operations, David Schofeld, walked in behind Eva. David had been the interim head of the company while Lauren was in jail. He’d seemed relieved when she took the reins back from him. Tim had been VP of operations before Lauren fired him. David had done all of the work and reported to him while Tim took all the credit. Lauren was glad he hadn’t left the company before she’d had a chance to promote him. Tim’s abuse of his staff was well known, and no threat of Lauren’s seemed to make any difference to him. Their parents left the matter completely up to her to manage. They’d refused to intervene when Tim came running to them.
“Lauren, I’m glad I caught you,” David said.
“I hope this isn’t trouble,” she said warily.
“It may be.” He looked nervous. David was close to seven feet tall and generally had to bend down to have a conversation.
“Tell me, David. I’m not going to shoot the messenger.” If there was one thing she still felt strongly about, it was not alienating David. He was essential to keeping the company running, even with Lauren at her best.
“I just saw Tim leaving the building.”
“What?”
“Oh, Christ,” Eva muttered.
Tim had been unofficially banned from the premises and until now had stayed away. There was nothing good about his showing up now.
“What was he doing here?” Lauren asked.
David shrugged. “I couldn’t tell you. He was heading out the door with a group of women from marketing. You know how they always liked him down there.”
Lauren knew only too well. On the few occasions she’d gone down to the marketing VP’s office since firing Tim, she got nothing but daggers from half the women who worked there. In the past year, with half of it spent in the county jail, the company had become a giant eggshell Lauren was forced to walk on, stepping through a confused mess of hurt feelings and strong resentments. Tim was not without his own cadre of supporters.
She stood still, thinking furiously, as David stood inside the door, Eva still behind him.
“That brother of yours is never good news,” Eva said. “Maybe you should get a court order to keep him out of here.” David nodded agreement.
Lauren picked up her briefcase and started toward the door, knowing that was impossible. “I’ll think about that. And if either of y
ou hear anything else about him, be sure to tell me.” Lauren intended to talk to Tim about this as soon as she could reach him. She knew his only goal for being on the Wade-Fellows property was to sabotage her in some way or make her more fearful for her parents. He was always full of ideas.
David and Eva parted to let her through. Lauren was at the door of her outer office before she turned and said, “Thank you both. You two are my eyes and ears. Don’t think I don’t appreciate it.”
She saw them smile at each other as she turned into the hallway. She was not herself yet, not automatically polite and approachable. She had to think in order to behave properly. She supposed the jail time did that. She’d become as defensive and guarded there as anyone would. She’d somehow escaped any major difficulties, though the tension there was nearly unbearable. She was worn down with worries—about her parents, Tim, the board of directors, her reputation, Kelly’s murder. She tried to pat herself on the back for functioning at all, but she really wasn’t a daily affirmations type of person.
And who was that persistent private investigator? She’d been giving some thought to hiring another PI to try to find her parents, but the first time she tried it the tail had been picked up by Tim almost immediately. Her punishment, according to Tim, was to have food withheld from her parents for three days, which she had no reason to doubt he did. She was afraid another attempt would cause even greater harm.
In any event, this new PI had most likely been hired by a magazine to do background for some sort of exposé. She couldn’t think who else was interested in keeping the case alive. She climbed into her Lexus and headed home for an evening devoid of any pleasant distractions. Only unpleasant ones.
Chapter Seventeen
Lucy arrived at six, bearing two bags of Thai food and a liter of Diet Coke. Now she stood by Josie at the kitchen counter, glopping huge portions of Pad Thai onto their plates. They sat in the dining room and Josie lit a candle in the middle of the table. She wanted to do things right. She liked Lucy, who’d arrived wearing a skirt over a pair of skinny pants, a short jacket over a sweater over a gauzy shirt. Her hair was held up by some hidden structure that pushed her red curls up and out. Josie didn’t know what to make of it. Lucy seemed to be wearing every piece of clothing she owned. It would be a formidable challenge to take them all off.
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