by V. P. Trick
Damn. She was back thinking about the case. Ah. Well, on that note, could she work undercover as a diner waitress? Yes. And if she worked part-time, she wouldn’t have to tell anyone. Although, with two murders in two years at two different diners, she would have to be undercover for years before she found any leads.
Memo to myself: I have resigned, haven’t I? She sighed and frowned and smirked. Yes, she had quit. And the Big guy had let her, knowing full well she wouldn’t last, damn him. How could she, Lemieux had been her friend, her lover? She had held the diner girl under the rain. She had to see those two cases to the end.
Surely, it was possible to do the filing and hanging around the office part without the finding and-or smelling dead bodies. How to get back on the team? She needed to convince Christopher. Yes, he was going to be furious, but so was she. Why on earth had he let her go from the team?
Diner’s Club
A simple enough goal: find a way to get rehired. Officially she was not, or rather had not been working for the team, but had occupied a filing clerk position. As a loan from Central (and on Central’s payroll), she officially worked as a filing clerk. Amongst her job’s benefits, she received Christopher’s permission to access one cold case at a time.
She had not done much filing in her months of work, she smiled at herself; Bridget, Christopher’s secretary, always claimed she didn’t need help with filing. Not that Patricia would have minded the filing, she had plenty of free time in-between her reading her cold case, her snooping around, her suspensions, her throwing up, her dead discoveries. Damn.
Why do I want to go back again? She enjoyed reading the cold files, the older, the better. No pressure, she read the data over and over, went visiting crime scenes long ago cleansed of blood and foul odours, chatted with the personnages involved.
The clerk position was a major improvement from before at the Archives. She received no visits over there; could rarely go sightseeing, and never personally made contact with the characters in the Archives files. Her job at Christopher’s precinct was different: the people she met as a filing clerk were interesting, or scary, but never dull.
She considered it a bonus when she successfully tricked one of the guys into taking her out (officially or not). Each officer on the team had his own style, each reacted differently, eliciting chain reactions at times. A chain reaction was what she needed now, to help with her rehiring. Her imagination didn’t run as wild as picturing Christopher begging, but a little pleading would be nice. Vraiment. Like that was going to happen.
Christopher had already called twice to check up on her. Overprotective. Nice. Since Lemieux remained an overly explosive subject between them, her best way back in was with the cold case diner girl. As there was no chance in heck of her going back to the second restaurant, she focused on the first diner. That was where her cold case had started after all. How about lunch? It was what she had intended to do, before the rain, the dead girl and the damn library.
Her shoulder didn’t hurt anymore, or so she told herself. She felt more of a numbness than excruciating pain. When she tucked her hand in her pocket, it took the weight of her arm off her shoulder; walking thus wasn’t too uncomfortable. She reached the restaurant at noon, right in the middle of rush hour. She had to wait ten minutes for a stool at the counter. The staff was the same as on her previous visit.
The waitress took a few minutes to get to her, giving her time to watch the customers come and go. “I’ll have a double order of fries and a small salad. Thank you.”
Thank God for the fries. The salad bowl the waitress sat in front of her was disappointing. She sprinkled her greasy golden crisp fries with salt and pepper and ate them one at a time but barely touched her salad. Every place in town served salads these days, but not all of them pulled it off. If traces of rust showed on the lettuce, if the cucumbers weren’t crisp, if the tomatoes weren’t firm, if no other veggies spiced up the salad, one shouldn’t serve salads. Let it be soup instead.
She ordered a slice of homemade sugar pie for dessert. Calories weren’t an issue; she intended to walk back too. Had it been raining, snowing or a mix of the two, she still would have had the fries and the pie. Medicine. The dessert was spectacular. The waitress offered her a glass of milk to go with it.
It would have been better with red wine but as a rule, Patricia never had red wine in a place where they couldn’t make salads. One of her many rules that always proved themselves right. The place got quiet around two. Wow. Had she just spent two hours eating fries and a slice of pie? Then again, it wasn’t like she had anything else to do. She didn’t have a job yet.
No, writing was not a job. It was something she did. Storytelling was a visceral urge, almost like breathing. Either she wrote or else she turned crazy mad. Making a living out of it was a bonus, icing on the cake (and in the last years, the icing had become pretty thick). Life was grand. Except for her not having a job. A regular job, one where no one harassed anyone, one where no one was dead, just a damn ordinary job like any normal person. She needed to come up with something fast before that infuriating man hired someone else to do the filing that there wasn’t enough of to begin with.
“Hi, sweetie,” she said as she waved the waitress over. “Do you remember me from the other day?”
“Sure. You’re that lady writer.”
A decade of writing and she still found it surprising when people remembered her, not because of her personality or her looks, but because she was a writer. However unknown or unread she was to them, her writer personae’s research and interviews made her memorable to most people, and if she turned on the charm, well, she often got away with a surprising lot. During a Monday meeting, she had once gone as far as offered to lead the pre-interviews. The team had stared her down with affronted glares while Christopher had laughed, grumbling something about ‘entrapment and court admissibility’ nonsense.
“You and the team do it often enough. Anything for a case, Big guy, remember?”
“As yourself or in any one of fucking alter ego writer disguises, I don’t want you anywhere near a real case, Princess.” Whatever.
She did not consider cold cases to be real anymore.
The waitress introduced her to the cook and his helper. They were kind enough to recount the events of the murder as they remembered it. The cook was defensive at first, but she smiled, cooed, took the time to visit the kitchen, listened as he explained his job, showing the right amount of interest and admiration at his effectiveness.
“How can you prepare so many orders in such a short time? Rush hour was mad earlier, and you guys handle it as if it was nothing. The food was perfect. The fries! I had two orders.” She kept her critique on the salad to herself. “And the pie! Simply delicious.”
That finally got the cook. “My wife makes the pies.”
“Does she? All of them? How wonderful. Please do tell her she’s a wonderful cook.” A bit thick, but the cook bought the pie delirium. Or perhaps it was her hand that hovered on his forearm by that time, she couldn’t tell. To be sure, she left her hand a little longer. Hovering was not touching; she never touched but the clothing. Her hand was light, her fingertips barely rubbing the fabric.
She even got the cook to open up a little about the police questioning. By that time, she was convinced the man didn’t have anything to do with the girl’s death. One couldn’t be a murderer when one got happy about a pie compliment to one’s wife. The police must have reached the same conclusion. Understandably, it had taken the cops longer, Patricia knew for a fact police officers often lacked imagination in such things.
The helper was a lot easier. A single man probably. Maybe she should suggest he asked the waitress out; he didn’t look much older than she was. His story was short. Left early, no theories. Boring.
The cook also volunteered information on other staff members. The neighbourhood. The clientele. The store owner. Patricia left with two new ‘threads’, namely the next door’s store owner and an ex-wai
tress’s new place of work; both looked promising for her storyline.
Since the shop was closed on Monday, and the ex-waitress worked the early morning shift, four to eleven, Patricia decided she had done enough for the day. She left around four but didn’t get back to her place until six. The walk back wasn’t all that fun.
At first, she strolled the diner’s neighbourhood, reflecting on what she had learned over her work lunch, but as she walked, the pain in her shoulder returned. When she marched briskly, her arm swayed, worsening the pain. Midway, she took the bus, but since by now, the city was in the throes of rush hour, the bus was packed. People pushed, people squeezed, and her shoulder worsened. Wincing in pain, she got out after only five blocks to sit on a bench, alone, until the pain lessened, telling herself it was only a bruise, no big deal. She walked two more blocks and gave up. It took another fifteen minutes to flag a cab and with all the traffic, it took the cab a good half hour to get to the hotel. When she arrived, she had a throbbing headache to go with the pain, and a very lousy mood to enhance the two.
Christopher was having a drink with Luis, the barman. He had taken the stool at the farthest end of the counter, his usual observation post, so he could watch the entrance in case some maniac ran in guns blazing or something. Or maybe he just wanted to see her arrive through the door, that stool being the only one where he could study the bar door and the cars turning in front of the hotel simultaneously.
She had seen him sitting there inside the cab had turned in front of the hotel. And yes, she was tempted, for a mere nanosecond mind you, to go hide under her bed covers, but, unfortunately, she remembered she was a mature adult. Besides, it could be he was here to plead her to take the job back. Or not.
She clearly saw his mouth twitch as she entered the bar. How could he know she was in a bad mood just by looking at her? Truly infuriating. She was in not in the proper frame of mind to tolerate his perceptiveness. She needed alcohol to numb the pain and gallons of it to kill it.
“Hi, Big guy. What are you having?” Dumb question. He already had a glass of scotch in front of him.
He smiled back at her, that infuriatingly sexy crooked grin of his. She was in no mood for that either. “Hi to you too, Princess. Good day? How’s your shoulder?”
He knew how her damn shoulder was! Hadn’t he been in enough fights to know how it was?! He was just rubbing it in, damn him. And why didn’t he look tired? He should, he had barely slept last night. As she just now recalled that she too had barely slept last night, she suddenly felt exhausted. “Day was OK. Shoulder was OK.” Past tense, hence no lies there. “How about having another scotch while I have a glass of wine?”
“I don’t think wine’s a good idea. Ice would be better.” Overprotective again. She was in no mood for that either.
She smiled at Luis sweetly. “Could you put an ice cube in my glass, please?” She heard Christopher sigh. She didn’t have to look at him to know that he was still smiling.
“That bad is it, Pussycat?”
Don’t push it, Big guy, remember your damn pussycat is not declawed. “Hmmm.” The moan escaped her; the wine tasted sooo good. She had not realised how thirsty she was. She pretended the ice cube helped with the thirst. She drained her glass rapidly, maybe a little too fast, and had to order another (no ice, the thirst had gone now) while she waited as Christopher emptied his.
He frowned, but if he had comments, he wisely kept them to himself.
“And how was your day?” She asked belatedly, and with some irritation. For sure his day had been fine; he, for one, had a real job.
“Hell.” Nice to know. Perhaps the filing was getting out of hand. “I had a talk with Charles,” Oh no. She held her breath. “We agreed he would finish the investigation before we make a final decision.” She let out a relieved sigh as Christopher put his hand to her cheek and traced her lips with his thumb. “Darling Angel,” he said very softly. “I told Charles that if he ever goes anywhere with you without telling me, I’m going to make sure he’s back doing traffic. Permanently.”
“You didn’t!” Christopher had such a devious attitude yet such a sexy smile.
“My exact words.”
Damn. Charles wouldn’t take her anywhere now, no matter how depressed he was. In any case, she wouldn’t ask him; she was not going to make him lose his dream job because of her. She was damned both ways. And for sure Christopher had her figured out. OK, she reminded herself, she was not going near Lemieux’s case again. Never. Jamais. Besides, if need be, she could ask someone else to take her to the store owner. Maybe. “OK, Christopher.”
“OK? Just like that, Princess? No arguments, no grand declaration about how it wasn’t the rookie’s fault, about how great he was? You must truly be in pain.” The infuriating man’s widened through his tirade.
The guy was a sadist, but she had no fight left in her, the wine and the lack of sleep were getting to her. Her headache had disappeared, though, chased by the dazing pain probably. She would appreciate some of that overprotectiveness of his right about now. “Perhaps we could go upstairs and have a long, relaxing bath before dinner, how about that, Big guy?”
“You lead the way, Pussycat.”
Up in her suite, he helped her strip to her underwear in the bathroom. Her contusion was now a dark blue.
“Impressive, Angel. The colour’s almost as deep as your eyes. You know. When I turn you on.”
How delicate of him, the jerk! She almost frowned at him, but the walk back had drained her. “Just start the water running.”
“Hot water won’t do any good. The bruise might swell.” No way was she having a cold bath. “Come on, Dollface, from the looks of you, it’s past your bedtime.”
He pushed her gently toward the bedroom. A bucket of half-melted ice sat on the nightstand. She wanted to shrug but had no energy left. After she had slid under the covers, he wrapped ice in a towel and gently fastened the bundle to her shoulder.
“We still need to talk.” Funny how he always wanted to talk about police stuff. “We’ll talk tomorrow when you’re in a better shape.”
She might have missed that last part because she was already asleep.
He got a sandwich from downstairs and watched the game until eleven before joining her. His face buried in her hair, he had a dreamless night. She did not.
PI Unlimited: Sunday Night
He studied her. She glared back. He was searching; where had he seen her before? She knew but could not move. No, of course not. He was looking at her while she was staring at him. The rain fell on his face, but he took no notice. The rain ran down her face, in her eyes; she pushed her hair back.
He remembered her. So young. He remembered making her sleep, making her dream of him. How could that be that she was here? He would make her sleep again, keep her to himself.
She too was looking at him. She, the third side of the triangle unnoticed by the two. Rain on her head, in her eyes. Or was it tears? Could it be that she had it? Could it be that she had him?
Her lover had talked of the triangle. Means. Motives. Opportunities.
“Look for common links,” he had said.
She had very few threads. The diners. The rain. The girls. She wanted to write the scene, set it up. Dozens of small restaurants. Hundreds of girls. Had there been only half as many restaurants, only fifty, it would still have been too much. She narrowed it down. The diners were near, no more than seven blocks apart. She sliced up the city and circled the ten or so that were closer to the two crime scenes.
She surveyed the sites, made contacts and listed all personnel. She drew up maps. Visited neighbourhoods and back alleys. Then, she installed surveillance systems and waited. She was ready.
She took other cases. Helped other people. One year. She moved in with Jeremy, her lover of a cop. Two years. She was now more specialised now. Yes, even female PI specialised. The word got out she was patient. Three years.
It started to rain. The alarm she had linked to her cellula
r phone blared. She turned the ringing off right away. Of the ten original diners, two were now closed. Another three she had taken off the list for no young college girls worked there these days. And she added one restaurant that had opened earlier in the year. Hence, the total of diners under the Sunday night rain came to six.
But, of those six, only two had a college girl waitressing tonight. Only two. She could have let the surveillance cameras do their work. She could have remained in front of her screens and waited. Three years she had been waiting. This evening was not the first time in those years she had sat in front of her screens, holding her phone as she awaited the alarm. Each rainy Sunday night she had.
She could have flipped a coin. She could have flipped with one of the girls. She did not. She went and hid in the back alley, concealed behind the bulky trash container since two, three hours before closing. She had asked he did the same. She would have pleaded but did not have to. Tonight was one of the reasons they liked each other so; Jeremy was a good man. He was most definitely not an ape.
Jeremy too stood in the rain. Hidden by the waste container, concealed just as his Princess Jane was. He hoped it would not happen yet hoped it would so she could rest. He hoped it would be his restaurant.
The girl came out. She carried two trash bags. Heavy. They were pulling at her arms. She half-carried, half-dragged the bags toward the container. Toward her. Toward him.
He had walked so silently; she had not heard him approach, focused as she was on the college girl. This one was a brunette. Not that it would make a difference. She was young. She was in college.
She watched the man approached. She was not afraid. Neither was the girl. Did she know the man?