by Ellle Parker
When I came back out a few minutes later, dressed in light slacks and a green silk shirt, she clapped her hands together and said, “Oh my, don’t you look handsome. I do like a man who’s a snappy dresser.”
She took me by the arm and led me to the table, pulling out a chair for me to sit down in, and taking a seat opposite. She leaned forward, chin in hand, and said, “Now, tell me all about yourself.”
“Not all that much to tell, ma’am.” I tore off a hunk of my cinnamon roll and buttered it. “I grew up in New York, went to school there, then got sick of the cold weather, so I came down here. I like it, so I’ve stayed here ever since.”
“And what do you do for a living? I bet it’s very exciting.”
I knew that was a standard line and it didn’t matter what I said. She’d claim to be incredibly impressed even if I told her I sorted bolts, but I really hated to sound like I was playing into it. Besides, I hadn’t exactly been honest with Adele about my job. If she didn’t want floozies traipsing through her building, I didn’t think she’d be too keen on having a P.I. there, either.
“I’m kind of a personal consultant,” I said. “I help people sort out problems.”
“My goodness, that sounds very interesting,” she said, right on cue. “You must be a very clever man.” The coy smile she gave me was right out of the Southern belle handbook, and I had to admit she wasn’t at all bad to look at even if she was about twenty years out of my range.
I shrugged and took a sip of coffee. “I guess I have a knack for figuring things out. You learn to be pretty street smart when you grow up in a city like New York.”
“I’ll just bet.”
“What about you?” I asked. “This doesn’t seem like the sort of place one would find a classy belle such as yourself living. How did you end up here?”
“Oh, I used to live in a much fancier apartment when I was married, but you know how it is when you’re single and living off a limited income,” she said offhandedly. She deflected further questions by busying herself with fetching more coffee. “Besides, I like the ladies who live here. We’ve all gotten to be quite good friends over the years.”
In the kitchen, she happened to glance out the front window and squealed with delight. “What a wonderful car. Is that yours? I just love Mustangs, I think it’s such a masculine car.”
I chuckled. “Her name is Matilda.”
That brought peals of girlish laughter and she came back to sit down at the table. “What a quaint name for your car. I think I like that very much. You’ll have to take me for a ride with the top down sometime.”
The tone of her voice left me in no doubt about the thinly veiled innuendo, and I’m not sure, but I think I blushed. I must have, because she laughed out loud and said, “Oh honey, I am going to enjoy having you around here.”
“Say, since you’re here,” I said, “do you know what’s going to happen with the storefront downstairs? Does Adele have any plans for it?”
She looked curious. “None that I know of. We just use it for a little extra storage. Why? Are you interested in it?”
“I was thinking it might make a good office. My old one is getting torn down along with my apartment building.”
“That’s a shame. Well, having your office right here would be very handy, wouldn’t it?” She beamed, and I could tell she was already thinking she’d be able to drop by any time she liked. I’d have to set things up so she could only do that when I wanted her to, and not when it might compromise a client. Aside from that, I wouldn’t mind a dishy broad bringing me lunch once in a while.
“That’s what I was thinking,” I said. “I’m not in the office all the time, but having it close to home makes things easier.”
The beeping of my cellphone drifted in from the bedroom, and I excused myself to go answer it. I glanced at the screen as I picked it up and saw I had a message from one of the insurance agencies I do work for. That could wait.
When I went back out, Della had cleaned up the dishes from brunch and was drying off her plate. “Well, Dino, it’s been just lovely getting to chat with you, but I think I better go, now, and let you get to work. I wouldn’t want to keep you from your clients. I do hope we can do this again some time.”
I told her I’d like that, and I meant it too. I’ve got nothing against playing a little cat-and-mouse with a brassy chick who knows what she’s doing. Nine times out of ten, it’s just the flirting they’re after anyway.
After Della left, I got my keys and wallet and went downstairs. I remembered the message, and while I was listening to my voicemail, I took a minute to check out my new home some more. There was a small patio off the side of the building with a table, chairs, umbrella, and a teeny grill on a bench. There was also a coffee can half full of sand and cigarette butts. This was all outside the windows and side door of what I assumed was Adele’s apartment. It was kind of a cute set up, if somewhat plain.
The voicemail from the insurance agent sounded like a pretty decent job, so I added them to my list of stops. I was about to get in my car when I noticed Adele walking back from the Winn Dixie with a plastic shopping bag. I waved.
“Adele,” I said jovially. “Just the woman I wanted to see.”
She eyed me. “Is that so?”
“It is indeed. I have a question for you.”
“And what would that be?” She took a pack of cigarettes out of her pocket and shook one out, sticking it in her lips while she felt for a lighter.
“I was wondering if the storefront here might be available for rent as well? I’m in the market for an office, and I was thinking that space might work out for me.”
She took a long drag while she appeared to consider it, blowing smoke up toward the sky. “Well now, I don’t know exactly. We’ve got some things in there we’re storing. I’m not sure what we’d do with that. Tell you what, let’s go see what it looks like.”
She had me wait while she got the keys, and we went into the shop through a side door connecting with the hall. It was essentially a large room with a couple of offices in back. The air was stale and smelled like dust. The floor was littered with scraps of paper, old price tags, and the odd cigarette butt. Brown grime covered the windows and filtered the sunlight, making it hazy.
I wandered through the room, looking at the furniture and old cardboard boxes scattered around, and turned back to Adele. “You know, I don’t need all that much space. If you let me build a couple of walls in here, you could still use part of it for storage. This stuff is kind of spread out, and if it were arranged better it would fit in a much smaller area.”
“Hmm,” she said, thoughtfully. Streams of smoke blew out her nose. “You’d have to do the work. And the cleaning. We’re not interested in getting this place all fixed up for you.”
“Of course not, ma’am, I’m sure I could arrange to have all the work done.” She sounded skeptical, but there wasn’t more than a couple days’ work involved. “You wouldn’t have to be troubled with it at all, other than to approve the plans.”
She nodded and flicked her ash on the floor. “I’ll have to talk it over with my sister-in-law, Fern, and see what the other girls think. Don’t know what we’d charge for the rent yet. Have to figure that out.”
“Why don’t you do that,” I told her as I picked my way back over to her. “Maybe let me know in a day or two? If you think it’ll work out, I’d like to get started right away.”
“All right. We’ll see what we can come up with.”
As she walked out, I said, “Hey, Adele, can I bum a smoke off you?”
“Yeah, sure.” She pulled the pack out of her sweater, shook a couple loose and held it out for me to take one. “Need a light?”
“I have one. Thanks,” I told her, reaching in my pocket for a book of matches. I try to always carry one, because you never know when they might come in handy.
On my way out to the car, I flipped open my phone and dialed Seth’s number. He answered with, “Talk dirty to m
e.”
“Okay,” I said. “How does an afternoon spent getting all hot and sweaty grab you?”
“Dude, that’s not bad. We might just make a pervert out of you yet. What did you have in mind?” The tone of his voice was pure sex, and I think I blushed for the second time that morning.
I gave myself a shake and said, “I think Adele will rent me that storefront for an office, and I need your help cleaning it up and building a couple walls.”
“Oh, you were so close.”
“Yeah, yeah. Can I count on you?”
“Sure. I have a few accounts I could use help collecting on, you take care of that for me and we’ll call it even.”
Later that evening, I returned home with a bag of actual groceries since my food supply was in dire straits and I’d been overdosing on the takeout lately.
Inside the entryway, the smell of pot roast was so strong I started to drool immediately. My stomach growled, and I was glad I had food with me. Before I could reach the stairs, Della came sweeping down them with a china bowl in her hand. “Why, sugar, what a lovely surprise! You’re just in time for supper. Come with me.”
“Oh, no thanks, Della. I don’t want to impose.”
“Nonsense, honey, we’re having a little dinner party, and it just wouldn’t be complete without our newest tenant.” She took me by the arm and pulled me down the hall to Adele’s apartment with a smooth style that didn’t brook resistance. So I didn’t try.
I let her lead me through the living room into the dining room and kitchen area, where there was a cozy scene. They had Glen Miller playing on the record player while Ruth and another old woman fussed around in the kitchen making salad and mashed potatoes. Adele sat at the counter with a drink and a cigarette, telling some story about her late husband and how men are. The table was set with old-fashioned china, nice silverware and a pot of flowers. I smiled and felt like I was a kid back home in New York with Ma and my grandma cooking Sunday dinner.
“Look what I found, girls,” Della announced with a broad smile. “Shall we set another place at the table?”
Ruth turned around, sucking mashed potatoes off her thumb, and lit up. “Mr. Martini, what a nice surprise. Yes, please stay, we have a ton of food here.”
Ruth had silver gray hair cut short in a man’s style, rimless glasses, and wore jeans and a plain sweater. She looked like the type to ride her bicycle everywhere and she was probably in better shape than I was.
The other woman, a powder-faced lady older than any of them, looked fairly sour at the prospect of a strange man joining the party. I assumed she must be Fern.
Adele said, “Sure, come on in, I’ll make you a drink. What’s your poison?”
This was old-fashioned entertaining of the kind they just don’t do anymore, and it wouldn’t have taken much to make me believe I’d stepped back about forty-five years. I think I fell in love on the spot.
“You know, ladies, I would be honored to join you. Just let me go upstairs and put my groceries away.”
There was a chorus of approval from all but Fern, so I took my bag up to my apartment and grabbed a bottle of wine and the last of my Disaronno. I know what’s expected of men at dinner parties like these—they bring liquor and they flatter ladies. And I was in a mood to flatter ladies.
When I returned, they had Peggy Lee playing and they were putting dinner on the table. Fern was just taking a pan of white rolls out of the oven, and my stomach growled at the smell of fresh bread.
I looked at Adele. “Do you have a corkscrew?”
She nodded and crushed out her cigarette, coming around into the kitchen to get one.
“Oh, how lovely,” Della said, clasping her hands.
I opened the wine while Ruth plopped butter on top of a bowl of steaming green beans, and Fern poured dressing over the salad, tossing it before passing it to Della. There was a Key Lime pie on the counter next to the sink.
Adele put out wine glasses, and I went to pour, but Della stepped into my path. She fondled the lapels of my suit jacket. “Don’t you just look sharp as a tack,” she purred. “You’ll dress up this little party very nicely.”
Adele rolled her eyes. “Wipe the drool off your chin and sit down.”
Della shot a look over her shoulder. “God made men good lookin’ so we could appreciate them. It would be rude not to.” She turned back to me and gave my jacket a little tug. “Would you like me to hang this up for you?”
“Thanks,” I said and let her slip it off me, switching hands with the wine to get my arms out of the sleeves.
I filled the glasses while Adele and Ruth went to the table, then I held a chair for Della who smiled and sat down like a queen. Fern came shuffling out of the kitchen with a big platter of sliced pot roast, which I offered to take for her. She scowled, but she let me, so I figured I was making progress. When I held a chair for her too, I’m sure I saw her flick a suspicious glance at me.
Dinner itself was a marvelous affair, with swinging music, good conversation, and amazing home cooked food. I made a silent toast to the guy who tore down my old place and thought maybe he’d done me a favor.
I learned a lot about the quartet. Adele was originally from Jersey, and Fern was her sister-in-law. Adele and her husband had moved to Florida for his health shortly after they married, and opened the hardware store. When Adele’s brother Walt died, Fern came to live with them, and when Adele’s Henry passed away, they closed up the shop and rented out apartments.
Ruth had been an Economics professor in Pennsylvania, but was now retired and spent a lot of her time traveling. Like the others, her husband was long gone, but she’d divorced him in her forties.
Della was born and raised in South Carolina and had also come to Florida with her husband when he retired. She didn’t say so, but I gathered they had come from money, and living in an apartment above an old hardware store was most definitely not the style to which she’d become accustomed. To her credit, that didn’t seem to squash her spirit in the slightest.
After dinner, Fern served pie. I got up to pour myself a glass of amaretto and offered some to the ladies.
“My, how elegant,” Della said, coyly holding out a glass of ice.
Ruth looked amused. “You are an interesting man, Mr. Martini,” she said, but accepted a glass as well.
“You can call me Dino,” I said.
She smiled and nodded.
Adele passed in favor of bourbon and water, and we all sat down again.
Then Ruth asked the thousand dollar question. “So, Della says you’re a consultant? What kind of work do you do?”
“Yeah, interesting story there.” I studied the ice in my glass and figured it was time to come clean. “That is the truth, but not the whole truth. What I am is a private eye.”
“Oh, go on,” said Della waving a hand at me.
I grinned and took out my wallet to show her my P.I.’s license.
She looked it over and said, “Very sexy!”
Yeah, okay, it wouldn’t be the first time I got a kick out of impressing someone with it, and I’m sure it won’t be the last. Sue me.
Adele, on the other hand, looked a little ticked off, and she pointed at me with the two fingers clutching her latest cigarette. “That’s what you want to use the storefront for,” she said, “and have a bunch of thugs running in and out of here like a Mickey Spillane movie?”
I tried my very best placating smile on her. “It’s not like that, I swear. It’s mostly very run of the mill stuff,” I said, and I told her about the lawyers and the insurance agents and the sweet, elderly ladies who just wanted little Jimmy from the old neighborhood to have something to remember them by.
“You can really lay the crap on thick, can’t you?” she said.
“Yes, ma’am. Comes with the job. I got top marks in my crap spreading class.” I grinned, because she was, and added, “But I’m serious when I tell you I have almost never had an incident at home I would call at all dangerous. Mostly it’s
just pissed off husbands who want to take a piece out of me for telling their wives they’re cheaters.”
“My goodness,” said Della, fanning herself with her napkin.
“And what do you do about that?” Ruth asked.
I leaned back in my chair and smiled. “I’m a charming guy. I just explain to them how it’s all better off this way, and she was gonna find out anyway, and that really I’ve done them a favor.”
She leveled her gaze on me and said, “And if that doesn’t work?”
“I knock ’em on their asses and threaten them with police action or blackmail, whichever I think will scare them the most. That usually does the trick.”
Fern looked positively scandalized, but the rest of these ladies had been around the block a few times, and I got a sense that while on the one hand they were concerned about safety and the sanctity of their homes, on the other, they were all thinking that having a resident P.I. would be a kick.
“Ladies, please, you won’t even know I’m here unless I get hungry and come looking for more pot roast.”
Della giggled, and Adele said, “All right. You can set up shop, but you piss me off and you’re out of here.”
“I already assumed that was a given, ma’am.”
“And cut the ma’am bullshit.” She got up and poured herself another drink, and offered me one, which I accepted.
“I’ll try,” I said, “but where I was raised, ladies hurt you if you don’t show them the proper respect.”
They all laughed, and we sat around the table trading stories while Adele and I smoked and Della and Ruth polished off the wine. Fern didn’t say all that much, but she sat and enjoyed her coffee and listened. Around eleven o’clock, I secured myself in their good graces by rolling up my sleeves and offering to help with the dishes. I know what side my bread is buttered on, and even Fern seemed to appreciate me as she snapped instructions on how she wanted her china washed and I followed them to the letter.
Chapter 4
I was up early the next day, feeling antsy and ready to get back into the regular swing of work. I’d been neglecting things for the past few days and needed to catch up.