by N.L. Wilson
When my buzzer rang, I pushed the button to unlock the door without bothering to ask who it was. Yes, it could have been a mass murderer or burglar or someone selling salvation door-to-door, but the way I was feeling, any of the above would do. I’d tear a strip off them a foot wide.
Of course, it was Dylan.
I’d grabbed a change of clothes out of the small dryer—jeans and an oversized t-shirt. After having seen me in my birthday suit with only a sheet over my butt, I wanted to show him something as far away from that vision as possible. I was just coming out of the bedroom, baretting my hair high on my head, when he let himself in the unlocked door. I could tell instantly that something was wrong.
“What is it?”
Juggling the McFood he’d picked up for our lunch, he pulled a letter from his back pocket and handed it to me. An official looking letter, from the law offices of Constantine, Trodbridge and Poole.
“Shit.” I tore it open and read it quickly. I could feel the tension in my jaw as I finished.
“What is it, Dix?”
“Apparently, Mr. Jeremy Poole has convinced the court that I’m a threat to his client.”
“What?”
“It’s a restraining order. I’m to stay at least a hundred yards away from Ned Weatherby, the Weatherby residence and Weatherby’s office at all times.”
I fell onto the sofa. I could feel the headache coming.
I looked at the damn document again. Dated today. Signed: Judge Stella Q. Stephanapoulis. Ordering me to stay away from Ned Weatherby and his home and business.
I’m not one to feel sorry for myself. I have never labored under the illusion that life was fair. But holy shit, this was so wrong! How was I supposed to investigate, to clear my name, if I couldn’t even access one of the main suspects?
“How about this, Dix?”
“How about what?”
Kicking off his boots, Dylan walked into the dining room with the fast food. “Dix Dodd: call if your man is missing in action, or you’re missing his action.”
“What?” I followed him to the dining room table.
“Yeah, that wasn’t my favorite, either. Let me run this one by you, then.” He cleared his throat. “When the men are being pricks, it’s time to call Dix.”
I groaned, rolled my eyes.
“Come on, Dix! I have to order the business cards next week.”
“Why?”
“Because we’ll need them.”
I had to admire his faith in me. More and more I was concluding that there wouldn’t be a business by next week.
“Let me think it over, Dylan,” I said, to pacify him.
“Oh, you liked one of those? Nicccce.”
“No,” I said. “They both suckkkked.”
“That’s it!” Dylan shouted. “Pay us the bucks if you think your guy sucks... and we’ll find out if you’re right!” He said it in a singsong voice that sounded more like he was planning business cards for Dr. Seuss rather than a private detective currently specializing in busting cheating men.
“That sucks too.”
He shrugged. “Yeah. But I’m not giving up on this, Dix.”
Knowing his way around my apartment, Dylan deposited the burgers, fries and shakes (his strawberry, mine chocolate) on the dining room table. I pushed the pile of accumulated newspapers, magazines and un-ironed clothes (are there any other kind?) aside.
We sat to eat, but neither of us did so with much enthusiasm.
“I don’t understand it.” I chewed on a salty fry. “If Jennifer Weatherby kept her appointment, at the spa, then it can’t have been her who hired me. And if that wasn’t Jennifer who came to the office, then who was it?”
“There doesn’t appear to be any if about it.” Dylan reached inside his leather jacket and pulled out a rolled up copy of today’s Marport City Morning Edition.
I took the paper from him, and there above the fold was a picture of Jennifer Weatherby.
Dammit. The fry I’d just swallowed turned leaden in my stomach. The women smiling back at me looked nothing like the woman who’d hired me. Now that I thought about it, even as her dead body had lain sprawled on that Persian rug, she hadn’t looked anything like the woman who’d hired me.
“I’m a fucking idiot.”
“I wouldn’t say that, Dix.”
“Oh, come on! That pantsuit, Dylan. The one she was wearing when she got plugged. It was definitely a quality garment, tasteful, understated, expensive. Jesus, why didn’t I see it sooner?”
“You were upset,” he said soothingly. “We all were. And you didn’t see her face. I mean, you told the cops she was face down when you found her, right?”
Well, he was right about that. My first instinct had been to roll the victim over and do CPR, but one touch of that cold flesh and I’d known the woman was beyond help. And I’d had no desire for a closer look at death. Still, there were other things I should have noticed.
“No, I didn’t see her face, but her clothing—I should have twigged to it then.” My eyes widened as I remembered another detail. “And her shoe! For God’s sake, it was right there in front of me! She’d lost one of her shoes, and it was normal-sized. Well, a little on the big side, maybe—a size 10, maybe—but nothing like the purple canoes that imposter bitch wore.”
“Don’t beat yourself up,” Dylan advised. “Besides, maybe it’s a good thing you didn’t know. Maybe if you’d told the cops that, it might have gone even worse for you. I doubt if your favorite detective would have believed you, for starters.”
Dylan was right. I really wasn’t any worse off than I’d been before. And at least now we had another piece of the puzzle. “You’re right.” I tossed the newspaper and picked up my fries again. “So, Jennifer kept her spa appointment last Monday, but what about all the other Mondays she cancelled? What’s with that? She paid in advance to keep the appointments. Heck, she tipped in advance. But then she cancelled without seeking refunds. I know money is no object to the Weatherbys, but shit, that’s not a cheap place.”
“Covering her ass?”
“That’d make sense if she was having an affair. Pretty smart, actually. All she’d have to do is show the receipts and debits on the accounts to prove to Ned she was at the Bombay.”
“If they had a joint banking account or credit card account, Ned would see the transaction going through every week and have nothing to suspect.”
“And...” I raised a salty french fry as I concluded the point. “Whoever was in our office posing as Jennifer Weatherby... maybe they knew this too. That Jennifer was at the Bombay on Mondays. So...”
Dylan’s eyes widened. “So—holy shit!—they set us up.”
Us. Yes, I caught that. Amazing how comforting “us” sounds when your ass is in a sling.
And dammit, Dylan was bang on. I’d been set up, all right. That, of course, put a whole new spoon into the pot. And the pot was getting so freakin’ full already! “Shit, shit, shit!”
“Hold on, Dix. Let’s not get too carried away.”
Technically, he was right, but I didn’t want to waste a good pissed off. “What the hell is it with people?” I ranted. “Okay, fine, I know I’ve made my fair share of enemies since I’ve been in business, but I only ever caught red-handed those with red hands.”
“Huh?”
“Oh, you know what I mean.”
“Dix, we don’t know that this is about us. We still have to assume it’s about Weatherby.”
Okay, he had a point. Nobody would kill someone solely for the purpose of framing me, no matter how much they disliked me. Or if they did, they’d pick a victim I actually knew, someone I cared about one way or another, to make the frame job more plausible.
“Let’s take the facts one at a time,” he said. “What we do know is that the Flashing Fashion Queen who came to you posing as Jennifer Weatherby was not Jennifer Weatherby.”
Dylan stood and took his milkshake with him over to the whiteboard I’d propped up on a dining roo
m chair. He drew one of his famous stick figures on the board, and we started filling in the details. About five ten in low heels, dressed horribly, a purse full of feminine hygiene products and five thousand dollars in cash. Dylan drew some dollar signs floating above the stick figure’s head.
I sipped my shake. “How old do you think she was?”
He scratched his chin. “Hard to say with the big glasses on. Mid-forties, maybe.”
Geez, he made mid-forty sound Jurassic. “That old?”
“Oh yeah, definitely.”
Bummer.
“And here’s a thought,” I said. “We don’t even know for certain our imposter was a female. If I can pass for a man, whose to say a man couldn’t pass for a woman?”
Dylan lifted an eyebrow. “You might be onto something there. I mean, remember what she looked like?”
“I know, I know. A purple Amazon with the feet to match.” My stomach sank. I’d only thrown the idea at Dylan because I was always trying to impress on him the need to keep an open mind on an investigation, but dammit, I think I was right. “Christ, Dylan, it could easily have been a man. Probably was a man.” I reached for my yellow pad, looking at the tight pairs of circles I’d drawn, again and again. “Oh, for—” I ground back a curse. “Gonads. That’s what I was doodling while she... oh, hell—he—was talking.”
“Stones?” Dylan leaned close to look at the pad. “Ya think?”
“I think.” I tossed the pad back on the desk in disgust. “How could I have missed something like that?”
“Hey, I missed it, too.”
It was the money, of course. I’d been blinded by all that cash. How many times had I said it? People see what they want to see, and I’d wanted to see an easy payday.
“Or maybe not.”
I glanced up at Dylan. “Huh?”
He shrugged. “Maybe she was just a masculine looking chick. My uncle married a woman who could pass for RuPaul, if you squint your eyes. And if RuPaul were a foot and a half shorter. And white. And quite a bit pudgier.”
I rolled my eyes. “The spitting image, I’m sure.”
“It’s true. I swear. And you know how it can be with some women as they get older.”
I resisted the urge to touch my upper lip. I’d had the latest go-round with the electrolysis needle less than a month ago. I did not have a moustache. Well, not much of one.
“Okay, I get the message. It might have been a woman. It equally well might have been a man. Which means we’ve effectively doubled our suspect pool.”
He grimaced. “Looks like it. But it doesn’t really change what we need to do, does it?”
“Not really.”
We had to find out who Jennifer Weatherby had been seeing. Yes, this assumed that Elizabeth had been telling the truth, but I had little else to go on at this time.
“Shall we talk to the neighbors again?” Dylan asked.
“No. If they haven’t told you anything before, chances are they won’t now. So let’s forget the new neighborhood and check out the old neighborhood.”
“What are you thinking?”
“Maybe Jennifer kept in contact with someone from her old days before she married Ned. If she felt out of place in Ned’s world, maybe she kept her place in the world she knew before him.”
“The other side of the tracks.”
I shrugged. “Worth a shot. We could talk to some of her old neighbors. See what the gossip was on that side of town.”
Dylan looked at me, his blue eyes boring into me with concern and energy. He was chomping at the bit to get going on this. “So you want me on this one, Dix?”
“Yeah. This one’s for you, Dylan.”
I did want him on this. But not for the reasons he probably thought. Sure, he might find out something of use to us. But I also wanted something else. I wanted him safe. Because I had the niggling feeling again, that gut instinct that told me things were about to get a little dangerous.
“I’m all over it.”
The minute I heard his motorcycle fire up and leave the lot, I grabbed my jacket.
Yes, I knew my next move. Knew who I had to talk to. And I was pretty sure it wasn’t going to be a pretty conversation. I located my smallest, most efficient tape recorder, slid it into my pocket, and grabbed my purse. I tucked my cell phone inside.
And lastly, I grabbed my gun.