“Charley,” she said, her tone admonishing, “you have got to learn to keep it in your pants.”
“Not like that,” I replied, appalled. “He painted the offices for us.”
After a long, exasperated stare, she asked, “You mean the offices we are no longer in?”
I offered her a sheepish shrug. “Yeah, I forgot to cancel, and he painted them after we moved out. He was really happy that they were so clutter free.”
“Well, that’s just fantastic.”
Her enthusiasm seemed disingenuous. It was weird.
“Surely, someone else owes us money,” she said.
Then it hit me. The answer to all our prayers. Or at least a couple of them. “You’re right,” I said. Reyes Farrow owed me and owed me big. I grinned at Cookie. “I solved a case. I am due my usual rate, plus medical expenses and mental anguish.”
She looked hopeful. “What case? Who?”
The determined set of my jaw told her exactly who I was talking about. She got that faraway, dreamy look in her eyes. “Can I help collect?”
“Nope, you have to get all this stuff sent back. How else are we going to eat for the next month?”
“I never get to have any fun.”
“It’s your own fault.”
She cleared her throat. “How is any of this—” She spread her arms wide. “—my fault?”
“That’s what you get for leaving me unsupervised. Don’t you have return receipts to fill out?”
She lifted a handful. “Yes.”
“From your apartment?”
“Fine.”
She took the receipts and started to leave me to my own devices. She would never learn.
“Oh,” she said before opening the door, “I took your remote, so don’t even think about it.”
That was so uncalled for.
* * *
After she left, I sat down and tried to think up a plan of action. If only I could get ahold of Angel. If anyone could find that low-down, dirty—
“How did you do that?”
I jumped at the sound of a voice coming from behind me. It was high. The jump. Not the voice. I pressed my hands to my heart and turned to the thirteen-year-old departed gangbanger who went by the name of Angel Garza. He stood in my apartment, wearing his usual jeans and dirty T-shirt with a bandanna wrapped around his head. “Angel, what the hell?”
“What do you mean, what the hell? What did you do?”
“What?” I asked, trying to calm my heart. I didn’t normally get that scared when Angel popped in.
His dark brown eyes narrowed in question. “How did you do that?”
“I don’t know. What did I do?”
“I was at my cousin’s quinceañera one minute, then here the next.”
“Really?”
“Did you do that?”
“I don’t think so. I just thought about you, and you were there.”
“Well, stop it. That was weird.” He hugged himself and rubbed his arms.
“This is cool. You never come when I need you.”
“I’m your investigator, pendeja, not your lapdog.”
“I can’t believe that worked.”
“What are all these boxes?”
“Did you just call me pendeja?”
Then he noticed me at last and got the familiar look in his eyes. “You’re looking good, boss.”
“And you’re looking thirteen.” Throwing his age in his face always worked. He bristled and turned to study my new cheese pot. He wouldn’t like what I was about to ask him, so I stood and faced him head-on, my stance set, my expression hard. “I need to know where he is.”
Surprise straightened his shoulders a moment, but he caught himself and shrugged. “Who?”
He knew exactly who I was talking about. “He was just here a minute ago, standing outside my apartment building. Where is he staying?”
Frustration slid through his lips. “You’ve stayed away from him for weeks. Why now?”
“He owes me money.”
“Not my problem.”
“It will be when I can’t pay your salary.” To pay for his investigative services, I sent an anonymous cashier’s check to his mother every month. He couldn’t use the money in his rather sparse condition, but she could. It was a perfect arrangement.
“Shit.” He disappeared through a wall of boxes. “Every time you get near him, you get hurt.”
“That’s not true.”
He reemerged but only partly. “What’s a Flowbee?”
“Angel.” I put a finger under his chin and stroked the barely emerging growth of hair that peppered his jaw. “I need to know where he is.”
“Can I see you naked first?”
“No.”
“You want to see me naked?”
“No. And yuck.”
He straightened, offended. “If I was still alive, I’d be older than you.”
“But you aren’t,” I reminded him gently. “And I’m sorry for that.”
“You aren’t going to like it.”
“That’s okay. I just need to know where he is.”
“He’ll be at Garber Shipping in the warehouse district tonight.”
“At a shipping warehouse?” I asked, surprised. “Is he working there?”
Reyes had money. Lots and lots of money. His sister told me. So why would he be doing manual labor for a shipping company?
After Angel took a long moment to nibble at a hangnail, he said, “Depends on your definition of work.”
* * *
After being stunned speechless by Reyes’s new job title, I walked toward my front door, wrapped a hand around the knob, then rethought what I was doing. I was going to face Reyes Farrow. Unarmed. Reyes had never tried to hurt me directly, but he’d been out of prison for two months. Who knew what the man was capable of? He’d probably learned a lot of bad habits since leaving the big house. Like cheating at poker. And urinating in public.
Even though I wasn’t much for carrying firearms—every time I carried a gun, images of it being wrestled away from me and used to end my life always flashed before my eyes—I headed back to my bedroom for Margaret. I figured, when facing a dirty, lying scoundrel like Reyes Farrow, one couldn’t be too careful. Or too armed. So I slid a belt through the loops of my jeans, holstered the Glock, then snapped the clasp closed.
After another deep breath, I headed out the door only to lose steam when I came to the stairs. The same stairs I’d taken a gazillion times before. They looked steeper somehow. More dangerous. My hands shook on the rail as I paused on each step, working up the courage to take the next, wondering what in the name of thunder was wrong with me. True, it’d been a while since I’d ventured out, but surely the world hadn’t changed that much.
When I finally made it down two flights of stairs to the first floor, I studied the steel entrance door to the complex. It sat ajar, not quite closed, and daylight streamed in around the edges. I forced one foot in front of the other, my breaths shallow, my palms slick with a nervous energy. I reached a quaking hand for the vertical handle and pushed. Daylight rushed in, flooding the area and blinding me. My breath caught and I pulled the door shut. Leaning against the handle for support, I took in long gulps of air, and tried to calm myself.
One minute. I just needed a minute to gather my wits. They were always running amok, wreaking havoc.
“Ms. Davidson?”
Without thought, I drew the gun from my holster and aimed toward the voice coming from the shadowy entranceway.
A woman gasped and jumped back, her eyes wide, gaping at the barrel pointed at her face. “I—I’m so sorry. I thought—”
“Who are you?” I asked, holding the gun so much steadier than I thought possible, considering the irrational state of my insides.
“Harper.” She held her hands up in surrender. “My name is Harper Lo—”
“What do you want?” I had no idea why I was still holding the gun on her. Normally, nice women with no hidden agen
da whatsoever didn’t scare me. It was weird.
“I’m looking for Charley Davidson.”
I lowered the gun but didn’t holster it. Not just yet. She could turn out to be psychotic. Or a door-to-door salesperson. “I’m Charley. What do you want?” I cringed at the sharpness of my own voice. Why was I behaving so badly? I’d eaten a good breakfast.
“I—I’d like to hire you. I think someone is trying to kill me.”
I narrowed my eyes, took in her appearance. Long dark hair. Tall and curvy, full figured in a very pretty way. Soft features. Neat clothes. She had a baby blue scarf tied loosely at her neck, the ends tucked into her dark blue coat. Her eyes were large, warm, and captivating. All in all, she didn’t look crazy. Then again, neither did most crazy people.
“You’re looking for a PI?” A girl could hope. I hadn’t had a job in two months. Apparently. I glanced up toward Cookie’s apartment.
“Yes. An investigator.”
I took a deep breath and holstered Margaret. “I’m kind of in between offices at the moment. We can talk in my apartment, if that’s okay.”
She nodded briskly, fear evident in every move she made. Poor thing. She clearly didn’t deserve my surly side.
With head hung in shame, I started back upstairs. They were much easier to climb than to descend. That wasn’t usually the case. Especially after a two-month veg-a-thon. My muscles should have atrophied by now. “Can I get you anything?” I asked when we reached my apartment. I was only slightly out of breath.
“Oh, no, thank you. I’m fine.” She was eyeing me warily. Not that I could blame her. My people skills needed a good honing. “Are you okay?” she asked.
“I’m fine. The wheezing will go away in a minute. It’s been a while since I took those stairs.”
“Oh, does this building have an elevator?”
“Um, no. You know, I’m not sure it’s wise to go into someone’s apartment who just pulled a gun on you.”
She’d been busy perusing the mess that was my office-slash-apartment-slash-ballroom-area-when-the-dancing-bug-hit. She dropped her gaze in embarrassment at my words. “I guess I’m a little desperate.”
I offered her the chair and I took the couch. Thankfully, Aunt Lillian still wasn’t back from Africa. After picking up a notepad and pen, I asked, “So, what’s going on?”
She swallowed hard and said, “I’ve been having strange things happen to me. Bizarre things.”
“Like?”
“Someone has been breaking into my house and leaving … things.”
“What kinds of things?”
“Well, for one, I found a dead rabbit on my bed this morning.”
“Oh.” Taken aback, I crinkled my nose in disgust. “That’s not good. But I’m not sure—I mean, maybe it was suicidal.”
She rushed in to stop me. “You don’t understand. A lot of things like that have been happening. Rabbits with their throats cut. Brakes with their lines cut.”
“Wait, brakes? As in car brakes?”
“Yes. Yes.” She was starting to panic. “The brakes on my car. They just stopped working. How do brakes just stop working?” She was scared. It broke my heart. Her hands shook and her eyes filled with tears. “And then my dog.” She buried her face in her hands and let the emotions she’d been holding at bay rush forth. “She disappeared.”
Now I really felt bad about the Margaret thing. I chastised her with a glare. Margaret. Not Harper. Sobs racked her body as all her fears spilled forth. I scooted forward and put a hand on her shoulder. After a few minutes, she began to calm, so I started my questions anew.
“Have you called the police?”
She pulled a tissue from her coat pocket and dabbed at her nose. “Over and over. So much so, they actually assigned an officer to vet my calls.”
“Oh, really? Which officer?”
“Officer Taft,” she said, a hard edge leeching into her voice. Definitely no love lost there.
“Okay, I know him. I can talk to him to get—”
“But he doesn’t believe me. None of them do.”
“What about your brakes? Surely they could tell if they’d been tampered with?”
“The mechanic couldn’t say it was foul play specifically, so they just dismissed that like they did everything else.”
I leaned back and tapped my notebook in thought. “How long has this been going on?”
She bit her lip, glanced away in embarrassment. “A few weeks now.”
“What about your family?”
Her fingers smoothed the edge of her scarf. “My parents aren’t really the supportive type. And my ex-husband, well, he’d just use it against me every chance he got. I haven’t told him.”
“Do you suspect him?”
“Kenneth?” She scoffed softly. “No. He’s an ass, but he’s a harmless ass.”
Proceeding with caution, I asked, “Is he paying you alimony?”
“No. Not any. He has no reason to want me dead.”
I wasn’t so sure about that, but decided to go along with it for now. “What about work colleagues?”
I’d embarrassed her again. She blanched under my questioning gaze. “I don’t really—I don’t work. I haven’t had a job for a while now.”
Interesting. “How do you pay your bills?”
“My parents are very well off. They basically pay me to stay away from them. It works out well for the both of us.”
I couldn’t help but conclude that if she weren’t around, they’d no longer have to carry her. Perhaps her parents were even less supportive than she imagined.
“What do they think of this situation?”
She shrugged. “They believe me even less than Officer Taft.”
She had me at Officer Taft. While we weren’t exactly enemies, we weren’t really friends either. We’d had an encounter once that ended in him cursing at me and storming out of my apartment. I tended not to forget such encounters. That one involved his sister, who’d died when he was very young. He got testy when I told him she’d stayed behind for him. Some people were so touchy when I told them their departed family members had taken up stalking.
“Okay,” I said, “I’ll take this case on one condition.”
The tension seemed to ooze out. I wasn’t sure if that was because I was taking her case or she really was that afraid for her life. “Anything,” she said.
“You have to promise to be honest with me. Once I take this case, I’m on your side, do you understand? Think of me as your doctor or your therapist. I can’t repeat anything you tell me in confidence without your express permission.”
She nodded. “I’ll tell you everything I can.”
“Okay, first, do you have any idea, any suspicion at all of who would want you dead?”
Most people, when threatened, did, but Harper shook her head. “I’ve tried and tried. I just have no idea who would want to hurt me.”
“Fair enough.” I didn’t want to push her too hard. She seemed fragile as it was, and my shoving a gun in her face couldn’t have helped.
I took down the names of her closest family and friends, anyone who might be able to corroborate her story. Attempted murder was no laughing matter. Neither was stalking or harassment. The fact that her immediate family wasn’t taking her seriously alarmed me. I’d have to pay them a visit ay-sap.
“Do you have a place to stay besides your house?” I asked when I was done.
Her hair fell forward with another soft shake of her head. “I haven’t thought about it. I guess I really don’t. Not anywhere safe.”
That could be a problem. Still … “You know, I might have just the place. It’s like a safe house, only it’s a tattoo parlor.”
“Oh … kay.”
She seemed open to the idea. That was good. “Awesome. You sit tight while I get this information to my assistant across the hall, then I’ll take you over.”
With an absent nod, she studied a box on the sofa beside me of collectible Kiss action figures.
“Yeah,” I said, agreeing with her bewilderment, “a lot of caffeine went into that decision.”
“I can imagine.”
I started across the hall, thrilled about the prospect of rubbing my new client in Cookie’s face—not literally, though, as that could be awkward—and almost ran down Mr. Zamora, the building’s superintendent.
“Oh—hey, there,” he said. He was shorter than me, pudgy with salt-and-pepper hair that always seemed to be in need of a good conditioning. And he always wore sweatpants and T-shirts that had seen more abuse than narcotics. But he was a good landlord. When my heater stopped working in mid-December, it took him only two weeks to get it fixed. Of course, it took me knocking on his door in need of a warm place to sleep to get it that way, but one night on his sofa, where I’d suddenly developed night terrors and epilepsy, and that puppy was running like a Mercedes the next day. It was awesome.
“Hey, Mr. Z.”
He was carrying a small ladder, a drop cloth, and a gallon of paint. And he was headed to the apartment at the end of the hall. What the heck? When I’d first moved in, I wanted that apartment. I begged. I pleaded. But no. The owners weren’t willing to shell out the money it would take to renovate it. And now he was renovating it? Now they were willing?
“What’s going on?” I asked as nonchalantly as possible.
He drew to a stop in front of me, key at the ready. While Cookie’s apartment and mine were right across the hall from each other, the end apartment spanned the length of both of ours with the door perpendicular to the main hall. It was like taking both of ours and putting them together. Since it’d suffered major water damage a few years ago and the owners lost the insurance money at the casinos before they could finish the renovations, it’d sat vacant for years. Which made no sense to me whatsoever.
“Finally finishing up this apartment,” he said, pointing with a key. “Got some construction guys coming in this afternoon. Might get noisy.”
Hope blossomed in my chest like a begonia in spring. My apartment was way too small now with all my new stuff. I could totally use bigger and better digs. “I want it,” I said, blurting it out before I could stop myself.
He raised a brow. “Can’t let you have it. Already have a tenant.”