Chapter 1 #2
“Do you? Because it doesn’t sound like the sort of thing you’d ask your old boyfriend’s widow to do for you.”
“I can pay.” She opened the purse and pulled out an envelope. “I brought a retainer. Heidi told me how much you charged her.”
She held it out.
I eyed it. It was nice and thick. She might be paying me in one-dollar bills, of course, but if not, there was a decent chunk of change in there.
And yes, I knew I should refuse. I should tell her to take her money and her problems and shove them.
But clients weren’t exactly plentiful on the ground, and she was offering us money.
No one else had done that in a while. While my divorce settlement from David meant I wasn’t starving, I would really prefer to pay Zachary from actual business income instead of my shrinking savings account.
So would Rachel, clearly. She was staring fixedly at me across the desk.
Besides, there was something almost poetic about it. Jacquie Demetros, the other woman, getting a taste of her own medicine.
“Fine,” I said. “Sit down. Tell me about it.”
Relief washed over her face as she sank into one of the chairs in front of Rachel’s desk. I pulled over a yellow legal pad and pen.
“My boyfriend is Nick Costanza,” she said. “We’ve been involved for a while now.”
I wrote down the name, though I didn’t really need to. I knew exactly who Nick Costanza was. He’d been Jacquie’s boyfriend before she’d set her sights on David—or at least, that’s what I’d pieced together from various conversations and some light stalking after David’s defection.
I’d always suspected that they’d planned the whole thing together, to be honest. I wouldn’t have been surprised to find out that she’d been stringing them both along at the same time, although truthfully, it would have been a stupid thing to do, because David wouldn’t have stood for that, had he found out.
Nick might have, if the payoff seemed reasonable.
Or if he liked Jacquie enough to take what he could get.
“And you think he’s cheating,” I said.
“There’s something going on.” She sounded sure of it. “There’s this woman where he works. Megan. She’s new, started about a month ago.” Jacquie twisted the strap of her purse between her fingers. “And Nick’s been acting weird ever since. Evasive. Like he’s got something on his mind.”
I wrote down Megan’s name. “Any last name for Megan? Does Nick still work at the same place? The car repair shop on Charlotte Avenue?”
Jacquie nodded. “The Body Shop. It’s the only place he’s ever worked.”
Was it, really? Nick must either be very good at his job, or his employer offered a nice benefits package.
“And no,” Jacquie added, “I don’t know her last name. He didn’t mention it, and I didn’t want to ask.”
I nodded. “What do you mean, he’s been acting weird? Weird how?”
“He won’t look me in the eye when we talk,” Jacquie said. “He’s jumpy, always checking over his shoulder. Last week he said he had to work late, but when I drove by the shop, his car wasn’t there.” She looked at me. “I just want to know. One way or the other.”
It wasn’t the first time I’d heard that sentiment. Heidi Newsome had said the same thing a month ago, and Diana before her.
This sounded like a simple enough matter.
I knew where I was going and who I’d be looking for.
I was familiar with the area around the Body Shop, enough to know that there were plenty of places nearby where I could park and keep watch for a day or two, even if sitting in a parked car for ten hours in November wasn’t my idea of a good time.
Zachary was always eager to do that sort of grunt work, though, so we could trade off. And one of us might get lucky and catch Nick and Megan sneaking off to a nearby motel on their lunch hour on day one, before my posterior turned numb and either of us had a chance to get bored.
“I’ll need a retainer,” I said. “And a contract.”
She pushed the envelope across the desk. I opened it and made sure there was money inside before I took the blank contract Rachel handed across the desk and started filling it in.
Client name: Jacquie Demetros.
Subject: Nick Costanza.
Scope: Surveillance to determine if subject is engaged in an extramarital—I crossed that out—a romantic relationship outside of his relationship with the client.
When I slid it across to her, she signed on the dotted line without reading it.
“Do you want a copy?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I don’t want Nick finding it.”
“Do you live together?”
They didn’t; she had her own place. Probably the same one I had once followed David to.
“Is he going through your things when he visits?”
“He might. If he’s suspicious.” She stood up, smoothing down the fur. “When will you start?”
“Tomorrow,” I said. “I’ll be at the Body Shop when they open in the morning, and I’ll tail him whenever he leaves. If he’s meeting someone, I’ll find out.”
Jacquie nodded. “Thank you.” She hesitated, her hand on the back of the chair. “I know this is awkward. But I didn’t know where else to go.”
I could have told her where to go, and I mean that in the most literal sense. There were plenty of other PIs in Nashville she could hire. I didn’t say so, mostly because I was grateful for the business. A paying client is a paying client.
And yes, there was a small part of me, one that had been very close to where she was now, that felt an unwelcome flicker of sympathy. I had been the other woman once too, after all.
“We appreciate the business,” I said instead. “I’ll be in touch.”
Jacquie nodded and turned toward the door. Zachary finally remembered how to move and scrambled to open it for her. She gave him a smile that undoubtedly made the fillings in his teeth melt, and then she undulated across the threshold and was gone, the door clicking shut behind her.
The silence that followed was deafening.
Rachel cleared her throat. “Are you OK?”
“I’m fine.” I handed the contract back across the desk. “File that. And give me a deposit slip.”
Rachel tucked the contract away in the file drawer and pulled out a deposit slip for the cash.
“It’s a case,” I added, as I accepted it from her. “One with a paying client.”
“It’s Jacquie Demetros,” Rachel said.
“Yes, thank you. I know that. But her money’s as good as anyone else’s, and God knows we can use it.”
I handed the envelope across the desk. “Count this and tell me how much it is.”
Rachel didn’t argue. She knew as well as I did that we needed every client we could lay our hands on. “You know that David might have given her this money?” she said instead as she pulled the wad of cash out of the envelope. Twenties, not hundreds, so it wasn’t as much as I had originally thought.
Edwina trotted over and dropped her squeaky toy at my feet, tail wagging. I picked it up and tossed it. She took off after it with single-minded determination. Life is simple when you’re a dog. There are no ex-husbands, and no mistresses, and no bills to pay.
“Then it’s a good thing it’s coming back to me,” I said, “isn’t it?”
Nobody said anything, and I added, “How much is there?”
She told me, and I finished filling out the deposit slip. “Who wants to go to the bank?”
Zachary raised his hand. “I’ll do it.”
I handed him the money and deposit slip. “Don’t lose it on the way.”
He promised he wouldn’t, and headed for the door. Edwina watched him go with a mournful look on her squashy face.
“So,” Rachel said, her tone deliberately casual. “Daniel has offered to show me the bar tomorrow after work. Do you want to come?”
Her tone fell somewhere between conciliatory and pleading, with maybe a bit of challenge thrown in.
“I don’t think I’ll be able to,” I said. I even managed to sound apologetic about it, instead of informing her bluntly that there wasn’t enough money in the world to pay me to spend an hour with Daniel and Kenneth Kelly. “I’ll be busy following Nick Costanza around.”
“It’s a really good location,” Rachel said wistfully. “Right in Five Points.”
“I’m sure it is.” I softened my tone a little. “And maybe I’m wrong and it’ll work out this time. Daniel has plenty of experience starting businesses. And he’s had enough practice with bars, too, hasn’t he?”
And so had Kenny, for that matter.
Rachel’s lips twitched. “That’s what I told him. At least he’ll be intimately familiar with the product.”
“I’m sure it’ll be fine,” I said. “And if they do end up getting it up and running, I’ll let you show it to me then, OK?”
“OK.” She smiled.
I nodded and went back to the bills, though I couldn’t quite focus on the numbers anymore. My third case as a PI, and it was following my dead husband’s mistress’s boyfriend around an auto body shop to see if he was cheating on her with a coworker named Megan.
The universe, it seemed, had a twisted sense of humor.