Blind dates can be murde.., p.22
Blind Dates Can Be Murder, page 22
He faxed over her list of upcoming personal appearances and project deadlines, and then they went down the page and finalized details on all of them. As she described the consulting job with Peter Trumble designing a “clean house,” Milton seemed very interested.
“I think this will be the final component I’ll need to put a book together,” Jo said. “It’ll be a helpful guide for busy people who want to simplify in such a way that it’ll be easier to keep things clean.”
“Sounds good, Jo.”
“Great. I’ll e-mail a full proposal to you this week.”
Once they hung up, Jo pulled out her notes and the house plan from Peter’s and wrote out some preliminary ideas. Despite all of the other things going on in her life, she found herself able to concentrate and was soon buried deep within the project. She had picked up Danny’s snapshots earlier, and now she spread them all over the desk, grouped by room.
Jo had already spotted a number of cleaning problem spots in Peter’s house, such as popcorn ceilings in the bedrooms, elaborate woodwork in the kitchen, and open shelving in the living room. Besides identifying problem areas and making recommendations, however, she also needed to research more of the gadgets he had in mind, such as self-cleaning windows and antibacterial counters. She began with the Internet, doing a series of searches that led her to all sorts of innovations in household cleanliness—not to mention a few worthwhile oldies like central vacuuming systems and laundry chutes. Some things never changed—and, sadly enough, no one had yet invented a way to get around cleaning entirely.
When Jo reached a good breaking point, she pulled out the business card she had received from Ming Lee, Peter’s architect girlfriend, and studied it for a moment. Jo had some legitimate questions to ask her about the house; it might be a good time to call and set up a get-together. If all went as Jo planned, they could discuss other issues as well.
Much to Jo’s surprise, Ming didn’t sound hostile on the phone at all. She suggested dinner at her parents’ restaurant in Moore City in an hour and a half. Jo was still full from lunch, but she seized the opportunity, got directions, and agreed to meet her there.
After Jo hung up she neatly organized her notes, slipped them into her briefcase, and made one more call. This time, she dialed Denise, Danny’s sister and her Lemon Pickers Bible study leader.
Jo needed advice on matters of the heart, and she thought Denise might be a good place to start.
Chuck looked at the clock on the dash of the Impala and pressed the accelerator even farther. He was on his way to Mulberry Glen to get his wife. Though it was only a forty-minute drive, it was the longest forty minutes of his life.
He still wasn’t sure what he’d do once he found her.
When he was taken away to prison, she had seemed sad to see him go. But when the first visiting day rolled around, she had surprised him by not showing up. He was allowed to make collect calls to certain preselected phone numbers, but the next day when he tried calling home, the number had been disconnected.
He wasn’t sure what to do at the time. There was no way to get to her, no way to find out what was going on. Those early days when he didn’t know where Lettie was or why she had disappeared were the worst. Sometimes, he was certain she was intentionally avoiding him, trying to get on with her life without him. Other days, he felt sure that something awful had happened to her, that she had fallen in the basement and broken her neck or something.
After the Torturer did his number on Chuck, he was out of commission for weeks. From his prison hospital bed, he had spoken to the chaplain, who promised to help locate his missing wife.
Eventually, the clergyman had been able to locate her and had convinced her to communicate. Chuck still had the letter, which said that she was sorry but she needed this time to think, and that she hoped he wouldn’t send any more priests to find her.
I’m working for Mickey now, she had written. I’m making ends meet the best I can.
Thinking Mickey had hired her as a stripper, Chuck went nuts. He had called Mickey, ranting and raving, only to learn that Lettie had taken his old job as a skimmer.
Since then, he had received a card from Lettie each Christmas and on his birthday, but that was it. Signed Love, Lettie, there had never been a personal note or anything beyond that.
It was so confusing.
Most confusing of all was what Mickey had said about Lettie today, just as Chuck was leaving Swingers.
You should be sitting pretty even without the stolen cash, Mickey had said, holding the jumper cables as Chuck unhooked them from the spark plugs. Lettie’s been working like a dog for three years, pulling in twice as much money as you ever did. And it ain’t like she’s living large or driving a nice car or nothing. I would imagine she’s been stashing most of it away.
Chuck had been shocked.
The Lettie that Chuck knew wasn’t capable of that. She wasn’t capable of much of anything other than keeping his house clean and getting his dinner on the table. Yeah, she had done some secretarial stuff from time to time when they were first married, but to go out and work all over the country, slip the skimmer discs into the credit card machines, show up every day and pretend nothing was up, and then pull them out a month later and disappear? To go somewhere and pretend to be a secretary, pop in a flash drive, and steal their customer and employee data?
She didn’t have it in her.
Lettie didn’t understand that in a lot of ways, weird ways, she was like a child. Chuck knew that skimming required personality, lots of personality, but Lettie could barely carry on a conversation with anyone other than family. She was a social zero, an idiot who didn’t know finesse from a hole in the wall.
She also had no money management skills. Before he went to prison, he had kept her on an allowance because she didn’t know any better. She never had a clue as to how much money he really made skimming, or how much slipped back out of his hands before she ever saw a penny of it. She was incapable of the things Mickey had described.
Mulberry Glen, 5 miles
Passing the highway sign, Chuck drove even faster, counting the minutes until he would see Lettie face-to-face. Once he found her, he still didn’t know what he wanted to do more at that moment: kiss her, because he’d missed her so bad, or kill her, for three years of uncertainty and disobedience.
Maybe he’d do the one and then the other.
Jo had hoped Denise might give her some wisdom regarding her love life and this new development with Danny. But as soon as they started talking on the phone, it became clear to Jo that Denise wasn’t the right one to talk to. As Danny’s sister, she was simply too biased—and way too excited—to do much more than gush about how wonderful it was that Jo and her brother were “an item” now, and how excited she was about their future together. Jo’s protestations were brushed off with a laugh and a dismissive “Don’t be silly, Jo. Everybody knows you’re perfect for each other.”
Jo finished that call as quickly as possible and dialed Marie instead. That conversation went a lot better, once Marie finished reacting to the news that Danny was in love with Jo.
“I guess we all should have figured that one out a long time ago,” Marie said. “In retrospect, it’s like, duh, of course.”
Jo busied her hands with straightening the silverware drawer as they talked.
“But what do I do now?” Jo asked. “I don’t know how to respond.”
“Do you love him? In that way, I mean.”
“I don’t know. I never thought about it. When I run the idea through my head, all I feel is…terrified.”
“Terrified. Okay. We can work with that. What scares you more: the thought of loving him or the thought of losing him?”
Jo swallowed hard, moving a tablespoon out of the teaspoon slot.
“Losing him,” she whispered. “I could never lose Danny. He’s like a part of me. I know him better than I know myself.”
“Well, maybe that’s the problem,” Marie said. “Maybe the reason you’re so scared is because for the first time in your life, you’re considering having a relationship with someone you actually know. I mean really, to the core of his soul, know. You sure can’t say the same about Bradford. In comparison, you guys were practically strangers.”
“But what difference does that make? Love is love.”
“Jo, the love glasses you wear are even more rose-colored than mine,” Marie said. “Romance paints a pretty picture, but it also keeps you at a distance. If you ask me, it takes a lot more guts to love someone when you can’t hide behind all the hearts and flowers.”
Jo straightened the last of the knives and slid the drawer shut.
“So if I love Danny, I won’t get the hearts and flowers?” she asked in dismay.
“Oh, honey, I think you’d get all that times ten. It’s just going to come in a different order, that’s all.”
Chuck easily found the Palace and pulled to a stop in the parking lot. With no cars out front, the place seemed deserted, but when he got out of his car, he could hear a man and woman yelling at each from one of the rooms upstairs.
He went into the office and asked the old man behind the counter for the room key for Smith. When the guy refused, Chuck grew belligerent, taking out his anger at Lettie on the desk clerk. Chuck was just taking a deep breath to launch into another tirade of cursing and threats when the man produced a gun from behind the counter, pointed it at him, and cocked it.
“I’ll say it again,” the old man told him calmly. “I ain’t giving out no room key to somebody I don’t know. I don’t care if you say she’s your wife or not. She checked in alone, and until she comes and tells me it’s okay, she’s the only one with a key.”
Amazing how three years in the joint had changed Chuck. Before he went in, a gun pointed at his head would have made him run scared. Now, it just made him change his tactics.
“Fine, buddy, fine,” Chuck said, holding up both hands so the guy wouldn’t shoot. “Could you call Mickey Paglino? He’ll vouch for me.”
The old man hesitated a long moment and then lowered the gun.
“You know Mickey?” he asked, pausing to spit into the trash can. “Well, why didn’t you say so? That changes everything.”
Jo opened the door to the House of Lee and stepped inside, spotting Ming at a booth along the wall. She was sitting at a table with papers spread in front of her, so absorbed in what she was doing that she didn’t notice Jo until she was sliding into the seat across from her.
“Jo! Hi! I didn’t see you come in.”
Ming introduced her mother and asked about Jo’s food preferences and ordered for both of them.
“I can’t believe this restaurant belongs to your parents,” Jo said after Ming’s mother walked away. “I’ve passed by here dozens of times.”
“Yes, it’s practically a Moore City institution.”
“Ming, before we get started, I wanted to talk about what you said—”
“Listen,” Ming interrupted, “I apologize if I was out of line the other day. I didn’t realize that you and the photographer—what’s his name? Danny?—I didn’t realize that you two were involved. Maybe I spoke too soon. Is the relationship serious?”
Jo felt guilty. Her actions of holding Danny’s hand and having him kiss her had been dishonest. So much had happened since then, however, that to completely deny a relationship of that nature now would also be a lie.
“Our relationship is…complicated,” Jo said honestly. “But there is a lot of love there.”
That much was true. Jo just didn’t specify which kind of love—not that she knew, anyway.
Ming seemed satisfied with that answer. She began talking about her and Peter’s relationship, sharing her heart in a way that seemed somewhat inappropriate. Strangely, Jo realized, Ming had gone from being a hostile adversary to a giggling confidante—and to Jo, both stances seemed quite unprofessional. This was, after all, primarily a business meeting.
According to Ming, she and Peter had only been dating for a few months, and she wasn’t sure if he was seeing her exclusively or not.
“We’ve never had that talk, you know?” she said. “I mean, I assume there’s nobody else, but I can’t know for sure. He’s very busy and very private, so there are a lot of hours of his day unaccounted for. I don’t know if I can trust him. With his work in risk management, he does mostly offices and professional buildings, but he also conducts a fair amount of home inspections. I worry about all of that one-on-one time with lonely housewives.”
“You really don’t trust him?”
“Not always. I’m just not sure.”
“Well, for what it’s worth,” Jo replied, “he was completely professional with me. I never picked up any vibes of flirtation at all.”
“Thanks, Jo. That’s good to know.”
“You’re welcome. Now what do you say we talk about Peter’s house? I’ve got some architectural questions—and a lot of great ideas.”
Chuck used the key to let himself into the room, closing the door behind him. What a dump. About the best thing he could say about it was that it was nicer than his prison cell—but not by much.
Chuck moved into the room, a sudden tenderness overcoming him. This was Lettie’s room, Lettie’s stuff. Her clothes. Her suitcase. Her cup of water on the bedside table.
He ran his hands along the surfaces, fingered the fabric of her clothes, touched the rim of the glass to his lips.
He didn’t understand the hold she had over him or why he loved her so. She wasn’t pretty, at least not so’s anyone could tell. She sure wasn’t sexy or fascinating or filled with things to talk about.
She was just so…sweet. So tender. So unassuming.
So guileless.
He hoped they could start over. He would forgive her, she would forgive him, they’d find the money, and they would start a new life. As long as she kept her mouth shut and stayed in line, he wouldn’t ever have to hurt her again.
On the floor beside the bed, something sparkled. Chuck leaned down and picked a little dog made from foil. He smiled. He had forgotten she did that. Almost a nervous habit, she was forever constructing these elaborate animals and then simply giving them away.
He sat on the bed and crushed the dog between his fingers until nothing was left but a tiny ball of foil. He flicked it toward the trash can and then stretched out, face down on her pillow, and simply inhaled.
He missed her so much!
After all of the activity of the day, after all the stress and transition and confrontation, Chuck was finally alone, in silence, in the comfort of a real bed. He was overwhelmed with an exhaustion he’d never known before.
Kicking off his shoes and pulling off his jacket, he burrowed deeper into Lettie’s covers, surrounding himself with the feel of her. Sleep. He wanted to sleep. In his fantasy, he could see her walking into the room, gasping at the sight of him there on the bed, waking him with a kiss.
Mickey hadn’t said what time Lettie might return to the hotel, Chuck thought as he drifted off, but he knew one thing: He’d be there waiting for her when she did.
21
Lettie finished working at 6 PM and walked out of the building alongside several other employees. She was tired but also satisfied that Tasha Green had been pleased with her performance.
If only the woman knew about the data on the flash drives in her purse!
Lettie’s sole disappointment had come this afternoon when the tech support guy had showed her how to upload profiles to the national database. Combing through the records, Lettie had realized that the nationally accessible information was much more secure than the local stuff. The national records didn’t include social security numbers or credit cards—or even names, for that matter. They simply identified each person with a code.
It was just as well. With Lettie’s luck, if she got too greedy, everything might crumble to the ground around her. And it was all going so well too.
Lettie climbed into her car and started it up, thinking it was time to act. She’d been mapping out her plan all afternoon. She would go to the Palace now and retrieve her things—though not so visibly that Mickey’s friend, the owner, might notice and think she was checking out. She’d leave her suitcase behind and just toss her clothes into a paper bag.
Once she was loaded up and in the car, she would drive to Moore City and pay Mickey a visit. She’d show him the data and tell him if he paid her cash, now, that there would be lots more where that came from. He didn’t need to know that the national info was unavailable to them—or that she was actually on her way out of town. She had done as he wanted and obtained the data on Jo Tulip. What he did from there was his business.
Tomorrow, while Mickey thought she was back at work stealing more data and Dates&Mates was trying to figure out why their newest employee hadn’t made it in on time, she’d be halfway to Toronto on the train. She could almost hear the whistle blowing now.
She could also hear her stomach growling, and Lettie realized she hadn’t eaten all day, except for half an apple she had pulled from the trash and rinsed off in the ladies’ room. She didn’t want to spend much money, but she would need more sustenance than that if she hoped to carry out her plan of escape.
On her way to the Palace, Lettie stopped at a grocery store for an inexpensive dinner. Wandering the aisles, she finally settled on a loaf of bread and a jar of peanut butter. That would serve her well now and on the train. On her way to the checkout, she grabbed a free plastic knife from the salad bar, and then she impulsively tossed in a bruised, on-sale banana too. Might as well get some potassium in the mix.
As soon as she was back in the car, Lettie dug into the food. Using the knife, she spread the peanut butter on two slices of bread and sandwiched sliced banana between them. She ate as she drove, finding such satisfaction in filling her stomach that she almost moaned out load.
