McCone and Friends (4 page)

“What I don’t understand,” Gordon finally said, “is why he always entered the stuff he was carrying on the weight-and- balance.”

“To cover himself. He knew if you caught him stowing any package he hadn’t entered, you’d start watching him. But why he put down the accurate weight for the bag is beyond me. Nobody would believe he could eat that much for lunch—even with his weight problem.”

Gordon sighed. “And here I thought Sam was just getting fat because of bad eating habits, when all the while he was eating too well on his profits from drug running.”

I grinned at him. “Widening his horizons at the expense of Wide Horizons,” I said.

There are some days that just ought to be called off. Mondays are always hideous: The trouble starts when I dribble toothpaste all over my clothes or lock my keys in the car and doesn’t let up till I stub my toe on the bed stand at night. Tuesdays are usually when the morning paper doesn’t get delivered. Wednesdays are better, but if I get to feeling optimistic and go to aerobics class at the Y, chances are ten to one that I’ll wrench my back. Thursdays—forget it. And by five on Friday, all I want to do is crawl under the covers and hide.

You can see why I love weekends.

The day I got assigned to the Boydston case was a Tuesday.

Cautious optimism, that was what I was nursing. The paper lay folded tidily on the front steps of All Souls Legal Cooperative—where I both live and work as a private investigator. I read it and drank my coffee, not even burning my tongue. Nobody I knew had died, and there was even a cheerful story below the fold in the Metro section. By the time I’d looked at the comics and found all five strips that I bother to read were funny, I was feeling downright perky.

Well why not? I wasn’t making a lot of money, but my job was secure. The attic room I occupied was snug and comfy. I had a boyfriend, and even if the relationship was about as deep as a desert stream on the Fourth of July, he could be taken most anyplace. And to top it off, this wasn’t a bad hair day.

All that smug reflection made me feel charitable toward my fellow humans—or at least my coworkers and their clients—so I refolded the paper and carried it from the kitchen of our big Victorian to the front parlor and waiting-room so others could partake. A man was sitting on the shabby maroon sofa: bald and chubby, dressed in lime green polyester pants and a strangely patterned green, blue and yellow shirt that reminded me of drawings of sperm cells. One thing for sure, he’d never get run over by a bus while he was wearing that getup.

He looked at me as I set the paper on the coffee table and said, “How ya doin’, little lady?”

Now, there’s some contention that the word “lady” is demeaning. Frankly, it doesn’t bother me: when I hear it I know I’m looking halfway presentable and haven’t got something disgusting caught between my front teeth. No, what rankled was the work “little.” When you’re five foot three the word reminds you of things you’d just as soon not swell on—like being unable to see over people’s heads at parades, or the little-girly clothes that designers of petite sizes are always trying to foist on you. “Little,” especially at nine in the morning, doesn’t cut it.

I glared up the guy. Unfortunately, he’d gotten to his feet and I had to look up.

He didn’t notice I was annoyed; maybe he was nearsighted. “Sure looks like it’s gonna be a fine day,” he said.

Now I identified his accent—pure Texas. Another strike against him, because of Uncle Roy, but that’s another story.

“It
would’ve
been a nice day,” I muttered.

“Ma’am?”

That did it! The first—and last—time somebody had gotten away with calling me “Ma’am” was on my twenty-eighth birthday two weeks before, when a bag boy tried to help me out of Safeway with my two feather-light sacks of groceries. It was not a precedent I wanted followed.

Speaking more clearly, I said, “It would’ve been a nice day, except for you.”

He frowned. “What’d I do?”

“Try ‘little,’ a Texas accent, and ‘ma’am!”

“Ma’am are you all right?”

“Aaargh!” I fled the parlor and ran up the stairs to the office of my boss, Sharon McCone.

Sharon is my friend, mentor, and sometimes—heaven help me—custodian of my honesty. She’s been all those things since she hired me a few years ago to assist her at the co-op. Not that our association is always smooth sailing: She can be a stern taskmaster and she harbors a devilish sense of humor that surfaces at inconvenient times. But she is always been there for me, even during the death throes of my marriage to my pig-selfish, perpetual-student husband, Doug Grayson. And ever since I’ve stopped referring to him as “that bastard Doug,” she’s decided I’m a grown-up who can be trusted to manage her own life—within limits.

That morning she was sitting behind her desk with her chair swiveled around so she could look out the bay window at the front of the Victorian. I’ve found her in that pose hundreds of times: sunk low on her spine, long legs crossed, dark eyes brooding. The view is of dowdy houses across the triangular park that divides the street, and usually hazed by San Francisco fog, but it doesn’t matter: whatever she’s seeing is strictly inside her head, and she says she gets her best insights into her cases that way.

I stepped into the office and cleared my throat. Slowly Shar turned, looking at me as if I were a stranger. Then her eyes cleared. “Rae, hi. Nice work on closing the Anderson file so soon.”

“Thanks. I found the others you left on my desk: they’re pretty routine. You have anything else for me?”

“As a matter of fact, yes.” She smiled slyly and slid a manila folder across the desk. “Why don’t you take this client?”

I opened the folder and studied the information sheet stapled inside. All it gave was a name—Darrin Boydston—and an address on Mission Street. Under the job description Shar had noted “background check.”

“Another one?” I asked, letting my voice telegraph my disappointment.

“Uh-huh. I think you’ll find it interesting.”

“Why?”

She waved a slender hand at me. “Go! It’ll be a challenge.”

Now, that
did
make me suspicious. “If it’s such a challenge, how come you’re not handling it?”

For and instant her eyes sparked. She doesn’t like it when I hint that she skims the best cases for herself—although that’s exactly what she does, and I don’t blame her. “Just go see him.”

“He’ll be at this address?”

“No. He’s downstairs. I got done talking with him ten minutes ago.”

“Downstairs?
Where
downstairs?”

“In the parlor.”

Oh, God!

She smiled again. “Lime green, with a Texas accent.”

“So,” Darrin Boydston said, “Did y’all come back down to chew me out some more?”

“I’m sorry about that.” I handed him my card. “Ms. McCone has assigned me to your case.”

He studied it and looked me up and down. “You promise to keep a civil tongue in your head?”

“I said I was sorry.”

“Well, you damn near ruint my morning.”

How many more times was I going to have to apologize?

“Let’s get goin’, little lady.” He started for the door.

I winced and asked, “Where?”

“My place. I got somebody I want you to meet.”