Traffic isn’t as bad as I’d thought it would be for a Saturday night and I arrive at the restaurant a few minutes before eight. I check myself once more in the driver’s side mirror. Good, I look like a woman who is doing well in life and, to quote Myrtle, a first-class lady. Fine, okay, let’s do this I say to psych myself up.
It’s always amazing to me that I’ve never had any trouble cracking an attacker’s ribs with a sharp jab of my elbow or shooting a man who is lunging at me with a knife, but I feel slightly dizzy about having dinner with my ex-mother-in-law. But then her son is a hardened detective who deals with all kinds of horrors on the job and he still hyperventilates when he has to see her. Go figure.
The valet waits while I rummage through my new bag for the key fob. It’s then that I notice Joshua’s key is in my card case. Melissa must have taken everything off my dresser and placed it all into my bag. Generally when I go out for the evening I leave my card case in a drawer on my night table and only carry one credit card and keys in a small bag. But tonight, because I didn’t want to be late, I failed to see what was in the new bag. I place the card case in a zippered section of the bag and hand the fob to the valet.
As I stretch one leg down to the ground the short skirt of my dress goes way up exposing a lot of thigh and my silky blue panties. I see the valet grin as he holds out his hand to assist me the rest of the way out of the car. Steadying myself on my new heels, I smile my thanks and walk towards the restaurant door.
Inside I greet Francesca with a hug and a kiss. She looks gorgeous, and we’re genuinely happy to see each other. There is a delicious whiff of lilac. Her perfume is expensive but subtle.
“Cate, you look lovely. How have you been? How are things in the world of private investigation?”
“I’ve been well, thank you Francesca. Business is good; I can’t complain. And you? Everything going well with you?”
“Oh yes, I’m in town for a short while mixing business with pleasure. The museum is looking at a new exhibition and I’m on the committee to approve it. That’s the business.” She smiles and looks at Will. “The pleasure is spending a little time with my son and having dinner with you both. Of course I don’t know how much time Will has to spend with me. That awful murder case! It’s all over the media, television, the internet, papers. And I understand that there was another one last month, correct?”
Will has on his professional face, the one he uses with reporters when he won't give any details on a case no matter how much they press for answers. “I can’t discuss any of it. Let me just say we’re working it.”
“Of course, Will. I understand," she says smoothly and, turning to me asks, “How’s your friend Melissa? Is she still in public relations?”
Will looks at me and lowers his eyes. He knows what Melissa does, accepts it, and lets it go. He’s a detective but not, as he tells me, vice. His attitude is live and let live and mind your own business unless it directly concerns you.
“Um, yes, she is. I’ll tell her you said hello,” I say too brightly. She’s met Melissa a few times and thinks she's wonderful. When she asked Melissa what line of work she was in, Melissa without missing a beat told her she was in public relations. And that’s not exactly a lie.
“Oh please do. Such a lovely young woman. You know, I wonder if she might be interested in doing a marketing plan for the museum. We need a fresh, modern campaign.”
“She’s incredibly busy right now,” I answer. “Lots of work.”
“I can imagine! She’s bright, articulate, and very personable. I’m sure that she’s in demand a great deal. Oh well, it was a thought.” I see Will muffle a laugh.
She turns to other topics and regales us with stories about the museum while we look through the menus that have been placed in front of us. I begin to relax. Will tells us a funny story relating to a suspect and I talk about the incident with the parking ticket. Maybe we can get through the night being pleasantly cordial. I hope so.
But then I see the look in her eyes as she glances from Will and then to me, as if she’s sizing up our feelings for each other. She pointedly looks at my hands, noticing that I’m not wearing any rings. Her smile is sweet but her eyes look determined and my hands begin to sweat.
Between the main course and dessert, and after we’ve killed two bottles of Merlot, she steers the conversation towards couples who have reconciled. Will tries to introduce other topics but Francesca is as ruthless in her personal interests as her son is in his police work. She may look delicate but inside she’s all steel. I can see where Will gets his determination and toughness.
“Love is funny, you know?” she smiles. “People make mistakes, it happens, but when you realize you love someone, well that’s what’s really important, don’t you think?”
She goes on to tell us about people who got back together after their divorces. After fifteen minutes of this I have to say something. Her ideas of true love conquers all is just too Disney-princess for me.
“What if love isn’t enough?” The false calm of the wine makes me ask the question, which I regret the second it is out of my mouth. I’ve fallen into her trap.
“But love is always enough!” Francesca declares. “If you love someone, truly love someone, anything, and I mean any problems, Cate, can be resolved. You,” she looks at me and then at Will, “just have to consciously work at it.”
“Mom, maybe there are some things that are harder to resolve,” says Will coming to my rescue. “People can love each other but that might not be enough to sustain a marriage. It’s complicated for a lot of couples. Marriages break apart because of a lot of different reasons. Constant fighting is one of them.”
Francesca sighs, then smiles. “Seriously Will, do you really believe what you just said? Your grandfather, my beloved father, was fond of saying, Marriages are made in heaven but so are thunder and lightning. I believe that’s true but I also believe that love is the glue that keeps it all together during, and after, the storms. Don’t you agree Cate?”
“I don’t think so Francesca,” I say firmly. “I think Will’s right about some things being harder to resolve in a marriage. There’s so much more to a relationship than love.”
Francesca takes what I’ve said and turns it to her advantage. “So … you and Will do agree on something!”
The server comes by just then to ask about desserts and after dinner drinks and I see my opportunity. I take a deep breath, excuse myself, and seek out that time-honored bastion of female sanctuary, the restroom.
Ten minutes later I’m adjusting my bustier top in the mirror when the door of the ladies room opens and Will walks in.
“Excuse me, didn’t you see the sign on the door? Ladies?”
“My bad, wrong room,” he says but makes no attempt to leave.
“Get out, now or I swear, damn it Will, I swear I’ll … tell Francesca!” I say stupidly, the wine blurring my thoughts and making me unable to think of anything else.
“She’d say go for it. It might help us to, what did she say, reconcile? Anyway she sent me to get you. She thought we needed some alone time to talk.”
“Someone might come in,” I warn.
“Not with the out-of-order sign on the door.”
“What out-of-order sign? I didn’t see any sign.” I turn, annoyed, and face him.
“The one I borrowed from the server. I gave him a twenty. Restaurants always have that type of sign available just in case of an emergency.” He takes my hand. “By the way, you look beautiful, really, really beautiful.”
“Thank you,” I say trying to pull my hand away. “This doesn’t qualify as an emergency. I think I’ll just end the evening now. I’ll tell Francesca that I have files to read and need time to work on a case.”
Will pulls me close to him and kisses me. “You’re tense, baby, relax,” he breathes into my ear. “We can get through this dinner without mishap, I promise you. Shhhh, baby. Let go. I was always able to get you to relax, remember? Just breath.”
He’s right; his hands know just what stress-relief buttons to push.
“This isn’t fair to Giles,” I protest.
“Giles isn’t here. I am,” he says before kissing me again. “By the way,” he whispers in my ear as his hand slides up the skirt of my dress, “How’s your tailbone? Still sore?”
After a few minutes and some close encounters of the erogenous kind, my stress is significantly lower and I feel more relaxed. I also feel like shit because of my relationship with Giles.
Will convinces me that we should walk back to the table together. “Look if we give Francesca some type of hope, even the smallest bit, maybe we can end the evening on a positive note.”
“But we’re giving her false hope.”
“That may be but, haven’t we done that in our work? Thrown someone off by lying a little, let the perp feel comfortable, so we can get what we want?”
He’s right. I know I’ve done it myself when I needed information. Make my suspect feel at ease. It’s kind of like good cop, bad cop except the good/bad cop is only one person. You let them see you as tough and then change your demeanor to let them see you as a person they can trust. It works very well.
I agree with him and we go back to our table together. Will even pulls my chair out for me and places my napkin on my lap. Francesca smiles warmly at the sight of the two of us.
“Everything alright?” she asks brightly. “You were gone quite a while.”
“Yes, everything is fine,” says Will before I can answer. “We were just talking.”
I hate to admit it but Will is right. Give a little false hope to someone and you are able to get what you want. He winks at me, Francesca takes it as a good sign, and the rest of the evening goes a little more smoothly.
The delicious hazelnut chocolate tart coupled with the cappuccino and shot of Benedictine has left me pleasantly full. A little too full I think, feeling my stomach press tightly against the bodice of my dress. I check Melissa’s watch and see that it is almost twelve-thirty. We’ve been sitting, eating and talking, for over four hours. There are only two other tables still filled with diners. The staff doesn’t seem to mind even though the server brought our check a half hour ago. No one rushes you at Regina Margherita.
As the evening is winding down, I tell Francesca about my cold case and even take Joshua’s key out of my bag to show her. She examines it and hands it to Will.
“This is a key to a type of strongbox,” he says. “It looks like one that I had when I was in my teens.”
“You had a strongbox?” Both Francesca and I look amused by this admittance of personal boyhood information.
“Oh, yeah,” he laughs. “I had to hide my Playboy pictures from Francesca. So, remembering the skills I learned in woodshop, I made an opening and a hinge in the wooden shingles right outside my bathroom window, hollowing out a nice little niche. Inside that I put a small locked, metal box. The shingles closed right over it. That's where I kept all my treasures, money, baseball cards, porn.”
Francesca shakes her head and raises an eyebrow but she’s smiling.
“You had easy access to them when you needed them. It was practically in your room.”
“Easy access and no one was the wiser.”
“So it could be in the house; I just haven’t found it yet.” I say mostly to myself.
Will looks at me. “You’re talking about the McElroy place, aren’t you? But you looked all over that house. You were pretty sure there was no hiding place that you could see.”
Francesca looks at me questioningly. Will fills her in on what I’ve told him about the McElroy cold case. She acknowledges the sadness of the case with a small nod.
“But you know, about that key? Children are pretty good at hiding things from their parents,” says Francesca. “The fact that Will had his own hiding place doesn’t surprise me at all. Some things need to be hidden because the child feels that they are personal and private.”
I know she means Will hiding his porn but her words are true for other reasons. I think that Joshua McElroy had something he felt needed to be hidden and he hid it near where he could get at it when he needed it. Just like Will with his treasures, it had to be accessible. I look at Will and I know what he’s thinking. If I’m able to find the locked box, the key I hold in my hand will lead me to the reason Joshua McElroy went missing.
My mind goes back over the house and the yard. It can’t be the yard because it’s too open. If Joshua came back to get something it would have had to been in the house or on the house itself. I think of shutters, windowsills, shingles.. Suddenly I’m wide-awake and the relaxed feeling from wine and Benedictine have disappeared from my head. I have to go back to the McElroy house as soon as possible.
A small argument erupts as Will places his credit card on the bill. Francesca insists on paying for dinner for all of us and I hand Will three twenties.
“No, Mom, I am paying for this. Let me do it. How often do I get to take you to dinner? Cate, take this money back.”
Francesca continues to refuse to let him pay for a few more minutes, then gives in. I think she realizes that it’s a male ego thing. As for me, I’m happy to get my money back.
The bill paid, we go outside and walk Francesca to Will’s car. Because he’s a detective he always parks his own car in case he gets a call, off-duty or not, to a crime scene. He doesn’t need other cars blocking him. I hug Francesca and she tells me that she hopes she’ll see me soon, really soon. I let the implications slide and just say that I enjoyed having dinner with her.
“I’ll be right back. I'm just going to talk to Cate for a second,” Will says as the valet brings my car up.
“Take your time, Will,” says his mother happily and ever hopeful.
At my car he thanks me for coming tonight. “I couldn’t have done it alone. She makes me a little crazy sometimes. Anyway, thanks Cate.”
“That’s okay. Dinner was good and your deception played out well. Thanks for thinking of that, otherwise I would have had to leave early.”
He opens the door and helps me in looking obviously at my legs and the way my dress rides up.
“Blue ones to match the dress, huh? Nice touch. I didn’t notice them during our encounter earlier. Blue bra too?”
Oh he is exasperating! “I’m not wearing a bra,” I say a little too loudly. The valet glances our way and muffles a laugh with a discreet cough. “Good night Will. Pleasant dreams.”
“You too.”
****
No pleasant dreams for me. Once I have a possible lead on a case, it gnaws at me until I can act on it. I lie awake looking around my bedroom. My dress is draped over a chair and the silky blue panties that Will admired were removed by Giles a half hour after I came home. No questions asked about my night, no talking at all; just hot passion coupled with guilt on my part. Giles sleeps easily. He once told me that the trick to sleeping well is to love the day you had. To do that you had to create a life filled with satisfaction. Giles has a job with meaning, makes good money, and enjoys his life. But for me, some of my days are not so lovable. Maybe in my line of work with so many ifs and unknown dangers, loving my days is not so easy.
The key that is still in my crystal purse is on my mind. Mentally I go over the rooms in Marie McElroy’s family house. I dismiss the downstairs ones and concentrate on the upstairs. Josh’s bedroom, Marie’s bedroom, the one that had belonged to their parents, and the tiny bathroom situated next to it. Where would Joshua McElroy be most likely to hide something?
Will had said that he had hidden his treasures behind a set of shingles. The McElroy house has no shingles, just flat pieces of siding. I didn’t think there was a hiding place behind that. I need to see the house again otherwise I can’t make a correct decision. I make a mental note to call Marie in the morning and ask her to leave me the house key again with her neighbor, Mr. O’Leary.
Giles mumbles something in his sleep and turns over towards the window. I close my eyes, drift into a restless sleep, and dream of Peter Pan holding a key. His face looks remarkably like Joshua McElroy with his haunted eyes.
****
“Where are we going, Joey.”
“Someplace special, Father, a very special place.”