THE WOMAN’S NAME I’d been given papers for at the process serving agency the next morning was Irene Faye. She was a cashier at a Vons in Pacific Beach. I sometimes shopped there and recognized her in the photo the agency showed me when they gave me the sealed document. A bit younger than me, late thirties. Red hair was always pulled back into a bun. Freckles across a button nose and bright green eyes. A big smile ever present on her face. Beautiful in an unconventional way.
All things being equal, I always chose her checkout line. Today would be the last time I did that. The last time I’d shop at that Vons. I considered not taking the job when I saw her picture. But I needed the seventy-five bucks, and if I didn’t take the gig someone else would. Irene Faye was going to be served papers she didn’t want, one way or another. I chose to be the one way so I pushed aside the warm feelings I had for her and took the job. If I gave up process server work, I’d never get close to making my monthly nut. I had a dog who needed feeding and a backyard to explore.
A middle-aged woman checked out in front of me in Irene Faye’s line. She had a full cart. The kind of grocery shopping you did when you had a family to feed at home. The kind of shopping I thought I’d be doing by now. Getting enough groceries for a wife and two, maybe three, kids. That had been my path fourteen years ago. Before Colleen was murdered.
I’ve never filled an entire grocery cart up in my life. Today I had a hand basket with a couple of apples and bananas in it. And those were just props.
The woman ahead finally finished and loaded canvas bags of food into her cart. She paid with a check. I unloaded the fruit onto the conveyor belt. Irene Faye gave me a quick smile as the check bobbed up and down in her cash register. A rock turned over in my gut. I didn’t know what document was in the sealed envelope in the pocket of my sweatshirt. I never knew. I didn’t want to know. But it was never good news. Good news didn’t arrive via a stranger verifying your identity and shoving a sealed envelope at you.
The woman with the full grocery cart and a family at home finally cleared the cash register. Irene Faye pulled my apples onto the scale.
“Good to see you.” Huge freckle-faced smile. “Did you find everything you needed?”
“Yes.” I couldn’t force a smile. “Thanks.”
The woman with the cart turned out of the aisle. One of her canvas bags shifted and a carton of eggs splashed down onto the floor.
“Clean up at register five,” Irene said into her PA system. “Ma’am, I’ll have the bag boy grab you another carton of eggs.”
She pulled my bananas onto the scale.
“Don’t,” I said quietly and reached across and put my hand on top of hers. I’d do my job, but the props now felt like insult on top of injury. I grabbed the envelope out my sweatshirt pocket and handed it to her. “Irene Faye?”
“Yes?” She smiled, cocked her head, and hesitantly took the envelope. The rock in my belly grew into a boulder.
“You’ve been served.”
“What?” Her eyebrows pinched up and she stared at me. “What is this?”
I looked for an exit, but the woman with the cart ahead blocked the way.
“I don’t know. I’m sorry.” I tried to step around the woman just as a bag boy arrived with a mop. He picked up the upside-down egg carton and it opened disgorging all its eggs.
“Oh my God!” Irene Faye shrieked and dropped the papers I’d served her.
I steered the bag boy out of the way and rushed toward the exit, slipped on goo, and almost went down. I bolted outside and made it to my car. Seventy-five bucks wasn’t worth seeing the checker’s face and hearing her shriek. Not someone I knew. Strangers were bad enough. I leaned back against the headrest and closed my eyes.
Somebody pounded on my window. I jerked my head and opened my eyes. Irene Faye stared at me through the window. Tears streaming down her face. I lowered the window.
“How could you do that to me?” Her face contorted in sadness and pain. “I thought you liked me.”
“I do. It’s just a job. I’m sorry. I don’t even know what’s in the envelope.” I was embarrassed even as the words left my mouth.
“He’s trying to take my children away from me. How can you help a man like that?”
“I don’t know him. I just get paid to deliver envelopes.”
“But you know me. How could you do that? What kind of a man are you?” She spun and ran across the parking lot, stopping at a sub-millennial Toyota Rav 4. She fumbled with her keys, finally got the door open, jumped inside, peeled out, and drove away. To her kids, a lawyer, or maybe just someplace else.
Irene Faye was a real person. Not a bit player in a life I was trying to ignore. And I’d just caused her pain. I knew I was only a conduit for the ruin coming her way. If not me, someone else would have served the will of her ex stamped with the authority of a municipal court. Irene Faye couldn’t avoid the chin music life just threw at her. But I didn’t have to be the baseball.
I was a private investigator. All actions I took had repercussions. On the innocent, the guilty, and me. I’d done things that would have put me behind bars if I’d been caught. All in a quest for the truth. Doing what I determined to be right without consideration of man’s laws. Or God’s. What scared me most was that breaking those laws bothered me less and less. The only way I could see to stop taking the law into my own hands would be to find a new line of work.
Irene Faye left before I could answer her question. What kind of a man was I? It had been rhetorical, but I had an answer. One I finally realized I couldn’t live with anymore.
Krista Landingham was being put to rest in Santa Barbara today. I couldn’t lie to myself anymore that it didn’t matter whether or not I was there to say goodbye.