Chapter 2

 

Breakfast wound down pretty quickly, as Drake needed to get out to the small westside airport where his helicopter is hangared and I still had those tax returns nagging at me. Freckles saw Elsa out to the break in the hedge then came back to join me. I kissed my husband at the front door, watched him get into his pickup truck in the driveway, and picked up my purse and keys.

My destination was a gray and white Victorian house in an older part of town, one we had converted to the offices of RJP Investigations. My brother, Ron, is actually the investigator. I’m the financial whiz. Our offices are across the hall from each other and somehow, too often, I seem to get pulled into helping out with his cases. He does a lot of corporate background checks on new hires, with a smattering of cheating-spouse cases.

Yeah, even in the age of digital openness, there are still people who use a PI to gather dirt on the person they once vowed to love forever—all for the purpose of dragging them to court and extracting the largest financial settlement possible. I back away from those—it all seems so sleazy—but I’ve been known to find myself in the midst of a murder or two.

Right now, Freckles and I were riding along in my Jeep with the goal of avoiding any of Ron’s dramas and heading straight to: 1) the tin of dog biscuits on my shelf and 2) the partially completed tax forms in my computer. We pulled into the driveway beside the office and followed its length to what used to be a backyard, now our own little parking area.

Ron’s Mustang wasn’t there yet, but our part-time receptionist, Sally Bertrand, was already on the job, as evidenced by her minivan in its usual spot. Sally was in the kitchen, pouring coffee into a stained mug, looking a little ragged around the edges.

“Long night?” I asked.

“Crazy morning. You know, with Ross staying home mornings with R.B., you’d think it wouldn’t be so nuts. But getting Chrissie off to school and myself to work without some disaster along the way … it never happens. Today, it was a whole bowl of oatmeal coating the highchair, the baby and the floor.”

I gave a perky smile and thanked my lucky stars my only children had been dogs.

She held out the coffee carafe to me but I declined, making a little chitchat about the muffin breakfast at home before calling Freckles inside and heading upstairs. Sally’s domain is the reception area and conference room on the ground floor—originally the parlor and dining room in the Victorian days.

Upstairs, the layout is pretty simple—two identically sized bedrooms became Ron’s and my offices, each with a bay window facing the street. There was a smaller bedroom which is now storage and a bathroom you’d hate to think that a family of five or six people once shared. A shower curtain hides the old bathtub and there’s a standard white toilet and porcelain pedestal sink—nothing glamorous because it doesn’t have to be. I rarely have time for home décor, so I’m pretty content with whatever is handed to me.

I flipped on the lights in my office and turned on my new laptop computer. After years with a crazily outdated desktop clunker, this little thing zooms like a race car. Freckles circled the room and parked herself facing the bookcase where the tin of dog biscuits sits. It’s our morning routine. She’ll sit patiently for about ten seconds, and if I don’t get the hint she’ll be leaping into my field of view to get my attention. It’s just easier to give her the cookie right away.

I patted her little brown and white head and sat down at the computer. An hour had magically vanished when I became aware of Ron standing in my doorway.

“Ever heard of an alibi company?” he asked.

I came out of my Form 1040 like a mole emerging from the ground, blinking and disoriented. “What? Good morning to you too.”

“Yeah. Morning, Charlie.” He’s recently taken to wearing ball caps and T-shirts instead of the Stetson and plaid western shirts he sported for years. Maybe it’s an attempt to impress his new wife of four months, to be cooler with his three sons now they’re getting into their teens, or merely to seem younger—I have no idea. Victoria is such a classy lady, I can’t imagine the ball caps being her idea.

“So?” he asked again. “Alibi companies. Ever heard of them?”

“Em … no.”

He held up a magazine, open to an article whose headline I could barely make out.

“They provide alibis.”

“Okay … You mean to get criminals off the hook?”

“Not serious criminals, more like cheating spouses.”

“Ooh, right up your alley.”

“Ha ha.”

I shot him a look.

“I’ve got this case and everywhere I turn, the guy’s got proof of his innocence. I know he’s sneaking around, but the wife wants proof and I can’t come up with it. According to this article, these places provide their clients with the whole deal—restaurant and travel receipts, answering services where a pretend secretary says the boss is in a meeting, the whole thing.”

“Seriously. Does anyone really care about that stuff anymore? I mean, there are no-fault divorces and it’s a community property state. Why jump through all the hoops when he knows he’ll have to split everything fifty-fifty anyway?”

“When fifty percent is several million dollars, I guess it’s worth a bit more trouble. It’s Bob Lorrento.”

“Bobby The Bomb? The football player?”

“The greatest quarterback in NFL history, the one who could land a pass in anyone’s hands. Forced retirement last year after that shoulder injury.” He went on to spout football stats I couldn’t even begin to follow, the kind of stuff he and Drake talk about on Thanksgiving Day after a huge turkey dinner.

All I remembered about the guy was the headline news about his injury, followed by a local flurry of stories last summer about how he was retiring and moving his family to Albuquerque. Even without the injury, he was hitting an age where you didn’t see a whole lot of pro ballplayers still in the game.

“Back on target here,” I said. “Bob Lorrento is cheating on his wife?”

“Allegedly. Marcie Lorrento believes he is, and she’s furious.”

“Well, have fun with it. I’ve got paperwork here.” I pointed toward the stacks of receipts and forms littering my desk.

He grumbled a little, to what purpose I have no idea. He knows those aren’t my kind of cases.

We met up again in the kitchen around noon, both Ron and I attracted by the smell of the microwave popcorn Sally had made as a snack. She leaves for the day at one o’clock anyway, but always has a little something to tide her over. I had brought a sandwich from home, but when Ron offered to run out and bring me a Big Mac I couldn’t refuse. Despite Victoria’s best efforts with both of us, the Parkers seem stuck on fast food.

“Any luck with the alibi guy?” I asked, digging into the bag for my fries immediately after he returned with the meal.

“Just getting started, really. I found two of those alibi companies here in town. I’m not exactly having any luck getting them to admit a famous client’s name.”

“Gosh, why am I not surprised?”

He tossed a French fry at me and it bounced off my hand as I was opening the little box containing my burger.

“You seriously think I just come right out and ask, expecting an answer?”

I shrugged and took a huge bite. That special sauce always gets to me and I let out a sigh of contentment. The repartee dwindled as we both got serious about our food. A few minutes later, with the initial hunger slaked, I thought of something.

“Do you remember a family in our neighborhood named Delaney?”

He wiped his mouth with a napkin. “Like, from when we were kids?”

Things had changed so much over the years. The homes in our neighborhood were built back when my parents and their generation were young couples starting their families. Elsa and I are now some of the few originals remaining on the block.

“Rick and Jane Delaney have been there a long time. They have twin daughters who were tiny when I was a teenager.”

He waved it off. “I would have been out of the house by then.”

We were all out of the house, technically. When our parents died in a plane crash, I was the only one still home and Elsa Higgins had—insanely—volunteered to take me in until, at my eighteenth birthday, the law would allow me to be on my own.

“Why do you ask?”

I wondered if he was truly curious or if he was only filling time as he ate the last of his fries.

“A comment Gram made this morning. She thinks there’s something odd going on with the twins. I might look into it.”

Ron bunched up the fast food bag and boxes from our meal, stood and took them to the big trash basket by the back door. I took what was left of my Coke upstairs to my desk. The tax papers awaited, but my mind went back to thoughts of the old neighborhood and the way it had been.