Diver Down (Mercy Watts Mysteries) (3 page)

I turned to another rack with something called palazzo pants and the man followed me. I so wasn’t in the mood. He moved in closer and I darted forward. “Can I help you?”

He wasn’t startled or embarrassed like I was going for. He smiled, revealing a set of slightly crooked, very white teeth and held out his hand. “Mercy Watts, I presume.”
 

“Are you a process server?”
 

He laughed and gave me his card. “Hardly. I’m Oswald Urbani and I have to say the illusion is perfect.”
 

“That website was not my idea.”

“So I’ve heard. Whoever’s responsible did an excellent job representing you. You couldn’t be more Marilyn.”
 

I rolled my eyes. People say that like it’s a compliment. They never think that perhaps, just maybe, looking like Marilyn Monroe isn’t the best thing ever. A couple of months ago, some VFW vets finagled some pictures out of me and made a website, making me world famous as a Marilyn Monroe impersonator. Since then I’d been harassed and stalked. That wasn’t totally out of the ordinary for me, but the guys who discovered me via the internet were pretty bold. It only let up when I agreed to do modeling gigs, but I still got a few weirdos a week.
 

Urbani watched me over the top of the rack with a thoughtful expression. He was my best looking stalker ever, not tall, but fit with a tan and soft dark curls waving back from his angular face.
 

“What?” I asked.

“I’d like to hire you,” he said.
 

“I don’t know what you’ve heard, but I only do print work. Fully clothed.”
 

“I don’t blame you, but that’s not the kind of work I’m interested in.”
 

“This conversation is over,” I said, going to a rack of bra tops.
 

Unfortunately, he followed. “I want to hire you as an investigator.”
 

“You’re high. I’m a nurse.”
 

Urbani moved in closer and lowered his voice. “You’re Tommy Watts’s daughter.”
 

“That doesn’t make me qualified to investigate anything.”
 

“I disagree, and I think the Holtmeyer family would too.”
 

“I can’t talk about that.” The Holtmeyers were the family that committed the murders that I’d been deposed to death on. I couldn’t talk to anyone about that case until the trials were over.

“This isn’t about them. I want you to cozy up to my brother-in-law. It should be a cinch for you. He’s a huge Marilyn Monroe fan.”
 

“Not interested.”
 

Sheila found me. Her arms were full of dresses, cover-ups, and an unbelievable amount of tops. “I’m ready.”
 

“Am I trying on the whole store?” I asked as I slipped away from Urbani into the dressing room.
 

“It’s not that much. You have to be prepared for any situation.” She put me in dressing room three, the extra large one, and closed me in with four stacks of clothes that were leaning like my mom after a couple martinis.
 

“I don’t need that much,” I said.
 

Sheila didn’t answer. She, like Mom, probably thought cutoffs didn’t count. I’m here to say they do. They are clothes. I slipped off the hideous daisy dress and rooted through the first pile.
 

“I’ll make it worth your while,” said Urbani through the door.
 

I shrieked, “Get out of here, you freak.”
 

“Now about my case.”

“Sheila!”
 

“She’s busy,” said Urbani.
 

I didn’t like the sound of that. “Sheila! Are you okay?”
 

“She’s fine. She found better things to do than hover around you. All I ask is that you hear me out.”
 

I pulled on a pink jumpsuit. OMG. It was even worse than I imagined. Jumpsuits are not made for short girls with curves. I looked like a stuffed bear. What the heck was Sheila thinking?

“Mercy?” asked Urbani.

“Fine. I’ll listen and then you’ll leave.”

“Good. I’m worried about my sister, Lucia Carrow. Her husband, Graeme, may be having an affair. She won’t talk to me about it.”
 

“That’s her business, not yours.” Jumpsuit off and in the thou-shalt-be-destroyed pile.

“She’s bruised. I think he’s hitting her.”
 

I could hear the pain in his voice, low agony under the words. I grabbed a one-piece and held it to my chest. Dad had worked on plenty of abuse cases over the years, the ones that ended in murder. I’d heard the pacing, watched him prep for trial. They were as bad as it got in his line of work, unless you counted cases involving kids. Dad drank when he caught those.
 

“I can’t help you. Even if you knew for sure, it wouldn’t change anything,” I said softly.

“I think it would,” said Urbani.
 

“I think this is your sister’s life. If she wants to be married to an asshole, that’s her business. Interference will just alienate her.”
 

“I need to help her.”
 

“You need to leave,” I said.
 

“I don’t give up.”
 

“Then it’s time you learn a new skill.”
 

I put on the one-piece and viewed myself through one squinted eye. Not bad. I’d buy it, if it covered my chest.
 

“Mercy,” said Sheila. “How’s it going?”
 

“Crappy. Why’d you let him back here?”
 

“Who?”
 

“That guy that was following me around the store.”
 

“He came back into the dressing room?” Sheila’s voice went squeaky. “Did he do anything to you?”
 

I opened the dressing room door and looked into Sheila’s panicked eyes. “Where were you?”
 

“I’m so sorry. I got this weird call from a supplier. I was in the back. Are you okay?”
 

“I’m fine. Nothing happened. He just wanted to annoy me,” I said.
 

“Thank goodness. I’ll stay here.”
 

And she did, right through twenty-eight swimsuits and countless outfits. I picked out things that later I wouldn’t remember buying. That call Sheila got wasn’t a coincidence. I would be hearing from Oswald Urbani again.
 

I parked behind a Lamborghini in front of Stillman’s Antiques Emporium and slipped into the breezeway between the shops. It was the best way to get onto or off of Hawthorne Avenue without being seen. I’d figured it out during my high school years when sneaking out became the only way I’d have a social life. My parents weren’t particularly observant, but other residents of the Avenue were. My parents got no less than five calls when I snuck out and got in Lizzie Meyer’s Beetle at the end of the block. Dad made a few calls and I was discovered in West County at a party with (gasp) boys. The Chief of Detectives put me in the back of a squad car and made six arrests for contributing to the delinquency of a minor. You can imagine how popular I was. I’d like to say that was the worst day of my life, but with Tommy Watts for a father, it can always get worse.
 

I don’t know why anyone cared about me, but they did. You’d think the wealthy would have better things to do, like ordering their gardeners around or collecting fine wines. Maybe it was because my family didn’t fit and they worried about the cop’s daughter bringing in the wrong element. As far as I could tell
we
were the wrong element, but once Myrtle and Millicent brought us in, we were accepted. Even though we never had a servant of any kind and Dad washed his own car.
 

The giant oak at the back of Harris Field’s property afforded the best hiding place. It was three houses down and surrounded by lilacs. I leaned on the rough bark and checked my watch. Claire should be leaving our house any minute. She was punctual, if annoying.
 

Right on time Claire pulled out into the alley behind our house in her baby blue Accord. See ya, sister. I’ll be looking at those files now. The ones you so helpfully organized. Once she’d turned the corner, I trotted up to the back gate and let myself in. Ha. As if a little thing like a confidentiality agreement would stop me. Amateurs.

Mom’s flowers were a riot of color and scent. Heavy rose blossoms encroached on the brick walk and brushed my ankles with their silky petals. I lazed up the walk breathing deep and looking at the stacks of raw wood covering the patio. Dad was supposed to be replacing the back porch roof, which had been torn off due to rot. The roof had been gone for a while and buying the wood was as far as Dad got. Actually, I think Claire bought the wood, but Dad was claiming credit. He should just hire someone like everyone else on the Avenue. They’d be happy to have their secretaries make a recommendation, but Dad was stubborn. He wanted to do it himself. Little did he know Mom was researching contractors behind his back. She was waiting for him to be out of town for a couple weeks before she’d strike. I planned on being there when he found out there was a new porch roof and he didn’t build it. I’d be sure to add to my cursing vocabulary. Dad was colorful when angry to say the least.
 

I let myself in the back door, and grabbed a tin of Ghirardelli double chocolate out of the butler’s pantry. No, we didn’t have a butler. But if we had, I would’ve called him Alastair. I made my cocoa and headed upstairs to Dad’s office. The door was open, inviting me in to snoop. I set my mug on Dad’s desk. We called it the boulder because it was a remnant of his police days and he’d kicked it round during his long career.
 

The in and out baskets were just begging to be gone through, so I picked up a stack and prepared to be enlightened on what Dad was up to.

“What do you think you’re doing?”
 

I screamed and the papers went flying. I spun around and saw Uncle Morty sitting at Claire’s little desk with his feet propped up on the immaculate wood surface.
 

Crap. Double crap.

The paper rained down around me like giant snowflakes. Great. Uncle Morty and a mess. This was not an improvement on my already lousy day. Uncle Morty chewed on the end of a plastic fork and eyed me from under his favorite driving cap, a sad affair with a ragged bill and several holes. It usually matched the rest of his ensemble. Uncle Morty loved ancient sweatsuits bought at Walmart in the eighties. That day he had on a shiny black tracksuit with racing stripes. I don’t think I’d ever seen him in new clothes before and the sight put me off balance.
 

He pointed the fork at me. “You think you’re smart, Mercy. You ain’t.”

“Are you trying to scare me to death?” I yelled.

Uncle Morty chuckled. “If that was possible, Tommy’d have done it long ago.”

“Why are you here?”
 

“You know why I’m here, Nosy Parker.”
 

“Did Claire call you? That little traitor,” I said, trying to look wronged instead of being wrong.
 

“You two was never friends. You got all the looks. She got all the dates. Boys are smarter than they seem.”
 

I plopped down in Dad’s comfy chair. “What does that mean? Guys were right to ask out Claire instead of me? Claire doesn’t have two opinions to put together.”
 

“Looks ain’t everything. You are trouble with a capital T.”
 

“I am not.”
 

“What are you here for? Dusting, I suppose.”
 

“I could be.”
 

He snorted. “You’re here to find information that’s none of your business.”
 

“It’s my family and I want to know what happened with our house.”
 

“Get used to being in the dark. It’s where Tommy wants you,” he said.
 

“No way. I’m getting deposed on this crap.”

“That’s an easy deposition for you then. You don’t know nothing and that’s how it’s going to stay.”
 

I crossed my arms. “You have to leave sometime. I’ll wait you out and get in those files.”
 

Morty picked up a black nylon briefcase and dropped it on the desk. “Ain’t nothing to find.”
 

Chapter 3

RIGHT AFTER MORTY left my parents’ house with his briefcase and all the information I wanted, I got called in to work a twelve-hour night shift in a Pediatric ICU. I took the shift, despite the heartache it would inevitably bring ,because I worked PRN, which meant I filled in when someone was short a nurse. Peds was my least favorite work, but I have to admit there was something about taking care of a child when a family was living their worst nightmare. I could do a good job. I could help. Sometimes I needed to be what other people needed. It was a quiet night and nothing much happened. There were about ten people on that floor who didn’t think I was trouble, so that was a bonus and I scored a second shift the next night.