This Doesn't Happen in the Movies (3 page)

“Did you?”

“Have an affair?”

I nodded.

“No,” she said.  “Tempted, once, but I didn’t.  When I wanted great sex, I had Peter.  As for an affair, I never met anyone that I thought could be a suitable companion.”

That made sense, at least at the moment.  “Was he always unfaithful?”

“I didn’t think so, but looking back on it, he probably was.  A few of my sorority sisters were awfully close with him.  At the time I was in love, so I didn’t see anything bad in their behavior.  I assumed he was being friendly.”

“Any children?”

“None.  I wanted to, but he didn’t.”

“Any financial troubles?  Business troubles?”

“No,” she said.  “Everything was great.  We were playing the game like we always did, no questions asked.  Then Peter didn’t call.  It doesn’t fit.  He should’ve come home.”

I wondered why a man with no problems would disappear.  Unless she was the problem.  The threat of a violent end at the hands of one’s wife seemed like a problem to me.  If he knew about it.

Amanda turned to head upstairs to Peter’s office.  “I know you don’t believe Peter’s dead.  Please, find out what happened to him.  I need to know.”

With five million hanging in the balance, I could see why.

CHAPTER THREE

Peter’s office took up the whole north side of the house.  The room was painted a light, creamy brown, with large windows east and west.  A mahogany desk the size of a compact car sat directly across from the door, taking up a sizable portion of the room.  On one side of it was a two-drawer file cabinet, on the other a computer printer sitting on a small stand.  Three-foot shelves spanned the entire wall behind the desk, and a huge painting of a sailboat on calm waters hung centered on the wall over the desk.  In the remainder of the room were a small table with a reading chair in one corner and a glass display case with a few model boats in the other corner.

“This is where he works,” Amanda said.  “When he’s in town,” she said as an afterthought.

I moved around the desk and sat in the leather executive chair.  Definitely more comfortable than the one in my office; it cushioned my underside like a pillow.  I ran my hands across the mahogany desktop, then checked out the computer monitor.  It was the very latest model, practically paper thin, taking up very little room on the desk.  I lightly tapped the keyboard, then switched on a small antique Tiffany desk lamp.  The room reeked of expensive taste.

“He also has a laptop for travel,” Amanda said.  “It’s with him.”

That made sense, since he was on a business trip, but I didn’t point out the obvious.  “I guess we have to start here.  Do you mind if I look at what he’s got on the computer?”

“I could care less what’s on that thing.”  I glanced at her as I turned it on.  Did she despise the technology or the man who used it?

“Let’s see what we have here.”  I waited for the computer to think its way through initial setup; when it finished, the desktop appeared with a variety of files on it.  I examined them, humming the catchy opening notes from a tune by The Smiths.  I double-clicked on one file after another.  Most of the files were documents related to Peter’s work, details of program modifications, suggestions for improvements, and a lot of computer lingo that I didn’t understand.  A few documents prompted me for a password, which raised my curiosity.  Not that they contained anything more than contracts or something he wouldn’t want just anybody, like me, to have access to, but a detective didn’t like not knowing.

“Anything interesting?” Amanda asked after a bit of fidgeting from the reading chair.

“Nope.”  I continued perusing files and humming The Smiths song.

“Is that
How Soon Is Now
?” she asked.

I looked up in surprise.  “Sure is.”  Not too many people recognized that alternative '80s band, or one of their greatest hits.

“I think we’re about the same age,” she said with a roll of her eyes.  “You’re what?  Thirty?  Thirty-five?”

“Thirty-four,” I said.

“Class of eighty-two.”  Amanda smiled.  “I like a lot of the groups from the eighties.”

“The Smiths were great,” I said, feeling like the schoolboy again.  She likes the same music as I do!  Get a grip, Reed.  She’s a client.  But I kept humming.

“Well, well.  What have we here?”

Amanda bolted up from the chair and came around the desk.  “What?”

I was checking Peter’s emails.  I couldn't believe he hadn't password protected them, but it made my job easier.  The Inbox contained only a few, but one of those was from a lady named Sheila.  The email was dated six months ago, and was brief but to the point.

“Dear Peter,” it read.  “So glad to hear from you.  Call me when you get in and we can have dinner and then… :-)”.  Below that: “Love Sheila”.  Underneath that was an auto signature, standard with most company emails, and this conveniently listed her full name as Sheila Banks.  It also had the company address, phone and fax numbers, and web site address.  Sheila obviously had little concern about being caught.  Either that, or she was incredibly stupid.  I’d recently heard about a couple who had spent the night together, and the unfortunate woman wrote her lover a steamy email about their night of passion, only to see him send it on to his friends, who send it on to their friends, and so on.  In a nanosecond the email passed through cyberspace, ending up in Inboxes all over the world, turning into a lover’s nightmare.  I saw the story on the news.  I’ll bet Sheila didn’t count on Peter keeping her email around, which wasn’t a very smart assumption on her part.

“That bastard,” Amanda said, smacking a delicate palm on the desk.  “Keeping an email like that.  I knew they were contacting him, but to keep the evidence...”  I knew exactly who “they” were.  And it sounded like there were a lot of “them.”

“Where did you expect them to contact him?”

She bit her lip.  “I don’t know.  I guess when he got to whatever city they were in.  Not here.”

“Maybe Peter didn’t consider his computer part of your home.”  I pulled out a pad and pen from my coat pocket while I talked.  “However, I would’ve thought he’d at least keep the correspondence on his laptop and not here.”  I printed the email, complete with Sheila’s business information and email address.

“Why?” Amanda asked.  “I never use this computer.  As a matter of fact, I hardly use the computer Peter bought me, except for occasional emails to keep up with friends.”

“But you could’ve looked here.”

Amanda shook her head.  “No, it’s like I told you.  Peter and I kept up the pretense of a good marriage.  I had no need to spy on him.  Besides, I knew what was going on.  There wouldn’t be any need for me to look here at all.”

The other emails were business correspondence, but I jotted down names and addresses just in case.  I didn’t find anything else on the computer that seemed significant, so I shut it down and rummaged around in the desk drawers.  “Where’s his itinerary?”

“Right here.”  Amanda opened the file cabinet drawer and pulled out a manila folder marked “airline info”, and handed it to me.

I leaned back in the chair and thumbed through the papers.  Each was a travel printout either from a travel agent or an airline, organized chronologically, with the latest trip in the back.  On his apparent last trip, Peter flew United Airlines, starting out twenty-six days ago.  The printout detailed flight information and times from Miami, Florida, to New York City, and then Philadelphia.

“Three weeks.  That’s a long business trip.”

She shrugged.  “That was where the work was, so he took it.  He made great money by consulting.”

I closed the file.  “Can I take this with me?”  Amanda nodded, so I set the file aside and examined the rest of the folders in the cabinet.

“Here’s his hotel information,” I said, pulling out another folder neatly labeled like the others.  I shuffled through it.  The last sheet was an email printout from a travel agent showing which hotels Peter was booked in and for how many nights, the last in Philadelphia.  I put that aside as well.

I looked further, admiring the neat and organized manner in which Peter kept his business files.  I did not have nearly the talent.  I found folders for each trip he had taken from the beginning of the year, ten months worth, with receipts and an itemized printout recording each expense in detail.  Planes, hotels, taxis, parking, car rental, all paper clipped to the printout.  The last folder had a label with the dates of this trip, but it was empty, the receipts Peter would have collected presumably still with him, wherever he was.

“Too bad,” I said.  “But at least I’ve got names of hotels where he planned to stay.  That’s a starting point.”

“Yes.”

“Did the police check with any of them?”

She shrugged her shoulders.  “I don’t know.  I talked to them yesterday, and they didn’t tell me anything.”

“Who’s the detective working on this?”

“His name is Detective Merrick.  Jimmy Merrick.  He’s with the Douglas County Sheriff’s Department.”

I took down his phone number and made a mental note to contact him, then rummaged some more, checking all the drawers.  More letters to clients, marketing plans, bills.  That was all.  Enough to know that Peter made a lot of money, but little else.  I opened the thin middle drawer of the desk, pushed around the papers and notepads, uncovering some photos.  I pulled them out, four in all.  In each one Peter posed with a different woman, and from the backgrounds, in different locations.  The women were stunningly gorgeous and appeared to be much younger than Peter.  He hadn’t tried very hard to hide his dalliances.

I handed them to Amanda.  “Recognize any of them?”

As she looked at them, her breathing became more controlled, heavy breaths coming out of a slit in her mouth.  “No.”  She slapped them on the desk.  “No, I don’t recognize them.”

“You don’t know anything about his liaisons?”

“No.  I told you, we pretended everything was normal.”  I wondered how she could keep up the pretense when he had so much available time and seemingly so many available women.

“Do you mind if I take these?”  I picked up the pictures.

“What do I want with them?” she murmured with a dismissive wave of her hand.

I sat back in the chair and slowly looked around the room, searching for inspiration, something to set off a flame.  I didn’t even get a spark.  Only the silence of the room, and the low rumblings of a huge, nearly empty house.

“So what do you do now?” Amanda broke the quiet.

I shrugged.  “Try and track Peter down through hotel records, that sort of thing.  See where this email leads.”  I held up the stack of papers.

“If you need anything else, let me know.”

“I do need one other thing.”

She tucked a wave of hair behind her ear, waiting for me to continue.  “I’m assuming you have shared credit cards?”  She nodded.  “Good.  I need you to call them or go online and get the transaction information for the past three weeks.  I want to know all the transactions, when and where.  As soon as you can get it.”

“I can do that this afternoon.  Will that be quick enough?”

“Sure,” I said.  “You can call me at the office.”

“Is that all?”

I smiled.  “For now.”

She leaned against the edge of the desk.  “If you’re done here, how would you like to have a drink before you go?”

Was she flirting with me?  No, couldn’t be.  I tried to look at my watch without looking like I was looking at my watch.

“I know it’s early,” she rushed to explain, leaning forward.  “But I’m used to having a cocktail at the club with lunch.”

I caught another whiff of perfume.  “No, uh, thanks.”  I stood up but Amanda didn’t budge. 

“Do you know why I hired you?”  She traced a figure eight on the desk.  Back and forth.

“Because I can be discreet?”

One side of her mouth turned up in a sexy half-smile.  “Yes.  And you seem like a nice guy.”  A cliché, but it worked.  I felt my chest getting tight.

“It’s just one drink.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I said.

“Well, maybe another time.”  The half smile remained.

I tripped around the desk.  “I’d better be going.”

A pout formed at the corners of her mouth.  “If you say so.”  She continued to trace on the desk.  “Will you take a rain check?”

“Sure,” I agreed.  And got the hell out of there.

CHAPTER FOUR

My office, creatively named “Ferguson Detective Agency”, occupies two small rooms in a renovated warehouse in downtown Denver, a few blocks from the outdoor Sixteenth Street Mall, the city’s urban heartbeat.  The rent borders on outrageous, but I thrive on the lively atmosphere and the burgeoning nightlife in the neighborhood.  I also like that I have my very own bathroom; it’s miniscule, but at least I don’t have to run to the end of the hall every time nature calls.  Or when I need to splash water on my face.

“Wow.  That’s cold,” I said to my reflection in the mirror above the sink in the bathroom.  My hazel eyes gazed back, chastising me.  I had just successfully averted a liaison with my first client.  At least for the moment. 

“Focus, Reed.  It’s your first case,” I said to my reflection.  “You don’t want to emulate
all
the traits of the movie detectives.”  Like having an affair with your client, who also happens to be married.

I dried my face off, feeling more-or-less in control.  I tossed the towel on a rung and returned to the office.  Okay, what would Bogie do, I asked myself as I paced back and forth.

After a moment I sat down at my desk, grabbed the phone, and dialed a hotel number from Peter’s itinerary.

“Thank you for calling the Hilton Miami.  How may I direct your call?”  A deep male voice droned.

“I’m trying to track down a friend of mine who stayed there a couple of weeks ago.  Could you help me?” I asked.  I’ve found that a direct approach usually gets you the information you want, and what better way to verify how far Peter had made it through his trip than to contact the hotels on his itinerary?