Who Glares Wins (Lexi Graves Mysteries) (2 page)

Most of all
though,
it meant clients couldn't poke around in
places
their eyes weren't meant to see. I thought
the room
could use a plant
,
at the very least
,
but Solomon
di
dn't take
my
suggestion of a ficus very well.

"I was hoping to meet a private investigator, but I guess you'll
do
."
Elisabeth
smiled at me hopefully,
but
not at all apologetically. "It's hard to get anyone to take me seriously."

"I
am
a private investigator," I explained patiently, knowing exactly what she meant about being taken seriously
,
but
resisting the urge to
point out the irony of the moment
. I knew what the problem was. Elisabeth Fong expected a grizzled
,
old ex-detective, probably with a paunch and nicotine-stained fingers, who talked in staccato bursts and had seen too much
evil
in the world. In short, not me. Even though my hair had recently returned to brunette, and I
didn’t
resembl
e
the peppy blonde
I’d
once
been
anymore, I still had a serious case of the cutes. Usually that worked for me; in Elisabeth's eyes
, however,
I clearly read
“
unprofessional
.”

"But you're..."

"A chick? It happens."
It
was partly why Solomon hired me. I did not look like anyone's expectations of a
private
detective. Case in point,
I
was disarming.
When
Fletcher walked into a building, people thought “cop”.
When
I walk
ed
into a building… I g
o
t hit on.
"Why don't you tell
me why you came to see me
?
"
I suggested, cutting to the
chase
.

Elisabeth paused, clearly wondering if
I
was worth her time
;
then seemed to decide, yes,
I
was. "It's like this
…
m
y friend is missing." The woman threw her hands in the air, clearly already exasperated
,
and
her
concern started to flow
. "No one will take me
seriously,” she
repeated
. “
I went to the police as soon as
I thought Marissa was missing
,
and they said it was too early to know. So I waited a few more days
,
and then they said, maybe she ran off. So, I wait
ed
another week
,
and they
checked
her place
out
because I
was
being a pest
, and found
nothing.
B
ut I kn
e
w someone
went
through her apartment
,
because she's neat, you know
, and
I could tell.
"

I did know. I would know if anyone had been in my apartment. Perhaps it was a woman thing. None of my three brothers
c
ould
detect
if a tornado had paid a visit to
any of
their places.

"How long has she been missing?"

"Two weeks
now
. It's not like her, really it isn't."

"You say the police think she..." I looked down at my one word note. "Marissa," I continued, "might have taken off?" The woman nodded. "But you don't think so?
Why don’t you t
ell me about that
?
"

"Well, they think Marissa took off because she's got no one here. She was a foster kid so she d
oes
n't have any family, and her job wasn't
an
exciting, high-flying one. It was kinda dull. They think maybe she got bored,
and
she met some guy and took off. But I
know
her. She's my best friend. Marissa wouldn't go anywhere without telling me
first
."

"Have you been close
very
long?"

"Six years."

"There's no chance she met a guy?
Decided to take off and do something different with her life?
"
It was
n’t
exactly
unheard of
. People changed their lives on a whim sometimes.

"No. She broke up with her last boyfriend two years ago and she wasn't into dating. Said she was fed up
with
losers."

I pondered that. A woman missing for two weeks and her best friend insist
s
she wouldn’t leave without a word. Worst
-
case scenario? She was dead already. Clearly
,
that had
already
crossed Elisabeth’s mind because she took a deep breath and closed her eyes, biting her lip gently.

"Okay, there'
s a form I need you to fill out,” I told her. “
I need to review the case with the
agency
before I can tell you if we'll take it.
Agency policy,” I told her, trying to be gentl
e
. How would I feel if my best friend, Lily,
disappeared
? Well, after appropriating some coveted items from her closet, I’d be
very
distraught.

I walked over to the cabinet, unlocked it with the small key on my key chain and extracted the missing persons form
,
with
the Solomon Agency logo printed in the top right corner
. It was four sheets long and asked for a
litany
of information, anything from the basics of name, date of birth
,
and address, to work history, friends,
known disagreements
, passport and bank details. I handed it to the woman and she flipped through it
quickly
. "I don't know the answers to some of these, but I can get them."

"Fill in what you
know
now," I said, "and bring in the rest when
ever
you can. As soon as possible. We talk over
potential
cases every day."

"So you'll take the case?"
she asked, hopefully.

"I don't know yet. It depends on what my boss says."

It went like this. When a case came in, we got all the details from the
prospective
client, and, as a team, discussed its merits and what we thought we could do
, as well as
what
resources
were necessary
to solve the case
to the client’s satisfaction
.
I’d only worked
on
one missing person case so far
,
but I knew it was s
ometimes as simple as monitoring the missing person's financials
,
and
just
wait
ing
for them to show up. Sometimes it took more effort, like
in a
custody case
;
and sometimes it was something we didn't want to touch
,
like a stalker who wanted more information about the person
he was
obsessing over.
I sat in on a meeting like that with Solomon and it still gave me the heebie
-
jeebies.
If we got a bad feeling, or suspected something of a serious criminal nature, we'd pass it
on
to the police.
This was probably the only area where I trumped my colleagues
;
alt
hough e
ach one of us had contacts
with
the
local police
.
I had nineteen serving family members in t
he Montgomery
P
olice
D
epartment. The retired ones pushed the count
even
higher.

"I don't have a lot of money," Elisabeth said
,
once she finished filling in all the details she knew and passed the form back to me
. I
scanned
her neat writing
. "But I need to know Marissa's okay."

"Understood," I said
, passing her the client request sheet
. "Write your details
down
here
and someone will give you a call."

"I'll bring in everything else you need this afternoon."

"Thanks. Leave it with the guy behind the desk when you come in."

I opened the door for Elisabeth
,
and she paused, her eyes suddenly frightened. "Please take the case," she said
, reaching for my hand
.
Waves of worry poured from her.
"I don't have anywhere else to turn."

"I'll give it my best shot," I said, which
meant nothing, unless we took
the case.

"Do you have a best friend?" Elisabeth asked me, stopping
in the doorway
.
I only had a moment to steady myself
to
avoid crashing into her.

I smiled.
"Yes, I do."

"If she disappeared and everyone told you not to bother looking, would you?
Especially if
you thought something bad might have happened to her?"
The pain on her face, combined with the slight pressure of her hand on my arm,
implored me to say no.

I thought about Lily. "I'd never stop looking," I said
, which
was true.

I spent the next hour at my desk, studying the forms Elisabeth Fong filled out. She knew most of the basics. Marissa Widmore was a twenty-eight
-
year
-
old college drop out. She didn't stay at any job longer than a year, according to Elisabeth, who had filled out six years of work history
. I
t was mostly
blue collar
:
waitressing, shop work, some office temping. Nothing that would say
,
“
this salary is too big to turn my back on
.”
Marissa didn't have any next of kin listed; instead, Elisabeth
had added
her own details.

Marissa lived in Frederickstown, a poor
,
but nice neighborhood. You could leave your car parked on the street and come back to
find it still had
all its wheels
,
al
though
you might think twice about walking around a
fter
dark. The population was predominantly lower
-
income families, young couples just starting out, singles who couldn't afford anywhere better
,
and retirees who'd never made
much progress up
the salary scale.

The deal was simple. You started out in Frederickstown
,
but you didn't want to end up in it for life. If you aimed really high, you'd
choose
a house in Bedford Hills, a neighborhood of large homes on spacious lots, with their own indoor gyms, pools and often, staff
;
or Chilton
,
if
you
preferred
the old brownstone buildings
. Mostly, families and couples moved to
places
like West Montgomery,
(
where I lived
)
, a nice area made up of small, converted apartment buildings and single
-
family dwellings. Singles
usually
moved to Montgome
ry Central
and bought neat, boxy apartments close to the restaurants, coffee shops and buildings where they worked
.
Harbridge
was another decent residential neighborhood,
if they could afford somewhere better, wanted more space, and didn’t work downtown
.
Frederickstown
’s
main problem was that the town planners
forgot about
transportation when they created the area
and couldn’t keep up with
Montgomery’s booming population. By the time
they addressed
it, the area had
already
ghettoized a
nd was
poor.
It
might
be hard to
abandon
a really nice home that you'd made your own, but
most
people didn't have much of a problem leaving Frederickstown behind.