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She was reaching for her coffee again when I said, “Emily Michaels.”
She paused and looked up at me, but before she could say anything, a server brought my food over.
“Aren’t you eating?” I asked her.
“No. I didn’t know you were eating.”
“I’m eating. You should order something.”
“What did you get?”
“Tuna melt.”
“Is it good?”
“Emily Michaels,” I reminded her. I felt like she was changing the subject on purpose.
“Why do you want to know about Emily Michaels?”
“Because.”
Her lips thi
“I can’t tell you. The man who held a gun to my head said no cops.”
Her mouth dropped open. I totally considered tossing a fry into it just to see if I could, but this was probably not the best time.
“Can I talk to her?” I asked.
“No.”
“Can you set up a meet?”
“No.”
“Can you tell me where she is?”
“No.”
Damn, she was tough. The FBI probably taught her how to withstand interrogation. I’d never met such resistance. Such pure determination. Maybe if I asked nicely.
“I won’t actually use that information,” I said, as though that would help. “I just need it as a backup. They said they are going to kill a friend of mine if I don’t get it.”
“Then give them a fake address and call me. I’ll have a team there to intercept. You can testify against these men. Wham bam.”
“And then what? Go into WITSEC with Emily? No, thank you.”
“Well, if you think there is even the slightest possibility that I’d give you that location, you’re wrong.”
I figured as much. “Why did they choose me, though?” I asked aloud.
“Probably because they know our co
“What co
“We’re friends, for one thing,” she said with a shrug.
Score! “Right. Of course.” I knew we were friends. I could now die happy. “And for another?”
“You’re a PI. They probably thought you could set up a lunch with me and just ask me to hand over that information.”
I snorted. “Crazy people. Who would think such a thing?”
“I wonder,” she said, her expression deadpan. “I do need to report this, Charley.”
“You can’t. No cops, remember?”
“Sorry. I can’t keep that kind of information to myself. If Brinkman’s men are getting that desperate, we’re getting close. We could use this to our advantage.”
“What about my advantage? And my friend’s advantage they are supposedly going to kill, though I’m begi
“Finish up,” she said, nodding to my sandwich. “I’ll need you to come to my office to make a statement.”
“Sack! No way.”
“I’ll sneak you in through the back. You can leave your Jeep here.”
Son of a bitch. “I’m sorry,” I said, rising from the table, “but I can’t risk it. If they get a whiff of an investigation where this is concerned, things could go very south very quickly.”
Her expression changed to one void of all emotion. “I’ll cuff you, Charley. I can arrest you on charges of obstruction of justice and hold you until you cooperate.”
I sat back down. “And I thought we were friends.”
“We are, which is why I’m going to get all the information on this that I can and investigate. It’s what I do. Let me help you for once.”
Surely I had smoke billowing out of my ears. “You’ve always trusted me in the past, and I’ve solved a couple of pretty big cases for you. Or have you forgotten?”
She rubbed her forehead. “Son of a— Okay, here’s what we’ll do. I’ll make a preliminary report stating there is a strong probability of an attempt on Emily’s life. You have forty-eight hours.”
I knew she’d let me do this my way. Hopefully things wouldn’t go south.
“But if this turns south, we are doing it my way.”
Sometimes I wondered if Sack could read my mind. Really good friends could do that.
11
It’s a beautiful day.
I think I’ll skip my meds and stir things up a bit.
—BUMPER STICKER
After convincing one of my best friends on the planet to give me some time on the Men in Black case, I headed over to the Fosters’ house since I was on that side of town anyway. I was now as curious as Cookie about what they looked like. Were they fair ski
One possibility that came to mind was, naturally, did he look like his real father? Did he look like Lucifer? If so, and he’d chosen the Fosters to be his human parents on earth, did he not consider their fair coloring when choosing a potential family?
Of course he did. Reyes was too smart not to.
I pulled up to an empty house that was for sale and pretended to be a potential buyer, looking this way and that before settling in and checking my phone. There was also a yard sale a couple of houses up, yielding a steady flow of traffic, so I blended right in. I knew Mrs. Foster would be home soon, so I sat outside, checking my e-mail and doodling in my memo pad. My doodles turned to words that eventually turned to names.
Charley Farrow,
I wrote, liking the feel of it, the look of it.
Charley Davidson Farrow
. Or should I hyphenate it? What were women doing these days?
Mrs. Reyes Farrow.
Farrow. I could get very used to that name.
I glanced up just in time to see a Prius pull into the Fosters’ garage. The door came down before I could see her, just like before, but I’d see her soon enough. I took out the case file Agent Carson had given me, the one of the kidnapping almost thirty years ago.
I glanced at my sidekick and made a mental note to carve out some time to go see his wife, Mrs. Andrulis. The poor guy needed to be done with whatever it was he’d left unfinished. I couldn’t have him ru
“I’m having a hard time not looking at your penis.”
“I get that a lot.”
I jumped in response to the voice coming from my backseat and slammed my memo pad closed. Reyes popped in, very hot and very … corporeal. He seemed more solid now than he used to be. Less incorporeal. The departed were always solid to me, but they didn’t look solid. And while Reyes had always had more color than the actual departed, he was still incorporeal. Not quite flesh but not quite spirit. Something in between. Lately, however, he was leaning toward the flesh.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Nothing. I was going to a yard sale. I’m in need of a new yard and—look! There’s one for sale.”
He looked across the street straight at the Fosters’ house. “Okay,” he said, and I felt a tinge of anger rise in him. “So, what are you waiting for?”
“I’m scoping out the situation,” I said, hoping he’d believe me but knowing deep down inside I’d lost the game before it ever began. With my plans foiled, I decided to go to the yard sale anyway. I’d show him.
I climbed down from Misery and shut her door, leaving my nigh fiancé in there to simmer and stew.
Three women who’d been arguing were still arguing when I walked up. Their disagreements seemed to center around the items in the yard sale. Two were dressed to the nines in mid-twentieth-century apparel. I guessed them to have died in the 1950s or ’60s. The third one, and the smallest, was in a fluffy pink robe with a
V
embroidered on the chest and tiny house slippers.
“Oh, I remember that music box,” she said, looking on as a young girl picked it up and opened the lid. “Daddy made it. He gave it to you, Maddy, on your sixteenth birthday.”
“No, he didn’t, Vera,” the tallest of the three said. “He gave it to Tilda on her twelfth birthday.” She gestured to the third woman, who nodded in agreement.