04 - Shock and Awesome (8 page)

 
   
"Are you ever going to let me forget that?" I asked, recalling, with a shudder, the day we found my ex-boss's corpse. Except for me, it was the second time.

 
   
"One day." She laughed, then pulled a face. "Unless we find anymore. Let's not, okay,
Lexi
? Promise me?"

 
   
I hated to say it, but I thought the chances of us not finding more bodies were low, seeing as we seemed to attract them. On the plus side, no one had been murdered on this case. Yet. All the same, I refused to make any promises I couldn't keep.

 
   
~

 
   
I declined Lily's offer of dinner with
Jord
and her, and retired to bed early. When I awoke, there was a thick envelope pushed under my door with a note from Solomon, simply saying “Read.” Over breakfast, I opened the envelope and spread its contents across the coffee table. I played
Eeny
-
Meeny
-
Miny
-Mo to decide which rich dating dude's case file or police report I should read about first. Of course, none of the suspects were a sure thing, but Helen
Callery
had already done some of our work by narrowing down the likeliest suspects. Aside from being millionaires - which they stated and Helen assured us they most definitely were - the one other thing each man had in common was dating each of the complainants. That made our pool of suspects much smaller, against a surprisingly long list of rich singles.

 
   
My finger landed on the middle file, and with a sigh, I snapped it up, opening the manila cover to reveal a few loose sheets of paper and a sheaf of photographs. The top paper was obviously the application filled out prior to joining the agency.

 
   
David Markham was thirty-nine, a self-made man of indeterminate software expertise. He owned a house in the exclusive hamlet of Bedford Hills, never married and didn't have kids. He claimed to enjoy tennis, fine wine, hiking, and art galleries. I decided not to write him off as a total bore, just yet. Besides, he wanted to get married and have two kids; and if he were hot, after seeing his bank account, I most definitely would consider dating him.

 
   
I turned the application over and laid it face down on the empty side of the file. A bank statement confirmed his income to an eye-watering degree. Personal references attested how nice he was and what a catch he would be for the right woman. As I warmed to him, I turned the page and my stomach flopped. It didn't matter how nice this guy was on paper, he couldn’t float my ocean-going yacht. Paunchy around the middle with a shirt a size too small and slicked-back, oily hair, he had a nice smile on otherwise plain features. He did not look like a suave operator. Or, sadly, my future husband. Not that I was looking for one anyway, but it never hurt to keep one's eyes open.

 
   
"
C'est
la vie
," I muttered, closing the file.

 
   
File number two revealed the jackpot of dating: an English man with a title.

 
   
"Holy crap, my mother would love this," I squealed, scanning the application. Then I thought about English oppression, Independence Day, and Prince William's lack of availability. "Nope. She'll still love a lord," I decided.

 
   
Lord Justin
Camberwell
hailed from somewhere in England with a name that probably wasn't pronounced anything like it looked. Apparently, he spent a fair portion of his youth in the States and decided to return last year to oversee some family business dealings before taking up management of the family estate back home. His bank statement was missing, but there was a printout of a Wikipedia page and a dozen shots of Lord Justin playing polo, in his graduation gown with the towering spires of Oxford as a backdrop, and as a guest at a couple of royal weddings. I'm pretty certain one of the couples was Wills and Kate. He had blonde hair, sparkling eyes and a terrific complexion with a toned physique, assuming the tennis snap was recent. I put down ten bucks on a mental bet that he was top of every single one of Million Matches'
millionairess's
dating list. After all, titles were cool. "Lady
Lexi
," I tried, then, "Lady Alexandra
Camberwell
. Lady Alexandra
Camberwell
Graves. It could work."

 
   
His address was listed as "care of" a house in Chilton, just a few blocks from Solomon's house. It made sense that a visitor on foreign shores would stay with a friend, I guessed, and wouldn’t have his own place if he didn't plan to settle here. His future plans for heading home, however, did make me wonder what he was doing searching for a woman in Montgomery. Was he dating for keeps? Or playing for now? And did playboys make good thieves?

 
   
I added Lord Justin's file to that of David Markham's as I opened the third file and wondered who else might be in the same league as a self-made software millionaire and an English lord.

 
   
Marty
Tookey
was a lottery winner. A big winner. Oodles of winnings. In fact, his bank account sniffed at most other winners, he had so much money. He was a local guy, born and raised in Montgomery, with a career in accounting until his big win. I recognized the firm as one with offices a couple blocks from the Solomon Agency. His application stated he wanted to be married with a family, and not see someone who wanted him for his money, which seemed like a no-brainer for me since this was a bags-of-money dating agency. I figured he thought it wouldn't hurt to state it. I wondered how much the winnings changed his life. Flicking past his references, I picked up a couple of photographs of an attractive man with sandy hair. He appeared in his early thirties. One shot showed him in tennis whites, and another on holiday, with a beach and palm trees in the background.

 
   
Reaching for my cell phone, I called Lily. "Does everyone rich play tennis?" I asked.

 
   
"Why are you asking me? What time is it?"

 
   
"Eight. You're rich."

 
   
"My parents are rich."

 
   
"Do they play tennis?"

 
   
"Yes."

 
   
"Do you?"

 
   
"Uh... yes," Lily admitted.

 
   
"Damn. I don't know how to play tennis. All my suspects so far play tennis. What if they want to play?"

 
   
"We were in the tennis club in school!" Lily reminded me.

 
   
I forgot about that and struggled to remember. I vaguely recalled looking super cute in my whites. "I only joined to look at the boys' legs," I admitted. "And to show them mine."

 
   
"Me too. I didn't learn much. My mother enrolled me in tennis camp one summer. Do you remember?"

 
   
"Vaguely. Did you learn much?"

 
   
"Only that the camp counselors at tennis camp are easy. And despite having a weak backhand, I can definitely grip a..."

 
   
"Don't tell me! At least you learned something."

 
   
"True. It's a lesson that served me well. Boom. Tennis joke!" Lily giggled.

 
   
"Ha-ha. Do you have tennis whites?"

 
   
"Somewhere."

 
   
"Can I borrow them if I need to?"

 
   
"Sure. Plus the skirt is incredibly short, so if you need to distract your opponent, you could just bend over a lot and play with the balls."

 
   
I grimaced, though, come to think of it, that would be distracting. "I'll make sure to wear my best underpants."

 
   
"Or none at all."

 
   
"I don't think they'll need that much distracting."

 
   
"You never know. It'll be a fast way to find out where the jewels are hidden." Lily giggled and I sighed. Pregnancy brought out her filthy mind. Come to think of it, having a filthy mind probably helped her get pregnant in the first place. I preferred not to think of my brother having anything to do with it.

 
   
"I'll call you later. I have apartments to see this afternoon and another file to read first. Hope the next one doesn't play tennis too."

 
   
"Hope he's hot."

 
   
Suspect number four wasn't just hot. Ben Rafferty was
smokin
' hot. He hailed from New York, a trust fund baby who had access to the best schools, homes in the Hamptons, Aspen, and a family duplex on the upper east side. His family also had roots in Boston, and while he was there recuperating after a skiing accident, he visited Montgomery and liked our town. He planned on staying, maybe investing in local business, while also volunteering at community aid organizations. His references portrayed him as funny, charming, but not without foibles. In short, his friends didn't say he was a saint, but one of life's good guys, which seemed like a reasonable description for someone who wanted an honest representation. There were two headshots, one looked posed, and a little formal in an old class tie, though I couldn't guess where from. The other was a relaxed, candid shot of him sitting in the park, a soft breeze ruffling his hair, smiling broadly as he petted a small dog. I bet if his family money wasn’t enough to sucker the women in, the image of the big guy being so sweet to a cute pup finished them off. It certainly worked for me. Best of all, he didn't mention tennis. Hurrah!

 
   
"Hello, date number four," I cooed, giving his puppy photo a stroke. "Two
hotties
, two
notties
. This job officially does not suck. Yet," I added, just to err on the side of caution, because, well, you never know.

 
   
There was one thing that bothered me about the case as I stacked the files and headed for the coffee pot and my second cup. Why would any one of these rich men be stealing? Surely they had enough money of their own? Even as I thought about it, the answer was clear. We assumed the motive for theft was the money, but what if it was theft for the sheer sake of thievery? Perhaps it was some rich man's game to stave off the boredom of a perfect life. A gentleman thief. We either had a penniless thief and a liar... or a real life Thomas Crown in our midst.

 
   
~

 
   
 
I arrived at my first appointment five minutes early, and four coffees into the day. While parking, I took a good, long look around the neighborhood, which was pretty easy as I was five minutes from my house. The West Montgomery apartment was the best of a bad bunch I booked to see this morning. The realtor told me it only just came on the rental market after the homeowner decided to move to Hong Kong. I really couldn't see how someone could just decide to move to Hong Kong, but that wasn't the point. This was a Holy Grail apartment; it was designed for an owner to live in, not for a money-sucking landlord to abandon. That meant it was probably pretty nice. And cockroach-free. The bathroom was new. Even better, it was in my budget.

 
   
As I slid out of my VW and approached the building, another couple strolled to the entrance. They looked young and smart. She wore ankle-length pants and a chic mac in lipstick red. He wore chinos and a navy blazer. They were holding hands. Perhaps they were my neighbors-to-be? My hopes of making friends with the happy-looking couple diminished as we both waited for the other to approach the keypad entrance.