A Match Made in Mystery (3 page)

As exhausted as she was, she still heard the heavy breathing coming from above. The sound sent a cold streak of fear skittering down her spine.

“Don’t let it be another burglar,” she muttered under her breath. “Or the neighbor.”

Roscoe, a soft-spoken giant of a man, had moved into the unit across the hall from her a few months earlier. He was nice enough, but she got the impression he was lonely from how often he attempted to engage her in conversation.

Squinting, she spotted a hulking figure hiding in the shadows on the landing by the door to her apartment. She froze halfway up the steps.

It wasn’t safe to continue upward.

“Miss Winn?” The man who waited in the shadows coughed violently and then moved toward her.

White-haired and dressed in an outdated, but freshly pressed suit, he didn’t look like one of the neighborhood troublemakers. An old German shepherd sat by his side, panting wild.

That explained the heavy breathing.

“Miss Amy Winn?”

Amy slipped her hand into her purse, feeling for the can of pepper spray she always carried.  Curving her fingers around the cool metal canister bolstered her confidence. “Who’s looking for her?”

“My name is Rex Leeves. I used to be a process server. I’m retired now.”

That explained the suit.

“But I have one last job to do. A job I’ve waited twenty years to do. And that’s to deliver this.” He waved a manila legal envelope at her.

Amy frowned. Twenty years ago she’d been seven. “I think you’ve got the wrong person, Mr. Leeves.”

“No, ma’am. I’ve been keeping track of you for all these years. You’re the one I need.”

“Need?”

He coughed again. “I made a promise decades ago to deliver this to you when the time came.” He paused a moment to catch his breath. “By rights that should be in six months, but the docs aren’t sure I’m going to last that long. Lung cancer.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I led a good life.” He waved the envelope at her. “Climbing these stairs nearly did me in.”

Tightening her grip on the pepper spray, Amy climbed the rest of the stairs and took the faded envelope. Her name was scrawled across the front, the ink barely visible after years of fading. “What’s in it?”

He shrugged. “Don’t know.”

“Who hired you to give it to me?”

“I promised I wouldn’t say.” He coughed again, so hard he had to hold onto the wall for support. The dog stood and leaned against his master, trying to hold him up.

“Do you need a glass of water or something?” Amy offered grudgingly, her conscience getting the best of her.

Wiping his mouth with a handkerchief, he shook his head. “I gave that to you. That’s all I needed.  Good luck, Ms. Winn.” Slowly, coughing every step of the way, he made his way down the stairs and out of the building, the shepherd following behind.

Releasing her grip on the pepper spray, Amy watched him go. She looked down at the envelope, wondering who, twenty years earlier, had been so determined to contact her.

She rapped twice on her own door before inserting a key into the lock to let Diego, if he was still there, know she was coming in.

Opening the door, she was greeted by Pippin, who wrapped herself around Amy’s ankles, purring louder than a vacuum cleaner.

“Look what I got.” Amy showed the cat the envelope.

Pippin sniffed it, then turned her head, signaling her disinterest.

“I know, I know. It’s awfully thin.” She tossed it on the kitchen table and bent down to pick up her feline friend. “How was your day?”

Pippin nuzzled against her neck, her whiskers tickling Amy’s cheek.

“Did Diego feed you?”

Pippin purred.

“Did he say whether he’s coming back?” Amy surveyed her small apartment.  Everything was back in its rightful place. No sign of Diego remained.

She sighed. She’d enjoyed having him around for a few days. It had been nice to have human company for a change. Sometimes she thought the four walls of her home practically echoed with her loneliness.

Two sharp knocks at her door startled her out of her maudlin thoughts. Frightened by the sudden noise, Pippin flexed her claws, pricking Amy with their sharp points.

“Easy,” Amy murmured, gently lowering her to the ground.

“It’s getting cold,” a male voice called.

Amy grinned. Diego had come back after all.

She threw open the door to find him balancing a combination of brown paper bags.

“Quick, let me in before Roscoe gets me.” He glanced over his shoulder dramatically as if he were being followed by her weightlifter neighbor.

She wouldn’t be surprised if Roscoe
was
right behind him. He
always
seemed to walk out of his place the moment she opened her door.  “What do you think he’d do to you?”

“I’m pretty sure he wants to put me in a diabetic coma.”

Amy chuckled. Her oversized neighbor did have a penchant for handing out delicious baked goods almost every time she saw him.

“We can’t have that happen.” She ushered him inside. “I’d thought you left.”

“Without thanking you for your hospitality?”

He dumped the collection of bags on the table, covering the envelope.

Like a magician pulling a tablecloth out from beneath a set table, Amy saved her mysterious delivery from being tainted by the grease that spread from one of the bags.

Diego began to unpack the bags with startling efficiently. “I got all your favorites.”

“You got enough to feed a dozen people.”

He grinned. “Like you don’t love the leftovers. Plates?”

Dropping the envelope onto the seat of one of the chairs, Amy grabbed two plates out of the small cabinet over the sink and put them on the table.

Diego set a couple of bottles of cold water in front of the two chairs and quickly dispensed heaping piles of fragrant, steaming food onto the plates. “Sit. Eat.”

Amy sat.

Diego picked up the envelope that had ended up on his seat. “What’s this?”

While they ate, she filled him in on her encounter with the retired, but determined, process server.

“Twenty years,” Diego mused.  “That envelope is older than our friendship.”

Amy smiled. They’d been friends since they were ten. He’d been one of the first people she’d met after she and her mother moved to the neighborhood.

“What do you think is in it?” Diego asked.

She shrugged. “Not much. It’s awfully thin.”

“Maybe it’s a secret inheritance.” Diego popped a dumpling into his mouth. “Maybe I’ve been hanging out with a wealthy heiress all these years.”

Amy chuckled.

“Hey, maybe I could be your boy-toy. You could buy me stuff. Lavish me with gifts.”

“What kind of gifts?”

“A car. New threads. Trips to exotic destinations.”

“You don’t have a passport,” she reminded him. She’d had her own passport for years. She’d never used it, but she had gotten it for her future trip to Ireland.

“You can get me one of those too,” he agreed easily.  Then he grew serious. “Do you think your mom left this for you?”

Amy rolled her eyes. “You knew my mother.”

Diego nodded.  “She was always nice to me.”

“She was,” Amy agreed. Her mother had possessed many good qualities, but the ability to plan ahead had not been one of them. “But we both know she couldn’t plan her grocery shopping list for the week. Do you really think she could have thought ahead twenty years?”

“Good point.”

While she packed up the leftovers, cramming them into her tiny refrigerator, Diego made coffee and quickly washed the two plates.

While the coffeemaker gurgled, they sat back down at the table, eyeing the envelope.

“You gonna open it?” Diego asked.

“A guy came into Busy Bea’s and ordered a purple people eater,” Amy said simultaneously.

Diego shuddered as though the sweet, purple cocktail was the most vile thing imaginable. “Really?’

“Young guy.”

“How young?”

“Thirty maybe.”

Diego traced the seal of the envelope with the tip of his finger. “You think it was a sign?”

“A sign?”

“From Bea.”

Amy took a closer look at her friend, worried he’d suffered some sort of brain injury and had forgotten she didn’t believe in that kind of stuff. “Are you kidding me?”

He shrugged. “Have you ever known anyone else who drank those things?”

She shook her head.

“Strange timing.” He picked up the envelope and tapped it against the surface of the table. “Very strange.”

“It’s not a sign.”

He raised his eyebrows. “You only say that because you don’t believe in such things. You don’t want to believe that there are forces at work in this world that we can’t possibly understand.”

Amy kept her mouth shut. This was an argument they’d had many times. Diego’s superstitious nature was one of his more annoying personality quirks.

“Fine. Dismiss it.” Diego groused. “But you can’t ignore this.” He handed her the envelope.

She refused to take it. “I could. I could put it right in the trash.”

“It’s important.”

Even though she was pretty sure he was right, she asked with stubborn petulance, “How do you know?”

“You’re a chickenshit,” he accused gently. “Open it.”

She shook her head. “What if it makes things worse?”

He made a point of looking around her apartment. “You live in this palace and you work two jobs you hate. How much worse could it get?”

“But I have you,” she countered quickly. “I have Pippin. I have my Ireland fund.”

“You want me to open it for you?”

She nodded.

Pulling a switchblade from his pocket, he flipped it open and slid the sharp edge along the seal.

Amy’s stomach churned nervously and she knew it had nothing to do with Chinese food. A rising panic clawed at her throat as he removed a single sheet of slightly yellowed paper and unfolded it. She searched his face as he scanned whatever it said.

He flicked his gaze from the paper to her face and back to the paper.

“What’s it say?” she croaked, tension straining her vocal cords.

He placed it down on the table for her to see. “It says you’re to go see Milton Willen at Michelman and Willen.  You’re supposed to show him this letter.” He pointed at a string of numbers and letters at the bottom of the page. “I’m guessing so that he can see that.”

Diego pulled out his phone and tapped wildly at it.

She exhaled a breath she hadn’t even been aware she’d been holding as she examined the typewritten note. It was unsigned.

“There’s a Michelman, Willen and Willen Law Firm a couple of blocks from the address listed there,” Diego told her. “Makes sense that they’d change office space and add a partner or two in twenty years.”

Amy nodded, trying to make sense of the numbers and letters.

“Maybe I was right about the inheritance thing,” Diego joked weakly.

“From who?”

“Your dad?”

She shook her head. “I’ve told you a dozen times he died before I was born.”

“Remind me how again?”

“Car accident. He stopped to help a woman who had a flat tire and was mowed down by a semi.”

Diego frowned.

“Maybe it’s from Bea. You always were her favorite.”

The mention of the woman who’d owned the restaurant and served as a surrogate grandmother to both of them brought tears to Amy’s eyes.

Diego clapped a hand on her shoulder, offering support.

“I didn’t know her twenty years ago either,” Amy reminded him.

He frowned. “Well you’ve got to find out who it is. I’m supposed to start a new job tomorrow, but I can push it back so I can go with you.”

She shook her head. “I can do it.”

“You sure?”

She nodded. “How tough can it be to deal with a lawyer?”

There were days when Brady had trouble remembering why he
’
d ever wanted to become a lawyer. It was one of those days.

He’d spent the morning studying Eric Willen’s plan for Keith Hasburgh’s company. It was a convoluted mess that offered Hasburgh a quick profit, but also exposed him to major vulnerability.

Eric was more concerned with making money than protecting their client. It was Brady’s responsibility to do both, but he had to tread carefully.  He was nearing the end of the time he’d promised Milton he’d work at the firm. The firm’s other managing partner, Michelman, was away for another three months on his trip around the world with his son, which meant Brady would need a recommendation from Eric when he started searching for new employment. He’d cast a few tentative feelers out and didn’t think he’d have too much trouble finding another job.
Unless
he got on Eric’s wrong side.

His secretary, Lara, stuck her head in his office. “Don’t forget you’ve got that meeting with Mrs. M.”

He nodded curtly. “Thanks.”

She took a step into the office and closed the door behind her.

He glanced up from his computer screen. “What’s up?”

“You look worried. How bad is it?”

“Bad. If this was done by anyone else but Eric, I’d scrap the entire thing.”

“Maybe you should anyway.”

He shook his head. “You know I can’t.”

“He’s going to run this company into the ground,” Lara declared. “And all of the people who work here will be out of a job. It’ll be all your fault, Brady. Just because you’re getting out of here doesn’t mean the rest of us won’t be left to deal with the consequences of your actions or inactions.”

“I’m sorry. I’m unclear what’s going on right now,” he mocked. “Are you trying to guilt me into doing things differently or bully me?”

“Both.” She put her hands on her hips. “Someone has to be the better man. You’re that man.”

He shook his head. “You know I can’t. I owe Milton.”

“What you owe him, and everybody else, is to do the right thing.”

His temper flared. “Your opinion has been duly noted, counselor.  Was there anything else you wanted?”

“You’re only pissy because you know I’m right.” She tossed her hair over shoulder and stalked out.

He watched her leave, knowing that she was, as usual, right.  He wasn’t annoyed because she dared to challenge him; hell, that’s why he’d hired her, but because she voiced the very thoughts that had been nibbling away at his conscience.