Last Shot (Dev Haskell - Private Investigator, Book 6) (30 page)

“Actually, much as I’d like to help you out, I’m wondering if I could get a rain check. I’m sort of in a meeting right now.”

“Oh yeah, figures, someone called ahead of me, right? My whole night has gone that way. The guy I was with ditched me about ten-thirty, stuck me with the bar tab and left me here. They had last call about fifteen minutes ago, now I gotta grab a taxi home. Oh well, you can’t blame a girl for trying.”

“Yeah, unfortunate timing. How ‘bout I give you a ring tomorrow?”

“I’m not sure I’ll remember.”

“I will. Okay if I call you?”

“I suppose.”

“What’s your name?”

“Danielle, but everybody calls me Danielle.”

I waited for a punch line, but there didn’t seem to be one coming. I heard a squeak that was most likely the stall door opening. “Well, I better get going, it’s gonna take forever to catch a taxi.”

“Thanks for the call, sorry I can’t help. I’ll talk to you tomorrow, Danielle.”

“Promise?”

“Yeah, I promise.”

“You won’t forget?”

“I won’t.”

I set my phone back on the dresser. Heidi’s heavy breathing was beginning to grow dangerously close to a snore. I figured if I woke her there was a chance it could lead to better things and she was probably still Prosecco’d enough not to remember in the morning. I shook her shoulder gently. She rolled halfway over on her back and gave a little sort of grunt. I moved back under the covers, snuggled up against her and lightly ran my hand along her side a few times. Each time I roamed just a little further down until my hand began its final approach launching off her hip bone. She rolled over and just as I was thinking ‘success’ she rocketed back with a quick, sharp elbow that caught me on the cheek bone. I saw stars, literally and had to shake my head a few times to get my bearings.

Heidi returned to her regular deep breathing.

Once my head cleared I decided to leave ‘well enough’ alone. Just to play it safe I took an extra pillow and placed it between us.

It was early morning. The sun was up and I guessed it was sometime before seven. I was vaguely aware of Heidi climbing out of bed and walking down the hall into the bathroom. I drifted back to sleep. Maybe ten minutes later I heard the shower running. Sometime after that she walked into the bedroom. I sort of half opened my eyes, hoping she might climb back in bed. I rolled over thinking I could lend some encouragement.

She had her thick white bath towel wrapped tightly around her and my bath towel wrapped around her hair. She wore a surprised look on her face that suggested something like I had two heads. She stopped and stared.

“What?” I said.

“What the hell happened to you?”

“Huh?”

“What do you mean, huh? That black eye, dopey. You walk into a door or something in the middle of the night?”

“Black eye?” I sat up and turned to face the mirror over my dresser. It looked like I’d stepped in the ring with someone a lot faster than me. My left eye and cheek were swollen and purple.

“Oh, God. Thanks for this.”

“Me?”

“Yeah, I just tried to pull the blanket over your shoulder last night because you seemed to be cold and you gave me the elbow. I guess no good deed goes unpunished.”

“I didn’t do that. Did I?”

I nodded.

“Really? I couldn’t have,” she said then tenderly felt her elbow.

“Yeah, and that’s about all the action I got.”

She stared at me for a moment, then said, “Oh, so that’s it. The sympathy vote. You probably did that just to talk me into climbing on…”

“Yeah, Heidi, that’s right, I beat myself up so you’d feel sorry and crawl back in bed with me,” I said, then waited. I counted silently, wondering if it might just work. I could see the wheels turning inside her head. I made it to nine before she spoke.

“You know, you’re so stupid, Dev. But that’s kind of sweet, in your own warped little way. Oh, God, I really shouldn’t, I’m just out of the shower.”

“I don’t mind.”

“Amazingly, I wasn’t thinking about you.”

“I was just hoping it might relieve some pressure. God, I think I’ve got a headache coming on.” I gently touched my swollen cheekbone.

“Okay, okay, but make it fast,” she said and dropped the towels.

Chapter Two

When we finished Heidi
lingered just long enough to drink the last of my coffee and eat the one remaining blueberry muffin I had saved for myself.

“Actually, I was gonna eat that muffin.”

“Too bad, you should have thought about that when you made me stay and work up an appetite.”

“I didn’t tell you, you had to stay. I was merely thinking that after I picked up the tab for dinner last night, your two bottles of Prosecco, and the after dinner drinks you couldn’t seem to live without, that maybe you felt guilty about falling asleep on me. I certainly put in the time.”

“Guilty? No, not really.”

“Well, you should.”

“Sorry. Not. Look, I had a great time and then I was tired from a really long day. Did I tell you I closed that Buchner deal?”

“Yeah, at least a half dozen times and by the way, you weren’t tired from an exhausting day at work. It was the two bottles of Prosecco,
‘your best’
, if I recall your order correctly. And then those after dinner drinks. What was it?”

“Did I order a dessert
Manhattan?” She sounded like she really couldn’t recall.

“No. You ordered two of them. You sure needed those.”

Heidi shrugged.

“No doubt you remember the ride home.”

Her blank look said otherwise.

“I had to keep pushing you off. You were crazy, wanted me to pull over so we could
‘make impetuous love’
…was how you phrased it. I think.”

“Oh, sorry about that. Maybe I did have a little sip too many.”

“Yeah, followed by that second bottle of Prosecco and then...”

“Okay, okay. Look I gotta run, I’ve got a luncheon meeting. Hey, if you find my thong, it’s red, hang onto it for me. I couldn’t find it, unless you did something typically stupid and crude, you perv.”

“Actually, I think it’s down on West Seventh, right near the stoplight at Grand Ave.”

“What?”

“Yeah, you said you felt imprisoned or something along those lines and you threw it out the window. I can’t remember exactly. It was just before your
‘impetuous love’
suggestion.”

“Are you kidding me? Damn it, that was about an eighteen dollar thong.”

“There you go, I’m always telling you not to wear one in the first place. See what happens when you ignore my common sense suggestions.”

She shook her head and said, “You really are a perv. See you later, I gotta run.” She scooped up her purse and the rest of my blueberry muffin and ran out the door.

“Thanks, Heidi.”

“My pleasure.” She waved over her shoulder, but never bothered to look back hurrying to her car in the cold weather.

I had my phone out as she pulled away from the curb. No rush, I ended up leaving a message. “Hi, Danielle, this is Dev Haskell. We spoke last night, actually this morning, early. Just calling back. You can reach me at this number. Thanks.”

Chapter Three

I showered and took
my time getting into the office. It was close to noon before I was able to stare out the window at The Spot bar and ignore the files on my desk. I was supposed to be doing some fact checking on job applications for an insurance company. The work was boring, but it paid the bills, at least for this week. I just had to make phone calls and verify periods of employment, some references, nothing too heavy. I figured I could put off making the calls for a few more hours and still complete everything by about four in the afternoon. I planned to call late enough so I wouldn’t get an appointment with my pal Eddie Bendix until tomorrow at the earliest.

Eddie was an old high school buddy and the HR guy at a major insurance company. I think they were gearing up to handle the influx they expected from Obamacare, although things were so screwed up on the government end no one seemed to be in a hurry.

It was winter, or would be officially in a couple of days. We’d already had ice and snow for three weeks and temperatures had hung below freezing since Thanksgiving. The day was cold and gray and seemed to match my mood. Oh, and we were out of coffee in the office.

I was staring out the window when Louie came in the door. We shared the office. Louie was fast becoming the man to talk to in town if you got nailed on a DUI, a driving under the influence charge. I think a combination of his personal experience, along with a pretty sharp legal mind were beginning to serve him well. The personal experience wasn’t the sort garnered in the court room. Louie had been pulled over enough times, and never yet been charged making him a bit of a legend, at least with the liquid diet crowd.

“I think you were doing that the last time I saw you,” he said, then threw his briefcase on the picnic table that served as his desk. He discarded a grimy ski jacket on top of the briefcase and tossed his Minnesota Wild stocking cap on top of the jacket, it fell on the floor where he ignored it. All of his suits seemed to be permanently wrinkled. He was in the same wrinkled gray suit he’d worn the previous two days.

I sort of came back to the present and stopped staring out the window long enough to answer him.

“Just thinking. I’m not at all excited about checking out those employment applications for Eddie.” I indicated the two untouched stacks of files on my desk.

“What the hell happened to your eye? And you haven’t done those yet? The files…you’ve had them for at least a week.”

“Actually, I just got them last Monday.”

“Yeah. And today is Friday. That’s a week. Right?”

“I was thinking seven days, you know, not five. Anyway, I’m not all that excited about making the calls. Most of the time I’m lucky if they’ll even confirm employment, let alone the dates. These companies are always worried about being sued by some jack-ass lawyer and don’t want to say much of anything beyond ‘hello’.”

“Tell me about it. And the eye?”

“Nothing really, just grabbed some dinner last night with Heidi. She sort of bumped into me with her elbow. It was an accident. Hey, get this I got a call in the middle of the night from some chick. She was reading my phone number off a stall door in the ladies room.”

“The ladies room? Okay, I’m ignoring your Heidi explanation for the moment. You wrote your phone number in the ladies room?”

“I wasn’t the one who…” My phone rang and I answered.

“Haskell Investigations.”

There was a momentary pause before a voice said, “Hello, I’m returning a call left for me from a Mr. Haskell?”

“That’s me.” I recognized her voice from last night and nodded at Louie. “Is this Danielle?”

“Yes.” Her response suggested our conversation wasn’t going much further.

“I’m returning your call from last night. Actually, it was early this morning, just after two,” I explained.

“My call?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ve had a lot going on lately and I’m wondering if you might have me mixed up with someone else.” She was suddenly sounding just a little unsure.

“You phoned me from the ladies room. I think you said the middle stall. Apparently my phone number was written on the door and you called.”

There was a long pause and I had the sense the event was slowly coming into focus. “Oh, God. Look, I apologize. I’m really sorry I bothered you. It won’t happen again, I promise. I may have had a little too much to drink and I…”

“I think you said some guy ditched you and you got stuck with the bar tab. Hopefully you found a taxi home.”

“Yeah, I did. Not my boyfriend, by the way. But back up for a minute, you’re an investigator?”

“Yeah, Haskell Investigations.”

“So, what do you investigate? Is it like in the movies and on TV?”

“Usually it’s a lot more boring.” I glanced over at the stacks of untouched files on my desk.

“Do you ever take on new clients?”

“On occasion. It sort of depends on what they want me to do. Sometimes they would be better served by an attorney or the police.”

“You ever investigate cheating partners and that sort of thing?”

“You mean like a husband or boyfriend?”

“Not really, I was thinking more along the lines of a business partner.”

“I have.”

“Really, gee, maybe we should talk.” She made it sound like I had just passed some sort of test.

“Do you want to set up a time when we could meet?”

“All right.” She suddenly sounded guarded. “Maybe a public place where we would both feel comfortable.”

I took that to mean where
she
would feel comfortable. “You pick the place,” I said.