Madeline Carter - 01 - Mad Money (28 page)

I found my heart was lighter. I liked the
reflection I saw in Steve’s smile. I was still smiling when, at the
place where Highway 90 joins up with 57 North, I spotted the
burgundy Honda again. This time I knew I couldn’t just write it
off. Though the car had never been close enough for me to see the
driver’s face, I felt I was beginning to be familiar with the basic
human-shaped bulk of the person behind the wheel. I was still
willing to be wrong, though. In fact, I was kind of expecting and
hoping for it. I kept telling myself: This is Southern California.
Do you know how many burgundy Hondas are probably just in this
little grid of the map alone? I couldn’t even guess, but I knew it
would be a lot. Plus I knew if it
was
the same car — both
before and after I’d made a nearly hour-long stop at Brea — then
the only explanation would be that someone was following me. In a
Honda. I couldn’t begin to ponder who it might be. It was
frightening just to think about.

Simply going along blithely didn’t seem like
a good idea. I had to do something that would, if nothing else,
tell me if I was right or wrong. Even though I hadn’t been planning
on stopping at Redlands, I deliberately cut over two lanes to take
the Orange Street exit that the sign said led to downtown. And then
I watched my rearview mirror as carefully as I could without
colliding with oncoming traffic.

As I turned onto Brookside Drive I was
chiding myself for getting jumpy. How goofy could I get? All this
cloak and dagger was getting to me. I pulled into the parking lot
of the Redlands Mall in order to turn the car around and see if I
could figure out how to get the hell back on the freeway when I saw
the familiar flash of burgundy and my heart sank again.

I pulled into an open spot near a mall
entrance and just sat in the car trying to calm myself and think
about what to do. Obviously, my original plan was out. Driving into
the wilderness with some unknown person following me did not seem
like a good idea. Likewise, just cruising unconcernedly home didn’t
sound particularly appealing, either. The great unknown represented
by the Honda was too... unknown.

In my side view mirror I could see the Honda
pull into a spot a good six aisles and ten cars behind me. Like me,
the driver did not get out of the car. OK: that did it. Someone was
definitely following me. Watching me.

Even in big cities, we tend to go through
most of our lives feeling pretty anonymous, fairly isolated. In a
Manhattan co-op with — literally — millions of people around you,
it’s possible to feel completely alone. It’s some sort of mental
island we create to keep from losing our minds at our proximity to
everyone else. These are things we don’t even have to think about —
our anonymity in a crowd — and I certainly never had, until now.
The loss of it was unnerving. In fact, it felt downright
creepy.

This time, when I got out of the car, I left
the windows open only slightly. I wanted Tycho to be able to
breathe, but I didn’t want anyone getting into the car, either. So
I took precautions. Then, without looking around at all, I headed
for the nearest mall entrance.

In the mall, I scouted around for an exit
that would take me outside another way: one that would bring me up
behind my would-be follower. I asked myself if I was really
thinking of getting the jump on the Honda guy and I decided that I
was. A public place like a mall seemed like a perfect place to do
whatever I was thinking about doing. Better, anyway, than the
wilderness or the Malibu hills where there might be no one around
to rescue me if rescue was required.

As soon as I could see the Honda, I pulled a
pen and paper out of my bag and jotted down the license plate
number. I wasn’t quite sure what I hopped to accomplish with that,
but it seemed like the proper first step. And, anyway, it gave me
something to do while I thought about my next move.

With that bit of business out of the way, I
moved in what I thought was a stealthy manner towards the car. The
driver’s seat was in a normal position and the headrest blocked my
view of the driver, but I reasoned that he probably couldn’t see me
either. And, in any case, his eyes would likely be fixed on the
door I’d entered and he wouldn’t have expected me to circle back
from the other direction so quickly.

My instincts — not the ones that keep me
moving forward in the market, but the ones that keep animals made
of meat from becoming lunch — were urging me to flee, get the hell
out of Dodge or at least make for the nearest pay phone and call
the cavalry. I didn’t listen. Instead, I let my feet propel me to
the side of the car, ready to confront the person that I was now
sure had been following me at least since Santa Monica, maybe even
from Malibu.

I got to the driver’s door, turned and...
found it empty. I scanned around the parking lot quickly: it was
full of people, but none of them looked as though they belonged to
the Honda. Before I was even aware of it, my hand snaked out and,
very authoritatively, tried the door. Almost as soon as I touched
the door handle, all thoughts of anything were driven from my mind
by the raucous sound of the Honda’s alarm bleating painfully to
everyone within shouting distance. I took an involuntary step back
and collided with something soft. I turned quickly and found it was
a large woman with a bemused expression on her face currently
messing with her keys, pushing buttons and, apparently, trying to
turn her alarm off from remote.

“Just what were you trying to do?” she asked
calmly when the air was quiet again. Her voice was British and her
accent sounded cultured to me: a complete contradiction to her
appearance, which was not.

I shrugged a little helplessly. It was a
pretty good question.

“Well, if you’ve completed your attempt at
stealing my car, perhaps it’s time for you to keep moving. Or do I
have to call the police?”

By then I’d gained some perspective. “Maybe
calling the police would be a good idea. And you can explain to
them why you’re following me.” I was proud of myself: I sounded a
lot calmer than I felt.

She sighed. Obviously the car thief thing
had been a weak gambit in case I really didn’t know she’d been
tailing me all day. She sighed again. “I’m not having a terribly
good day.”

“
You’re
not. Try being on this end of
it. Now why the hell are you following me?” I was rapidly feeling
more brave. She was large and rumpled and tired-looking. Hardly a
physical threat.

“That would be telling, wouldn’t it?” In
certain circumstances, it might have been taken as a humorous
comment, but the tone was not too cheery.

“That’s the idea. Telling. You did a really
crummy job following me. I saw you. A lot. I don’t know much about
this, but I don’t think I’m supposed to be able to know. You lose
the advantage, following someone, if you spoil the surprise. Now
the surprise is spoiled anyway. So... go ahead. Tell me. Why are
you following me?”

Another sigh. Her plump face screwed up in
concern. Then, “I really can’t afford to lose another job this
week. It’s not like affluent clients fall from trees, you
know.”

“You’re not with the police?”

She rolled her eyes, as though what I’d
stated were so obvious, it didn’t warrant an answer. She indicated
her somewhat seedy attire, her worse for wear Honda. “Do I look
like official law enforcement to you?”

“I guess not. But I don’t have much
experience. I just can’t imagine why anyone would follow me.” This
was only half true. A week ago it would have been completely true.
In the last few days, though, I’d given several people motivation
to follow me, I just wasn’t sure which one. “If not police, then
what?”

“I’m a private investigator.”

“Cool,” I said and meant it: I’d never met a
real life P.I. before, though I hadn’t imagined that they’d look
like this woman. I had thought that a private dick would be lithe,
or at least in relatively good physical shape, from all the running
around and catching crooks that you’d imagine go with the
territory. This woman looked as though she’d have trouble stuffing
herself into a booth at McDonald’s and that she’d get out of breath
in the process. And running down a crook? Forget it. I’m hardly a
marathoner, but on foot I could have lost her in half a block. She
looked out of shape
and
down on her luck. This last gave me
an idea.

“What do you get paid?” I asked her. “For
this, I mean,” I indicated the car; the following.

“I’m receiving five hundred dollars per day
for this job,” she said quickly hopefully. She could see where this
was leading.

I considered. And suddenly I was feeling
better, less afraid. I was on familiar ground. “OK then, how about
I give you a hundred and fifty and you tell me why you were
following me and then stop.”

“I can’t do
that
,” she pushed her
face into a shocked mold, but I could see I had her attention.
“There’s such a thing a professional ethics, you know.”

“I’m sure,” I said agreeably. “But look: the
jig is up. You can’t very well follow me anymore now that I know
you’re following me. It would be too useless. And I’m not doing
anything very interesting. I promise. You could just tell whoever
that you followed me here and then I went home, or you lost me or
whatever you want to tell them.”

“That wouldn’t be honest! I have my license
to consider, you know.”

“Well, it wouldn’t be exactly lying, would
it? You
did
follow me here, and I found you out.” I
shrugged. “Saying you lost me might just be a bit neater, if you
see what I mean.”

She didn’t say anything, but I could see
that she saw exactly what I meant.

“And it’s not like I’m going to contradict
you. I just want to know who is so curious about me that they’d
hire someone to follow me. I’m not a criminal or anything. I’m not
married, I’m not having an affair, I’m just so completely not up to
anything that would make me worth following,” another shrug. “So
your conscience would be clear.”

“But my license...” she said again, though I
could see she was weakening.

“Like I said,
I’m
not going to tell
anyone. So if you don’t...”

“Make it two-fifty. I could have gotten
another half day or more for following you tomorrow.”

We went inside the mall and I left her at
the food fair while I went to find an ATM so I could give her cash.
I didn’t bother asking if she’d take plastic or a check. I found
her overlapping a mushroom-shaped plastic chair while munching on a
side of fries doused in ketchup. I plunked myself down on the
mushroom opposite her, forked over half the money and said, “So
spill.”

She looked around theatrically while she
pocketed the cash. Making sure the watcher wasn’t being watched? I
would have been amused if I wasn’t so freaked out and annoyed.

“It was someone called Mrs. Billings.”

“Arianna?” I said, somewhat incredulously.
And it wasn’t just that she’d had me followed — she had been at the
top of my suspect list anyway — just that high rent Arianna would
hire this obviously low rent private investigator. “How do you know
her?”

“Give me the rest of my money,” she
demanded, wiping grease from her chin with a napkin that had
already seen similar work. I guess she was eager to make sure I
didn’t bolt with the other half of her dough.

“Sure, but just tell me: how do you know
her?”

“I don’t,” she said as I watched her make my
money disappear into her purse. “She called me Thursday afternoon.
Gave me the address of a coffee place in Brentwood. Told me to go
there and wait outside. Said there would be two blondes coming out
of the coffee place together. The one that
didn’t
get into
the Porsche parked outside would be you.” Arianna had told me she’d
stopped at home before she met with me that day. She’d said it was
to check on me and to get the papers she’d shown me. I guess what
she hadn’t told me was that she had hired a private detective at
the same time.

“But how did she know to call
you
?”

She shrugged. “Probably called on my ad in
the Yellow Pages. I think she liked my name. Clients like her
generally do.”

I looked at her. Trying to imagine. “Why?
What’s your name?”

“Anne Rand,” she told me, forking over a
card. “See? No ‘Y’, but it sounds the same.”

Anne Rand. I stopped myself from laughing
out loud, but it was hard.

Her french fries were finished and so,
apparently was our business. Anne Rand was pushing herself to her
feet.

“Listen, Ms. Rand, before you go, why were
you following me? What did Mrs. Billings hope you’d see?”

She looked at me, then at her purse and
seemed to come to a decision: perhaps she figured she hadn’t given
the greatest value for two hundred and fifty clams. She didn’t
settle herself back down, but rather sort of perched awkwardly
where she was, a feat that was only possible through the sheer
largesse of her bulk and the sturdiness of the plastic
mushroom.

“Well, as you’d imagine, she didn’t go into
great detail. I guess a sort of need to know basis, right?” I
nodded. “I assumed it was a husband matter. People who introduce
themselves as ‘Mrs.’ then pay with a credit card in the name of the
‘Mr.’ are generally looking to find out what the other woman is up
to.” I snorted, and Anne held up a hand. “Well, it’s the commonest
sort of thing I get hired for, as you can well imagine.”

I had trouble imagining anyone hiring her
for anything, but whatever. “Did she tell you why she wanted me
followed?”

“No. I was just to keep a log and check in
with her at the end of each day.”

“You mean it wasn’t just today?”

“No, I told you: she had me eyeball you as
left the cafe the other day. I’ve been around pretty much ever
since.”