Читать книгу Her Better Half - C.J. Carmichael - Страница 12

N ine hours later, I met Erin back at Murphy’s Grill. Shelley was spending the night at our place, with Devin and Jamie sharing babysitting responsibilities. Per Erin’s instructions, I had brought a large insulated travel mug, but no ice-cream pail. I was hoping Erin had been joking about that. I placed my cup on the counter next to Erin’s and watched as Murphy emptied the coffeepot into both of them.

Given the lack of washroom facilities, as previously outlined by Erin, I wasn’t sure the super-sized coffees were such a great idea. But Erin seemed to think a person could never get enough of Murphy’s coffee.

Even as I had that thought, Murphy’s dark brown eyes settled on me. “Want room for cream?”

“Oh, yes. Lots of room, please.”

Murphy paused, looked at me intently, then turned to Erin. “She has nice manners.”

Erin seemed oddly proud. “Didn’t I tell you?”

“What’s going on with you two? Is it a crime to say please in this neighborhood?”

Erin ignored my question, just pushed the cream pitcher my way. “Okay, we’re set. Let’s make tracks.”

Although it was dark outside, the temperature was still hot, the early August air oppressively muggy. I slipped into the passenger seat of Erin’s Toyota and had no sooner inserted my mug into one of the cup holders than Erin handed me a package of batteries.

“Put those in the glove compartment, would you? Nothing worse than running out of batteries at just the wrong moment.”

I unlatched the glove compartment. A flashlight rolled out to the floor. I groped in the dark, found it, then jammed everything back into place.

Erin already had the car in motion. She U-turned at the next intersection, now heading east on Dupont. The street was narrow with cars parked solidly on both sides—even at this time of night. I kept expecting us to clip off a few side mirrors, but Erin knew what she was doing.

“Okay, here’s a little background,” Erin said. “Our client, Sherry, is a big-shot VP at one of the downtown banks and travels to New York a lot.”

“She’s there now?” I guessed.

“Yup. Left this morning. She’s been worried for some time that her husband, Martin, has been sneaking around on her.”

“Did she try asking him?”

Erin gave me a pitying look, as if she couldn’t believe anyone could be so naive. “He denied it. Told Sherry he still loves her. But Sherry’s pretty sure it’s her six-figure income he’s really crazy about.”

Erin turned left on Spadina and as we passed Casa Loma, I peered out the window at the grand stone structure. “When the girls were little they used to love visiting this place.”

“Yeah? I’ll have to take Shelley sometime.”

I was surprised Erin hadn’t already done so, especially since the castle was close to where she lived. But then I thought about the admission rates, and the fact that Erin worked two jobs as well as looked after her daughter on her own.

We were now in the Forest Hill neighborhood, driving along winding roads bordered by majestic trees and gracious stone and brick mansions. Devin and Jamie’s school was just up the way on Avenue Road, but Erin kept to the side streets. This was one of the few neighborhoods in Toronto that rivaled Rosedale, and I gazed out the window longingly.

“Nice, huh?” Erin said.

“Oh, yes.” I wondered if Erin would be surprised to find out that until recently my girls and I had lived in a home just as splendid as these. We’d had so much, and now we had…

Enough. We had enough. I had to stop whining, even if it was just to myself.

“Where are we headed?” I checked out a street sign as we cruised slowly through the next intersection.

Erin recited the address.

“Martin’s girlfriend must be well-off to live there.”

“She should be. She’s Sherry’s boss.”

“Her boss?”

Erin grinned, her crooked teeth gleaming in the light from the dash. “Kinky, isn’t it?”

Now I really felt sorry for Sherry. Not only was her husband cheating on her, but so was her boss. Not that it was technically cheating in the boss’s case, but it was certainly a betrayal.

Erin took her foot off the gas. “Here’s the house.”

It was a classic Tudor home, with lovely English-garden-styled landscaping.

“I scoped out the neighborhood earlier. We can park down the block. The people who live there have teens. Cars are always coming and going.”

Erin pulled into a vacant space, opened her window a few inches, then motioned for me to do the same. “I know it’s hot, but we can’t run the air-conditioning. It’ll look too suspicious.”

“And two women sitting in a parked car won’t?”

“You notice I picked a spot between streetlights. We’re in the shadows here. Now, just recline your seat—” as she spoke, Erin demonstrated “—and no one will even see we’re here.”

There were all sorts of tricks to this game, I realized. “Are we sure Martin is going to show up tonight?”

“No.”

That was disappointing. “What if he doesn’t?”

“Then we come back tomorrow. Then the next night and the next.”

“Sounds…boring.”

Erin’s grin flashed again. “Now you know why we needed the coffee. Without it, I’d fall asleep in the first hour.”

“Good point.”

“Can you pass me the camera? It’s at your feet.”

I found the vinyl bag and handed it over. “Is he here?” A car had just driven by, but though it had seemed to slow a little, it hadn’t stopped.

“Nah, I’m just getting prepared. Nothing bums me out more than waiting for hours, then missing the shot when something finally does happen.”

I watched as Erin turned on the power, then inserted a fresh cassette into the machine. Funny how comfortable I felt, sitting in this car with a woman I’d known for only a week. Usually it took me a while to warm up to strangers. Yet, I’d confided the details of my marriage breakup to Erin within an hour of meeting her.

“You’ve heard my life story, but I know hardly anything about you. Have you lived in Toronto long?”

“All my life—just like you. Well, maybe not just like you. My mom had a house in the Beaches—that was before the yuppies declared the place trendy and drove up the real-estate prices.”

“Must have been a fun place to be a kid.” I had enjoyed taking the girls to the Beaches when they were little. We’d stroll along the boardwalk on the shore of Lake Ontario, then walk up to Queen Street for an ice-cream cone and a little window-shopping.

“It was fun, yeah, until my mother remarried.”

I noted the injection of coolness into her tone. “You didn’t like your stepfather?”

“You could say that. I beat it out of there as soon as I could land a job. After that, it was sort of my policy to make the stupidest choices I could possibly make.”

All the while she’d been talking, Erin had been carefully scanning the road, passing cars and the occasional pedestrian. Now she let her gaze settle on mine for a second. “You name it, I’ve probably done it. The one good piece of luck I had is that I was never arrested. I wouldn’t have been able to get my P.I. license if I had a record.”

I wondered if I’d ever met anyone more unlike myself than Erin. You name it, I hadn’t done it. I’d even refused to try marijuana when I was in college.

But then, so had Gary. We’d been such a straight couple. I’d thought that was one of the things that made us so perfect for each other. But perhaps our lack of adventurousness when we were younger was exactly why Gary was rebelling now.

Wait. I was thinking about Gary, and about our failed relationship again. I was supposed to stop doing that.

There was something else I wanted to ask Erin about. “How long have you known Murphy?”

“I met him the night I moved into the neighborhood, when Shelley was still a baby. After an exhausting day of moving I couldn’t believe it when she wouldn’t settle for the night. By midnight I was almost crazy. She just wouldn’t stop crying.”

“Colic?”

“Or something. Anyway, I was almost out of my mind and I decided, to hell with the breast-feeding rules, I needed coffee. I didn’t have any in the house so I went to Murphy’s. You have to understand that when I walked into that diner, the kid was yelling at the top of her lungs. I expected to be kicked out onto the street.”

“But Murphy didn’t kick you out.”

“Nah. He poured me a cup of coffee, then came out from behind the counter and took Shelley into his arms. Damned if he didn’t hold her right, too, supporting her head and all of that. The little monster had the nerve to shut right up. I kidded Murphy it was because she was scared, but she wasn’t. She took to him on sight.”

Erin shook her head, as if it defied belief, and I had to admit, Murphy did not seem like the nurturing sort. Still I wasn’t surprised to find out that Murphy had a softer side. When he looked at Erin, it was clear that he cared about her.

“Are you and Murphy…?”

Erin’s eyes widened. “No way. Not that I don’t like the guy, you understand. It’s just that by the time Shelley came into my life, I’d had enough of men. It’s always been just the two of us, and that’s how I want to keep things.”

“But don’t you ever—” I stopped talking as Erin lifted a finger to her lips.

“Shh.” She turned the key to the auxiliary position, then lowered her window all the way down. As she did this, a dark sedan in front of us began to slow. The driver parked his car a discreet distance from Sherry’s boss’s place, then stepped out.

I scrunched as low in my seat as I could manage while still keeping an eye on the street. My heart was pounding so madly it was as if I was the one who was doing something wrong here, not Martin. I wondered if I would ever be able to do this job without feeling like a criminal.

The man we were pretty sure was Martin looked up and down the street. I was scared to death that he would spot us, but he seemed to find nothing amiss. He pocketed his keys then walked jauntily along the sidewalk headed for the Tudor house.

As he stepped under a street lamp, I got a clear view of his face. It was definitely Martin. Beside me, Erin switched on the camera and began training it on him.

Good thing Erin had remembered. I’d been so on edge, I hadn’t even thought about the need to shoot video.

But, disappointingly, there wasn’t much to capture on film. The front door opened and I caught only the briefest glimpse of a woman before Martin slipped inside and the door shut tightly again.

“Well, that was useless.” So Martin had gone inside the house. We couldn’t even prove he’d been met at the door by Sherry’s boss. “Are you sure we shouldn’t try and get some footage of the bedroom?”

Erin powered the camera off and returned it to the vinyl case. “Aside from the fact that the bedrooms are on the second story and I’m lousy at climbing trees, we probably won’t need to. This camera prints the date and time of the footage. Let Martin try and explain why he was at this house so late on a Wednesday night.”

“That is suspicious on its own right,” I had to agree.

“Besides, we might get lucky when they’re done. Usually cheaters are pretty cautious at the beginning of a date. But I’ve often caught a good hot kiss on the doorstep around midnight when they don’t think anyone will be in sight.”

“That makes sense.” I hoped it would happen. I wanted Sherry to nail this jerk and teach him a lesson. Next time, Martin might think twice about cheating on a woman when he’d promised fidelity.

An hour went by. Then another. I had been so excited at the beginning of the evening, I hadn’t been able to imagine feeling tired or, worse, nodding off. But after another hour passed, I started yawning. The coffee was gone, as was the bag of potato chips Erin had stashed in the back seat.

“Can we change the radio station?” Maybe a talk program would help me focus.

“Go ahead.”

As I played with the controls, Erin grabbed the camera from the floor.

“What? Did I miss something?”

“No. I’m just guessing that they might be finishing soon. I think I’ll get better pictures of the tender goodbye scene if I hide in that shrub over there.” She pointed.

“The dogwood?”

“Whatever.” Erin opened the car door, and after a brief hesitation, I followed her.

“You don’t have to do this,” Erin whispered. “Why don’t you wait in the car and be comfortable?”

“No way.” I was here to learn. Eventually I’d be doing this on my own and I wanted to do it right.

Erin hesitated, then passed me the camera. “You might as well do the shooting then.” She paused by the shrub, then got down on her knees and crawled in among the branches.

I did the same, squirming around until I’d made myself reasonably comfortable. Once settled, I checked the controls of the camera, wanting to be familiar with how to operate it.

“See the door?” Erin said softly. “We have a better angle here. Even if they don’t come out on the stoop, we should get some decent footage of the woman.”

“Right.” I was primed for action but, as minute followed minute, my adrenaline rush began to fade. I needed to talk or I was going to fall asleep.

“When did you get into the P.I. business, Erin?”

“About ten years ago I started working for this guy, Harvey Westman. He was quite a character, but he was mostly legit and he taught me the ropes. When he had a heart attack, I took over the business.”

Something in Erin’s voice suggested that this Harvey had been special to her. “Were you and Harvey friends?”

“Sure.”

I hesitated. “More than friends?

“Harvey had twenty years on me.”

Not a straight answer, which made me all the more curious. Could Harvey have been Shelley’s father? I didn’t quite dare to ask the question.

Erin’s hand clamped on my arm a split second before I noticed the same thing she had. The front door to the Tudor home was opening. Martin stepped out to the landing and, as Erin had guessed, the woman gave him a goodbye kiss, right underneath the bright porch light.

I got it all on video, but couldn’t manage to get a clear facial shot of either of them. Once the woman had gone back inside and Martin had driven off, I handed the camera back to Erin.

“I don’t think that was very good.”

“We tried. It just goes that way sometimes.” She scrambled out of the bush and started pulling twigs from her hair.

As we walked back to her car, I asked what had happened to Harvey after his heart attack.

“He died,” she said matter-of-factly. “He had no family and we were close, so he named me as his beneficiary—there was a will and everything. That’s how I got the business…and enough money for a down payment on my house.”

“Sounds like a good guy.”

“Better than most.”

Pretty cynical, I thought. Then again, my opinion of men wasn’t much better these days. Maybe Erin and I had something in common after all.