Municipal Blondes
28
The never-ending story
MORE PEOPLE ARE DEPRESSED at Christmas than any other time of the year. I get it. I catch myself thinking, “When I see Dag…” or “I need to tell Dag…” But Dag isn’t there. I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t have friends.
Almost homeless
“Merry Christmas,” Cinnamon said, lingering as she kissed me on the cheek when I entered the room. I noticed she spent considerably less effort on her peck on Angel’s cheek and somewhat more on Jordan. One of the other officers brought all our luggage up and told Jordan he’d be available whenever. Maizie came running to me, sniffed up one leg and down the other and decided I was okay. She stood on her hind legs until I knelt down on the floor to pet her.
I looked around my apartment trying to remember when I was last here. At first all I noticed was holiday decorations. Then I noticed the ‘tree’ was made of cardboard boxes. I started to tell Cinnamon it was very creative when I realized my things weren’t in their usual places. In fact, they weren’t anywhere. I know I left in a hurry but I didn’t strip the apartment.
“Cinnamon,” I said, “what’s going on?”
“Honey you forgot,” she answered. “With all that’s happened the past two months, you probably haven’t even looked at your mail. Your lease is up. The manager came by while I was here last week and handed me an eviction notice. Apparently, they’re redoing the apartments in this building and turning them into condos. It’s a big think now.”
“I’m being evicted? What am I supposed to do? I won’t go!”
“Sure you will, Honey. You’ve got that other little apartment. I met your landlady, Mrs. Prior, when she brought Maizie over a few days ago. The first thing she asked was when you were moving into the apartment. I told her it looked like the end of the month. I thought I’d get a head start for you and pack.”
There was too much going on for me to process, but geez! I go away for a few days and my whole life is changed. That wasn’t the end of the news. Teri was there and we hugged each other and started talking at once about how worried we were about each other. In the midst of our giggles of relief, she stopped and turned all serious on me.
“Deb, I’ve got a new boyfriend!” she blurted out.
“No way!” I said. “Why didn’t you bring him over. We’re having a party.”
“I invited him,” she said, “but I told him he couldn’t come in until you agreed.”
“Why not?” There was a knock on the door and I turned to answer it.
“Because you really need to give him permission to enter your home.” I pulled the door open and almost slammed it back shut in the face of Geoff Gilliam. I turned to Teri with my mouth hanging open to my knees.
“Him?” I said. Teri nodded. My best friend was dating a member of the Committee—okay, maybe an undercover federal agent on the Committee—who was a reputed playboy, sadist, and womanizer. I turned back to the door.
“Miss Riley,” he said. “I’m glad to officially meet you. I’m sorry if we got off on the wrong foot the first time.”
“Come in, Mr. Gilliam,” I said formally. “But if you are going to date my best friend, could we please call each other by our first names. I’m Deb.”
“I’m Geoff,” he responded with a smile. Killer smile. Poor Teri. “Pleased to meet you.” He stepped into the room and Teri caught him in a lip-lock that made the rest of us turn away to give them privacy.
“Well, merry Christmas, everybody,” I said, “and God bless us all.”
“Come to the tables, everybody,” Cinnamon called. She must have gotten card tables and chairs from everyone she knew. “The chef says he’s ready to serve.”
“Chef?” I asked. “Who now?” The question was answered as my advisor Lars Andersen walked in from the kitchen with a huge turkey on a platter. “Lars!” I exclaimed and rushed to hug him as soon as he’d set the turkey down.
“Merry Christmas, Riley,” he said.
Over dinner, Angel and I were called upon to relate our story. It was helped along by Jordan, Cinnamon, Teri, and Geoff all adding bits about their parts. The puzzle pieces all seemed to fit together somehow but Angel and I carefully avoided details about how Ray Hawkins departed from this world. We’ll talk to Jordan about it but no one needs to know Angel shot him with a harpoon. We just said he fell overboard and we didn’t see him again.
With Brenda Barnett in a Belize jail on drug running charges under a pseudonym the US Government won’t recognize and the Committee all agreeing to make restitution, it’s beginning to sound like my first case is wrapped up nice and tidy. I have to finish packing and then go to inspect my office before I start moving things over to Dag’s apartment.
Will I ever think of it as my apartment? Or is the whole life I’m living just a continuation of his? I’ve got to do some serious thinking.
New office
OMG! It’s beautiful. I got to the office this morning and Cinnamon was sitting behind a new desk where my old desk used to be. The walls have been painted a soft green. There are plants and a new rug.
Then I walked into Dag’s office. My office now. Cinnamon is amazing. The place is unbelievable. The pieces of furniture are generally smaller than Dag’s furniture was. It’s sleek and modern with lots of glass. Maizie came in with me and went trotting over to the girliest little bed you’ve ever seen. She was so proud of it!
There’s no place to hide anything. My desk is wide open with nothing more enclosed than a pencil drawer. On it was the remote control for the new 52-inch plasma TV screen that hangs on the opposite wall. The old remote sat beside it.
And pictures. She brought some of my photos from the apartment and put them on my desk. The one of Dag and me at Pier 57 sits by itself on one side of the table. I’ll keep that one here. I don’t know how to tell Cinnamon the others are all fakes.
I was never photographed much as a child. My mother burned any photos she could find and I kept my little stash well-hidden. The family pictures, even my parents’ wedding picture, are all fake. They are all pictures of me in various disguises.
When I was little, I could never pass one of those little photo kiosks without getting my picture taken. My father would indulge me with a dollar and keep Mom occupied while I got my treasures. It meant I had a lot of pictures of me clowning around, smiling, serious, and what have you. But they didn’t have any background. So, I scanned all the pictures, looked up photos of different scenery on the Internet, and airbrushed myself into them in a digital editing program. It worked so well for my childhood photos, I started taking pictures of myself in disguise and brushing them into the photos as my parents.
I got pretty good at digital editing. You have to look really closely in order to tell they aren’t completely natural and right. Cinnamon chose some of my best work. My parents’ wedding picture, the three of us at the Grand Canyon (never actually been there), and my graduation picture. Maybe I’ll leave them here after all.
Cinnamon closed the door between our offices and left me alone.
I stood by the window looking out over Puget Sound and thought about the past two months. It seems my whole world changed the day Brenda Barnett brought Simon’s laptop into Dag’s office. I’ve been going for fifty-seven days now, thinking about all the crap she pulled. I’m no longer at a desk in the outer office working on my thesis with Dag humming away in here. All Dag’s furniture is gone and I’m standing by his window with stupid tears running down my cheeks and Maizie standing next to me, leaning against my leg.
I sat down on the sofa and Maizie jumped up on my lap. I buried my face in her fur and cried.
Hungry lioness on the loose
I got a call from Jordan while I was trying to sort things out in my office. He said he’d like to hire me to do an analysis of how they were pulling off the mobile phone scam. I can do that. What I didn’t figure out while I was still holed up at the Condo, Simon filled in when I was in Croatia. Jordan also says he needs a bill from me for my services cracking the encryption on Simon’s computer. I can’t bill him for the field work because, officially, I wasn’t working for him. But I can bill him a lot of time ‘at Dag’s old rates’ for the computer work. That’s good because I’ve got to pay for redecorating the office and figure out a salary for Cinnamon. She says Lars submitted insurance claims on behalf of the estate and most of the new stuff should be covered.
“Oh, by the way,” Jordan said casually, “Brenda has escaped from Belize.”
WTF???
“I thought she was in jail where the sun would never shine and the government wasn’t going to help her,” I exclaimed.
“That’s a problem with working with a government that’s mostly not corrupt but isn’t strong enough to enforce its own laws,” he said. “In a really corrupt government, we could have spread some money around to the right people and the problem would have been solved permanently.”
“You wouldn’t!”
“No, of course not. I’m just saying we could make sure things stayed the way we wanted them to,” he said. “The problem with an honest government is they would be highly offended by any suggestion that they do something not as respectable as they consider themselves. So, we can’t make any offers at a level that can enforce the agreement. But that doesn’t mean everyone who works for the government is completely honest. A very wealthy prisoner can promise almost anything to a low level guard and get a response. Brenda got to someone who just walked out with her at the end of his shift and disappeared.”
“So now what?” I asked.
“We’ve got a search going on. She’ll turn up somewhere. A woman like that can’t live without spending a lot of money. We’ve tapped accounts that she’s likely to use and will be able to track the transactions. She’s definitely gone from Belize but there’s a lot of Caribbean to disappear into. We’ve sealed the borders to her under every known alias she has.”
“That makes me feel so much better,” I said. “Just a thought, Jordan, but she won’t use any of the accounts you’re watching. She probably has a million dollars-worth of ATM cards in her purse. And with ready cash, she could buy a birth certificate, citizenship, and a passport for someplace like Nicaragua or Ecuador.”
“Thanks for the tip. We’ve shut down her base of operations. The Committee is hiding behind a cloak of respectability and would turn her in if she dared to contact one of them. They all know what thin ice they’re walking on right now. They’d turn in their own mothers. They’re all a little relieved Brenda is out of the picture.”
“I’ll be relieved when I know she’s really out of it. I’ll sleep better if you catch her.”
“I’ll do that. What are you doing for dinner tonight? Or should I make appointments with your assistant?”
“Um… Is this a business meeting?”
“It was more… well, no… I just thought… Well, I promised to take you to dinner as a thank you.”
“Are you asking me out on a date?” I asked.
“Um… More like a fig.”
“What?”
“It’s between friends. Just dinner to catch up and thank you.” My sigh was probably loud enough for Cinnamon to hear.
So, how do you dress for a fig?
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