Chapter Four

My office was quieter than a foreclosed church, as I sat at my cigarette-and-tear-stained desk, in the middle of a featureless Thursday morning, pretending to work; I suspected I was avoiding something, but my detective skills were insufficient to drag it out into the light.

Hazel, my admin, had the day off, something about a conference with the school principal about her son, Seth’s truant streak, I offered to go with her, for moral support or as an intimidation resource, then remembered he attended Our Lady of Intercession and, instead, offered her the loan of my gun; she smiled and accepted the day-with-pay; I figured I got off cheap.

My email were shouting silently from the inside of my computer screen on one side and Leanne’s case folder on the other, I considered heading down to the Bottom of the Sea Strip Club and Lounge now, rather than wait the two hours until lunchtime; this prompted a replay of a conversation with the owner, Lou Ceasare, “Yeah, I tried once to, you know, add some class to the joint, do a brunch for the weekend crowd, fuckin reglars drank the fuckin Sterno out from under the chafing dishes, had to bend a couple of… things, to get them to stop,” his laughter, guarded by an expression as lethal as the Sterno, allowed me to know what a Great White shark would sound like, laughing.

Dr. Thunberg, of Radcliffe and my close friend, was being a good client, leaving me pretty much alone in the process of locating her missing ex-husband Elias; her weekly Status of Search questionnaire was low-key formal and it wasn’t in a Pass/Fail format.

In a moment of inexcusable over-confidence, I decided to check my email and then get to looking for missing husbands, big mistake; the first email was from Haley and my smile dissolved at the subject line: Notice of Final Decree; my mind rallied with practiced desperation, this was the best thing for both of us because she was a full partner at her law firm and I was busy with my private detection.

Muttering like a thorazine-addled heckler, the voice in my head reminded me that, if only I could remember one thing I missed, when we were married, maybe I wouldn’t have to drive home every night to an empty house that had somehow become too small for the two of us and, yet, now, intolerably large for one.