Curtis instructed Leslie to hold all his calls, including the detective. "Tell him I'm out for the afternoon and can't be reached, and ask him to call tomorrow morning, he said in a voice she knew better than to argue with. He had some dark moods, and after 3 years as his assistant, she knew them all too well.
Curtis locked his door and opened the desk drawer he always kept locked. Inside were newspaper clippings, police reports, and forensic reports almost a decade old. He didn't have to ask why a police detective wanted to speak to him. He remembered the name of the young cop who'd interrupted his football practice with the news. He just didn't know why the detective would be calling after all this time, but he feared the news would be upsetting. Had they found the weapon? That seemed the most likely answer. As his eyes drifted over the pile of clippings with their lurid headlines scattered over his desk, his attention caught on a grainy picture of his mother with wild vacant eyes, her shirt covered in what was probably blood…his father's blood. The black and white newsprint made the details slightly less gory, but no less disturbing. Curtis wondered what they would discover if they recovered the knife. Shivering, he swept the papers back into the desk drawer and slammed it shut. He didn't think he wanted to find out.
Curtis glanced out into the street, reliving the events that followed his father's murder. For a few seconds he didn't realize that his mother stood on the sidewalk across the street, munching an apple as she stared intently at the building. Grabbing his coat, he rushed out of the office and took the stairs two at a time to the street, leaving a startled Leslie to gather the papers he'd knocked off her desk in his flight.
Curtis stopped short before he hit the front doors. Bursting out might cause her to panic. Instead, he shrugged into his coat and opened the door slowly, to allow her time to adjust to someone walking out of the building. When the door was fully open, he took a deep breath and walked out, allowing it to close behind him before starting cautiously across the street. His mother watched him come with wary eyes, but she did not run or scream. Her face resolved into a warm, welcoming smile and she held out her arms to envelop him in a hug. Curtis held her tightly, breathing in the scent of her favorite perfume, often included in the packages he left for her to find, over the nauseating stench of long-unwashed skin and some unknown putrefaction. He wanted to gag, but he was so happy that she recognized him he fought the impulse, blinking back tears. Finally, she pulled back, taking his face in her hands in a familiar gesture from his childhood. "Look at you," she sighed happily, "such a handsome man. I remembered that this is your building, but I was not sure which office, so I'm so glad you happened to come out just now. I look so raggedy that I thought it might embarrass you if I came in and knocked on doors".
Curtis shook his head, tears running down his face and over her filthy hands. "You look beautiful mom. I'm so happy to see you. Please, would you come with me to see Jilly? She misses you so much. I have a van big enough to hold all your stuff so we can take it with us. And guess what? I saved your clothes, mom, all your things. They are at Jilly's place, in a spare bedroom. You can shower and change and put on something bright and pretty. You always said that wearing bright colors made you happy. Remember the wraparound dress with the purple flowers you loved so much?"
Eileen beamed at her son. "That sounds just lovely. I can't wait to see Jilly. Lead the way." Curtis pushed the cart into the parking garage attached to his office building and hefted it into the back of his Suburban. He didn't need such a huge vehicle, and usually drove the tiny Miata parked in the next spot, but he'd kept it on the hope that something exactly like this might happen. He had rehearsed over and over what he would say if his mother ever resurfaced from her private hell.
He helped her into the car and buckled her in, the got into the driver's side and started the engine, praying she wouldn't start screaming before they got to Jilly's. The doctor had told them that her mental condition would allow her times of lucidity, but in the last few years she'd degenerated so badly that every attempt to contact her directly had ended in disaster. He debated calling Jilly to warn her, but was afraid that anything unusual might set his mother off. He watched her surreptitiously out of the corner of his eye. She sat comfortably in her seat without the slouch she'd picked up in the street, looking bright and alert. He didn't realize how tense he was until she patted his arm and pointed to the church they used to attend. "Oh, I wonder how Pastor Mike is doing…remember him? Such a nice man."
"He's great, Mom, Jilly and I saw him just last Sunday. We still go every week and have lunch after, like we used to, back when…" he let his voice trail off and searched for a less dangerous subject. "How about coming with us this Sunday? Pastor Mike asks about you all the time. He'd love to see you again."
She laughed then, a silvery young giggle that tore his heart out of his chest with its familiarity. "I'll check my social calendar". She winked. "I'm pretty sure I can make it." Her tone turned serious. "About Jilly, how's she doing? Is she being taken care of?"
"No worries there, Mom. Between the insurance settlement and social security, she's got a round-the-clock companion trained to take care of all her needs, plus a nurse that visits every other day. She's actually becoming quite the web celebrity chef. She built a website and uploads cooking videos almost every day, and she's got thousands of subscribers. She's making a pretty good living off the ad revenue from her sponsors. She hopes to actually get on TV with her show one day, and it wouldn't surprise me a bit if she did." Eileen didn't answer and Curtis could see that she was fighting emotion. "Mom? Are you ok?" He prepared himself for a sudden outburst that would end this idyllic visit. But Eileen only choked a bit as she answered softly "I gave her that. I taught her to cook after the…after the accident. I never dreamed it would become her passion." She reached over and gripped his hand. "Maybe I didn't completely screw you both up after all."
Curtis turned into Jilly's apartment complex. "No, Mom", he answered gently. "Stuff happens. You couldn't control what happened, none of it. But we are strong because of you. We are ok." He handed her a tissue. "Enough of that. Wipe your tears, your daughter's waiting."
Monday, November 9, 2009
NaNoWriMo: Damaged --Post 2
Detective Anthony McCaffrey paced impatiently, listening to his partner argue on the phone with his girlfriend. Finally, Gavin covered the receiver with one meaty hand and pointed at the door with the other. "Go wait somewhere else, Tony," he hissed menacingly, "you're buggin me". Throwing up his hands, Tony retreated to the break room to wait. After grabbing a coke from the machine, he crossed to the window and stared out over the little lake behind the station. Something about this case really nagged his subconscious and he couldn’t put his finger on it. They were missing something. In fact, he figured they'd missed it nine years before when Calvin Walsh died, and it had bothered him since.
They could hear keening coming from inside the house when they got out of the car. Tony's detective shield was shiny and new; he'd been promoted just a few months before. His partner, Jim Sachs, had been on the force for 25 years and was contemplating a nice desk job to finish out his career. Recurring bouts with sciatica were making the physical activity of field work more difficult by the day. If he could stick it out five more years, he could afford to retire. He was ready to take a desk and watch the clock tick as he filed paperwork.
They knocked on the door and no one answered. The keening never broke, it just went on and on like a recording on a loop. Guns unholstered and ready, they turned the knob and quietly entered the house. The noise was coming from a room ahead and to the right. Light spilled into the short hall from the open door, and shadows moved in rhythm with the sound. Jim gestured to spread out and check the rest of the house, while he checked the other rooms off the hall and kept an eye on the unseen keener. Tony crept first to the left, though the living and dining room, the kitchen and laundry room, and tried the back door. It was locked from the inside, with the deadbolt firmly in place. Passing the hall where his partner was flattened against the wall next to the room where the keener waited, Tony pointed upstairs.
Cautiously, he made his way up, back to the wall, leading with his gun. At the top of the stairs, he found himself in a darkened hallway with several doors leading off. Door one was a boy's bedroom with a jumble of clothes on the floor and poster on the wall. The second door was another bedroom, decorated in white and lavender with a wheelchair parked next to the bed. In the bed, a small girl in braided pigtails looked at him with wide, terrified eyes. Tony crossed swiftly to reassure her in low tones. "Don't worry, I'm a policeman. Do you know who's crying?" he whispered. She nodded. "I think it's my mom." "Is anyone else in the house?" She shook her head. "What's your name?" Her lower lip trembled as she tried to look brave. "Jillian. Everyone calls me Jilly." He patted her cheek gently and told her he'd be back in a minute. After making a cursory check of the last room in the hall, a bathroom, he went back down to join his partner. Silently, they entered the scene of the crime.
Blood was everywhere. The bed where the man lay was saturated. The walls, the ceiling, pooled on the floor under the spot where the man's head was thrown back over the edge. He'd nearly been decapitated. The keening woman knelt in the blood with her hands covering her face. The front of her retro "Cheerios" tee shirt and denim shorts were covered with it. She rocked back and forth on her knees, making that awful sound.
Gavin burst into the breakroom with his characteristic energy, shaking Tony back to the present. "Hey, partner, I thought you were hungry. Let's roll."
--
Jilly flipped languidly through the channels until she found a rerun of Hell's Kitchen. Chef Ramsey was screaming at a motley collection of people who thought they were chefs but couldn't get an appetizer on a plate given 30 minutes…as usual. She chuckled to herself. Where do they find these people? Being a chef would be so awesome. She flexed her hands. She was a good cook, but tended to drop things. She just didn't have enough strength in her fingers. Maybe one day they'll have cooking shows for handicapped people, she thought. I could do definitely do that. Jilly had already won a certain amount of fame with her youtube cooking channel. She had a lot of followers. At first she figured it was freak factor – hey look at wheelchair girl cooking – but the retention factor had to come down to the fact that she was really a good cook. At least she hoped so. She didn't want a pity audience.
She started at the sound of a key in the lock. Even after all these years, an unknown presence on the other side of the door always made her heart pound and her blood pressure rise. Her doctors had warned about her blood pressure repeatedly. Just another factor in the joy of paralysis.
The door swung inward and Jilly's helper came in, awkwardly carrying two armloads of grocery bags with a bunch of flowers tucked under one arm. "Sorry, Jilly. I know you want me to tap out the code before I use the key, but my hands were full. You ok?" Jilly nodded, unable to speak. It would be a few minutes before the terror subsided, and she'd have to take pills to get any kind of sleep for the next few nights. But at least she hadn't screamed or turned over her chair trying to get away this time. It was always so embarrassing.
--
Over thick, greasy cheeseburgers at Hobie's Famous Burger, they discussed the case. Tony described the scene in lurid detail as the tables around them slowly emptied. Eventually Hobie wandered over and told them to pipe down before they scared away all his customers. Tony invited him to join the conversation. Hobie had once been a cop, then a private investigator, and finally had bought a restaurant next to the station. The puckered scar on his right shoulder from the bullet that ended his police career was hidden under the pink flamingos of a screaming Hawaiian style shirt. For a short order cook, he had one of the finest analytical minds in the city.
"Ok. So as I understand it, you found this guy Walsh dead in his ex-wife's house. The ex-wife is covered in the guy's blood, screaming her head off. One kid is at football practice a couple of blocks away and the other is in bed upstairs. She's 12 and paralyzed. Sounds like the ex-wife did it, most likely in self-defense. What's the problem?" Hobie had a way of getting right to the heart of the matter.
Tony thought for a moment before answering. "First, there's a matter of the weapon. We never found it, and it wasn't one of the knives from the house. Those were all accounted for. The coroner said it had to be something like a hunting knife, with a curved blade and a sharp tip. Second, there's the timing. Eileen had arrived home with Jilly about twenty-five minutes before we got there. They'd both been at a physical therapy session two miles away. Nobody was exactly watching Eileen, so technically she could have slipped away, but given her later reaction it doesn't seem likely. Nobody's that good an actor. She would have had to carry Jilly upstairs, help her change clothes, locate the remote control and turn the TV on, chat for a minute about dinner, and then go downstairs, cover herself with blood and scream for more than 10 minutes. What's more, she was wearing the same clothes she wore to therapy, and Jilly swore that there wasn't a speck of blood on them when they got home. Nobody could have done that much damage and walked away clean. Jilly said the screaming started about 5 minutes or so after her mother left her room."
"Who called the cops?" Gavin took another enormous bite and talked around it. "Neighbors?" He washed the cheeseburger down with a swig of milk. Hobie kept the milk at a temperature just above freezing and delivered it to the tables in graceful pewter jugs that had been kept in the freezer along with matching pewter mugs. He said it kept the customers happy and the heartburn complaints to a minimum.
"Jilly called the 911. The tape of the call is chilling. Her shaky little voice, whispering into the phone that she's paralyzed from the chest down and her mother is screaming downstairs. She was terrified that something was happening right then…and she was completely helpless. She might have been able to get into her chair, but there was no way she could get down the steps…and was afraid to in any case. She thought her mother was being killed and she might be next." Tony swirled a couple of steak fries in a puddle of barbecue sauce, but didn't put them in his mouth. His gaze was distant, as if he was seeing it all over again for the first time. "All that blood. You don't see that often. Walsh was stabbed 26 times. The first one, in the neck, would have been fatal in minutes, maybe seconds. Blood pumped out like a hydrant. But the killer kept stabbing until the guy was drained. Whoever it was hated him real bad. When we got there, he'd been dead just over an hour."
They could hear keening coming from inside the house when they got out of the car. Tony's detective shield was shiny and new; he'd been promoted just a few months before. His partner, Jim Sachs, had been on the force for 25 years and was contemplating a nice desk job to finish out his career. Recurring bouts with sciatica were making the physical activity of field work more difficult by the day. If he could stick it out five more years, he could afford to retire. He was ready to take a desk and watch the clock tick as he filed paperwork.
They knocked on the door and no one answered. The keening never broke, it just went on and on like a recording on a loop. Guns unholstered and ready, they turned the knob and quietly entered the house. The noise was coming from a room ahead and to the right. Light spilled into the short hall from the open door, and shadows moved in rhythm with the sound. Jim gestured to spread out and check the rest of the house, while he checked the other rooms off the hall and kept an eye on the unseen keener. Tony crept first to the left, though the living and dining room, the kitchen and laundry room, and tried the back door. It was locked from the inside, with the deadbolt firmly in place. Passing the hall where his partner was flattened against the wall next to the room where the keener waited, Tony pointed upstairs.
Cautiously, he made his way up, back to the wall, leading with his gun. At the top of the stairs, he found himself in a darkened hallway with several doors leading off. Door one was a boy's bedroom with a jumble of clothes on the floor and poster on the wall. The second door was another bedroom, decorated in white and lavender with a wheelchair parked next to the bed. In the bed, a small girl in braided pigtails looked at him with wide, terrified eyes. Tony crossed swiftly to reassure her in low tones. "Don't worry, I'm a policeman. Do you know who's crying?" he whispered. She nodded. "I think it's my mom." "Is anyone else in the house?" She shook her head. "What's your name?" Her lower lip trembled as she tried to look brave. "Jillian. Everyone calls me Jilly." He patted her cheek gently and told her he'd be back in a minute. After making a cursory check of the last room in the hall, a bathroom, he went back down to join his partner. Silently, they entered the scene of the crime.
Blood was everywhere. The bed where the man lay was saturated. The walls, the ceiling, pooled on the floor under the spot where the man's head was thrown back over the edge. He'd nearly been decapitated. The keening woman knelt in the blood with her hands covering her face. The front of her retro "Cheerios" tee shirt and denim shorts were covered with it. She rocked back and forth on her knees, making that awful sound.
Gavin burst into the breakroom with his characteristic energy, shaking Tony back to the present. "Hey, partner, I thought you were hungry. Let's roll."
--
Jilly flipped languidly through the channels until she found a rerun of Hell's Kitchen. Chef Ramsey was screaming at a motley collection of people who thought they were chefs but couldn't get an appetizer on a plate given 30 minutes…as usual. She chuckled to herself. Where do they find these people? Being a chef would be so awesome. She flexed her hands. She was a good cook, but tended to drop things. She just didn't have enough strength in her fingers. Maybe one day they'll have cooking shows for handicapped people, she thought. I could do definitely do that. Jilly had already won a certain amount of fame with her youtube cooking channel. She had a lot of followers. At first she figured it was freak factor – hey look at wheelchair girl cooking – but the retention factor had to come down to the fact that she was really a good cook. At least she hoped so. She didn't want a pity audience.
She started at the sound of a key in the lock. Even after all these years, an unknown presence on the other side of the door always made her heart pound and her blood pressure rise. Her doctors had warned about her blood pressure repeatedly. Just another factor in the joy of paralysis.
The door swung inward and Jilly's helper came in, awkwardly carrying two armloads of grocery bags with a bunch of flowers tucked under one arm. "Sorry, Jilly. I know you want me to tap out the code before I use the key, but my hands were full. You ok?" Jilly nodded, unable to speak. It would be a few minutes before the terror subsided, and she'd have to take pills to get any kind of sleep for the next few nights. But at least she hadn't screamed or turned over her chair trying to get away this time. It was always so embarrassing.
--
Over thick, greasy cheeseburgers at Hobie's Famous Burger, they discussed the case. Tony described the scene in lurid detail as the tables around them slowly emptied. Eventually Hobie wandered over and told them to pipe down before they scared away all his customers. Tony invited him to join the conversation. Hobie had once been a cop, then a private investigator, and finally had bought a restaurant next to the station. The puckered scar on his right shoulder from the bullet that ended his police career was hidden under the pink flamingos of a screaming Hawaiian style shirt. For a short order cook, he had one of the finest analytical minds in the city.
"Ok. So as I understand it, you found this guy Walsh dead in his ex-wife's house. The ex-wife is covered in the guy's blood, screaming her head off. One kid is at football practice a couple of blocks away and the other is in bed upstairs. She's 12 and paralyzed. Sounds like the ex-wife did it, most likely in self-defense. What's the problem?" Hobie had a way of getting right to the heart of the matter.
Tony thought for a moment before answering. "First, there's a matter of the weapon. We never found it, and it wasn't one of the knives from the house. Those were all accounted for. The coroner said it had to be something like a hunting knife, with a curved blade and a sharp tip. Second, there's the timing. Eileen had arrived home with Jilly about twenty-five minutes before we got there. They'd both been at a physical therapy session two miles away. Nobody was exactly watching Eileen, so technically she could have slipped away, but given her later reaction it doesn't seem likely. Nobody's that good an actor. She would have had to carry Jilly upstairs, help her change clothes, locate the remote control and turn the TV on, chat for a minute about dinner, and then go downstairs, cover herself with blood and scream for more than 10 minutes. What's more, she was wearing the same clothes she wore to therapy, and Jilly swore that there wasn't a speck of blood on them when they got home. Nobody could have done that much damage and walked away clean. Jilly said the screaming started about 5 minutes or so after her mother left her room."
"Who called the cops?" Gavin took another enormous bite and talked around it. "Neighbors?" He washed the cheeseburger down with a swig of milk. Hobie kept the milk at a temperature just above freezing and delivered it to the tables in graceful pewter jugs that had been kept in the freezer along with matching pewter mugs. He said it kept the customers happy and the heartburn complaints to a minimum.
"Jilly called the 911. The tape of the call is chilling. Her shaky little voice, whispering into the phone that she's paralyzed from the chest down and her mother is screaming downstairs. She was terrified that something was happening right then…and she was completely helpless. She might have been able to get into her chair, but there was no way she could get down the steps…and was afraid to in any case. She thought her mother was being killed and she might be next." Tony swirled a couple of steak fries in a puddle of barbecue sauce, but didn't put them in his mouth. His gaze was distant, as if he was seeing it all over again for the first time. "All that blood. You don't see that often. Walsh was stabbed 26 times. The first one, in the neck, would have been fatal in minutes, maybe seconds. Blood pumped out like a hydrant. But the killer kept stabbing until the guy was drained. Whoever it was hated him real bad. When we got there, he'd been dead just over an hour."
NaNoWriMo: Damaged --Post 1
Ok, since I totally stink at keeping this blog updated and it's just sitting here, I thought I'd hijack it temporarily for my writing project. NaNoWriMo is an event that takes place every November and frankly, I've never been sufficiently insane to enter. The idea is to write a complete novel - 50,000 words - in one month. Editing is verboten. There just isn't time. Most of the novels written will be drivel, and I imagine mine will fall right into the drivel/pedestrian category. But if you'd like to read along and chuckle at my mistakes, welcome :) and feel free to comment, especially if you unravel the mystery early. I HATE that. I won't be posting in chapters, exactly, more like day by day...I've completed 4 days (yes. I am WAY behind) So here it is:
Damaged --post 1
Curtis slouched casually against the rough brick of the building, hat pulled low over his eyes, one leg bent so his foot was against the wall. It would not do if she saw him, not at all. The last time had not been pleasant. The bag dangled from his left hand, waiting for the drop as she ambled slowly up the walk pushing the cart, eyes on nothing and everything.
When she crossed the spot he'd decided would be the demarcation line, He pushed off from the building, crossed the sidewalk and dropped the bag in the trash container directly in front of him, then continued across as if he'd just been waiting to cross all along. He didn't look back to see if she'd stopped and picked it up until he was safely across and had entered a coffee shop on the other side.
Inside, confident she could not see past the reflections on the window glass, he watched his mother investigate the trashcan and find the bag of treasures he'd dropped. He saw her eyes dart around, wary that a mistake had been made and someone would be running back, making a scene. She had always hated scenes. She relaxed a little when she saw no one coming purposefully towards her, but dropped the bag into her cart and pulled a newspaper over it, and then shuffled quickly around the corner.
Curtis saw the glee on her face and the movement on her lips that meant she was talking to herself. It was so familiar that it unsettled him with an unexpected memory of happier times when she sang to herself as she dusted…not loud enough for anyone to hear, but watching her, he would often catch her lips moving and that same self-satisfied smile.
When she was out of sight, Curtis ordered a cup of coffee (grande half-caf latte with a float of whipped cream and a sprinkle of pumpkin pie spice) and took a table near the window. He wiped a tired hand over his eyes and yawned as he dialed his sister's number. She answered on the third ring without a hello. "Did you find her? Is she ok?" Curtis chuckled "Hi Jilly, nice to hear your voice too. I'm fine, thanks for asking. And yes, I saw her and she looks ok. I dropped her a care package and watched; she found it. She looked happy."
Jilly expelled the breath she'd been holding. "Thank goodness. After we didn't find her the last few days, I was afraid…." She let her voice trail off, but Curtis knew. He was afraid as well. He'd been afraid for years. She cleared her throat and he knew she was fighting sudden tears. "She didn't see you?". "No", he answered, "I blended in pretty good. Used the crowd disguise, jeans, nondescript jacket, baseball cap, sunglasses, slouch. She'd have to get pretty close to know it was me, and I ducked into a coffee shop before that happened."
Jilly's voice turned warm. "You're drinking that vile concoction with pumpkin spice right now, aren't you? Don't know how you can stand it." He slurped loudly in response. "You just don't know what you're missing. Hey, Jilly…about the other day..?"
Jilly sighed. "Forget it. It was nothing. Just me being dramatic. Gotta run. See you Sunday. Let me know if you see her tomorrow, ok?" Curtis snapped his phone shut and put it on the table where he could spin it around as he thought. Jilly's not the dramatic type, he thought dourly, and it was hardly nothing.
Leslie looked up from her desk when he got back to the office a few blocks away. "Messages on your desk, boss. Brad Guardino from Cytec wants to know when his billing program will be completed, Darcy Frank from HRMIC says everything she uploads to her documents database disappears, Ken Harris wants to know if we received his check and a Detective McCaffrey called. Said he'd call you back, wouldn't say what it is about."
Curtis thumbed through the mail while listening to the usual array of customer issues, but his head jerked up at the mention of the call from the detective. "Sorry, Leslie…what did you say about a detective? What did he say exactly?" Leslie stammered apologetically "he said…oh dear…he said he needs to talk to you about something, but he would not tell me what. He asked when you'd be in and said he'd call back. I told him about 1:15. Is that ok?" Curtis' office door was already closing.
Damaged --post 1
Curtis slouched casually against the rough brick of the building, hat pulled low over his eyes, one leg bent so his foot was against the wall. It would not do if she saw him, not at all. The last time had not been pleasant. The bag dangled from his left hand, waiting for the drop as she ambled slowly up the walk pushing the cart, eyes on nothing and everything.
When she crossed the spot he'd decided would be the demarcation line, He pushed off from the building, crossed the sidewalk and dropped the bag in the trash container directly in front of him, then continued across as if he'd just been waiting to cross all along. He didn't look back to see if she'd stopped and picked it up until he was safely across and had entered a coffee shop on the other side.
Inside, confident she could not see past the reflections on the window glass, he watched his mother investigate the trashcan and find the bag of treasures he'd dropped. He saw her eyes dart around, wary that a mistake had been made and someone would be running back, making a scene. She had always hated scenes. She relaxed a little when she saw no one coming purposefully towards her, but dropped the bag into her cart and pulled a newspaper over it, and then shuffled quickly around the corner.
Curtis saw the glee on her face and the movement on her lips that meant she was talking to herself. It was so familiar that it unsettled him with an unexpected memory of happier times when she sang to herself as she dusted…not loud enough for anyone to hear, but watching her, he would often catch her lips moving and that same self-satisfied smile.
When she was out of sight, Curtis ordered a cup of coffee (grande half-caf latte with a float of whipped cream and a sprinkle of pumpkin pie spice) and took a table near the window. He wiped a tired hand over his eyes and yawned as he dialed his sister's number. She answered on the third ring without a hello. "Did you find her? Is she ok?" Curtis chuckled "Hi Jilly, nice to hear your voice too. I'm fine, thanks for asking. And yes, I saw her and she looks ok. I dropped her a care package and watched; she found it. She looked happy."
Jilly expelled the breath she'd been holding. "Thank goodness. After we didn't find her the last few days, I was afraid…." She let her voice trail off, but Curtis knew. He was afraid as well. He'd been afraid for years. She cleared her throat and he knew she was fighting sudden tears. "She didn't see you?". "No", he answered, "I blended in pretty good. Used the crowd disguise, jeans, nondescript jacket, baseball cap, sunglasses, slouch. She'd have to get pretty close to know it was me, and I ducked into a coffee shop before that happened."
Jilly's voice turned warm. "You're drinking that vile concoction with pumpkin spice right now, aren't you? Don't know how you can stand it." He slurped loudly in response. "You just don't know what you're missing. Hey, Jilly…about the other day..?"
Jilly sighed. "Forget it. It was nothing. Just me being dramatic. Gotta run. See you Sunday. Let me know if you see her tomorrow, ok?" Curtis snapped his phone shut and put it on the table where he could spin it around as he thought. Jilly's not the dramatic type, he thought dourly, and it was hardly nothing.
Leslie looked up from her desk when he got back to the office a few blocks away. "Messages on your desk, boss. Brad Guardino from Cytec wants to know when his billing program will be completed, Darcy Frank from HRMIC says everything she uploads to her documents database disappears, Ken Harris wants to know if we received his check and a Detective McCaffrey called. Said he'd call you back, wouldn't say what it is about."
Curtis thumbed through the mail while listening to the usual array of customer issues, but his head jerked up at the mention of the call from the detective. "Sorry, Leslie…what did you say about a detective? What did he say exactly?" Leslie stammered apologetically "he said…oh dear…he said he needs to talk to you about something, but he would not tell me what. He asked when you'd be in and said he'd call back. I told him about 1:15. Is that ok?" Curtis' office door was already closing.
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