‘Uh-huh. So give your new friend a call.’
‘It won’t be hers. Who writes their own number on the back of an old photograph?’
‘So what are you going to do?’
‘What am I going to do?’ He pointed at himself. ‘I was thinking I’d give it to a police officer.’ He pushed the wallet along the bar towards her. ‘There you go. Do your job.’
She pushed it back again.
‘Do you know what I do, Evan?’
She knew it was a mistake as soon as it was out of her mouth.
‘I know what Ryder does.’ Ryder was her long-standing partner, his long-standing nemesis. They’d almost come to blows on a number of occasions. ‘He sits on his fat ass all day long—’
The palm of her hand was suddenly an inch off the tip of his nose.
‘Enough. And I’ve got better things to do than return lost property.’
‘What about the fight? And the guy with the knife? What are you going to do about that?’
‘Not much I can do. There’s no CCTV. I didn’t get a good look at the license plate.’
She picked up the wallet, thumbed through the bills.
‘Like you say, about a thousand bucks. But they weren’t muggers. Not in a busy bar, not even for a thousand bucks.’
She was right, of course. There was a lot more to it than that. If either of them had noticed the man sitting further down the bar, the one staring intently at Evan, and had asked his opinion he’d have agreed with her.
2
The next morning, Evan called the number on the back of the photograph. The recorded message he got wasn’t quite the same as the one on his own phone. He was informed that he’d reached the Carlson Residence and that currently there was nobody available to tell him to piss off. The tone of the woman’s voice suggested that she had a lot of experience in that field. It made him briefly consider inserting a middle initial into his name, probably a J. Maybe adding the third for good measure. He tried it out in his mouth, didn’t feel right. And he could hear Guillory laughing already.
He left a message all the same, kept it short. He was trying to get in contact with Arabella Carlson—the name on her driver’s license, not the one she’d given him. He hesitated before he hung up, then added that he was a private investigator. He couldn’t put his finger on exactly why. As Guillory had said, it hadn’t been an abortive mugging. It had been a targeted attack. Added to which, the reference to the Carlson Residence intrigued him.
He was a little disappointed when he got a call back a couple hours later. He’d been looking forward to the challenge of trying to get past the Rottweiler on the recorded message. Instead, it was a man’s voice, although the clipped Boston Brahmin accent implied he was equally adept at dealing with people from the real world.
‘Mr Buckley?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘My name is Aldrich LeClair. I am Mr Thomas Carlson’s personal assistant.’
He paused momentarily as if he were accustomed to having to wait while people made the appropriate ingratiating noises. Evan passed.
‘Okay.’
‘I understand you’re trying to get in contact with Mr Carlson’s daughter, Arabella.’
Evan said that was true.
‘May I ask how you got hold of this number?’
‘You can ask.’
That put a bigger dent in the flow of the conversation. The personal weasel was starting to irritate him. He got the impression of thin lips pressed tightly together, a wrinkle in his nose as if there was a bad smell coming from somewhere.
‘This number is unlisted,’ the weasel whined.
‘Good to know. Lucky I’ve got it already, eh?’
He wondered if it would be possible to push LeClair to the point where he lost his composure and yelled down the line, tell me what you fucking want. LeClair asked now, but in a nicer way.
‘Why do you want to get in touch with Arabella?’
The may I ask had slipped making him sound a little less like he had a broom handle stuck up his ass. Evan was getting bored with antagonizing the guy, anyway.
‘I have her wallet. I want to return it to her.’
It wasn’t what LeClair was expecting to hear. The silence that came down the line was different this time. It wasn’t a bored silence as he waited for sycophants to finish gushing, or a red-faced silence at Evan’s impertinence. He was genuinely lost for words. A little more of the haughtiness was gone from his voice when he found it again.
‘Where did you get it?’
‘She left it in a bar.’
‘You were in a bar with her?’
Evan might have thought that the incredulous tone was as a result of Mr Thomas Carlson’s daughter Arabella being seen in a bar with a grubby private investigator, not so far removed from being caught loitering outside a public urinal. Except the worm of excitement that had been slowly coming awake in his gut ever since the previous evening told him there was more to it.
‘Not with her. Like we were about to go back to my place after we’d had a few drinks.’ That was just for the fun of it. ‘But we got talking. She had to leave in a hurry and forgot her wallet.’
He’d have expected a bunch of questions, but LeClair surprised him.
‘Hold the line, please.’
He said it like he’d had a lot of practice. As if callers were expected to wait while Mr Carlson finished his round of golf. He was also off the line before Evan had a chance to say yes or no. Evan passed the time trying to reconcile the woman he’d sat next to the night before with the family that she was clearly a part of. It wasn’t happening.
When LeClair came back on the line, Evan got the impression of a man delivering information that he had counseled against.
‘Mr Carlson would like you to come here with Arabella’s wallet.’
‘That’s not necessary. I can mail it. Or send it by courier . . .’
LeClair wasn’t
