was occupied by a very slender blonde woman wearing a lot of clothes. Her white skirt reached her ankles, nearly covering her black-laced high-heeled boots.
Over the skirt she wore a longish ivory-colored tunic and a black leather belt with a huge buckle and a small crocheted beige sleeveless sweater, and a beige scarf at her neck, and ivory earrings that were carved in the shape of Japanese dolls, and rings on all her fingers, and a white bow in her hair.
'Hi, I'm Nancy,' she said. 'Can I help?'
I took a card out of my shirt pocket and gave it to her. It had my name on it, and my address and phone number and the word Investigator. Nothing else. Susan had said that a Tommy gun, with a fifty-round drum, spewing flame from the muzzle, was undignified.
'I'm representing Paul Giacomin, whose mother works here.'
Nancy was still eyeballing the card. 'Does this mean, like a Private
Investigator?'
I smiled winningly and nodded.
'Like a Private Eye?'
'The stuff that dreams are made of, sweetheart,' I said.
The woman with the blue-black hair hung up the phone.
'Hey, PJ,' Nancy said. 'This is a Private Eye.'
'Like on television?' PJ said. Where Nancy was flat, PJ was curved. Where
Nancy was overdressed, PJ wore a sleeveless crimson blouse and gray slacks which fitted very smoothly over her sumptuous thighs. She had bare ankles and high-heeled red shoes. Around her left ankle was a gold chain.
'Just like television,' I said. 'Car chases, shootouts, beautiful broads. ..'
'Which is where we come in,' PJ said. She had on pale lipstick and small gold earrings. There were small laugh wrinkles around her eyes, and she looked altogether like more fun than was probably legal in Lexington.
'My point exactly,' I said. 'I'm trying to locate Patty Giacomin.'
'For her son?' Nancy said.
'Yes. She's apparently gone, and he doesn't know where and he wants to.'
'I don't blame him,' PJ said.
'You know where she is?'
Both women shook their heads. 'She hasn't been in for about ten days,' PJ said.
'A week ago last Monday,' Nancy said.
'Is that usual?'
'No. I mean, it's not like she's on salary. She doesn't come in, she doesn't get listings, she doesn't sell anything, she doesn't get commission,' PJ said. 'But usually she was in here three, four days a week-she was sort of part-time.'
'Who runs the place?'
'I do,' PJ said.
'Are you Chez or Vous?'
PJ grinned. 'Is that awful, or what? No. My name's P. J. Garfield. PJ stands for Patty Jean. But with Patty Giacomin working here, it was easier to use PJ, saved confusion. I bought the place from the previous owner when she retired. Chez Vous was her idea. I didn't want to change the name.'
'Either of you know Patty's boyfriend?' I said.
'Rich?' Nancy said.
'Rich what?'
Nancy looked at PJ. She shrugged.
'Rich…' PJ said. 'Rich… she brought him to the Christmas party last year. An absolute hunk. Rich… Broderick, I think, something like that. Rich Broderick? Bachrach? Beaumont?'
'Beaumont,' Nancy said.
'You sure?'
'Oh.' She put her hand to her mouth. 'No, god no, I'm not sure. I don't want anyone to get in trouble.'
'How nice,' I said. 'Do we know where Rich lives?'
'Somewhere on the water,' Nancy said. She looked at PJ.
PJ shrugged. 'Could be. I frankly paid very little attention to him. He's not Patty's first boyfriend. And most of them are not, ah, mensches.'
'What can you remember?' I said.
'Me?' Nancy said.
'Either of you. What did he look like? What didhe do for a living? What did he talk about? Did he like baseball, or horse racing, or sailboats? Was he married, separated, single, divorced? Did he have children? Did he have any
