About a second after rat-eyes started yelling at coffee-girl, I had him pegged. Courage problem. Not too much courage, that’s never a problem in the world of working canines. And by working, I mean military and police. A lack of courage — now that’s a problem.
I picked up his coffee and turned to him. “You forgot something,” I said.
“What?” His rat-eyes got a little rattier, his lips turning white, stretching thin. I stepped close, invading his personal space. He held up a hand, chest high, an instinctive reaction. I gripped his wrist with my left, feeling him try to pull back, his face going as pale as his lips.
Was it fear or rage? My guess was fear. I’d lived with rage the last seven years, since my wife and daughter were murdered, and this didn’t look like it.
My grip turned hard. Not the kind of hard you get from machines or weights alone, but the kind of hard you develop in a lifetime of living. Real living. I ran away from home when I was fourteen and signed up on a Crabber, fishing the Alaskan coastline. In that line of work, you develop a strong hand quick or don’t make it back alive. I made it back and signed up for another season the next year.
I slowly rotated his wrist until his thumb pointed straight up. I gently placed his coffee cup against the palm of his upturned hand and tightened my grip, pinching the ligaments and tendons in his forearm, so that his fingers curled around the cardboard.
A part of me hoped he would go for it. That was the rage talking. A lot of my edges have been rounded since my family’s death, I’ve come to terms with a lot, but there are still a few snags here and there. I’m what my shrink calls a work in progress.
“Have a nice day,” I said quietly. I leaned in even closer so that my lips almost touched his ear. “Somewhere else.” I leaned back, releasing his wrist, and let him see just a glimpse of what was behind my eyes.
He turned and left the shop.
“Thank you.” It was the coffee girl.
I smiled. “What’s your name?”
“Mindy Castle.” Her eyes were clear and dry.
I picked up my coffee and handed her one of my coins. The coins are a lot more expensive than cards, but they last forever and people tend to keep them. “If he comes back in and bothers you, Mindy Castle, give me a call. It won’t happen a third time. I give you my word.”
She nodded bravely.
I went back to my table, but before I could sit down a tall, thin woman with shoulder length, brown hair, and a sleeping two year old girl in a stroller, walked up to me, holding out her hand. “You must be the private investigator.”
I offered her my hand. “Gil Mason.” She shook it. I motioned toward a chair and she sat. My ten o’clock appointment had arrived.
2
The engagement ring was simple but nice, nothing gaudy or vulgar. Just a small stone embedded in a twisting ring of white gold. The matching wedding band was void of diamonds but continued the twisting motion enhancing the overall appearance.
You can tell a lot from wedding rings, or the lack thereof. For instance, the twisting grooves of this ring had long since smoothed to gentle slopes. The black antiquing had rubbed away until there was little more than a hint staining only the deepest of cracks.
The white indentation around her finger contrasted sharply with the nut brown of her tan. The ring and finger told their own story. She’d been married at least a decade; it took some time for a ring to settle like that. She played with it now, spinning it idly as she spoke, tugging it gently toward the knuckle. When a woman fidgets with an object as precious as her wedding ring — moving it closer and closer to that dangerous point where it could slip off and roll away to be lost — she’s subconsciously doing the same thing with her marriage.
Too bad. She seemed like a nice lady, but staking out wayward husbands isn’t my line.
“How did you find out about me, Mrs. Franklin?” We sat at a table by the window, my iPad between us. I judge K9 trials and events for police, military and government agencies, as well as private clubs, and keeping up with scheduling is murder.
She turned the ring with her index finger and thumb. “Please, call me Lisa.”
I nodded, smiled. “Lisa then.” A splintering of crow’s feet touched the corners of her eyes. They were a light blue, matching the flowered pattern of her shirt. But the eyes themselves lacked something — a luster, the slight shine that lets others know you’re alive. I’d seen this absence before, in the faces of Afghan children after terrorists invaded their village and murdered their parents in front of them. Hope was the missing element, and without it, their eyes looked dead.
She’d been a beauty once, not so long ago, but years and life eroded her looks, smoothing them in the same way time blunted the ridges of her ring, dulling the sharp edges of her beauty into a mellow, dignified grace that was still very easy on the eyes.
The little girl made a cooing sound and shifted her position in the stroller. She brought her thumb to her lips and started sucking.
Lisa smiled and shook her head slowly. She brushed a stray lock of curly hair from the baby’s forehead and looked up at me. “Don’t worry, she won’t wake up. Amber could sleep through a tornado. She gets that from her father.”
I looked down at the angelic face, seeing my own daughter, Marla, and remembering how we used to push her in a stroller until she would fall asleep from the motion and the gentle hustle of activity all around.
The curl fell back onto her forehead
