I said, “What do you mean, ‘fuck the accountant’?”
Chapter 26
The girl sitting next to me kept glancing at my jewelry. We’d just gotten settled into our seats when—there, she did it again.
“Business or pleasure?” I said.
The corners of her mouth turned slightly upward. Not a smile, exactly, but not a frown either.
“Business, I’m afraid. You?”
“The same. By the way, I’m Cosmo.”
She gave up a quick laugh that made her eyelids crinkle at the corners. Then looked up and saw me not laughing. “Oh,” she said. “You’re serious.”
I showed her a wan smile. “I curse my parents daily. How about you?”
She giggled. “I don’t even know your parents,” she said.
I shared the smile. “Good one.”
“Thanks. I’m Alison. Alison Cilice.”
“Cilice with an “S?”
“With a C,” she said, and spelled it for me.
It never ceases to amaze me how much personal information total strangers reveal about themselves in casual conversations on an airplane. In less than three minutes I can get almost anyone to tell me where, when and how to kill them.
“Nice to meet you, Alison. What sort of work do you do?”
“Oh, Gawd. It’s so boring!”
I laughed. “Try me!”
“Okay. You know the Park ‘N Fly’s?”
“The parking lots by the airports? That’s you?”
She laughed. “How old do I look? No, I don’t own them. I’m their internal auditor.”
Alison was about thirty, had an easy manner with men. Darwin probably had all the sexual details in a file on his desk.
“You must travel a lot,” I said.
“Every other week.”
“How many locations?”
“We’ve got nineteen lots across the country,” she said, “so I stay pretty busy.”
“I bet a lot of managers hate to see you coming.”
“Serves them right if they do,” she said.
“Do you always find irregularities?”
“Always.”
“That means you’re good at what you do.”
She smiled.
I looked away a moment and stretched my hands in front of me so she could get a closer look at my sparkles.
“Nice jewelry,” she said.
