Shoot from the Lip

garage and told him we got the maid service name. He said he was glad to hear that, since they got nothing from the pimp except what a neat freak Fiona Mancuso had been and that he considered her stupid. All his girls had been stupid.

“I’m glad I wasn’t there,” I said. “You know how I shoot from the lip.”

“I’m certain you two wouldn’t have gotten along. Tell me the name.”

“Purity Maids.” I maneuvered around what had become standard fixtures on Houston city streets-orange construction cones.

“You can bet Fiona picked out a new name when she went straight. Can you work the maid angle? Try to find her?”

“Because you don’t want to scare her off?” I asked.

“Right. If you can get to her without telling anyone who you are, that would be great. We’ve already got one of Christine O’Meara’s friends in the morgue.”

“Don’t remind me,” I said.

“Quit with the guilt. You didn’t cut that guy.”

“That’s what Jeff said,” I answered.

“You probably won’t be able to reach me for a while,” he said. “We just got called out to a murder-suicide. I hate fucking Mondays. I’ve learned people are damn selfish. ‘I don’t want to go to work or pay my bills or make up with my wife, so I’ll kill myself-and maybe take someone with me so I won’t get lonely in hell.’ ”

“DeShay, come on,” I said.

“I know, I know. But suicide scenes are the worst. Usually messy, and then you got the crying relatives. Why do suicides have about ten times more relatives than other victims? That’s what I want to know.”

“Maybe that’s the reason for the suicide,” I said. “Too many relatives.”

“Yeah. There you go.” He laughed. “I gotta run. Keep in touch.” He hung up.

Ever alert for a tail, I’d driven home wishing there weren’t so many damn Ford Focuses on the road.

I sat back in my desk chair a half hour later, stroking Diva and wondering how to learn whether Fiona Mancuso still worked for Purity Maids. Seemed a safe bet, since Emma had talked to her two weeks ago. But I needed to be sure. A simple check of the yellow pages showed an ad that proclaimed Purity had been in business since I was three years old. They must be doing something right. But what if the recent publicity concerning the reality show that had come to town, not to mention the murder of her old bar buddy Jerry Joe Billings, had sent the woman running scared? If so, all I could do was try to pick up her trail.

Like DeShay said, Mancuso probably used an alias to get hired and had a fake or new social security number attached to that alias. Reputable housecleaning agencies required their employees to be bonded, and a rap sheet in your background showing multiple arrests for solicitation wouldn’t get you a job with an agency like Purity. I wouldn’t be asking about Fiona Mancuso, but rather a woman who had a very distinctive and visible tattoo.

How should I approach this? I couldn’t call up and say I was a PI. The agency would get their back up, want to know if there was a problem. I decided I’d be a customer. Since someone cleaned my place every couple weeks, I knew the drill. When I called, they’d send someone out to evaluate my house, determine exactly what I wanted done, how often and at what charge. Which would take about a week. We couldn’t afford to waste time. I needed to be a customer in a desperate hurry for a housecleaning-definitely not a stretch for me.

I dialed the Purity number, hoping I could convince them I needed help right now.

“Purity Maids, this is Randy. How may I help you?” the man answered.

“My name is Abby Rose, and your agency was recommended to me. I understand you do good work, and I’d like to get my house cleaned as soon as possible.”

“Thank you for calling, Ms. Rose. As the manager, I’m authorized to give a free cleaning to the customer who recommended us. Was it a friend or relative?”

Uh-oh. Think fast, Abby. “Um, actually, neither. A friend and I were in line at Panera Bread and I was talking about how I didn’t like my current maid service. This lady behind us mentioned Purity.”

“Too bad. She missed out on her freebie. Anyway, we can get an evaluation done by tomorrow and-”

“But I really need the cleaning done tomorrow-I’m having guests, and the place is a mess. This lady mentioned a specific maid, said she didn’t have her name but that you’d know her because of her tattoo.”

“Unless she works your area, we can’t promise that a certain maid will be sent to your house-and certainly not on a rush job. Tomorrow will require me to do rescheduling, and I’m afraid that will cost extra.”

Damn. I gave away too much too soon. “Maybe she works in my area. This tattoo is on her left ring finger.”

“Ah. Loreen. She’s quite popular. Where do you live? I’ll see what I can do.”

My heart sped at getting a first name. I thought, Where do I need to live? But I had the feeling that if I asked too many questions-like Loreen’s last name or her territory-he’d get suspicious. Nope, I saw no way around giving the manager what he wanted. “I live in West U.”

“Sorry, Loreen works in The Woodlands four out of five days a week, and her other houses are in the Memorial area.”

“Darn,” I said. “Could I get her another day this week?”

“That would take a massive overhaul of my schedule. I have an excellent pair assigned to West U-Angela and Dolly. I can fit you in at, say, ten a.m. Tuesday, depending on your square footage. I’m seeing on my job chart that they only have until noon to do the house.”

“My home is small, maybe twenty-one hundred square feet. And ten is fine,” I said.

After he gave me a quote and took my credit card info, I gave him my address and hung up. At least they were coming tomorrow. I sure hoped Angela and Dolly liked to talk, and that one of them knew Loreen, or at least her last name.

I left my office, which ticked off Diva and sent her scurrying up the stairs to find a warm place in my bedroom. I wanted to swing by Jeff’s apartment and check on how he and Doris were doing, maybe join them for dinner. But before I could gather my purse and an umbrella, the doorbell rang.

I closed my eyes and whispered, “Damn,” when I saw Paul Kravitz in the monitor. Couldn’t he have stayed away longer than a weekend?

I let him in.

“Hello, Abby. Looks like I need to be brought up to speed-especially since you didn’t call me when a certain significant event happened after I left town.” He strode past me into the living room and sat down on the sofa.

I followed him and said, “Hi, Paul. Come on in and have a seat.”

“A man was murdered, a man connected to the Christine O’Meara case,” Kravitz said.

I lowered myself onto the farthest chair from him. “I figured you’d be back soon and I’d tell you then. How did you find out?”

“HPD is communicating with us-but I thought you and I had an arrangement to cooperate with each other, for Emma’s sake.”

“Yeah, well, maybe when I found the GPS tracking device on my car, I decided cooperation is a one-way street for you-and goes in your direction.”

“What are you talking about?” He looked truly surprised.

“And,” I went on, trying to keep him on the defensive while he was a little confused, “what’s with the guy you put on Emma? You never mentioned him.”

Kravitz rubbed at a few drops of rain on his suit jacket shoulder. “It never came up, did it?”

He had me there. “You should have told me.”

“We put someone on Emma because we don’t want her talking to other reporters. Now, what’s your explanation for not telling me about the murder? I want to know about this man and his connection to Christine O’Meara.”

“I thought your police friends already told you,” I said.

He pointed at me. “You are pissing me off. If you’d called me, I would have sent our own guy to the murder scene to tape. Now we can’t even examine local news footage, because going to any of your TV stations would tip them off that the infant bones and the Billings murder might be connected.”

“Listen, Paul. I don’t care whether you got to tape or not. And if you or one of your yokels like Louie put that thing on my car, don’t expect anything more from me.”

He took a deep breath, his stare never wavering from my face. “I did not put a GPS device on your car, and I specifically told my investigators to leave you alone. Since someone else is obviously on to your investigation, did it dawn on you that you led a killer straight to Billings?”

“Oh, yeah. It dawned on me.” I felt an unexpected burning behind my eyes and fought hard to avoid the tears. I succeeded.

But Kravitz saw. He was an experienced interviewer and could read the emotion in people’s faces. “Sorry. That was unfair.”

“No, it’s the truth. What do you want from me?” I asked.

“I want you tell me how you found Billings and what you learned about his connection to Christine O’Meara.”

“Like I said, sounds like you already got everything,” I said.

“Not exactly. I want your take, with every detail you can remember. We’re already doing a background check on this guy, but you were one of the last people to talk to him. It’s the details that make a good story, Abby. The telling details.”

23

I was watching from my office window when the Purity Maids minivan pulled into my driveway Tuesday morning. The van was turquoise, like their uniforms, and the logo on the vehicle was white with darker turquoise letters. I realized I’d seen vans like this in the neighborhood before, but they blended into the background, like so many other things that weren’t important at the time.

Last night, after I’d told Kravitz all those telling details he so desperately wanted, I’d spent the evening with Jeff and Doris. Jeff had made plenty of calls Monday and scheduled interviews with two home health care agencies today. When I left them to drive home, I felt a sudden sense of loss. Jeff and I had a comfortable routine that would have to change. Though I didn’t resent Doris, I realized we’d have to come up with new ways to spend time together. She was a part of our lives now. A new challenge-but maybe a reward, too.

The two women who’d gotten out of the van, one black, one white, dragged to my doorstep a vacuum, mops, and two plastic pails filled with cleaning supplies. I opened the door before they could ring the bell and welcomed them inside.

“I am thrilled you could do this on such short notice. I’m Abby, by the way.”