I glanced at the sedan.“I don’t want to lose him, either.”
“He’s either going home or back to work,” Mendoza said.“Is this your first time tailing him?”
I nodded.
“Next time, find somewhere else to park.Nobody else is parked on the side of the road here.”
No, they weren’t.It was the kind of neighborhood where the properties were large and had long driveways.Mrs.Grimshaw, for instance, could easily accommodate ten cars nose to back.
“I can’t park on someone else’s property!”
“You can if you want to look like you belong,” Mendoza said, as Steven rolled by.“Just pick a driveway where everyone’s at work, and nobody’ll ever know you were there.”
I turned my head to watch Steven’s progress, and Mendoza added, “Look at me.”
“Why?”
“So he can’t see your face,” Mendoza said, watching the sedan move past on the other side of the car.“With any luck, he’ll think we’re just two neighbors who happened to meet on the street, and stopped to have a conversation.”
Sure.“You’re driving a cop car.Government plates and extra antennas.”
“Antennae,” Mendoza said.“The kind bugs have.”
“The kind cop cars have.”
He shrugged.“I can’t help that.And anyway, why would it matter to him?Infidelity isn’t a crime.”
Very true.Although it ought to be.
I watched in the rearview mirror as the brown sedan slowed, signaled, and then took a left onto the side street, bound for the nearest interstate.Or so I assumed.
“Is it OK if I leave now?”I asked.“Before he gets away?”
“Sure.”Mendoza removed his arms from my window and straightened as I cranked the key over in the ignition.The Lexus purred to life.“Don’t drive too fast trying to catch up.I don’t wanna have to pull you over for speeding.”
“I’m sure you don’t.”I reached for the window control.“Have a nice day, Detective.”
“You too, Mrs.Kelly,” Mendoza told me, and took a step back.I made a highly illegal U-turn and sped off down the street, hoping to catch Steven before he got to the highway.When I glanced in the rearview mirror on my way around the corner, Mendoza was still standing in the same spot with his hands on his hips, and I didn’t have to see his face to know he was scowling after me.
Two
My late husband,David Kelly, before he left me for Jackie-with-a-q and then got himself murdered, was one of two partners in a financial firm that had its offices on Music Row in midtown Nashville.David and his business partner Farley started the company a few years before David and I got married, while David was still married to his previous wife Sandra, although when you walk into the lobby, you’d swear that the place has been in business for more than half a century.It was an impression David had gone to great lengths to cultivate, mainly by lining the walls with framed, signed photographs of some of country music’s greats, many of whom had died while he and Farley were in diapers.Patsy Cline, Jim Reeves, Hank Williams Senior, Johnny Cash, all smiled—or in Johnny’s case, glowered—down from the walls of the lobby.All of them—save Johnny—dead before David had started grade school.
Not one of them had ever been a client of either David’s or Farley’s.
Rachel looked up from arranging an array of magazines on the table in the corner.“Gina.How did it go?”
I dropped my purse on the nearest chair and walked over to inspect the magazines.“Tailing someone is harder than I thought.Why do we suddenly subscribe toGuns & AmmoandShooting Times?”
“We don’t,” Rachel said, aligning the corners with razor sharp precision.“Zachary brought them in.They’re from his personal collection.He said they’d set the tone for any walk-in clients.”
“I guess they would.If any clients happened to walk in.”
And I wasn’t holding my breath.
Our current case was a favor for a friend.Diana Morton had handled my divorce from David, the one he had died in the middle of, and it was thanks to her that I still owned the house in Hillwood (that I would sell, as soon as the damage from a recent fire was repaired), the luxury penthouse in the Gulch (David’s love nest, that I lived in now), the Lexus I had gotten when I traded in my convertible, and the building we were standing in.She’d offered to pay me for stalking Steven, but I was more than happy to do it gratis.It seemed the least I could do, and anyway, once I proved myself, I hoped she’d refer clients my way.A lot of wives, when they first suspect their husbands of straying, are willing to pay to have that suspicion confirmed.
Just look at Jaime Mendoza’s ex-wife.
