I saluted her. She scowled at me.
When she returned and set down a whiskey glass full of bubbles with a lime on the rim, I gestured to the pub around us. “We have a bar as a base of operations, so I don’t think a drink would be out of place.”
“And? People want to feel like you’re taking their situation seriously. I said ‘petty Perry Mason,’ not ‘petty Sam Spade.’ You can’t nurse bourbon until a dame comes to hit on you or a heavy comes to beat you up.”
“More’s the pity,” I said as I took my lowball of very little flavor and absolutely no alcohol. In truth, there were few things I took more seriously than righting wrongs, but that didn’t mean I had to be happy about forgoing my evening glass of wine.
At least I could rest assured that if anyone could take being a petty personal assistant from cottage industry to full-fledged business, it would be Daisy Salcedo, marketing major. After countless texts and emails, I was beginning to think she wanted to both create and rule a pettiness industrial complex. While I’d spent the morning serving papers and finishing up my paralegal homework, she’d made sure to reserve all socials under “LittleMissPetty.” Part of me wanted to ask her if she was taking care of her own homework, but I let it be. She felt awful about Ken’s reaction to her glitter bomb.
I was halfway through my nonalcoholic concoction when an impossibly slender woman with sleek blond hair walked through the door. Damned if she didn’t look like a femme fatale from one of the noir films Havisham had referenced. She had to be my new client because she telegraphed “trophy wife,” and only a trophy wife would have a spare $3,000 lying around to throw at me. Sure enough, Havisham pointed her in my direction. Everything about her screamed “money,” from her exquisitely coiffed hair and tailored clothing to her understated manicure and overstated jewelry.
I smiled, despite feeling sloppy in my customary uniform of skinny jeans—sorry, not sorry, Gen Z—with an oversize button-down. Older than I was, but by an indeterminate number of years thanks to both makeup and a better gym regimen, my client had style. Of course, she also had money. Funny how style and money so often went together.
“You must be looking for Little Miss Petty,” I said with a smile.
“Yes, I’m Trista,” she said as she slid onto the bench across from mine. “And you are ...?”
“Your new petty personal assistant, Anonymous McGee.”
She nodded. “Plausible deniability. I like that in a person.”
“How can I help you today?”
“I feel like such a cliché, but I’m living the true tale as old as time. Girl falls in love with boy. Boy gets bored. Falls out of love with girl. Checks out of fatherhood and marriage. Almost certainly has a younger woman on the side. Girl decides to be proactive and get her shit together to serve him with divorce papers before he can serve her.”
My eyebrow couldn’t help but lift. “You would think life could find some new plots.”
She chuckled. “You really would.”
“Okay then. What is your vision?”
“My vision is to feed my husband through a sausage grinder, but he is the father of my children, so I suppose I could settle for some good old-fashioned karma. My friend, Jackie, is the person you helped with the Tinder password. She came back later to thank you again, saw your flyer, and sent me a picture. The part about how karma doesn’t work fast enough? That really spoke to me.”
“So, you don’t want me to look for his side chick?”
She brushed her hair behind her ear, and a diamond stud earring caught the light. Well over a carat, best I could tell. “No. It won’t do me any good to show that he’s cheating on me. The state of Georgia doesn’t care. Mind you, ifIwere the one cheating, then it could affect custody arrangements and my alimony, but since he’s the primary breadwinner, he can sow his wild oats in anyone’s field.”
She paused as Havisham placed a glass of chardonnay in front of her. Warmth suffused her features. “Chardonnay?”
“Yep.”
“How’d you know?”
“I have a sixth sense about these things.” Havisham had observed that women of a certain age and income bracket tended to like oaky, buttery chardonnays—especially when single or about to become single. She’d taken to calling chardonnay “cougar juice.”
I hoped the wine’s nickname became a self-fulfilling prophecy for Trista. Didn’t she deserve a future rebound fling with a younger man? If I were truly in charge of karma, I would make it so.
My client took a sip of wine, then closed her eyes before taking in a breath, holding it, then releasing. Either she was no stranger to yoga, she had her own mantras to chant, or both. Once centered, she met my eyes with a gaze that was once again steely. “Now, where was I?”
“You were about to tell me how I could help karma find your husband.”
“Yes, that. It may be childish, but I need to see him reap at least some of what he’s sown. It’s exhausting and exasperating to see him get away with so much.”
“Exhausted” and “exasperated”: These were two adjectives I knew only too well. “And you saw the fine print on the flyer about logical consequences rather than random revenge?”
She sighed. “If we must.”
“We must. A wise woman once said, ‘Karma’s only a bitch if you are,’ so I’d rather ... identify areas of improvement for your husband.”
