called her to tell her that.”
“Well, I did, too.”
“So you admitted that you were the investigator who was hired to watch her husband?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you tell her that you’d been spying on her for months, trailing behind her when she took the kids for a walk and following her when she drove to the grocery store?”
“I did.”
“That’s not the typical pickup line. How did she take it?”
“You know Lucy.” He smiled with one side of his mouth and then pushed his plate away, as if the thoughts of Lucy had fed him enough. “She was kind about it. She was actually happy that it all happened. She had no idea Michael was into something dirty. She’s filed for divorce.”
“And now she’s got you, apparently.”
That one-sided smile again. “This is it, Izzy.”
“It, like you’re in love?”
“Yeah.”
“It, like you want to marry this girl?”
“Yeah.”
“Wow. I’m jealous. I can’t seem to decide if I want Sam or …” Or Theo. Or Grady. Or someone else altogether. Or no one at all. “Anyway, does Lucy feel the same way?”
“Not sure. It’s a lot more complicated for her.” He pushed his chair back. “All right, enough about me. I need you to eat that omelet fast, because we have to go to the lingerie store.” He turned and pointed through the front windows at a store across the street.
“The Fig Leaf? Don’t tell me you want me to model lingerie so you can pick out something for your girlfriend.”
“Nope. Have you ever worked in retail?”
“No.”
“Well, I want you to work there.”
“You want me to fold panties?”
“And I want you to sell them and ring them up, and mostly, I want you to watch Josie, the manager. My client, Marie, the owner of the store, doesn’t trust her lately, but technically the store is running great, so she doesn’t want to fire her.”
“This doesn’t sound like your usual case.” Mayburn worked for big law firms, monster corporations and international banks.
“It’s not. Marie is a family friend. Maybe she’s being paranoid about her manager. Who knows? But I’m not treating it different from any other investigation.”
“Okay, so what’s Josie up to? Skimming money off the top?”
He shrugged. “The books seem like they’re up-to-date. Inventory seems well-handled. They’re just getting a lot more traffic, which obviously is a good thing, but they haven’t increased marketing efforts or their PR. Marie can’t figure out exactly how it happened. She wants to make sure everything is on the up-and-up, especially since she spends most of her time in Palm Beach now. If there’s nothing to find, everyone’s happy.”
I stared at the Fig Leaf. It was an upscale place I’d been once. The merchandise had been ludicrously expensive, but still I had purchased a white nightie, very short and very sexy, for my wedding night. The nightie still hung at the back of my closet, tags on.
“Since Marie started spending more time out of town, Josie has been telling her they need to hire a clerk,” Mayburn said. “This morning, Marie told Josie she’d found someone—her family friend Lexi, who is attending law school during the day.”
“Does Lexi have red hair?”
“Yes.”
“Lexi,” I said, trying the name out. “Lexi what?”
“Lexi Hammond.”
“Lexi Hammond,” I repeated. “I like it. But wait a minute, what about filling out IRS forms and stuff? Won’t I need a social security number?”
“They’re paying you cash under the table. And then I’m paying you a freelance investigator fee.”
“Shouldn’t I be getting an investigator license if I’m going to keep doing this?”
“Nah. It’s a pain in the ass to get a license in Illinois. And expensive. Plus, I just need your help to get intel. I don’t want you to testify or anything like that.”
I thought of something else. I told Mayburn about my job at Trial TV. “But Jane says I won’t be going on-air right away.”
“Should be fine. I need you to start tomorrow, Sunday, and if we’re lucky I won’t need you more than a few weeks. So, what do you think, Lexi?”
“Does Lexi get a discount?”
“I knew you were going to ask that. Thirty percent.”
I clapped my hands and pushed the omelet away. “Let’s go.”
10
Zac Ellis opened their weekend house in Long Beach, Indiana, the way he always did. He walked through the place, turning on lights, dialing the thermostat up or down, opening windows just to get some fresh air in the place. Often, he would be followed by Jane when she was done with a broadcast, and the fresh air would twist its way though the house and into their lungs and even into their relationship, and they almost always felt much better within hours of arriving.
But he could tell today would be different. The fresh air, colder today on this side of Lake Michigan, seemed too harsh. And so was the news of Jane’s latest bit of messing around. How had he ever thought he could handle it?
He stopped for a moment in their kitchen. It was narrow and crammed with old, kitschy appliances they’d picked up at antique malls and flea markets—so different from their vast, metropolitan kitchen in Chicago. Standing there, he thought about his history with Jane. Before they’d met, he dated deep, brooding women. Artists like his ex Zoey, who were dark and moody, who wore funky clothes and who painted in a studio for days at a time.
Jane was so different from those women—tall and flashy and up-front about everything. He hadn’t been mesmerized with the whole TV world, or even really that interested. Which had given him the mistaken impression that he would never fall for Jane. How very, very, very wrong he had been.
He left the kitchen and walked down the narrow hallway toward their bedroom. The house was built in 1927, and so, like the kitchen, the room was small, and their antique brass bed had to be pushed into the far corner. He leaned against the wall, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jeans, imagining Jane there. Almost ten years ago, about a year and a half after they’d met, they got married on the beach two blocks from here, and they spent their first night as a married couple in that bed.
It felt good to picture Jane this way, with him. Lately, his mind only held pictures of her with other men.
Yes,
