Page 39 of Lake
CHAPTER NINE
Bridget
Night two and I had a feeling nothing was going to be different than the night before. This was either the wrong address or something fishy was going on.
Parking under a street light wasn’t the stealthiest of moves, though I really could have used the light because I felt the need to look over my notes again. Not that I thought I might find something more in there.
Only thing was, the street lamps were either out or so old the light covers were too dingy and didn’t give off much light. It might have not helped that the windows were tinted pretty dark too.
The combination of those things left me with no other choice but to use the flashlight on my phone to read over shit. Either way, I had a feeling that I stuck out like a sore thumb. Not that it mattered because it didn’t seem like there was anyone around to take notice.
The place was dead.
Like Ghost Town, dead.
Sitting sideways and hunched over in the driver’s seat, I opened the file.
“There is nothing here,” I said as I shook my head. “Art is usually better than this.”
He wasn’t the type to take something and run with it. While being a PI, for the most part, wasn’t all that dangerous, sometimes you found yourself in a pickle especially if you weren’t careful and didn’t do your research.
One of the first cases on my own, I was on a watch for this man cheating on his wife. A wife that was wealthy and there had been a prenup signed. If he divorced her, he wouldn’t get a dime. If he cheated on her, well, she could divorce him without having to pay out anything. So while he wanted to keep the cash flow and have his cake too, she wanted him to know that she wasn’t stupid.
I had no idea how the two of them had even gotten together, she was from a good family and work driven. He was, well, not. He had a juvie record. Which, okay, didn’t always mean they were bad. But in this case, he hadn’t changed, he just got smarter on how not to get caught.
It turned out, he wasn’t cheating. No, he was breaking into people’s homes and stealing their valuables. These people were friends and acquaintances of his wife.
It ended with him figuring out that I was watching him and he tried to end my life. He really didn’t want to go to jail. And me, well, I had seen the darkness in him even before I started tailing him. All the research I did came in handy. I didn’t go in blind. I ended up fine and even solved the case that the local PD had been chasing their tails on for months.
Needless to say, she got her divorce and got to keep her money. That was a very satisfied client.
So I knew it paid to see every angle and dig up every little thing that we could. Art was the same and so that was why it surprised me that the file was so light.
I didn’t even have the woman’s name that we were working for. Or a phone number. That bugged the crap out of me.
Which was why I found myself dialing up Art’s number right now.
“Art,” I said before he could speak. “I was just wondering if I could call this woman and ask her some questions. I feel like there’s nothing going on at the address you gave me and I need to head in a new direction. How old is this information?”
“You were able to start already?” he asked and if I wasn’t wrong, I would have said he sounded surprised a little.
“Yeah, I got a car while mine is being worked on.”
I would have told him more but I just didn’t want to get into it. I realized that it would have been a smart thing to let him know who I’d been hanging out with and where I was staying, but I figured I had good instincts at this point in life, and they were telling me that I wasn’t in danger. And since he wasn’t here to see what I did, I didn’t really want to hear all the words of warning he would sling my way. I couldn’t be mad about it because I knew he only wanted to look out for me.
He grunted in response not sounding even a little bit happy.
“What do you need to know? I’ll call her tomorrow and get it for you.”
I paused. Something tickled in the back of my head and I tried my best to ignore it.
Art was just like that and I imagined that he wanted to be the one with the line of communication because he had been the one to take the case. It was kind of an old school way of thinking about things but that was what I’d come to expect from the man.
“Where did this address come from?” I asked.
There was a pause before he answered.
“It was the last known address for Ms. Banks. The only one I could find for her adult life so I figured she was still there.”
