Private Deception

Chapter 1

Wobbling on the soles of my combat boots, I crept further out on top of the wooden beam that held the swings. I eyed the sand beneath the apartment complex playground about eight feet below, teetered even more, but regained my balance. I used one shoulder to push my hair back, and I focused my camera. There he was, Bill the bozo.

I supposed I looked odd, maybe even scary, crawling around on the playground equipment in my tight, black jeans and holey, black T-shirt. My straight, dark brown, shoulder-length hair fell forward and framed my face. Sometimes, like tonight, I even painted my fingernails black. I mean, why not? No one could see it. My attire blended in with Sweetwater Lake at my back. Crickets chirped; the dark air brushed my skin like moist feathers, and the faint smoky aroma of a charcoal-grilled dinner hung in the air, flirting with the sweet smell of Confederate jasmine.

Through my camera I clearly saw bozo Bill, technically William Lunsford III, two stories up and framed perfectly beyond a sliding glass door. Since I stood outside in the black night, the indoor lighting worked like a stage spotlight. The lights illuminated a bedroom with fluffy pink and lavender boas hanging from the top of a canopy bed. They allowed me to perfectly document the evidence Mrs. Lunsford needed.

Too easy, I whispered to myself, snapping more photographs. I’d thought, as a lawyer, Bill would have possessed more than the usual allotment of common sense. I’d thought Bill would at least have given me a challenge, used a little discretion, concealed himself behind a closed curtain and made sure it was pulled tight. Bill’s wife, Elaine, had hired me two days ago to follow Bill because she thought he was being unfaithful. As women’s intuition often tends to be, hers hit the bull’s eye, or in this case, Bill’s other end, which appeared wide, flabby, and pink.

Disgusting, I said, continuing to shoot photographs.

A cool spring breeze pushed against me, and I wobbled again before finding equilibrium and catching my breath. As the only female PI at Grayson Investigations, and the firm’s only employee under age 30, I often found myself pushing the limits, like using this playground bar as a balance beam, to defeat stereotypes and prove my skills. Those skills included documenting infidelity, and documenting it professionally with quality photographs that captured faces and not mere blurs. The added height on top of the play equipment placed me at precisely the right level to get a clear shot into the apartment. I snapped another photograph: evidence that would stand up in court, singing like the fat lady Bill’s artificially enhanced mistress obviously was not.

A bark sounded nearby, followed by snarling. My muscles tensed involuntarily, and I teetered. Then I saw a man walking toward me from the apartment complex. His huge, furry German shepherd strained against a leash. I flailed wildly, trying to regain my balance, willing my combat boots to stay glued to the beam. Unsuccessful, I fell, landing hard on the sandy ground and rolling to the side, protecting my camera against my chest.

The man holding the leash ordered the dog to sit. But he stepped toward me, his silhouette lean and muscled, his free hand balled in a fist. Where was my Taser when I needed it? Back in the Jeep beneath my seat where I’d left it. I had used no more common sense than bozo Bill.

Chapter 2

Stay! the man commanded the dog, his voice hard, the night shading all but the sharp contours of his face. The German shepherd obeyed but remained focused on me, ears perked. What are you doing? the man asked.

What does it look like I’m doing? I sat up and glanced at my camera, which appeared intact and free of sand. I’m bird watching.

I caught a glint off the man’s eyes as he shook his head. The lights from the apartment complex shone at his back, preventing me from clearly observing his expression.

You’re not going to apologize for startling me or help me up, are you? I asked, shaking sand out of my hair.

What are you really doing? He extended a hand.

I gripped it, and he pulled me up, faster and easier than I expected. I let my hand linger in his warmer, slightly larger grip, trying to play to what I hoped was his weakness. But then I found myself enjoying the feel of his calloused fingers holding mine.

Who are you? he asked.

Jade O’Reilly. What’s your name? I reminded myself that I couldn’t allow my mind to wander no matter how well our hands fit together; I was on a job and talking to a stranger.

What are you doing, Jade? The man pulled his hand back. You’re on private property.

Really? I asked, wondering if he was the apartment’s security guard. I’m standing on a common ground within this complex. Any resident is welcome.

I shuffled around so the light from the apartment complex shined at the man’s side instead of shielding his face. A crescent-shaped laugh line punctuated the corner of his mouth, and brown hair fell long enough for a slight wave at the tips but cut close enough for low maintenance. Instead of the security guard’s uniform I expected, he wore a forest green polo shirt and jeans. Even in the dimness, his eyes drew my attention. They appeared pale, like glacier-blue ice, as they ran over my body, boldly assessing me. Was my heart pounding only because I’d been caught while on surveillance? I didn’t think so.

Apartment amenities and grounds are for residents, he said. You’re not a resident, are you?

I snapped my thoughts back to attention. He wasn’t my Romeo. Instead, he sounded like he wanted to report me for trespassing. Are you a resident? I asked.

The playground is for kids age 13 and below.

You got me there.

And bird watching at night—

Owl watching, I said. But I think your dog scared away the owl that was perched on top of the building.

He glanced toward the roof above the lit window I’d been photographing. The bedroom light where I’d seen Bill and his mistress remained on, but from the ground only the gauze that stretched across the top of the canopy bed was visible.

Right, he said. And the all-black clothes—

I’m a Goth chick. I waggled my black fingernails at him. It’s all the rage.

I don’t—

I’m joking. The dark clothing lets me blend in with the landscape. Ever hear of something called camouflage? It’s so I don’t startle the wildlife. I decided to change the subject and hopefully divert the man’s attention. I like your dog. I waved at the German shepherd and got a growl. I realized I spoke too fast. The dog probably sensed my anxiety. I felt antsy and wished the man, whoever he was and however hard he made my heart beat, would forget he saw me.

What are you really doing here? the man asked as his dog barked. Easy, Copper.

Copper, that’s a nice name for a dog, I said. How old is he?

The man’s laugh line deepened. Stop evading my questions.

Well. I forced a laugh. Stop interrogating me.

Stop lying.

Sure, I said. I’ll be on my way. Obviously, no owls will be returning tonight.

I backed up a couple steps and then turned and walked toward the apartments, glancing once behind my shoulder. The man still stood there. I hurried to my car, an eight-year-old, beat-up Jeep more dirt-caked than blue. Inside, locks activated, I turned on my digital camera and checked the photographs I’d taken from atop the playground. I’d gotten what I’d come for, so I started my engine. As I shifted my car into gear, I glanced in my rearview mirror and caught the handsome man watching me leave.

Chapter 3

When I got home to my apartment above my brother’s separated garage, a few Irish beers and some melancholy rock on my favorite free Internet radio station lulled me into a philosophical mood—dangerous. I began reevaluating my encounter with the man from the apartment complex and reassessing my lack of a steady relationship by playing the game I caught myself in every time I drank more than two beers—the say-it game.

Say I was a normal girl. Say I’d met the man from the apartment complex under normal circumstances as opposed to being made by his dog. Say I’d bumped into him at a bar. Say there’d been music playing. Say I wasn’t wearing all black, or at least say I wore a little black dress instead of my recon outfit—and he’d been the one wearing the combat boots. Everything would have gone differently.

I popped open another bottle, left my door open so my music wafted outside, and wandered across the upper-story porch overlooking the lake. Sweetwater Lake was a Carolina bay, one of a vast quantity of oval depressions found mostly along the Atlantic seaboard. The bays, all with the same northwest-southeast orientation, were named for the bay trees that flourished in and around them. One of North Carolina’s largest bay lakes with 13 miles of shoreline in an elongated oval, Sweetwater Lake’s surface rippled and crushed against the shore in an easy lapping motion. Strung along the lake, the lights on piers marked different properties scattered around the water’s perimeter.

Whether formed by a meteor’s strike, or carved painstakingly by coastal winds and waves from a million years ago, or flooded by underground springs—the lake’s origins couldn’t be conclusively determined by scientists. Me and the lake, we could be twins. Both of us—how we got to where we were, why we were who we were—no one could decipher our histories’ murky depths.

I rolled my eyes at my too philosophical thoughts, checked my watch, and called it an evening. After I locked the doors and threw my empty bottle into the recycling bin, and after I pulled my sea-green comforter to my chin, I fingered the hollow beside my right hip where my tattoo of a phoenix rested, its fiery feathers disappearing into ash, which disappeared into my underwear. I closed my eyes. Some things leave scars that never go away.

Say maybe I was forever stuck in those ashes. Say maybe I’d always be struggling to fly. Maybe a part of me would always be burned raw by the allegorical lightning bolt that struck my life years and years ago, leaving me changed forever. Maybe I’d never regain the person, the purity of self, I’d possessed before I’d allowed it to be carved away from me. Maybe nothing could have gone differently tonight, not with the man at the apartment complex, not under any other circumstances. Say nothing ever would go differently. Well, it wouldn’t. At least not when I played silly games like this. I twisted onto my stomach, took solace in the way my pillow embraced my head, and wondered why I ever drank more than two beers in one evening.

*

O’Reilly! Knuckles rapped on my desk, and I jumped, my coffee sloshing and almost spilling onto my shirt. Wake up, Jade O’Reilly! Instead of sitting there daydreaming, do something productive, like get a job at the makeup counter at Belk’s. You look like week-old leftovers this morning.

I glared at the college ring with its gaudy purple stone set in thick gold—better than looking at Mack’s Pug face. Droopy dog forehead wrinkles hung over a turned up nose, and brown eyes bulged over sun-spotted skin. Mack kept his white hair buzzed, perhaps to give him the sensation that he still was employed as a cop.

Top of the morning to you, too, Mack-a-roni, I said. I smiled into his frowning face. Mack, a former police officer—and a Marine before that—preferred to be called Lieutenant or Sir, or at least by his last name, Blackmon, and not by a mutilation of his common name.

Respect, Mack said. Respect for your superiors—that’s what you girls are lacking these days.

You’d know about girls and respect, Leslie, I said, calling him by his first name, the one he treated so sensitively that he abbreviated it on everything, including the gold desk nameplate he’d saved from his police days, Lt. L. McKenzie Blackmon. I saved calling him by his first name for special occasions. Like this morning.

I’ll report you to our superior, he said. I told you never to call me that!

Leslie? I asked. You don’t want to be called Leslie? I asked even louder. Through the buzz-cut hairs, I saw Mack’s scalp redden. Then don’t call me a girl. I set my coffee on my desk and bobbed back in my chair, pretending to be less agitated than I felt.

I’ll stop calling you a girl when you stop acting like one. Mack turned and strode out of the office we shared with Grayson Investigations’ two other private investigators as fast and forcefully as his bad leg would carry him.

And I’ll start treating you with respect when you earn it, I called to his back.

Mack’s limp was a remnant of the accident that ended his decades-spanning police career. From coworkers and contacts on the police force, I’d gleaned that Mack had been involved in a shootout. A bullet blasted through his leg, disabling him, and rather than work at a desk, Mack resigned and joined Grayson Investigations. Since he’d been a PI for nearly a dozen years, he was by far the senior-most investigator at Grayson, if you didn’t count Rex Grayson, our supervisor who founded the company, and who was also a veteran of the Sweetwater police force.

Steve glanced over his shoulder at me, and I shrugged at him. While Mack and I typically handled cases that involved extensive fieldwork, Steve and Earl, the other PIs at Grayson Investigations, specialized in niches of the private investigation world. Steve handled background checks, and Earl served papers.

Late night, Steve said. When I’d first joined Grayson Investigations, Steve taught me surveillance tactics and enough skills to allow me to take his place in the field while he retired from fieldwork to his desk. Through my training with him, and after several lengthy stake-outs that consisted of days spent together in the covered bed of his pickup truck, I considered Steve my friend.

Late night? I repeated. I didn’t think I looked that bad. I fingered the bags beneath my eyes.

I meant Mack had a late night, Steve said. He’s been grouchy all morning. Should make for another lively morning meeting.

Sometimes, I wondered if that wasn’t why Rex hired me permanently—to create entertainment through my frequent disagreements with Mack. If it weren’t for the bantering, I figured Rex held the morning meetings to keep a toe in the investigations scene since he focused more on security system installations than fieldwork. At least the meetings were scheduled late enough in the morning that us PIs—who might have been on late-night stakeouts or in my case, mildly hung over—could sleep in a bit.

Go easy on Mack, Steve said. He’s getting old and can’t take kidding like he used to. Besides, what’s that saying—something about catching flies with sugar?

Honey, I said, and I’ve never stocked my supplies with it.

Maybe you could ask Dale to borrow some of his, Louise said from the doorway.

The only other female Grayson Investigations employed, Louise served as the receptionist and billings department—and as my sounding board for romantic advice. I groaned at her reference to Dale Pickles. Pickles—what a last name. And I’d almost been stuck with it. Dale, my ex-fiancé who I’d dumped not a half year ago, two months before our wedding day, continued to be a steady presence in my life. Sweetwater held no secrets, not in a town so small and secluded that its population barely supported a mall. Much of Grayson Investigations’ business came from nearby Morehead City, my hometown, a port city just minutes from beaches with ocean water so clear that swimmers often could see their toes.

Though Louise had no experience in the PI field, having lived through the last world war, she trumped all of us in life experience and doled out grandmotherly advice along with the butterscotch-flavored hard candies that she kept in a crystal cup on her desk. She was 80-something going on 30-something and drove a motorized lemon-yellow scooter to work on sunny days, ever since her license was revoked after she repeatedly failed the eye exam.

I gathered my notebook and the folder of photos I’d printed revealing Bill’s escapades last night, and followed Steve and Louise to the conference room for the morning meeting. Mack’s eyes lit up when he saw me enter.

Chapter 4

Steve joined Mack and Earl, filling up one side of the conference room table, leaving the head vacant for Rex Grayson, our boss, and of course leaving the opposite side of the table open for me and Louise.

As I settled into a wood-backed chair, Mack yanked open the blinds so the morning sun refracted off the glass-topped table and into my face.

You don’t mind, O’Reilly, Mack said, tough little girl that you are.

I squinted at him. Actually—

I don’t mind, Louise said, adjusting her rhinestone-studded, horn-rimmed plastic glasses. Never could see much out of these suckers anyway.

So Jade, Mack said, did you wrap up your case last night, or did you come back empty handed again?

I glanced at Steve. He was discussing baseball stats with Earl.

I was on fire yesterday, Mack said. Three billables!

Rex paid his employees, with the exception of Louise, on commission. I’d never managed to close three cases in a day—not yet, I told myself.

Hold on, Mack, I said, reaching into one jeans pocket and then the other. I think I’ve got a gold star in here somewhere for you.

You want it done right; you want it done fast; you come to me! Mack shot me with both index fingers as Rex entered the room. Could you top me off, Jade? Mack asked. He slid his coffee mug across the table at me. I forgot to do it on my way in.

I gritted my teeth. If I snarled back at him and told him to get his own drink, I’d appear uncooperative, or worse, insensitive to his impaired leg.

That’s a good girl, Mack said as I stood. Extra cream.

If it weren’t for Mack, Grayson Investigations would be my dream job. And I supposed Mack felt similarly toward me; I’d invaded his turf and infiltrated the all-male investigations unit. As I set down Mack’s cup, I stifled the urge to pretend to trip and spill hot coffee onto Mack’s lap.

So I’d like to begin, Rex said, now that we’re all present. He glanced at me, his gray-brown eyes as sharp as his namesake’s teeth. Tyrannosaurus Rex—huge, meat eating, ferocious, take no prisoners, and never back down—that summed up Rex Grayson’s demeanor also, especially when he worked a case.

After Earl and Steve gave updates, Mack bragged about his three cases yesterday. He’d completed a due diligence process by tracking down the owner of a small piece of property the Sweetwater township wanted to buy. Mack also had located a deadbeat dad, and he’d caught an insurance claimant bench pressing 150-pound weights at a local gym when the claimant had said he couldn’t work due to a bad back. I felt better. I’d assumed Mack’s cases all involved fieldwork. Only the insurance claimant case had required Mack to actually leave his desk.

And you, Jade? Rex asked.

I caught a married man with his mistress. I tapped my folder of photographs. I just need to break the news to the spouse.

Why haven’t you done it yet? Mack said. In this business, O’Reilly, it’s all about turning cases over. Get in, get out, notify the client, collect payment. Right, Captain? Mack glanced at Rex.

Rex nodded his head slowly.

Gee, Mack, I said, "I guess I haven’t contacted the client because she asked me to wait until she made contact with me. She was adamant that I not call her. Maybe