The Girl on the Edge of Summer Page 4

  I headed down to the grannies.

  Jane and Timmy—sorry, Timothy were there. Jane is now the ringleader. When I first moved into this building, back when dinosaurs roamed the swamps, I shared the third floor with a woman named Sarah Clavish. At the time, she was old enough to be my grandmother, both prim and proper, and kind and generous. We were neighbors and we acted like it, feeding each other’s cats, accepting packages, walking out together if it was dark. I made no bones about being lesbian—as I lived here in my office back then and she couldn’t miss it—and she never wavered in her respect and politeness for me. Over time we became friends. She had been doing mail-order Cajun cookbooks, and once she started computerizing her business, discovered the possibilities of the tech world. She had started the computer grannies, pulling in a few of her friends, recruiting other older women who were willing to learn. Naturally I took my computer searches—and let’s be honest, occasional hacking—to them. I hadn’t become a private investigator to sit at a desk and stare at the computer screen, so I was happy to delegate those chores to them. Jane, known mostly by her handle LadyJane, had taken over running the business. In August of 2005, Sarah Clavish had gone down the river to try to convince her sister and brother-in-law to evacuate. He was confident they would be okay; he had a skiff in the backyard. They weren’t. Only he made it to the boat.

  The grannies had recently hired Timmy, Timothy, as their, yes, they used this title, Girl Friday. He had the goatee, trendy long sideburns, and enough of a coffee habit to help the coffee shop downstairs pay their rent, which paid my mortgage. He didn’t know much about computers, but he looked the part and happily answered phones and talked to customers and consumed all the baked goods the grannies constantly brought in whenever they came by the office. He looked so young, I had trouble thinking of him as Timothy instead of Timmy.

  I entered their office bringing the offerings of the computer, cell phone, jump drive, and pink notebook. Jane waved Timothy away to handle me herself. The reasonable rent I charged got me to the front of the line and the standard friend discount. Other than that, I paid them what they were worth.

  “What have we here?” she asked as she led me to her office.

  I told her about Tiffany’s sad life, including that she might find nude pictures on the computer or phone. “You don’t need to do a thorough search of everything. I’m trying to track down the identity of the jerk who threatened to send her photos around.”

  “What do you hope to accomplish?” she asked.

  “I’m not sure,” I admitted. “He might have broken the law by either threatening her or sending the pictures on. But my client wants to know. Plus, maybe a little—legal—harassment might make him think before he does it again.”

  “It was catcalls in my day, and at least you could walk away,” she answered. “I’ll see what we can do.”

  “Show me whatever you have. The unspoken part of this case is that the mother doesn’t want to know everything, and I get to pick and choose what to tell her.”

  “The mother is the client?”

  I nodded. Client confidentiality is important, but Jane was working on the case at this point, so was in the small need-to-know circle.

  “Will knowing this do her any good?”

  “I don’t know. She thinks it will. I considered letting her find someone else to do this.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “I guess I felt this should be done by someone who cared that a young girl died.”

  “And that would be you?”

  “Yeah. Me. I was a young girl once.”

  Jane nodded and then said, “So was I.”

  Timmy decided now was the time to interrupt to ask if we wanted coffee or tea. “A new chai tea, it’s delish.”

  I took that as my cue to say I had to get back to my office.

  Jane asked for regular coffee, black.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Good timing. I made it back to my office just in time to catch the phone ringing. Caller ID told me it was Danny.

  “Hey, Danno, what’s up?”

  “I don’t know, you called me,” she said easily.

  “Yes, I did. But thought I’d be friendly before we got down to business.”

  “Friendly is good. I like friendly. How about trying that good pizza down by your office this evening?”

  “Can’t do tonight, how about Saturday?”

  “Visiting Elly’s parents, that won’t work.”

  “How about the following Saturday, would that work?”

  “Nope. Can’t. Maybe the following weekend?”

  “Maybe Sunday?”

  “Can’t, already booked. Let me check my calendar and come up with something.” She continued, “Okay, so how about the business you wanted with me?”

  “What do you know about sexting?”

  “Don’t do it. Not a good way to date.”

  “Not for me. This is a case I’ve taken on. Are there any Louisiana laws on sending out naked pictures?”

  “Amazingly, Louisiana does have a law on the books. It can be considered child pornography, depending on the circumstances.”

  “How about if a young girl sends a picture of her bare breasts to the wrong boy and he threatens to send it on if she doesn’t perform sexually for him?”

  “Did he actually send the photo out?”

  “Don’t know for sure. Do know he threatened to, and he was the kind of lout who might go ahead and do it.”

  “Do you know the ages involved?”

  “Don’t know who the guy is, but she was seventeen.”

  “Was she seventeen before or after the photos were sent out?”

  I did a quick scan of her case file. Her birthday was in late May, so unless this happened before last summer, she would have been seventeen. I told Danny as much.

  “That complicates things,” she said. “Seventeen is the cut-off. Louisiana considers anyone younger than seventeen to not be adult. But if she was seventeen and sent the photo out, then she would be considered an adult.”

  “And once you’re an adult, half-naked pictures aren’t considered kiddie porn.”

  “Pretty much,” she confirmed.

  I swore under my breath. “What about threatening to send the pictures out unless she had sex with him?”

  Danny sighed. “Maybe, but the law considers them adults. Did she freely send the picture to him? Or did he some way steal it from her?”

  “As far as I know, she sent it to him.”

  “I’d have to look at everything, but it might be a hard case to make. Unless he was over the top and it could be considered stalking.”

  I thought back to the three notes I’d seen. Only the presumed last one could really be considered threatening. That wouldn’t qualify as stalking. He could easily claim he was angry and didn’t mean it, that it was a one-off thing. I had to admit, “No, there seems to have been only one communication that threatened to do that.”

  “Is she afraid of him? Worried that he might do something?”

  “At this point, no. She killed herself about five days ago. Her family wanted me to look into it.”

  “Oh…damn. That doesn’t leave too many legal options, I’m afraid. The family might be able to sue in civil court, but a good lawyer will advise against it.”

  “Why?”

  “Courts don’t much like to get involved in affairs of the heart unless the law is clearly broken. It usually is a case of ‘he said / she said,’ and in this one, she’s no longer around, so it’ll be his version only. They could easily not win, it won’t be cheap, and court cases can drag out for a long time, keeping the wounds open and bleeding.”

  “I’ll pass that on, if it comes up.”

  Then Danny asked the question I was hoping she wouldn’t ask. “What do they want you to do?”

  I considered ducking the subject but figured a little legal advice couldn’t hurt. “They want me to find out who the boy was she sent the photo to.”

&n
bsp; “What will they do with that information? You did ask, didn’t you?”

  “Of course I asked. I’m not going to help them blow his brains out. The reply I got was at most they would do to him what he did to her, expose him on the internet.”

  “I can’t say he doesn’t deserve it, but there are slander and libel laws—”

  “If it’s true, it’s not libel,” I cut in.

  “Yes, but you have to be able to prove it’s true, and remember what I said about court cases. He can decide to sue, he might win, and that’s not a pretty picture. I’d suggest you use whatever influence you have to make them aware of the consequences of anything they might do.”

  “Don’t worry, I will do what I can to make sure everything stays comfortably legal.”

  “Good to hear it. Check your calendar and let me know some possible free times for you.” With that she hung up.

  I mulled what she had told me. Life isn’t fair, and it didn’t seem like it would be fair anytime soon for Mrs. Susie Stevens.

  I glanced at my watch. Time to leave this place.

  The special at the coffee shop was “honey-roasted ghost pepper turkey on whole wheat croissants with organic tomatoes, arugula, and rosemary-garlic aioli.” Leftover pizza sounded better.

  Home. But the bra had to stay on. I was either insane or finally had entered the modern age and, at the rather insistent urging of my cousin Torbin, had agreed to try online dating. The reason I couldn’t meet Danny was that tonight was D-day, so to speak. As I spat the mouthwash into the sink, I considered that perhaps a war metaphor wasn’t the best way to view this. I had first suggested coffee, but she said she didn’t drink coffee—not an auspicious start for a caffeine addict like myself, but I was trying to keep an open mind. We had settled on meeting for dinner; after all, she had pointed out, we had to eat. She had suggested a place uptown, not my favorite stomping grounds, but had offered to pick me up. I declined, claiming that I would be coming from running errands. Optimistic as I was trying to be, I was far too security conscious to let a stranger be my only transportation. She was coming from the ’burbs, me from downtown, so we’d agreed on a decent burger place around where St. Charles and Carrollton meet.

  I looked at myself in the mirror. No hiding I was solidly into my forties, hair still mostly black but more than a few stands of gray, especially at the temples. I needed a haircut, but given that it was curly, a few fluffs and tucks hid how shaggy it was. Laugh lines at my eyes, faint yet, but they didn’t go away even if I wasn’t smiling. Still in pretty good shape, but that was now due to meeting my Russian personal trainer twice a week and spending a couple of hours on the elliptical and / or bike we had in the back spare bedroom. The elliptical had been a birthday present for Cordelia—that and roses, I’m not crazy—one she’d left when she moved out. Paying a lot more attention to what I ate, every burger had to be made up with two salads, those kinds of trade-offs I’d never considered when I was young and thought I was immortal. In other words, time and money were all that kept me from turning into a bloated couch potato middle-aged sloth.

  I’d left my office a little early, but between stopping at home to spiffy up and the reality that I would have to slog through both rush-hour traffic and the road work maze of uptown, I had no time to linger.

  Or think about whether or not this was a sensible thing to do.

  I hated dating. When I was younger, it had been fun, meeting new women, new possibilities, living in the shining world of finding Ms. Right, not old enough or smart enough to realize they were all real people, just as real and flawed as I was. Now I knew how fragile love is, a miracle to find—that real person who is willing to take you and your imperfections and somehow find enough to love amongst them, and for whom you want to reciprocate.

  Miracles are rare, and I suspected I’d already got mine and had squandered it.

  I didn’t want dating; I just wanted what I had back, someone I knew and trusted, sharing our lives, the mundane daily tasks, the beautiful moments when you noticed the light as it hit a hidden flower and could show it to her. Holding hands in the rain, making her laugh.

  But that was gone, and the only slim possibility of getting it back was to go through this slog of frogs until I found one I wanted to kiss.

  Even with the best of intentions to be on time, the traffic twists and turns—and drivers who seemed to have never ever seen an orange traffic cone before, so had to stop and contemplate it and pull up their navigation system to see if this really was the correct route and only then noticing the roadwork icon—slowed me down. I was about five minutes late when I drove up, and only reasonably smart parking—I didn’t even bother looking for something close, but went to the next block over—kept it under ten before I made it in front of the restaurant, where we’d agreed to meet.

  I had already rehearsed my apology, but no one resembled the picture I’d seen online, unless she’d transitioned to a he with a nose, chin, and face lift thrown in. A glance at my watch told me I was no more than nine minutes late. My phone confirmed that my watch was indeed right. I was both relieved and annoyed.

  Maybe she got stuck in worse traffic. To be fair, I’d give her a few minutes.

  I used my phone to make it look like I was doing important work, so important I had to stop right here on the street instead of looking like I was stuck waiting for someone who was clearly late.

  After ten minutes, now twenty minutes after our agreed-on meeting time, the relief diminished and the annoyance started to take over. I pulled up the map of traffic on my phone—no major delays or accidents listed.

  Five more minutes and I was out of here.

  Four minutes and thirty-eight seconds later, someone tapped me—jabbed, really—on the shoulder.

  “So, you must be Micky,” she said. The photo I’d seen was at least ten years and thirty pounds out of date. She’d claimed to be in her mid-forties, but if that was true, she either had crappy genes or a career of digging ditches in the desert. Had to be mid-fifties. She had claimed to be five-four but could probably only make that in stilettos, which she wasn’t wearing today, so her head was barely at my shoulder. Her hair was a frizzy brown, but with roots of gray showing, and she was wearing a pair of jeans that were so tight I didn’t know how she breathed, a button-down cowboy shirt that wasn’t giving her much breathing room either, and a black leather jacket that was obviously made for men, as it was too big in the shoulders and arms.

  I get the vanity; yeah, I’d searched for the most flattering photo I could find. I don’t get the deceit. You have to be honest if you want more than one date. One of my better traits is I’m not hung up on looks. A good brain and a reasonably sane temperament are more important.

  “That would be me.” I couldn’t help it, I glanced at my watch.

  “I’ve been watching you for the last ten minutes,” she said.

  “Why?” I asked. My real question was, “What the fuck?”

  “Gotta check out what I’m getting into, you know. You should feel complimented; I usually give most of ’em at least fifteen minutes before deciding.”

  “You mean you deliberately leave people just waiting?”

  “Oh, that’s right; you said this was your first time doing this. No sense showing up if it’s just going to be a waste of time.”

  “So if the woman doesn’t pass your muster, you call and cancel?” I queried.

  “I can pretty much tell in the first five minutes just by watching. Why add an extra few hours if I know it’s a waste of time?”

  I should have walked away then and told her I agreed with her. About the wasting of time, not the trickery of making a woman wait while she decided whether or not to bother keeping the date. I noticed she didn’t answer my question, so I wondered if calling to cancel with an appropriate lie was part of the agenda.

  We went in. We ate. She talked a lot. I listened more than I cared to. I had a beer and a second, considered a third but remembered the traffic maze drivin
g home. Sobriety would be a necessity. I’d ordered a big cheeseburger and fries, since that would be the only compensation I would get for this evening. I heard about all the “losers” she had dated, about her previous five serious relationships, all of which seemed to have lasted no more than a year or two. I heard about how much she hated her job, something in insurance, and how stupid her coworkers and clients were. She asked a few questions. Did I like darts? When I said I didn’t play, she told me about how much fun it was and how good a player she was and I really needed to learn. And…yawn.

  I was so happy when the waitress put the bill on the table.

  “Let me get it,” she said and grabbed it. Then she ignored it for another forty-five minutes while she kept talking.

  I finally managed to jump in when she took a breath to claim I had an early morning tomorrow and needed to get going.

  It was another ten minutes before she paid the bill. She left a 5 percent tip. I waited until we were standing up, let her precede me, and while her back was turned stuffed a ten into the bill folder.

  “I’m curious,” I said when we got out to the sidewalk. “Where did you watch me from?” I had been off duty and not expecting it, but my professional pride was still annoyed I hadn’t noticed anyone observing me.

  She chortled—not an attractive sound—and pointed. For once, she didn’t say anything.

  “You hid behind the bush?” She hadn’t. I would have noticed ten minutes or even five of that. But it was the most immediate object in her point direction.

  “No, of course not.” She chortled again. “See that beautiful piece of black machinery?”

  “The motorcycle?”

  “No, the H2.”

  I had no clue what she was talking about.

  “Admit it, you’ve always wanted one. No one messes with me on the road.”

  A Hummer. Halfway down the block was a big, ugly gas-guzzling piece of shit. Politeness failed me. “Really? I thought those were only for men with extremely small penises.”

  “That shows what you know. C’mon, get in, I’ll give you a ride. You have to admit, you’re curious.”