Shred of Evidence

When I entered the kitchen my wife was sitting at the table in her bathrobe, arms crossed and face set. “Last night I dreamt I was the private investigator. I was standing outside a seedy motel taking pictures of you having sex with a redhead.”

I opened the refrigerator. “Who was the client?”

“That’s not funny. I’m still angry.”

Realizing breakfast was fast food on the way in, I closed the door and approached her, placed a hand on her shoulder. “Honey, it was a dream.”

She looked away. “You’re the one who always says where there’s smoke there’s fire. I must have had the dream for a reason.”

I counted to three. “There is no smoke. You were dreaming. There is no redhead. You know I wouldn’t cheat on you.”

“Actions speak louder than words mister.” She spat out the statement as though I’d been caught committing the crime.

“You’re actually upset at something I did in a dream.”

She shrugged her shoulder away from my hand. “You bet.”

I sat. “How do I apologize for something I didn’t do?”

“For one thing you can drop that tone of voice.”

“What tone?” I’d done the drill so many times that the words rolled off my tongue.

“Talking to me as if I’m crazy. I’m not crazy. I know what I dreamt.”

Had her face been not so intense, I might have laughed. “Hon, if you had a dream that you won the lottery, would you wake up and start spending money?”

“Not until a lawyer made sure your girlfriend would never see a penny of it.”

“Look honey, nothing is going on. There is no girlfriend, redhead or otherwise. You have nothing to worry about.”

She huffed.

“What can I say to convince you?”

“Why should I believe anything you say?”

From experience I knew there was no point in continuing the discussion. “I need to leave for work now but when I come home, if you’re still having these negative thoughts, we’ll talk more about it.”

Her nod was barely perceptible.

I stood and kissed the top of her head. “There’s no one but you babe. And if you do dream you win the lottery, you can take that to the bank too.”

She was probably still sitting at the kitchen table when I closed the front door behind me.

I concentrated on keeping my speed down and fought a momentary urge to slam the car into the nearest telephone pole.

Six months after our wedding she began being haunted by fears I was going to be shot or knifed, beaten up and dumped in some dark alley. She didn’t want me to quit being a PI but my job scared her.

I’d known too many cops whose marriages didn’t survive the stress. We went into therapy.

“That will be four sixty-two. Please pull up to the second window.”

For a while things were better. In fact they were great. She relaxed which meant I relaxed and it was as if we were dating again. She couldn’t help but be reassured when nobody shot at me or stabbed me or even raised a fist.

Then the threat of physical danger mutated into moral danger. How could I see what I saw and not be tainted?

She became convinced I was stealing from clients, taking money to bury the truth, selling a bill of goods to the highest bidder. We couldn’t go back into therapy because we’d never left.

Now, apparently, I was succumbing to temptation.

I guess it was funny in a way. People paid me to find the truth and I couldn’t convince my wife her illusions weren’t real.

After parking behind my office so the nervous wouldn’t hesitate to stop, I went inside and turned on the lights, began hunting for something else to eat.

This was what I did and there weren’t many options unless we sold the house so I could afford to start a new career. With my luck I’d end up managing a video store and get shot the first night by some wired punk who didn’t like the late charges.

I found two boxes of crackers in the filing cabinet and opened the one that contained a half ounce more.

What passed for my insurance coverage didn’t pay for the weekly sessions, didn’t pay for the medications, didn’t pay for the lost income when my wife stopped working due to her condition.

A better man than me would have stayed home with her today, helped defuse the latest emotional minefield, but here I was. Maybe it was the culmination of scene after scene and maybe it was the stack of bills in my middle drawer that made me come to the office this morning. Or maybe I simply was no longer that nice a guy.

The front door opened and a woman walked into the office, prompting me to swallow a half-chewed mouthful of cracker. As I chugged the last of the styrofoam coffee to keep from choking, I motioned the woman to the chair in front of my desk.

“Be with you in a sec.” She was a redhead. The color even looked natural. I cleared my throat, tossed the empty cup in the trash. “How can I be of assistance?”

She looked around the office as if she was thinking of buying it and finally landed her gaze on me. “My name is Shirley Homes. I think I’m being followed.”

“Why do you think that?” Ironically, I couldn’t stop myself from imagining myself at a motel with this woman. It was no wonder that dreams were often considered premonitions since they had the power to channel behavior.

“For a week now, everywhere I go, I see the same car.”

“Could it be coincidence?”

She shook her head causing a stray red hair to curl onto her cheek. “I’ve been too many places. The car is always there in my mirror or parked wherever I’ve stopped.”

“I drive a blue Chevy Cavalier. There are twenty-seven licensed within the neighboring towns.”

Shirley flushed, angry. “You don’t believe me.”

“I’m just trying to determine whether you really need to hire me. I don’t want to take your money if there’s nothing I can do to help.”

“It’s the same car.” Her words were clipped, her voice cold. Dream or not, we would never be friends.

I raised a hand in submission. “Okay. Make and model?” I pulled my pad closer and uncapped my pen.

Shirley glanced down. “I don’t know. A four-door sedan.”

“Color?”

“All white except for the driver’s door which is turquoise.”

I sniffed, thinking I would have said blue-green.

“What?” Obviously she thought I was making fun of her.

“The car’s a Hentel Rental. I drove it myself once when nothing else was available. As you’ve noticed, it’s not exactly inconspicuous.”

“Then you can call and find out who rented it.”

“I can ask, yes.”

Her eyebrows arched. “Why wouldn’t they tell you? You’re a private detective.”

How little some people knew. “First, no one has to tell me anything. Second, Hentel and I were on different sides of an insurance investigation and he lost. I’d be lucky if he didn’t lie just to spite me.”

“At least you’ll have no trouble spotting the car.”

I sat back. “No.” Heaven help me if my wife discovered I’d taken a redhead as a client, a very attractive redhead at that. Again I had a quick flash of a motel room. “Why do you think someone would want to follow you?”

“I haven’t the slightest idea.” Shirley shifted sideways in her seat, the third time in as many minutes.

Either she was uncomfortable or she was lying. Or she was both. “If there is a reason you don’t want to mention, I’ll probably learn about it sooner or later.”

“Really, I don’t have a clue.”

“Okay.” She could be telling the truth which was always a plus where a client was concerned. “What are your plans today?”

“Once I leave here I’m going straight to work, Gendar Electronics over in the industrial park. I take lunch from noon to one and then I won’t leave the building again until five.”

“Anything on for tonight?”

“No. I’ll be in all evening.”

I opened a drawer to pull out a new client folder. “I’ll be at Gendar before you leave for lunch. Go about your regular business. Don’t look for me and don’t do anything differently.”

“Understood.”

I labeled the folder, slipped in my notes, handed Shirley my usual contract to sign. “We’ll figure out what you want to do once I identify the person who is following you.”

“That will be fine.”

After Shirley paid me the retainer in cash, she surprised me with a dazzling smile and went on her way, the first redhead who’d ever hired me and twenty minutes later I found I still couldn’t get her out of my mind.

I never slept with clients. Work was work and I’d never even been tempted. What could be more insane than my wife’s dream driving me into someone’s arms?

Hoping to distract myself, I pulled the bills from the middle drawer.

The utilities were simple. Copy the amount of the bill to the Amount Paid box and then to the check. For the charge cards I called first to get the latest balance.

I was surprised to learn my wife had used her card since the end of the billing cycle. She hadn’t mentioned any new purchase but the company had made mistakes before. I selected another menu off the voice mail system.

She was renting from Hentel.

Since I knew there was nothing wrong with my wife’s car, I had to assume she was driving the white and turquoise car in Shirley’s mirror.

I rocked back in my chair.

Why would my wife be following Shirley?

Last night’s dream now made sense, a regurgitation of the actual surveillance, but why conduct the actual surveillance?

I couldn’t remember my wife ever mentioning a Shirley. Perhaps they had been classmates, Shirley the boyfriend-stealing bad girl who disappeared after graduation for parts unknown. Then after all these years, there she was in some line, the redhead returning to town to steal a morally weak husband.

When I called home the machine answered and no one picked up when I said it was me.

Since I still had two hours before lunch, I completed the bills, dropped them in the nearest mailbox, and swung by the house with a heavy heart.

Her car was gone. I wondered where she was parking the rental during the hours we were both home.

Had therapy accomplished so little?

Did she really think I was having an affair with Shirley? Was this some kind of test?

I started towards Gendar Electronics.

The thing was, while I was the only PI in town, Shirley could just as easily have gone to the police, more easily if she had something to hide.

Perhaps my wife had hired Shirley to act as bait. I had used the tactic myself more than once to prove fraud in workman’s comp cases. If the two women were working together, however, there was no need for the complication of a rental.

Fictional PIs lived alone and beat the truth out of people. I could appreciate the simplicity even as I doubted it would fly. There was simply no getting around the fact that people were complicated, made so by conflicting emotions.

As much as I loved my wife I was relieved when she was elsewhere and I could be free of the cloud.

Rein in the frustration of dealing with her issues.

Focus on the trivial.

Stopped at an intersection, I forced myself to watch the cars passing in front of me, calling out the make and model, skipping one out of every four. I wondered whether dealers could do any better the way the body shapes kept changing.

That and new license plate designs made quick recognitions harder every day, one more reason to be glad I wasn’t a patrol officer scanning for be-on-the-lookouts.

At a break in the cross-traffic, I saw the white and turquoise car just sticking out behind the first car in the opposite lane.

The light changed.

I kept my face forward as I accelerated through the intersection, trusting my peripheral vision to confirm the person at the wheel.

The driver came as a complete surprise: Shirley Homes.

Traffic was heavy enough that I’d lose her in the time it took me to reverse direction and so I pulled into the next parking lot and killed the engine.

Okay. Why was my client driving the car my wife had rented?

Simplify the question. Why drive a rental?

I reached under the seat and pulled out my telephone book, tracing the numbers with one hand while I dialed with the other.

At the fourth body shop I hit pay dirt.

“Like I told your wife Mr. Homes, her car won’t be done until next Friday at the earliest. We’re really backed up here and I’m short help. It happens.”

“Thanks.” I disconnected and slid the telephone book back under the seat, stared out the windshield at nothing.

So Shirley was driving the car she told me was following her. That made her a liar. It didn’t, however, explain my wife’s charge card bill. Neither did coincidence.

I pulled back onto the road and continued towards Gendar Electronics. I may not have understood the rules of the game yet but someone was pulling my leg and I didn’t like the sensation.

On the other hand, at least I was no longer tortured by images of a torrid rendezvous with my redheaded client.

After arriving at my destination, I did a once-around in the parking lot. Neither my wife’s car nor the rental were there and I selected the first open spot that allowed me to watch both the entrance to the building and the parking lot.

Gendar Electronics must have been doing well since it occupied the largest building in the industrial park. If I and the rest of the taxpayers were lucky, the company wouldn’t decide it needed bigger digs elsewhere.

Here came the Hentel Rental.

Shirley parked out of my sight but I heard the door slam. Then I saw her marching towards the building carrying two grocery bags. Even from this distance I could see the controlled rage in her stride and wondered whether a female employee had been sent to do a shopping errand for the office.

I checked my watch to see that it was ten of twelve. A sales goal had been met or a birthday had been discovered and someone decided to have an impromptu party during lunch. “Oh Shirley, can you run to the store and pick up what we need?”

It wouldn’t be the first time and it wouldn’t be the last.

I could picture Shirley banging things around but in the end producing a spread that no one else could have managed. It didn’t matter so much whether my client was a junior secretary or the vice president of distribution. Nothing less would be expected of her and all involved would be distressed to learn Shirley resented the assumption.

Would she be convinced to stay or would she pry apart her teeth long enough to say she already had plans?

Five minutes later, I got my answer. Shirley was the first employee out the door. While the others headed into the parking lot, she paced back and forth to the right of the entrance.

Perhaps she was simply burning off steam before getting behind the wheel, always a good idea.

A car approached her and stopped. My wife leaned over to open the passenger door and Shirley climbed in.

I followed them out of the industrial park keeping two vehicles between us.

They didn’t stop until they reached the motel.

I wouldn’t have called it seedy but then I didn’t have guilt coloring my impression.

My wife must have rented the room earlier in the day because they went straight in.

I waited two minutes and then knocked.

Shirley answered the door.

She opened her mouth but said nothing, tried a half-smile, shrugged. My client finally waved me into the room and then walked past me to disappear in the bathroom.

My wife sat on the bed, stunned. “What are you doing here?”

I grabbed a chair. “Your dream was a little mixed up.”

“No, that was different.” She jabbed a finger at me. “You were sleeping around, conquesting, cheating on me.”

“What’s this?”

“This is a loving relationship.” My wife glanced at the closed bathroom door. “Shirley isn’t some loner cowboy who gets high on power and danger. Just how long have you been following me?”

I hung my head. “I wasn’t. I saw you pull into the motel.”

“Doesn’t that just make all the difference in the world?”

She was right and I was wrong. I wondered what my client was doing in the bathroom, whether she was grinning because she’d finally brought things to a head or whether she was already regretting her ploy.

“Why didn’t you tell me you wanted out?”

“Like I suppose you listen to what I say.”

“I always listen.” At least I did once. Perhaps I’d stopped. After all, I hadn’t seen this coming, the private investigator blind to his wife’s affair.

“Then you didn’t listen hard enough.”

I stood, slowly and at great cost. “I’m sorry we couldn’t make it work. I do love you.”

She had tears in her eyes when she turned away, but she still turned away.