LITMIR.BIZ

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his end.

      Actually I could have gotten to the shop earlier than nine, but I’m not a morning person. Besides, I didn’t want to risk any flower shop customers coming in when I was there alone with a client. Or in this case, a client’s representative.

      The cat in the box on the seat beside me was scrabbling furiously at the cardboard and swearing at me in cat. The one in the back had settled for piteous mews of unhappiness. I wasn’t sure which was worse.

      “Look, guys, let’s just make the best of this, all right? Whichever one of you is Mr. Sam is going back home tomorrow. The other one gets to go to the animal shelter to find a nice new home, so let’s be quiet and let me drive, okay?”

      Not a chance. Time stretched unbearably between the cats and rush-hour traffic. All in all I made decent time to Shaker Heights, but then I got lost on the side streets trying to find the address.

      I was sweating profusely by the time I stumbled on it through sheer dumb luck. The sweat was only partly due to frustration. Mostly it was a result of the lack of cool air in the small car. I didn’t dare open the windows, even the wings, more than a crack, for fear Sam Two might prove suicidal.

      The east side of Cleveland is different from my part of town. Binky wouldn’t raise eyebrows on the west side, but here he stood out like hot pink at a funeral. Somehow I was pretty sure no one in this neighborhood was apt to mistake him for one of the trendy reissued Bugs that had come out a couple of years ago. Binky made no pretenses about what he was. His numerous rust spots had been sanded, filled in and painted with primer, but I’d broken things off with Ted Osher again before the mechanic got around to putting any paint on Binky for me. Bad timing on my part.

      I’ve known Ted since high school. We graduated together. He’s a nice enough guy when he isn’t being a jerk, but our relationship is not exactly the romance of the century. More like a comfortable habit when we’re both at loose ends. Ted’s happiest when he’s covered in grease, with auto guts spread all around him. Whatever our relationship at any given moment, I have to give him credit for keeping the important parts of Binky running all these years past their prime.

      As I drove past the address I’d been given, I wondered what it would be like to live in a place this fancy. Somehow I didn’t think I’d be comfortable behind an ornate fence in a neighborhood where even the houses managed to look snobbish.

      Since there was nowhere I could park and look inconspicuous, I pulled to the side of the road a few houses down and spread out the map I’d been trying to read when I’d gotten lost. I had the perfect cover story ready in case someone came along demanding to know what I was doing here. I’d tell the curious that I was trying to deliver a pair of lost cats to their owner. I’ve found it always pays to use what you have to hand.

      Besides, I wasn’t the only car parked along the street, even if the other vehicle was a burgundy Honda that looked far more presentable in this neighborhood than Binky. Tough cookies, as Trudy liked to say. I was here and I was staying here until my quarry appeared. I had her picture, her license plate number and a description of her car. All I had to do was wait and pray Elaine Russo hadn’t left before I’d found her house.

      My hand had stopped bleeding, so I used tissues and spit to clean up as best I could. I was running out of saliva when I realized the car had grown ominously silent. No sound came from inside the box. Worse, there was nothing from the backseat.

      My shoulders tensed. My neck prickled. Was Sam Two preparing to spring over the seat and attack me? Or worse, had he died of asphyxiation back there? The last thing I needed was a pair of dead cats. I hadn’t thought to poke any air holes in the box since I hadn’t expected him to be in there for any length of time. But cats like heat, right? They were always pictured curled up in front of a roaring fire.

      I lowered the windows as far as I dared and opened the wings to the extent where I was pretty sure the cat’s head wouldn’t fit through. Then I debated lifting a flap to check on Sam One. Except things would be worse if he got loose in the car with the other one. I was twisting to peer over the backseat to check on Sam Two when movement over near the burgundy Honda caught my attention.

      A man appeared between some tall hedges. Not just any man. This was a delicious hunk of serious eye candy. He strode toward the car with the assurance of someone who knew where he was going. A sporty white shirt, open at the neck, over neatly tailored black dress slacks gave him a suave, debonair look that captured my full attention—and my imagination.

      Yum. He was gorgeous. Even his dark hair, curled slightly against the nape of his neck and in need of a trim, didn’t diminish his appeal. He carried his tall, lean frame with comfortable authority. His features carried a trace of ruggedness that kept him from being too pretty, but it was a face no sane woman would mind waking up beside. The man exuded raw sex appeal.

      I sighed wistfully and decided I needed to get out more. My love life was nonexistent. Since moving back to Ohio, the only guys I’d dated on a regular basis had been Ted Osher and Billy Nugent. Billy was my aunt’s accountant. A freckle-faced strawberry-blond, he was another nice guy, but he saved his passion for neat little rows of numbers and football. Put him in a crowded stadium with a group of men wearing shoulder pads and the transformation was downright scary. The meek accountant turned into a raging maniac.

      Now, I like football as well as the next armchair quarterback, but it’s a game! Billy took every bad play as a personal affront. He’d actually thrown a ledger through his mother’s television set one time when the Browns missed a field goal. With the season about to begin again, I knew it was time to start looking around for someone else to date.

      Ted and Billy are okay to look at, steadily employed, good to their mothers and…well, frankly, boring. The man sliding into the Honda did not look the least bit boring. I couldn’t speak to the rest, but it was too bad I hadn’t been hired to tail him.

      I looked back toward the driveway just in time to see a gleaming white Jaguar glide through the open gate of the Russo’s driveway. Elaine Russo was leaving.

      Her car turned right onto the street. The opposite direction I was facing, naturally. The handsome stranger’s car fell in several car lengths behind her while I had to shoo Sam Two back over the backseat and start Binky.

      Putting him into gear, I made a tight U-turn on the narrow street as the burgundy car disappeared around the corner at the end of the street. Both animals protested loudly as I hurried to close the distance. Sam One went back to desperately clawing the insides of the box while Sam Two tried to drown him out with sheer volume right behind my seat.

      I turned on the radio in self-defense and hung back as far as I dared as soon as I spotted the white Jaguar some distance up ahead. There was no way I was inconspicuous if she was watching for a tail. I blessed the burgundy Honda’s presence in between us until it turned off onto a side street and left me the only car on the road behind her.

      Apparently Elaine wasn’t paying attention to her rearview mirror. While she might not be concerned if she did notice me back here, that would change if she continued to see my car everywhere she went. If only there’d been time to borrow my aunt’s light gray Buick.

      Fortunately Elaine didn’t seem to be in a hurry. Everyone had heard of Legacy Village, but I’m a west-side girl. The east side of Cleveland isn’t my territory, so I wasn’t sure how to get there from here. My map was so old, it didn’t even show the development. That meant I had to stay close enough to the Jag that Elaine didn’t lose me.

      I was concentrating on maintaining the proper distance when it suddenly occurred to me to wonder why Albert Russo had selected me to tail his wife. I mean, there had to be other female private investigators he could have hired. Ones that lived on his side of town. They would have been more familiar with the area and no doubt would have blended in far better than I was doing.

      When Russo had called and asked for a meeting, I’d simply been grateful for the work. Now I started wondering. They say you shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth, but, as Trudy liked to point out, how else are you going to determine how sharp the teeth are?

      Both

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