Love at its truest, ever as faithful as it is delusional.
And then, after all the hugging and kissing and swearing and pain, after it all, she simply slipped away. The police came looking for her, but she had disappeared. There were charges of obstruction of justice and abetting a murderer to deal with, there were financial matters concerning her dead husband’s estate to deal with, there was me to deal with, but all that was evidently too much for her to deal with, because she slipped away and disappeared. She vanished into the thin of the air, as if without her one true love to keep her grounded she rose into the ether and dissolved.
But I eventually received a clue that she might not have dissolved into nothingness after all. It arrived in the mail, a package from a place called Corsicana, Texas, about fifty miles northeast of Waco. A pecan pie. It was thick and rich, so sweet it curled your toes, and the nuts on top were fat as toads. About as perfect as a pecan pie could be, but not homemade, not Gwen’s, with its little imperfections and heirloom taste. She had promised me a pie, and she had made good on her promise, even if what she sent was mail order.
“We got us a ways to go,” read the note, “but we’ll get where we’re going.”
Was I delusional to believe Julia was there, in that lovely word at the head of the sentence? Was I a fool to hope that Julia was with Gwen somewhere, healing? And all I knew about the somewhere was that it wasn’t in Georgia, because Gwen hadn’t made the pie herself from handpicked pecans, and it wasn’t in Texas, because Gwen was too smart to order from on close. I could see the three of them, Norman driving the big white Buick while Gwen fussed on Julia in the backseat, a sweet little family making do on the road, with just one another to rely on, and one point seven million in cash.
One point seven million minus the thirty bucks they sprung on my pie.
I was glad that Gwen had gotten away with it, glad that she had slipped through the clutches of Trocek and Sims, glad but not surprised. When I look back on it, through the whole of that time after the murder of Wren Denniston, I can see Gwen’s fingerprints on much of what happened. She had sent me searching for Miles Cave, she had given the anonymous tips that kept Gregor on my case and the suspicions about me swirling, she had stayed by Julia’s side until Clarence brought the cash right to her. No matter how clever those of us on the trail of the money had been, there had always been one person one step ahead. That she would stay a step ahead only made sense.
And did I feel a bit deprived that I hadn’t had that chance to see my Julia again, to hold her in solace and feel the painful emotions wrap like barbed wire around my heart one more time? Not as sad as you might expect. Because I suspected I’d have my chance eventually.
An old lover is like the lumbago; no matter how free of the pain you might feel today, in the small of your back you always know that someday she’ll return.
It was Detective McDeiss who eventually clued me in on what happened to Sims. It came over the Interpol wire, a warrant issued by the government of Croatia for the arrest of two fugitives suspected of murder: Gregor Trocek and an American named Augustus Sims. I suppose, with Sandro dead and Gregor in need of a new enforcer, Sims just naturally slipped into the role. And he’d do a hell of job, too. Though having a Cadizian hit man might make quite the statement in America, it probably carried a lot less weight in Cádiz. But having a slick-suited Philadelphia hit man on your side, well, that would be enough to make any Iberian quaver in his boots.
Any Philadelphian, too.
So I was rid of Julia and Sims and Gregor Trocek, but I was not yet rid of Derek. He showed up at my outer office a few days after the shooting, showed up with Antoine at his side and a nine-page invoice in his hand. I read the letterhead on the first page.
DEREK MOATS – INVESTIGATIONS
No Girl Too Tall
No Case Too Small
“Nice motto.”
“I came up with that myself,” said Derek.
“Why am I not surprised?” I said, looking over the invoice.
It was quite a document, so overinflated in its self-importance, so rich in useless detail, so full of bogus items and bloated numbers, so nauseating in its final tally that for a moment I thought it could only have been drafted by a lawyer.
“Like it?” said Derek.
“I’m flabbergasted. How the hell did you come up with all this crap?”
“A man in my position, just starting out in the detecting business and never having done an invoice before, needs to find help wherever he can.”
“So who helped? Antoine?”
“Not exactly.”
“Then who?”
“I asked around, talked to people” – pause – “and Ellie had some ideas.”
I snapped my head to stare at my secretary, who had bent over to pretend to be looking for something quite important in a lower desk drawer. “My secretary?”
“I just needed a sense of what a proper bill looked like,” said Derek. “She helped me work on it while you were out.”
“My secretary?”
“He looked like a lost puppy,” said Ellie in a soft voice.
“A puppy?” I said.
“You should be proud as a papa,” said Derek. “She told me that everything she learned about invoices she learned from you.”
“This,” I said, waving the invoice in the air, “this is outrageous.” I stopped waving the document for a moment and looked it over again. “Which means you are well on your way, my friend. Well on your way. Now, if we can just negotiate some sort of a reasonable reduction among friends…”
“Can’t do it, bo. That would be unethical.”
“Unethical? But lawyers do it all the time.”
“Which just proves my point. I got to follow the guidelines. Giving you a break wouldn’t be fair to my other clients.”
“But you don’t have any other clients.”
“Don’t matter. I will, and, like you been telling me, it’s time I start thinking about my future. So you going to pay up, or do I got to put that bill into my collection department?”
“You have a collection department?”
Antoine doffed his porkpie hat.
“Ah, yes,” I said. “Now I see. Nice touch. You learn quickly, Derek, I’ll give you that. Okay, you don’t have to put it into collections. I’ll write you a check. No matter how outrageous your invoice, you did a fine job and deserve exactly what you get.”
“Thank you, bo. And now that that’s settled, I see you have some empty office space.”
“Yes I do, at least until my partner returns from overseas.”
“When’s he going to do that?”
“It’s a she, and I’m not holding my breath.”
“Because just now, we’re in the market for some office space ourselves.”
“You and Antoine.”
“That’s right. Derek Moats Investigations. No girl too tall-”
“Yeah, yeah. And no case too small.”
I thought about it for a moment. It would be nice to get some income out of that office. But then I’d have to see Derek’s face every morning, which would really put me off my appetite. But then, truth be told, I could afford to lose some weight. And I had to admit, in the whole of that terrible week, whenever I had asked for Derek’s help, he’d been there. He had the makings of the real thing. It’s one thing to lecture your clients on straightening up and making something of their lives, it’s something else to give them the opportunity. I thought it over and glanced once more at the invoice.
“I’ll need something up front,” I said finally.
“Now we’re talking business,” said Derek. “Let’s have it.”
“First month,” I said, “last month, a deposit for utilities and phone, equipment rental, furniture rental, secretarial usage-”