We divide up to walk down the final steps off the bridge, arriving in a grassy mini-park at the end of Charles Street.
“Dammit,” Franklin interrupts. He points a finger ahead of him. “Look.”
We both follow his instructions. And we a see a bright orange piece of paper on our windshield. We’ve gotten a parking ticket.
“I’ll be right back,” Franklin says.
He strides toward the car, holding up his arm, and pointing to his watch. “I’m positive we had five more minutes on the meter,” he announces over his shoulder. “City Hall, here I come.”
“Franklin never gets a ticket,” I explain. “He’s very organized.”
Keresey smiles. “How well I know. Wish I could fix it for him, but we don’t have any control or connection with the Boston cops. Or the staties, for that matter. We’re federal jurisdiction only.”
Aha. So the FBI may not know what the state cops are doing. Which means it may have been a good thing I kept quiet about Detective Yens and his set of photographs. But why do they have the same photos? Certainly can’t ask Keresey. Time to change the subject.
“How are you, anyway?” I ask, touching Keresey on the arm. “I don’t see you enough, and Maysie’s always asking for you. You liking your assignment? You having any fun?”
“Well, you know, I’m just a middle-aged married lady,” Keresey says.
I step back, hands on hips. “Keresey Stone, you’re holding out on me. Last time we talked you were bemoaning your 35-year-old fate. ‘No one wants to date a sharp-shooting, drug-hating, law-abiding federal agent,’ was, I think, along the lines of your complaint. And now you’re telling me you’re married?”
“Yup,” Keresey says. Then she smiles. Twinkling. “I gave up on the whole man thing.”
This is surprising. “You-?”
“Oh, not that,” says. “Not that there’s-”
“Anything wrong with that,” I finish.
“Right. But I realized I couldn’t find the perfect man because I had already found him.” She opens her jacket and flashes the black-and-silver FBI badge pinned to the sleek satin lining inside. “I realized I was already married. To Uncle Sam.”
Single. Been there. Married to her job. Done that. Do I tell her how she may feel in ten years? Do I warn her?
Every time Mom tried to convince me to “forget about that silly local television” and “come home to Chicago” where I could be “truly happy,” I politely went to her dinner parties. And then came home. Did what I thought was right for me. When Maysie urged me to “be flexible” and “open-minded” with a parade of single but impossible judges and CEOs, I politely went on the dates. And then came home. Did what I thought was right for me.
But now, having settled all these years into single, my heart is having a bit of a struggle adjusting to the possibility of “my life” becoming “our life.” Making room for Josh. And Penny. And it could be I’m meant to be single. Maybe that’s what’s right for me.
To each her own. Slinging one arm over Keresey’s shoulders, I give my pal a quick hug. “Congrats, Mrs. Sam. At least you won’t have to write thank-you notes.”
Chapter Twelve
“Speaking of tickets,” Franklin says. He stabs his orange violation notice to his bulletin board with a pushpin. “The good news is, the Delleton-Marachelle visit came through. Done deal. Got the message on my voice mail when we got back from Keresey. I already called the travel agent to check out schedules and plane tickets.”
“For when?”
“Tomorrow, if we can get there. Or the day after. Apparently the D-M marketing director.” He consults a pad on his desk, and holds it up to show me the name. “Someone named Urszula Mazny-Latos? She’s called Zuzu. Is jet-setting back to Paris first thing Monday. So it’s got to be a weekend deal. Saturday or Sunday. Maybe both, if tomorrow works out. I’ll work on getting us a crew from the Atlanta affiliate. If this Zuzu will let us bring a camera.”
This is great news. We’re getting unprecedented inside access, and the potential for fascinating video. I should be thrilled. Instead, I’m seeing a romantic makeup weekend with Josh slip-sliding away. And at a deal-breakingly terrible time.
“No way to do it Monday?” I ask. I twist one of my legs around the other. “You sure?”
Franklin looks at me quizzically, then snorts. “What happened to Miss ‘there are no weekends in TV news’? How many times have I heard you pronounce that j-school credo to your eager little interns? And now, suddenly Saturday exists?”
He’s right. For the last twenty years, almost nothing has come before my job. Dad’s funeral, of course. I struggle to come up with another example. And fail. Now I’m trying to change the date of an important interview to protect an important dinner date. Am I losing my edge? Or gaining something else?
“Don’t ‘oh, ho’ me, Franklin B. Parrish. Stephen is out of town anyway, right? On one of his accountant things? So you don’t care. But my future is probably at stake here.”
“Well, it certainly is if you don’t get on the plane to Atlanta G-A.” Franklin gives me an evil smile. “Unless you can explain to Kevin and Susannah why Brenda Starr has suddenly turned slacker.”
I sigh, and check the wall clock. Josh and I have dinner plans for tonight. Penny’s favorite Chinese carry-out at his house. Over egg rolls and dim sum, I’ll soon be forced to explain how our weekend just crashed and burned.
Crashed and burned. Not the best words to use before getting on an airplane.
A thought skitters through my head. A good one.
“Charlotte?” Franklin asks. “Yoo hoo, reporter girl. I’ve been talking for the past two minutes about the plane schedules the travel agent just e-mailed. Did you hear anything at all?”
“You know what I was thinking?” I ignore his sarcasm. “Let’s look at the undercover video again. You have the tape handy?”
Franklin pulls out a green plastic bin marked “Purse” from under his desk. Inside is a series of yellow tape cassettes, each carefully labeled in Franklin’s precise handwriting. He selects the one marked “UC-1. G Barrington. Exteriors and ints. Sally,” and hands it to me.
“Here. Pop it into the viewer,” he says. “But why?”
“Go with me here,” I say, sliding the cassette into the opening. I push Play and the black screen dissolves into those shaky pictures.
“Let’s look again, in another way,” I say, peering closely at the screen. “I’m wondering. What if just-call-me-Sally is actually the Prada P.I.? Let’s say, she’s infiltrated the Designer Doubles organization. Talk about counterfeit. You plop a wig of coppery curls on someone, you know? Change the makeup? We know my disguise worked for me. Those waitresses at the restaurant didn’t recognize me. And if Sally is actually Katie, she might not have recognized me, either. Katie’s not even from around here, remember? And I did wonder, in that mall, whether we were both pretending to be someone else.”
“Only you saw Sally in person,” Franklin says. “I probably won’t be much help. But, hey, it could happen. Brilliant idea, anyway.”
I scroll the video into fast forward, searching for the first time I got Sally on camera.
“Wish we had those photos,” I murmur. “It would make this easier.”
“Want to call the cops and ask for copies? Or call Keresey? I’m sure they’d be more than thrilled to help us.” Franklin wheels his chair up to the monitor, then takes off his glasses, cleaning them with his special wipe. “You know, that was quite the morning we had, wasn’t it? You, me, Yens, Keresey. And every one of us, at some point, was lying.”
Nothing like the smell of fried food. The pungent mix of salt, oil and forbidden carbs draws me, irresistibly, through the back screen door and into Josh’s kitchen. A brown paper bag, the top rolled down and stapled closed, waits tantalizingly on the island in the middle of the room. Grease stains already darken the bottom. Another brown bag, smaller, has already been ripped open. Beside it someone dumped a pile of chopsticks covered in paper sleeves, shiny plastic packets of duck sauce and hot yellow mustard, and a plastic-wrapped selection of multicolored rice puffs. Next to that, a crinkled pile of cellophane suggests a certain nine-year-old has no willpower. And proves her father has been out of the room.