I Married a Billionaire: Lost and Found(34)

Lindsey was walking over. "What the hell are you two talking about?" When neither one of us said anything, she grabbed picture out of my hand.

"Oh," she said, after a moment of frowning at it. "Oh, my God."

***

After Daniel switched the bedroom light off, I was only able to lie there in silence for a few moments before I spoke.

"You have to say something," I said. "Tell someone. You have to…you have to do something."

He let out a long, slow breath.

"We don’t know," he said. "We don’t know for sure."

"We both saw it," I said. "It’s her."

My eyes hadn’t fully adjusted, but even without being able to see him, I could tell his jaw was clenched tight. Maybe his fists, too.

"Maddy, we can’t," he said, softly. "After what happened, you and I both…we’re going to see her around every corner. Tell me this hasn’t been in the back of your mind since that phone call came."

"It hasn’t," I said.

"It’s confirmation bias," he insisted, rolling over. "You can’t even see that woman’s face, in the picture. We have no idea if it even has anything to do with me."

Well, all right then. If that’s how he was going to be.

I hardly slept that night, rolling out of bed early and sneaking out before Daniel even woke up. I crept into the bathroom, snaked the cash out of the bottom of my makeup bag, slipped on some clothes, and stole down the stairs and out the door.

Once I was a few blocks down the street, I sat down on a bench and started searching on my phone. What I needed, clearly, was a private detective. The hard part would be finding one who wasn’t some kind of scam artist, or just plain useless. Despite the romantic notions I’d picked up from books and movies, I knew that most P.I.s weren’t anywhere near as glamorous or as impressive as in fiction. But all I needed, really, was someone who could answer a question.

Who was the woman in the picture?

I knew the answer, of course. But I couldn’t prove it.

So I was going to hire someone who could.

I ended up choosing someone a few miles away - the first local one who had a website that didn’t look like it was designed in GeoCities in 1994. He said he had a ninety-percent success rate, whatever that meant. As if I could verify it. After a few minutes of trying to hail a taxi, I decided to go it on foot.

It was a beautiful day, with just enough of a light breeze to whisk away the sun’s heat. I kept a brisk pace. I knew there was at least a passing chance I’d be photographed by someone, but it wouldn’t matter. My hair was pulled back and I held my head up high, and although I was wearing my sensible walking shoes, I was confident I’d come across a little better than I had on the blog.




I couldn’t believe that was something I actually had to think about, these days.

When I finally reached the office, I actually walked past it a few times before I doubled back and realized what it was. The building looked abandoned - there were actually a few boards nailed over some of the first-floor windows, although in a haphazard-enough way that I wasn’t sure if they were meant to signify vacancy or possibly ward off very lazy thieves. There was no address number above the door, but judging by the ones I could see, it had to be the place.

I stepped up to the door. Alongside it, there was a long strip of little black buttons. Not a single one of them was labelled.

"Great," I muttered.

I wasn’t about to stand outside a building like this and just buzz random doors, so I decided to try jiggling the door handle, on a whim. It didn’t give, of course, but through the filthy frosted glass windows, I could see someone or something stirring inside. Well, at least I was making progress.

The door creaked open. An enormous, greasy, sullen man stared me down in complete silence.

"Hello," I said, smiling. "I’m here to see the detective agency?"

He grunted, turning and shuffling away but leaving the door open. I took this as a signal to come in, and followed him.

"Second floor," he wheezed, sinking back into a lopsided folding chair in the lobby. "There’s a sign."

"Thank you so much," I said, shutting the door behind me and then immediately wishing I hadn’t, when the smell hit me.

I made my way up the ancient stairs, beginning to think I’d made a horrible mistake. But I’d walked all this way; I had to see it through.

There was, in fact, a sign on one of the doors. It was scrawled on cardboard, with what looked to have been a ballpoint pen, so that I had to get close before I could read it.

PRIVATE EYE

Fantastic.

I raised my hand to knock on the door, and just as I was about to connect, it swung open.

"Oh," I said, startled. "Hello, you must be-"

"Kelly," said the woman standing there, flatly. "The private eye. Come in."

I stepped into the tiny, tiled mudroom and looked around. The smell didn’t seem to be as bad in here; there were stacks of newspapers all over the place, but I supposed they might have been for legitimate research purposes. We briefly passed by the kitchen, which was grimy in the way that only 40-year-old kitchens could be, with mustard yellow appliances and dishes piled in the sink. In the back of the apartment, there was a cluttered desk with an old banker’s lamp and many overstuffed manila folders. I sat down gingerly in an industrial-grade padded chair that looked as if it had been stolen from a ‘70s office building. Inwardly, I berated myself for assuming that Kelly must be a man, just because she was a detective. After all, I’d wanted to be a detective when I was a kid. Kelly was living the dream.