08 - December Dread (5 page)

“I’m going to be here for at least a week.” I’d told her this several times already. I think she just liked to hear me say it. “We’ll have plenty of time to catch up.”

“You sure Johnny can’t join us?”

I sighed involuntarily. Hot, sexy Johnny Leeson and I had been seriously dating for a few weeks. He was a blonde Adonis with lean hips and large hands, and he got my blood humming like nobody’s business. He was also smart, sweet, and supportive, which is exactly why I was sure I was going to mess up the relationship. To stall the inevitable crash and burn, I’d put up boundaries. No telling each other we loved each other or full-on sex for six months. It was tough work, a first for me, really, and I couldn’t say that I liked it. I did like Johnny, though, and I wanted to keep him around as long as I could, even if it meant pretending I was someone I wasn’t. “He and his mom flew to Texas to stay with his aunt. He won’t be around this Christmas.”

“Maybe he can join us for Easter, then?”

“Mom, I’m here now. Let’s just focus on that, ’kay?” I could feel my blood pressure rising. She hadn’t changed at all, which was both good and bad. Good because she’d always been a great mom. Bad because I
had
changed, and it left me feeling older than her somehow. It was uncomfortable.

“I was just asking. It’d be nice to see him, you know. And his mother. We had such a nice visit in Battle Lake in August.” Mom cupped her elbows while she spoke. “What about Mrs. Berns? What is she doing for Christmas?”

Mrs. Berns was the first actual, close, do-anything-for-you friend I’d ever had. She was under five feet tall, over 80 years old, and lampshaded everything. I missed her something terrible, which just added to my annoyance at my mom’s line of questioning. “Visiting family in Fargo.”

“Hmm. It would be wonderful to see her. And Mrs. Leeson and Johnny. Just wonderful.”

“All right,” I said, my tone unexpectedly harsh. “I’ll see what I can do. Is that good enough?” I wished I hadn’t snapped, but it felt like the little farmhouse was closing in on me all of a sudden, and my world was shrinking with it. I hadn’t even been here 24 hours. It didn’t help that I’d slept so poorly last night. I kept tossing and turning and waking up to find Kevin Bacon staring at me. “Look, I’m sorry, but I have to go, all right? The class starts in an hour, and all the roads might not be plowed yet.”

She handed me a brown paper sack. “I packed you a lunch.”

“Of course you did.” I drew in a deep breath and gave her a peck on the forehead. “You’re going to be fine with Tiger Pop and Luna?”

“I’ll relish the company. When are you going to be home?”

“Mom.”

She held out her hands. “I want to know if I should cook supper for one or two.”

“I’ll be home for supper, okay?”

Her smile was bright enough to read by. “I’m making your favorite.”

She was my mom. Everything she cooked was my favorite. Still, I couldn’t escape that house fast enough. It wasn’t just my room or my mom.
None
of it had changed. The kitchen had the same blue-flowered wallpaper, chipped cupboards, and Goodwill plates. The dining room table was the same one I’d fallen into when roller skating in the house at 12. I’d earned 13 stitches on my head and still bore a faint scar. My dad had threatened to spank me, something he hadn’t done since I was little, but my mom had stopped him. Even their bedroom was the same, a dusty little space with photos of them together the day my dad returned from the Vietnam War with his honorable discharge papers and a Purple Heart. The pictures were color, but a weird 1969 version that was both brighter and less distinct than current color photography. The handful of photos showed him short and compact, maybe 5'7" to my mom’s 5'4". His jaw was set, his eyes tired, a little scared, hopeful. He held my mom around the waist, close. She was grinning. Those were the only photos of him she displayed.

The bottom floor of the farmhouse also contained a sad little bathroom and a combination scrapbooking and sewing room. The top floor housed only a bathroom added on late, my bedroom with the 1980s posters and sloping, low-ceilinged walls, and storage space. My mom lived here on a military widow’s pension and had neither the money nor the interest in updating. It was enough to make any reasonable person climb the walls.

Forty minutes of driving southwest, and I located the Willmar Community Education Center with little trouble, right off the main drag. The building was squat and gray, the classroom the first room on the right inside the doors. I was surprised at the amount of apprehension I felt walking inside. Returning to school, even if it’s PI school, at the ripe age of 30 is a little like taking your first step out of the bathroom at a nudist colony. Is everyone else going to be naked, too?

The room had the outgassing smell of new carpet. It was a modern classroom, with a whiteboard consuming one wall, a podium and table in front of it, and a couple dozen chair-desks arranged in rows. An LCD projector hung from the ceiling like a mechanical uvula.

A man in light-brown corduroy pants, an open-collared, button-down shirt, and a navy-blue corduroy jacket was writing on the board in black marker:
Welcome to PI Class. I’m Mr. Denny.
He appeared to be in his 50s but took good care of himself.

I chose the farthest seat in the rear, closest to the door without putting my back to it. You know—where all the smart kids sit. Six other students were already seated. I was gratified to see that I was the only one under 40, but disappointed that I was the only female. Two of the men seemed to know each other. The other four guys sat on the periphery, like me. I opened my notebook and began doodling, now wishing I had never left the farmhouse.

Out of the edge of my eye, I spotted another female enter. I watched her through the partial shield of my hair. She was about my height and weight, but blonde and at least a decade younger. Judging by the parade of trendy bracelets ringing her arm and the expensive, orange blossom-tinged perfume that emanated off her, she either wasn’t from around here or had gone to college out of state and had recently returned home. Her purse cinched it. I’d seen the soft black Coach satchel on the arm of Jennifer Aniston in the latest issue of
People
magazine when I’d accidentally dropped it at the library, open to that page. And then the next page. And the next.

The woman grabbed a stack of papers from Mr. Denny’s desk, smiled secretively at him, and walked out. Three minute later, he began class.

“Welcome!” He made eye contact with each of us. His gaze was unnervingly direct. “You’re all here today because you want to be a private investigator in the state of Minnesota. To do so, you must complete a 15-hour certification course, which this is, and 6,000 hours of supervised work. Does that surprise any of you?”

No one spoke.

“Good. I’d like to add a third qualification: to be a private investigator, you must also be observant. Who can describe the person who just removed your personal, private, highly detailed student files from my desk?”

Some of the men began buzzing. One spoke without raising his hand. “Young. Eighteen maybe. Blonde and blue-eyed. An office worker here?”

The man next to him nodded his head. “Same thing I saw. Except she had a lot of jewelry on, too. I heard it clink.”

“Excellent. Anyone else have anything to add?”

You couldn’t have paid me to volunteer my input. Not only was I the only female, I had a rule against drawing attention to myself. It never ended well. I slumped lower in my seat, and in doing so, accidentally knocked my notebook to the ground. Mr. Denny’s hawk eyes found me. He glanced down at a sheet of paper on his desk.

“Myra James, is it?”

“It’s pronounced ‘Mira.’ Rhymes with ‘can of beer-ah.’” Wow. Totally unnecessary.

“Mira, then. Did you see the woman?”

“Yeah.” I tipped my head at the clot of guys, reluctantly. “They got it right. She was blonde, lots of bracelets but no earrings or rings, and I’d put her closer to 20, but 18 is good enough.”

He nodded approvingly. “You also think she’s an office worker?”

“No. I think she’s your daughter.” Once I started, I couldn’t stop. “Based on how she’s dressed and smells, she definitely goes to college in a big city, probably on one of the coasts. You two gave each other a look like you’d done this before but not recently, so I’m guessing this is something of a tradition for the first day of class. At least until she went off to college. She’s home on Christmas break?” I clamped my mouth shut. Too much. I had said too much.

He pursed his lips. “She goes to Berkeley. Any guess what she’s studying?”

“Sociology.”

He threw back his head, and to my great relief, he laughed. “Close enough. Psychology. And we’ll save any psychoanalyzing of that choice. Very nice job, Mira. What made you think she was my daughter?”

I tried to form an invisibility shield but that didn’t work. In for a penny. “You both acted too familiar for her to be a colleague or an acquaintance. That meant she’s either family or your girlfriend. I figured a woman who dresses like her would never date a guy who wears a corduroy blazer with corduroy pants, and gambled that you,” here I indicated his wedding ring, “are too decent a person to cheat on your wife. That leaves family, and since you two have the same nose, I guessed daughter.”

Mr. Denny drew his hand over his face. The other students swiveled to stare at me as my cheeks cooked. When Mr. Denny finally pulled his hand away, his eyes were dancing. “Nice work. Gentleman, take note. Body language and interactions can give you as much, if not more, information than written facts. Now, let’s get down to business.”

I was relieved that the rest of the class took the shape of a lecture, with Mr. Denny discussing the definition and goals of private investigation, other foundational terms, the limits of a PI’s rights and jurisdiction, and case studies. There was no need to call myself out again. By noon, my wrist was sore from taking notes and my head was full, but in a good way. For the first time, I was beginning to wonder if I had what it took to be a real-life PI. The seven of us were gathering our notebooks and reaching for our jackets when Mr. Denny made his last announcement for the day, and it was a doozy.

“Most of this class will be a combination of lecture and films, but I have one out-of-class project for you. There are seven students in this class. I’m going to reveal seven secrets. It is your job to match the secret with its owner by the end of Friday’s class. The only way to earn an ‘A’ in here is to match them all accurately.” He crossed his arms and stared at us.

The guy two desks to my right and one forward blanched, and not at the part about acing the class. The other five appeared mildly interested. I wondered if the whole world was about to find out I was sleeping in a room with a Kevin Bacon poster.

“Secret 1, someone here served in the military.”

Harmless enough. My money was on the guy who wore his hair in a heinie.

“Secret 2, someone in here is cheating on his wife.”

The blancher went so white he was almost blue. Bingo.

“Secret 3, someone here has a drinking problem. Secret 4, someone here was fired from their job a month ago but still pretends to go to work in the morning. Secret 5, one of you was born in Albania. Secret 6, someone in here has a wooden leg, and Secret 7, one of you is on the FBI watch list.”

Shit, I hoped I was secret 3.

A 50-something guy with unnaturally black hair raised his hand. He had introduced himself as Leo and had been the one chatting with the buzz-cut older guy at the start of class. “Isn’t some of that information private?”

“Exactly,” Mr. Denny said, with no hint of sarcasm.

“What if we don’t correctly match the seven secrets with the seven students?” asked Gene, Leo’s friend.

“Nothing, except that the highest grade you can earn is a ‘B.’ It won’t affect licensing as you just have to pass this class to fulfill the requirement.”

Since I’m inquisitive by nature, I was jazzed about this assignment, but I could tell I was the only one. The expressions on the guys’ faces ranged from annoyed to “something is crawling in my underwear.”

“Any more questions?”

Nobody had any. I grabbed my coat and casually strolled to the women’s bathroom. I waited in a stall for six minutes. When I exited, the classroom was empty except for Mr. Denny speaking at the front with the blancher. I stood to the side of the door so they couldn’t see me and tried to eavesdrop. I only caught the student’s name—Edgar—and some mention of a lawsuit. The conversation ended abruptly, and I ducked into the nearest unlocked classroom. Fortunately, the lights didn’t turn on when I entered, allowing me to watch Edgar storm out, followed by a calm Mr. Denny.

I counted to 25 and left the classroom, following the signs directing me to the main office in the center of the building. I passed three classrooms on the way, all of them dark. The beige Berber carpet swallowed my footsteps. An office worker with a face as creased as a winter apple looked up as I entered the office.

“May I help you?” she asked pleasantly.

“I hope so.” I rested my purse on the counter and leaned forward, with what I hoped was a friendly smile on my face. “I’m taking the PI licensure class.”