me a burst of energy, because I stayed in the kitchen to help Mark, my British cook, to make turkey soup. I have my special way of cooking turkey soup, which I invented while living in Center City and driving a cab. This soup, like any other great invention, came into existence by accident and lack of resources. It was the day after Halloween, and Iris had overdone it with sweets. Her stomach hurt, so she stayed home from school. I did a six-hour shift and went home. The best treatment for stomach sickness is chicken soup, no doubt about it, but we had only turkey breast. I found two potatoes, a tomato, a white onion, a red bell pepper, and moldy spaghetti squash. Cooking a vegetable stew, I saut,ed chopped onion and pieces of turkey in olive oil. Then I dropped in tiny slices of bell pepper, potatoes, squash and tomato, and I poured some water to top the stew. I let the soup cook slowly for two hours on medium heat; finally, I just added a little garlic and soy sauce to it.
The result was amazing. My strictly no-soup-please daughter finished two helpings and announced that her stomach hurt no more.
After dinner would be the best time to tell Alex about my new investigating job. Five minutes before six, he called and said he was running late. The girls got their dinner in the TV room. Larissa ate in the kitchen, and I just sat in my favorite recliner, reading a mystery novel. Glistening with silverware and china, the dinner table remained untouched.
Around midnight, my husband's car pulled into the driveway. I ran outside to hug him, and his smell made my head spin. It was okay that we missed a family dinner, because at the end of the week we would have two days all to ourselves. I'll be able to be with him for two days!
"I'm starving," he said, entering the kitchen, still in his business suit. "Oh, soup."
I poured soup for him and ran to the bathroom for a quick makeover, feeling all fuzzy and romantic. It took two minutes to shower, slide into my silk nightgown, brush my teeth, and put on a touch of French perfume. However, when I returned to the kitchen, he wasn't there. I ran upstairs to our bedroom and found my beloved husband lying on the bed, still fully dressed.
"Honey, do you want to take it off?" I pulled the sleeve of his jacket. He didn't respond. Only when I was pulling his pants off, he said, "Phew, what's that smell? It's awful."
I lay next to him in the dark, hoping that he didn't mean my expensive French perfume he praised so much when fully awake.
I tried to shut out the annoying ringing in my ears when I realized it wasn't an alarm clock. It was my cell phone.
"Rachel," I croaked, picking it up. It was two o'clock in the morning, and I hate phone calls in the middle of the night.
"Joe Madnick. How are you?"
"I don't know. I was sleeping."
"Come here this instant. I need your help. Don't ask questions; just come to my office now." He hung up and left me staring at the darkness in disbelief.
Why would Joe call me in the middle of the night? And then I remembered; he appointed me as his detective. I'm a lawsuit investigator! I jumped out of my bed, pulled on jeans and a t-shirt, grabbed a jacket and went outside. My red Jaguar greeted me with its lights when I unlocked the door. I looked around our dark property, breathing the chilly spring wind, smiling to the dawn of my new life.
Driving, I thought about some crooked ways life rewards us. I wasn't even thinking of becoming a detective, with all my love of mysteries and whodunits. I didn't have any special training and education. I would never get this job if I tried to look for it. Joe would reject me if I asked him to hire me. But I was in the right place at the right time. He was backed up; I came with a pack of sandwiches. Voila! He asked me to do some investigative legwork for his law firm.
I felt so much pity for Debbie. I have been through the hell of single motherhood. Her case seemed obvious to me. If this Philippine woman accused her new co-worker with such ease, she probably did something similar to other people before. In twenty years, she stepped on some toes. I had to find those people and talk to them. I needed to find a couple of witnesses who would testify against Gamma Woods.
Joe's voice boomed in my ears, "Get out there and talk to people, find as many as possible whose who can tell that Debbie is a nice decent lady. I don't want to paddle to court just to meet a material witness saying that Debbie stole before."
For his office, Joe used his own house, a two-story red brick townhouse with a lawn up front and a parking lot in the back. At two o'clock in the morning, the house looked spooky. All the lights were off. I knocked at the door, and it opened a crack, just enough for me to get in. Once inside, I was grabbed and pressed against the wall.
"Shish!" Joe put his fat fingers on my lips. "Don't talk." Moonlight in the entrance hall was just enough for me to see that he looked exactly like I left him in broad daylight. Which means he wasn't attacked or injured, just mildly paranoid.
"Did anybody see you coming here?"
"I don't think so…"
"Rachel, don't think too much!" he whispered and cleared his throat. "It's my job." He stood plastered on the wall, peeking out the door window in complete silence for a very long time before saying, "Okay, now, it's time."
He opened the door, let me outside, and ushered me into his car soundlessly. With his bulky body, he moved in the dark like a cat, reminding me he served some years as a Navy Seal, doing who knows what, who knows where.
Getting into the driver's seat, he didn't put a seatbelt on, just started the car and pulled off his driveway onto the street. There was something eerie in the way we were moving through the neighborhood, and it took me some time to realize he hadn't turned his headlights on. Plus, the car had tinted windows.
"What's going on?" I whispered. "What do you want to do?"
"I'll tell you in a minute," he whispered back at me. "Just do what I say."
After a couple of miles, he wheeled to the opposite side of the street and parked without turning off the engine. I got out, obedient to his command, while Joe was shifting his big body inside the car, trying to get out. Not having enough room, he put his left foot on the ground and pressed the car horn with his elbow. His honking woke up the whole neighborhood. Dogs barked, and the light went on and off in the next house up the street.
The house on the hill across the lawn from us remained dark and silent. Joe exhaled like a whale and proceeded to the car's rear. He popped the trunk up, pulled out an oddly shaped bag, and handed it to me. It was slippery. He, himself, got a heavy object that looked like a white box. He carried the box to the lawn and left it there. I put the slippery bag next to it. Shaking and sweating, I was trying to kill the thought that those objects were the remains of some annoying material witness who crossed my new boss.
Joe trotted back to his car, got another boxy white thing, and dumped it next to the first one.
"Get in the car," he commanded, though it took him more than a second to get inside and start the engine. He wheeled back to the right side of the road, turned on the headlights, and lit his cigarette.
"What did we just do?" I squeaked.
"Take this, you need it." He gave me his cigarette.
I don't smoke, but neither do I dump things on people's front lawns; so, the cigarette felt like the right thing to do.
"How was it?" my boss asked.
"Terrifying!"
"Yeah… Especially when I tooted my horn in the middle of the operation. Everything because it was so secretive."
"What was it?"
"My old toilet tank."
My cigarette flew out when I coughed. "Your toilet tank? You woke me up in the middle of the night to dump your toilet tank on other people's property?"
"You have to understand, I was too embarrassed to put them in front of my office. These rich people have so many kids, it's natural for them to throw out toilet tanks. Nobody would give a shit about it. And I'm a lawyer. I have clients coming. I have done so much work, by the way, since you left. I installed two new toilet tanks. Now, the toilet flush sounds like a military jet."
"So, that was the important business you needed to do. That's why you