Free Hunting Sweetie Rose : A Mystery (9781429950879) by Jack Fredrickson

I tossed the remains of my cold coffee over the wall and went inside.
    *   *   *
    â€œYou look like hell.” Leo said a couple of hours later, stepping out onto his front steps. He wore a neon green sweatshirt with Woody Woodpecker embroidered on it. “Would you like coffee?”
    â€œI’ve been up on the roof for hours, drinking coffee.”
    â€œYou have a dilemma?”
    I nodded.
    He told me to sit on the steps and went inside. We’d sweated a thousand dilemmas on those front steps, spring through fall, since seventh grade.
    He came out with two of Ma’s scratched porcelain mugs, steaming with coffee. He’d also brought several newspaper sheets, tucked under his arm.
    â€œCoffee with fortifier,” he said. “You’ll bloom like a rose.”
    It was a surprise. Coffee and fortifier was coffee and Jack Daniel’s.
    I took a sip. He’d made it weak, just enough to flavor the brew, because he knew I avoided booze since my divorce.
    â€œMy dilemma,” I began, after he sat down.
    He looked at the folded newspapers he’d set on the concrete between us. “I know.”
    I set down my cup. “What do you mean?”
    â€œAmanda and that guy. Three times, their photos have been in the papers.”
    My face must have looked paralyzed. Because his then registered the shock of realizing he’d just told me something hurtful that I didn’t know.
    â€œLovely day today,” he said, looking for even the smallest laugh.
    â€œWhat guy, Leo?”
    â€œI thought that was why you came over.” He unfolded one of the newspaper sheets and handed it to me. “Today’s Tribune . A party, night before last.”
    It was one of those society lineup photos, fine folks dressed in fine duds to do fine deeds. Amanda stood next to the silver-haired fellow I’d seen at Sweetie Fairbairn’s, the guy who’d made her laugh. They’d been at a fund-raiser for the Lyric Opera. His hand rested around her waist.
    Leo mumbled something about getting us more fortifier, meaning he was going to give me a minute with the other news sheets. He took my cup, which I’d barely tasted, and went inside.
    The man’s name was Richard Rudolph. In addition to heading a commodities trading firm, he sat on charitable boards. He looked every bit a rich, do-gooding son of a bitch. In each photo, Amanda looked delighted to be with him.
    Leo must have been waiting just inside the screen door, because he came out the instant I looked up.
    â€œIt doesn’t have to mean anything,” he said, setting down the coffees. “Those people travel together, in packs.”
    â€œNot with their arms around each other.”
    I picked up my cup, took a taste. He’d added only more coffee. He was my friend.
    â€œThat was only in today’s photo, Dek.”
    â€œMaris Mays?” I asked, keeping my eyes on the shutters of the bungalow across the street. Maris was a girl Leo and I had known. She’d disappeared right after high school. Years later, someone hired me to execute a will, and that led me back to those very old times. Maris haunted me during that investigation, and that had haunted Amanda.
    â€œMaris didn’t reorient Amanda’s world,” Leo said. “Wendell Phelps did. Old Dad brought her into his company, and into his life. Those pictures don’t have to mean anything.”
    â€œThey meant something to you; you saved them.”
    â€œI was thinking you’d seen them, and would want to talk.”
    â€œShit, Leo.”
    â€œTell me about your dilemma,” he said.
    â€œYou mean my other dilemma?” Whining, self-indulgence, and churlish words were still called for.
    â€œOK. Your other dilemma.”
    â€œEver hear of Sweetie Fairbairn?” I folded the news sheets so I wouldn’t have to look at the photos of Amanda and the silver-topped gigolo.
    â€œI did work for her once,