Free 3 Swift Run by Laura Disilverio

should give Heather-Anne her money back and
     tell her she was better off without him. I was angry with myself for getting my hopes
     up. I should know better by now. Finding the happiest sweater in my drawer—a lemon
     yellow angora blend with purple pansies embroidered on it that was long enough to
     cover my behind—I pulled it on, then had to redo my hair. Then, since it was only
     about one o’clock, I called good-bye to Dex (who didn’t answer) and drove to Swift
     Investigations.
    I listened to the messages off the answering machine and called everybody back. I
     hated having to tell the people who wanted us to find lost pets that we didn’t do
     that kind of detecting, but Charlie flat-out refused to look for pets. “No one will
     take us seriously as investigators,” she said, “if we spend all our time hunting for
     Fido and Fluffy.” I gave the unhappy pet owners the Humane Society’s number and suggested
     they consider microchipping.
    After the pet owners—there were two of them today—I called a man who wanted us to
     find his runaway teenaged daughter and set up an appointment with him. I offered to
     meet him that very afternoon, but he said she’d already been gone three months and
     he wasn’t canceling his tee time for an appointment with me. Next week would do fine,
     he said. I started to tell him that if it was my Kendall gone missing I’d be out there
     looking for her morning, noon, and night till she was safe at home again, but I remembered
     in time that Charlie thinks it makes potential clients irritable when we say things
     like that. Once I’d typed the appointment onto the calendar, I looked around, not
     sure what else to do. Charlie had finished off the background checks for Danner and
     Lansky, so I decided to drive those down to the law firm. After that, I returned to
     the office and made the call I’d been putting off: I phoned Heather-Anne to give her
     an update.
    I hoped she wouldn’t be in her room and I could leave a message. She picked up on
     the first ring.
    “This is Gigi,” I said, “from Swift—”
    “I know who you are, Gigi, for God’s sake. Have you found him?”
    “Well…” I told her about tracking Les down in Aspen and talking to him briefly. I
     didn’t mention sleeping with him, although I wanted to, or the police arresting me
     for breaking into Cherry and Moss’s.
    “So you chatted with him a bit and then he disappeared—poof!—like Glinda the Good
     Witch?” Heather-Anne sounded annoyed and skeptical both.
    “Um, yes.”
    “Of all the incompetent— What are you going to do now?”
    Ooh, good question. “We have other leads we’re following,” I said, reciting the line
     Charlie gives folks when she’s completely stumped. “I’m sure we’ll pick up his trail”—that
     made us sound like hounds on the scent of a possum—“in a day or so.”
    “That’s too long,” Heather-Anne snapped. “Tomorrow is—”
    When she didn’t finish, I asked, “Tomorrow is what?”
    “Important.”
    I thought she was hiding something. “Why?”
    She sighed like I’d pushed her to the limit. “If you must know, it’s the anniversary
     of our first date. I didn’t want to have to say that, given that you were married
     to him at the time, but—”
    I hung up. My hands trembled and I clasped them together. I was not going to cry;
     tears would melt mascara all over my face, and I’d end up looking like a rabid raccoon.
     Then, ashamed of my rudeness, I dialed her back and got a busy signal. Maybe she was
     still spilling the details of their first date, not realizing I’d hung up. I called
     again and asked the hotel operator to connect me with voice mail, where I left a very
     nice message about being sorry we got cut off and promising to be in touch as soon
     as I had more information. Nasty task completed, I locked the office and headed down
     to Albertine’s. I needed a drink.
    Albertine’s sits at the far end of the strip mall