Storm Season

FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER after completing my calls, I found Kimberly in the kitchen.

“You hungry?” she asked.

“Sure.”

Mainly I was being sociable. Thinking about Bill and Trish heading out to dinner together right about now had taken the edge off my appetite. I only hoped he wasn’t planning on sitting with his ex-wife in our special booth at the Dock of the Bay. It was bad enough that the woman was living in our house.

I’d called Darcy and asked her to go by my condo and pack me a bag. She had a key for emergencies such as this and, happy to log in the overtime, would deliver the clothes and toiletries I’d requested to the penthouse later. I’d also instructed her to tell Bill where I was and that I’d be here overnight. I could have called Bill myself but hadn’t wanted to interrupt his dinner plans with Trish. Call me crazy, but I’d rather not know where they were and what they were doing.

I climbed onto a high stool at the breakfast bar and watched Kimberly remove food from the refrigerator and pantry. She piled cold cuts onto thick slices of bread, smeared them with mayonnaise, heaped the plates high with chips and pickles and opened a bag of chocolate chip cookies and another of oatmeal-raisin.

She set one of the gargantuan sandwiches and potato chip mountains in front of me. “Iced tea or soda?”

“Diet Coke or water’s fine.”

She must have seen me eyeing the feast that would have fed four linebackers.

“When I’m anxious, I eat,” she explained.

“I’d be the same way, but there’s usually no food in my house. I hate to shop.”

She sat across the bar from me and dug into her sandwich. If how much she consumed was a true sign of anxiety, Kimberly was almost ready for the psych ward. Between bites, she asked, “Do you carry a gun?”

I nodded.

“Where is it?”

“In the holster at the back of my waist. Don’t worry. I can reach it in a hurry if I need it. But you have three levels of protection before anyone can get to me: the security officer at the gate, the private elevator that needs your personal code to activate it and the double deadlocks on your front doors. Unless some guy swoops onto your balcony from a helicopter, I won’t be needing my weapon.”

Her faced paled. She set her sandwich down and gazed toward the windows, covered with lavender fabric, as if she expected an assassin to crash through the glass sliders at any moment.

“Relax,” I said. “Helicopter assaults happen only in the movies. Unless Bruce Willis or Steven Seagal is your hit man, you’re perfectly safe.”

I couldn’t tell if my witty assurances made her feel more secure, since she returned to eating with renewed gusto.

I slid off the bar stool.

“Where are you going?” she asked in a panic. “You’re not leaving?”

“I’m checking the locks.”

I’d already stated how unlikely an attack was at twenty stories up, but she’d hired me for protection, so I went through the motions, if for no other reason than to make her feel better. After securing every glass slider and double-checking the dead bolts on the double front doors, I returned to the breakfast bar and my sandwich.

I didn’t mention that, if her assailant had formerly served in special forces, twenty stories would be no deterrent, but how many SEALs, recon Marines or Army rangers had time to read “Ask Wynona Wisdom,” much less work themselves into a killing lather over her advice?

My sweep of the room apparently reassured Kimberly, because she visibly relaxed. The only residual sign of anxiety was the rapidly disappearing cache of cookies.

She finished off an oatmeal-raisin in two bites. “I’ve never met a private eye before. Your job must be exciting.”

“It’s mostly paperwork. Background checks, tracking down lost relatives.” After finally calming her down, I didn’t want to ruin the result by sharing some of my more harrowing cases.

“Was this job, being an investigator, something you always wanted to do?”

At the rate she was paying me, talk wasn’t cheap, but if conversation kept her mind off her worries, I’d humor her. “I started out as a librarian.”

“Really? Why the major shift in careers?”

The passing years had eased the pain to a dull ache, so I could talk about Greg without feeling as if someone had ripped out my heart. “After I graduated from college and started working at the library, my fiancé, a doctor, was killed in the E.R. by a crack addict.”

“How awful.” My story momentarily distracted Kimberly from the cookies.

I nodded. “I was so angry about such a senseless waste, I had to do something, so I quit my library job and entered the police academy.”

“You were a cop?”

“For over twenty-three years. Detective Adler was my last partner before I retired from the Pelican Bay Department. Then Bill Malcolm and I opened our agency earlier this year. What about you?”

“Me?”

“How did you become Wynona Wisdom?”

She made a face, as if the memories were unpleasant. “I got my PhD in psychology and opened my own counseling practice. But I couldn’t stand the continual misery, day after day of listening to people pour out their problems. Guess you and I are alike in that sense. People don’t come to counselors or cops unless they’re in trouble.”

She had that right. “But as Wynona Wisdom, you still deal with their misery every day, at least on paper.”

She flashed a rueful smile. “I provide insight or give advice, but I don’t have to watch people self-destruct by ignoring it.”

I understood. Having clients unable to grasp, and therefore change, the circumstances that caused their problems was probably as frustrating for psychologists as recidivism was for cops, who often arrested people only to have them commit the same crimes again as soon as their sentences had been served.

“You must get a ton of mail,” I said. “How do you keep up with it?”

“I have a staff of seven in Omaha. That’s where I’m from, originally. They maintain the office there, sift through the letters, discard questions similar to ones I’ve answered before and send me the queries that are the most timely or interesting. They also help with research, if I need it.”

“And the death threats?”

“They keep a file of those, just in case.”

“You never read them?”

Kimberly shook her head and reached for another cookie. “I used to, but they were too upsetting. So upsetting, in fact, that I decided to relocate here, become more anonymous.”

“No one’s ever bothered you here?”

She shook her head. “Not until today. I guess you cops would say my cover’s blown.”

“That’s only if the shooter was really after you. We haven’t established that yet.” I took a bite of sandwich, chewed and swallowed. “The death threats, the ones you used to read, what was the basis for them?”

She laughed without humor. “Most of the psychos didn’t need a basis. One said my picture gave her the evil eye, staring out of her newspaper every morning. Another said he’d followed my advice about not letting his cat roam outdoors, and the feline had died of a broken heart and boredom. And there are always the wackos who say I should roast in hell for getting rich off of other people’s misery.”