Chapter Text
Most PI jobs were pretty straightforward. There were no car chases or secret government conspiracies. Not in real life. Because most people had fairly simple problems: money keeps going missing from my business. I think my husband might be cheating on me. My daughter hasn’t called and I keep finding charges on my emergency credit card from bars in Cabo.
Nine out of ten jobs she could wrap up in five minutes of facebook stalking- sometimes before the client’s elevator had reached the lobby. The cashier is stealing from you. Of course he’s cheating. Your daughter ran off to Mexico for spring break with her new boyfriend.
The rest was just digging around for proof.
Nine times out of ten.
Jessica noticed that the woman sitting across the desk from her was nervous. Twitchy. Well-manicured nails were fidgeting with her cuffs and the diamond tennis bracelet on one wrist. That was nothing new- most people who sat in that chair were nervous. Nobody hired a private investigator to figure out who had left cookies at their front door.
“You’re going to think I’m crazy. Or a liar.” She said, with a self-deprecating little laugh. “Everyone else has.”
Middle-aged, but the stiff way she held her eyes and mouth screamed ‘Botox’, and the ‘artfully’ chunky haircut made Jessica think upper-east side housewife. Those people didn’t come to someone like her unless they had a unique problem.
“Try me,” Jessica says.
The woman takes a folded-up newspaper clipping from her purse, closing it again with a neat little snap.
“Last month, my husband walked off the balcony of our twenty-third-floor apartment.” She unfolded the paper and laid it flat on the desk between them. The byline read, ‘Investment Banker Suicide’.
“Ouch,” Jessica winced at the mental image. Splat.
She scans the short article, although it doesn’t tell her much she couldn’t have guessed from the header. Rich guy took a swan-dive off the balcony in the early hours of the morning. Caused a four-car accident when he hit the street below. No history of depression, no apparent motive, no sign of a struggle. Pretty straightforward.
The woman gives her a tight-lipped smile. “The police ruled it a suicide. What else could they do?”
“And you don’t think it was?”
“I know it wasn’t.”
“How?”
“Because I was there.”
Jessica’s eyes narrowed. “You saw him jump?”
She closes her eyes. “Yes.” Opens them again quickly, like she didn’t like what she saw in the darkness behind her own eyelids. She composes herself quickly. These society women could be made of iron when they wanted to be.
Jessica reminds herself to say, “I’m sorry,” because that’s what you’re supposed to say. “What was it you wanted me to do?” She asks slowly, handing back the newspaper clipping. Suicide was pretty open-and-shut. Unless there was money involved.
“Lloyd’s insurance policy didn’t cover suicide.” She says bluntly.
Jessica sort of hated always thinking the worst of people. Especially when they proved her right.
“We have some money from investments, savings, but with the lawsuits from the accident…” she trails off. “I need that insurance money. Now, Jerri Hogarth says you’re very good at what you do, Miss Jones. Whatever your usual fee is, I will double it if you can find proof that my husband’s death was not a suicide.”
Her greedy little heart practically skips a beat. She forces it to slow down, not to jump the gun.
“Before I can agree to take your case,” she says, as much to herself as to the woman. “I need to know what you think happened to your husband. If he didn’t kill himself.”
That tight-lipped smile returns. A mask of self-deprecating amusement hiding the guarded hurt of someone who’s been laughed at too many times before for whatever they’re about to say.
“Lloyd walked right off that balcony. Just strolled out, like he was going for his morning run. But it wasn’t suicide. He did it because the man in our house told him to.”
Something prickles in the back of Jessica’s mind. She had a sixth sense for when the shit was being loaded in front of the fan.
“The man in your house?” She prompts, as neutrally as possible.
“I don’t know who he was. He never told us his name …isn’t that funny?” Neither of them laugh. “He just showed up at the door one night and Lloyd said he was going to be staying with us for a while- at the time it didn’t bother me, but now…”
Shit. Shit shit shit-
“And he told your husband to jump off the balcony?”
“He told him to go for a walk.” She says flatly. “Then he pointed at the balcony doors and said, ‘That way.’ And Lloyd just-”
I’m going to fucking kill him, Jessica thinks. Stupid lying son-of-a-bitch. ‘No I think I’m staying in Rome this year’ her ass. He promised her. He promised-
It had been a child’s promise, back when they were both still young and stupid enough for things like that to matter.
Cross your heart and hope to die.
Somehow, that makes it hurt even more.
The woman was still talking. “…I think my husband was drugged. That’s the only thing I can think of- Lloyd was a happy man. He would never have killed himself.”
“Yeah, I’m sure- tell me, er…“ she trails off, suddenly realizing she had never even bothered to get the woman’s name. Crack private investigator she was.
“Caroline Danvers.”
“Right. Caroline, what did K- what did this guy look like? Can you describe him?”
There was still a chance it wasn’t him, right? Maybe Lloyd pissed off his drug dealer. Maybe there was another dickhead with mind control powers out there. There were more of their kind every day.
You've got to promise you won't do this again, Kevin. Promise.
“Tall? Sort of skinny. Nice suit. He had an English accent.”
That settled it. Jessica was going to fucking kill him.