Клео Коул - Decaffeinated Corpse

When they embraced and locked lips, Madame and I stared in shock.

“Oh my goodness. What’s my boy doing with that woman?”

“Wild guess? I’d say he’s kissing her. Passionately kissing her.”

But something wasn’t right about the way he was kissing her. I knew how my ex-husband kissed, and the way he was holding Ellie just didn’t seem right. A moment later, I realized why. As Matt turned with Ellie to walk out of the lobby, we finally saw his face.

“That’s not Matt,” Madame whispered. “It’s Ric Gostwick.”

Silently, we watched as they headed, not for the restaurant, but for the elevators to the bedrooms.

“I guess she’s doing more than hugging him, after all,” I murmured.

“What do you mean?”

“Ellie mentioned to me that her assistant, Norbert, caught her embracing Ric in the Garden. I pressed, but she implied it was just polite affection. She wouldn’t admit that she was sleeping with Ric.”

“Well, it certainly looks like she is.”

“Unless tight sweaters and short skirts are some new requirement for discussing botany in hotel rooms, I’d say you’re right.”

I noticed the Asian man rising from his armchair. I tapped Madame and pointed. She silently nodded.

The man’s magazine was gone. Keeping his head down, he moved carefully across the lobby, stopping as soon as he was within sight of the elevators.

“What’s he doing?” Madame whispered.

“Nothing. He’s just standing.” I noticed him adjust his Mets cap again, and I squinted. “They make cameras now that are small enough to fit into hats, don’t they? Do you think he’s filming Ellie and Ric?”

Madame frowned. “I guess anything’s possible, but I certainly can’t tell. The man just looks as though he’s loitering.”

Ding!

One of the elevators arrived, and Ric and Ellie disappeared inside. Then the doors shut, and Mets Cap Man turned. A young blond woman in a dark business suit approached him. He spoke to her, as if he knew her. She nodded, said a few words, then she went directly to the armchair in the lobby that he’d just left.

“Come on,” I rasped to Madame.

“Come where?”

“Where do you think? We’re going to follow Secret Asian Man.”

He left the hotel and walked south a few blocks. When he reached an underground parking garage, Madame and I hailed a cab.

“What about your car?” she asked.

“We’re not that far from the Blend. I can walk down here, and pick it up later.”

After a few minutes, a big, black SUV appeared in the garage’s driveway and turned down the one way street. “Follow that SUV!” Madame commanded our cabbie.

“Yes, ma’am.”

The black SUV headed east then north, traveling all the way up to Midtown. Madame barked orders to the cab driver, making sure he hung back. Judging from Secret Asian Man’s ability to shake our tail in Brooklyn, then pick up Ellie’s scent again—and without our noticing—we both agreed that he might get suspicious of a taxi hugging his bumper.

Traffic was heavy enough for us to blend into the sea of cars. Finally, the SUV pulled into a small parking lot, behind a clean concrete plaza near the United Nations.

“Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza,” I murmured. “Okay, I’ve finally found a winner for the most obscure, hard to pronounce place name in New York City.”

“Clare! I’m surprised at you. Don’t you know who Dag Hammarskjöld is?”

“What do you mean who? Are you telling me Dag Hammarskjöld is a name?”

“He was the secretary general of the United Nations. He died in a plane crash in Africa in the 1960s. He also won the Nobel Peace Prize. In my time, every schoolchild knew his name.”

“Well, I’m sorry to tell you, Madame, times have changed.”

Madame sighed. “You don’t have to tell me, dear. I notice every day—often several times a day.... So what do we do now?”

“We wait to see where he’s going.”

We sat in the cab until we saw Secret Asian Man again. He was leaving the parking lot on foot, heading up the block toward Second Avenue.

“You follow him,” I quickly told Madame. “I’ll pay the driver and catch up.”

Five minutes later, I found Madame on the sidewalk, in front of a typical seventies-era Bauhaus office building— an avocado green box with pillars of faded aluminum, and all the charm of a thirty-year-old chamber pot.

“Where did he go?” I asked, worried she’d lost him.

“Tenth floor,” she said with a smile. “And do you know who has an office on that floor besides a gynecologist and a marriage counselor?”

“Who?” I asked.

“A private investigator.”

The office wasn’t large, about the size of a busy dental practice. The walls were a freshly painted off-white, the framed prints on the walls the sort of generic pastel landscape art designed to put one at ease, if not asleep.

“I’ll be with you in a moment. Please have a seat.”

The young African American receptionist with stylish jade eyeglasses and a beautiful head of long braids pointed us to a small waiting area before she turned her attention back to the receiver in her headset. “Yes... I understand,” she murmured, “that’s correct... would you mind spelling that for me?”

She appeared to be scribbling down an extensive phone message, and I was relieved to see that she was preoccupied. It gave Madame and me a chance to catch our breath and get our bearings.

Downstairs we’d already discussed strategy. The plan was simple. Madame would show the receptionist her set of keys and claim that she’d seen an Asian gentleman drop them when he’d parked his SUV near Dag Hammarskjöld plaza.

If the receptionist offered to take the keys, Madame would refuse to give them up, requesting a chance to speak to the man himself. When he appeared, she’d challenge him, recounting his movements and demand that he give up the name of the person who’d hired him to tail Ellie.

I didn’t like the idea of direct confrontation, but I couldn’t think of a better scheme at the moment, and my former mother-in-law felt confident she could make this work. Maybe she could. Madame was the sort of regal dame with whom most people were reluctant to argue. Secret Asian Man might be one of them.

Given the fact that he was a professional investigator, however, I was willing to bet we were in over our heads. My bookie dad probably would have given us 7 to 3 odds: the long-shot being our actually getting the information for which we came and the more likely scenario landing us unceremoniously on the sidewalk downstairs.

While the receptionist continued talking on the phone, Madame and I settled into the standard issue waiting-room furniture. Madame pawed through the magazines and brochures on the coffee table. I glanced around the room.

“Are you nervous?” I whispered.

“Not at all,” Madame replied, opening one of the office’s glossy brochures. “Just a little impatient.” She dipped into her handbag and pulled out her reading glasses. “This is interesting...” she murmured a minute later.

“What?” I asked, my eyes still on the receptionist.

“This office is being run by a man named Anil Kapoor, but it’s only one branch of a global company. Have a look...”

I took the brochure, and began to read:

At Worldwide Private Investigations, Inc. (WPI), our licensed private investigators, forensic experts, and legal information specialists achieve results. With offices around the globe, we are especially equipped for international investigations, including missing persons, marital and child custody cases, property and copyright disputes, extradition and asset inquiries as well as a host of other investigations and security needs. At WPI, no case is too big, or too small. Whether you are an individual, a C-level executive, or a government official, you can rest assured that our confidentiality is paramount.