Julie Kistler - Cut To The Chase

“Oh, Ma…” Sean stared into space. His mother playing amateur detective and checking up on his dad and conspiring with his secretary? And right when the old man was up for a major promotion? He’d never forgive her.

Sean looked up. On the other hand, what was Michael Calhoun doing on that park bench with that woman? He narrowed his eyes at the photos. Ever since he’d cracked a couple of hard cases, people had been teasing him about his “uncanny knack for seeing the truth.” It was a quote from a newspaper account of his career, and the other detectives—and his brothers—thought it was pretty funny to ride him about it. It was a bunch of baloney, but still… If he stared at the photo of his father and the curvy blonde long enough, would he see the real deal behind this shadowy meeting in the park?

“So the next time your father wasn’t where he was supposed to be, I sent Bebe back to Humboldt Park again, you know, disguised, so she could get closer this time. She wore a headscarf and sunglasses and pushed a baby carriage. Your father never suspected a thing,” his mom said with fierce satisfaction.

Bebe in disguise, pushing a baby carriage. It might’ve been funny if it weren’t so horrifying. “Let me get this straight. You had Bebe shadowing Dad at the park?”

“So? She got some very good pictures, didn’t she?” His mother shook her head. “Same woman, same park bench. Meeting her again. And look at her, Sean. Cheap Christmas trash.”

Well, he couldn’t disagree. Bebe’s clear, sharp photographs showed a dyed-blonde with obvious roots and a frizzy ponytail, big sunglasses, and a dark raincoat over her clothes. She had a good jawline, a determined little chin, and what appeared to be a nicely shaped mouth exaggerated by a load of shiny, dark pink lipstick. The raincoat was open far enough in several of the pictures to reveal a low-cut top, very tight jeans, and the most god-awful pair of shoes he’d ever seen. They were clear plastic sandals with very high heels and glitter and stars plastered all over them. He didn’t have to be a detective to recognize hooker shoes when he saw them.

So which was worse? The assumption that his dad was having an affair? Or that he was somehow involved with a prostitute?

“All right,” he said grimly. “You’ve got photos of him with a suspicious woman. Is there more?”

“That’s the thing, Sean. I was waiting for him to have, you know, another unexplained absence. But he hasn’t. Well, until today, but his secretary heard him on the phone arranging to meet Jake, so I think that was okay.”

“Yeah,” Sean put in. “I got a message from Jake canceling the fishing trip. He said Dad had an errand for him. So that checks out.”

“So since the meeting where Bebe got the pictures, he’s been clean. But now…” Her voice was positively triumphant as she made a flourish Bebe’s way.

“I saw her again,” Bebe whispered.

“At the park?”

“Oh, no. At the airport.” Bebe leaned forward, her eyes wide. “I had to go pick up my niece, who is such a nice girl. And so smart. She had a scholarship to Johns Hopkins. You should meet her, Sean. She’d be perfect for you.”

“Uh huh. How about the rest of the story?”

“Well, I went to pick up my niece, and who do I see? That same woman from the park! Oh, she was trying to look different all right—her hair was a different color and she had a headscarf, a bandanna kind of thing, but that did not fool me.” Bebe, now the queen of scarf disguises, nodded sagely. “I recognized that trick, I’ll tell you.”

“You saw her at the airport,” Sean said patiently. “So she was leaving town. Which is good, right? If Dad was somehow mixed up with this woman, he’s not now, because she left town.”

“Oh, no, that’s the thing,” Bebe interrupted. “She wasn’t leaving. She was arriving.”

“I don’t get it. If she was already in Chicago, why was she arriving?”

“We don’t get it, either,” his mother said, patting his arm. “But that’s where you come in.”

He had a very bad feeling about this. And since Jake had just canceled out on the fishing trip, Sean didn’t really have a good excuse to duck and run, either.

“Sean, my sweet, adorable son,” Yvonne Calhoun murmured, putting her head on his shoulder, “we all know you have this…”

He knew what would be next.

“You have an uncanny knack for seeing the truth,” she finished. “Sean, you are practically psychic when it comes to these criminals and figuring them out. Disguises, deceptions, it’s nothing to you. You just see right through.”

Already feeling trapped, he asked, “What do you want me to do?”

His mother sat up straight, laying it out for him without mincing words. “Here’s the deal. Bebe saw her at the baggage pickup, she thought it was her so she followed her, she lost her again, but then she picked her out at the Help desk.”

“I spotted the headscarf,” Bebe said helpfully.

“So she got right in behind her at the Help desk and eavesdropped.”

“Wow, Bebe, maybe you should join the force,” Sean suggested, trying to keep the edge out of his voice. Keystone Kops on a stakeout.

“I know,” Bebe said with a smile. “I was pretty good, I’ll tell you.”

“And what did you hear when you eavesdropped?” he asked tersely, knowing he didn’t really want to know.

“She wanted to know how to get to…”

Sean bent closer, waiting for the word that would come at the end of the dramatic pause. “Where?”

“Champaign,” both women said at once.

“Downstate Champaign?” he asked doubtfully. “University of Illinois?”

“Exactly.” His mother sat back. “She caught a bus to go downstate to Champaign. So I want you to go there, too, and find this tart and figure out what she wants with your father.”

AS SEAN UNPACKED AT the Illini Union, he could feel himself begin to relax. A beautiful summer day. A nice hotel room overlooking the Quad on a serene, green college campus where most of the students were gone for the summer. And just about no chance in hell he would ever run into anything remotely connected to the bimbo in the hooker shoes his mother wanted him to find.

Okay, so he felt a little silly being on a wild-goose chase. But as long as he already knew it was a wild-goose chase, what difference did it make? He could hang out in Champaign-Urbana, enjoy himself for a few days, and then head back to town and tell his mother with a crystal-clear conscience that he had done what she’d asked and gee whiz, he just didn’t find hide nor hair of the woman she was looking for. Sounded like the easiest case he’d ever been assigned.

And, hey, accepting her crazy mission got him out of town, didn’t it? Out of town, away from his desk, away from Mom and her endless string of fix-ups, and away from the responsibility of baby-sitting Cooper at a fishing cabin for a week. Not so bad. Especially when it meant he was back in Champaign-Urbana, which struck him as a great place for a little R&R.

He’d gone to college here, and he had fond memories of pickup basketball games, excellent pizza, lousy beer and general irresponsibility. Good times.

After stowing his belongings, he didn’t waste any time, grabbing a bottle of water and quickly taking the stairs down to the ground floor of the Union. He planned to make a fast trip down memory lane to check out some of his old haunts and get his bearings. Then he would tool around town with the blonde’s picture, put out a few discreet inquiries, enough to truthfully say he’d done his duty, and get beyond that to the beer and pizza as soon as possible.

First, memory lane. Sean was actually smiling as he slid out the big white doors onto the Quad, feeling footloose and fancy-free for the first time in forever. That smile lasted approximately four minutes, which was as long as it took him to walk down the west side of the Quad, past a group of kids and a guide walking backward on a college orientation tour, and glance up at the auditorium looming ahead.