C.J. Carmichael - Her Better Half

He shrugged. “If you say so.”

As soon as he’d moved on to give our orders to the kitchen, Erin squeezed my arm. “So? Are you excited?”

My stomach started up with the gyrations again.

“Your first stakeout.” Erin sounded like a proud mother. “I remember my first time. It was kind of a letdown to tell you the truth.”

“Must have been with the wrong guy,” Murphy said, returning to his position behind the counter.

“Oh shut up and cook eggs or something. For your information we weren’t talking about sex.”

The guy next to Erin was openly staring now. Erin turned her back to him.

“Um.” I leaned in close to her so I wouldn’t be overheard. “What is our assignment, exactly?” Erin had been very sketchy with details up to this point.

“It’s a simple adultery case.”

Oh, really? Simple adultery. As compared to what…complicated adultery? I wondered if I would ever take this work as cavalierly as Erin appeared to.

I took another sip of my coffee and it was all I could do not to make a face. It was so bitter and sharp compared to the lattes I preferred. How did Erin drink such quantities of this stuff? Still, I supposed I’d better get used to it. On my budget I could no longer afford Starbucks. “So what do I do?”

Erin removed an envelope from the canvas pack she’d been carrying. “Sherry Frampton hired me a week ago. She thinks her husband’s been cheating on her and she wants us to prove it. I’ve got all the background information in here, but what I want you to focus on is the photograph of her husband. You need to get to know that picture. In the dark it can be hard to make sure you’ve got the right man.”

I studied the candid shot of a nice, ordinary-looking man in a suit. He was probably in his late thirties, clean-shaven, with brown hair.

“We’re going to hang out at the home of his suspected girlfriend. If he shows up, we shoot some video. It’s not complicated.”

Was she kidding? I searched her expression for a hint of humor, but Erin really seemed to think this was all humdrum stuff.

Murphy arrived with the food. “Eat every bite,” he admonished Erin, before leaving to serve another customer.

Here was advice that I agreed with. Erin was far too thin. Yet, she tucked into the sandwich with what seemed to be a healthy appetite.

I compared her plate to mine and too late I realized I’d made a mistake with the BLT. I’d never seen anything that looked as limp and greasy.

“So how do we do this?” I asked.

“Just pick it up and eat it. No fancy table manners required at Murphy’s.”

“No, I meant the stakeout. What do we do if a neighbor notices us hanging around?” They could call the police, and what would we do then?

“Neighbors are pretty clueless as a rule. But if they do go so far as to phone in a complaint, I’ll handle the cops, no problem.” She cut into her sandwich then looked at me. “You aren’t eating.”

I nibbled at the tasteless white bread, fried with too much grease, not enough heat. Would it have killed the produce budget to add a thicker slice of tomato? I fought the urge to spit the food back onto the plate.

“Try some of this, honey.” Erin pushed the ketchup bottle closer. “And next time you might want to order the steak sandwich.”

“But I don’t eat red meat.”

Erin looked at me as if I was nuts. Then she snapped her fingers. “Ah. Because of Gary?”

“Well, actually…” I hated to admit it…. “Sort of.” Eliminating red meat from the family’s diet was the one concession I’d made when Gary had started demanding the family eat vegetarian.

Though I had to admit, the steak sandwich looked good. Or it would if I weren’t so darn worried about my job.

“Are you sure I can do this, Erin?”

“You’re talking about the job, right? Not the sandwich?”

“Right.”

Erin put a hand on my arm. “You can do it. The hardest part is going for hours without peeing. You might want to consider bringing an empty plastic ice-cream container, just in case.”

N ine hours later, I met Erin back at Murphy’s Grill. Shelley was spending the night at our place, with Devin and Jamie sharing babysitting responsibilities. Per Erin’s instructions, I had brought a large insulated travel mug, but no ice-cream pail. I was hoping Erin had been joking about that. I placed my cup on the counter next to Erin’s and watched as Murphy emptied the coffeepot into both of them.

Given the lack of washroom facilities, as previously outlined by Erin, I wasn’t sure the super-sized coffees were such a great idea. But Erin seemed to think a person could never get enough of Murphy’s coffee.

Even as I had that thought, Murphy’s dark brown eyes settled on me. “Want room for cream?”

“Oh, yes. Lots of room, please.”

Murphy paused, looked at me intently, then turned to Erin. “She has nice manners.”

Erin seemed oddly proud. “Didn’t I tell you?”

“What’s going on with you two? Is it a crime to say please in this neighborhood?”

Erin ignored my question, just pushed the cream pitcher my way. “Okay, we’re set. Let’s make tracks.”

Although it was dark outside, the temperature was still hot, the early August air oppressively muggy. I slipped into the passenger seat of Erin’s Toyota and had no sooner inserted my mug into one of the cup holders than Erin handed me a package of batteries.

“Put those in the glove compartment, would you? Nothing worse than running out of batteries at just the wrong moment.”

I unlatched the glove compartment. A flashlight rolled out to the floor. I groped in the dark, found it, then jammed everything back into place.

Erin already had the car in motion. She U-turned at the next intersection, now heading east on Dupont. The street was narrow with cars parked solidly on both sides—even at this time of night. I kept expecting us to clip off a few side mirrors, but Erin knew what she was doing.

“Okay, here’s a little background,” Erin said. “Our client, Sherry, is a big-shot VP at one of the downtown banks and travels to New York a lot.”

“She’s there now?” I guessed.

“Yup. Left this morning. She’s been worried for some time that her husband, Martin, has been sneaking around on her.”

“Did she try asking him?”

Erin gave me a pitying look, as if she couldn’t believe anyone could be so naive. “He denied it. Told Sherry he still loves her. But Sherry’s pretty sure it’s her six-figure income he’s really crazy about.”

Erin turned left on Spadina and as we passed Casa Loma, I peered out the window at the grand stone structure. “When the girls were little they used to love visiting this place.”

“Yeah? I’ll have to take Shelley sometime.”

I was surprised Erin hadn’t already done so, especially since the castle was close to where she lived. But then I thought about the admission rates, and the fact that Erin worked two jobs as well as looked after her daughter on her own.

We were now in the Forest Hill neighborhood, driving along winding roads bordered by majestic trees and gracious stone and brick mansions. Devin and Jamie’s school was just up the way on Avenue Road, but Erin kept to the side streets. This was one of the few neighborhoods in Toronto that rivaled Rosedale, and I gazed out the window longingly.

“Nice, huh?” Erin said.

“Oh, yes.” I wondered if Erin would be surprised to find out that until recently my girls and I had lived in a home just as splendid as these. We’d had so much, and now we had…

Enough. We had enough. I had to stop whining, even if it was just to myself.

“Where are we headed?” I checked out a street sign as we cruised slowly through the next intersection.