C.J. Carmichael - Her Better Half

Erin recited the address.

“Martin’s girlfriend must be well-off to live there.”

“She should be. She’s Sherry’s boss.”

“Her boss?”

Erin grinned, her crooked teeth gleaming in the light from the dash. “Kinky, isn’t it?”

Now I really felt sorry for Sherry. Not only was her husband cheating on her, but so was her boss. Not that it was technically cheating in the boss’s case, but it was certainly a betrayal.

Erin took her foot off the gas. “Here’s the house.”

It was a classic Tudor home, with lovely English-garden-styled landscaping.

“I scoped out the neighborhood earlier. We can park down the block. The people who live there have teens. Cars are always coming and going.”

Erin pulled into a vacant space, opened her window a few inches, then motioned for me to do the same. “I know it’s hot, but we can’t run the air-conditioning. It’ll look too suspicious.”

“And two women sitting in a parked car won’t?”

“You notice I picked a spot between streetlights. We’re in the shadows here. Now, just recline your seat—” as she spoke, Erin demonstrated “—and no one will even see we’re here.”

There were all sorts of tricks to this game, I realized. “Are we sure Martin is going to show up tonight?”

“No.”

That was disappointing. “What if he doesn’t?”

“Then we come back tomorrow. Then the next night and the next.”

“Sounds…boring.”

Erin’s grin flashed again. “Now you know why we needed the coffee. Without it, I’d fall asleep in the first hour.”

“Good point.”

“Can you pass me the camera? It’s at your feet.”

I found the vinyl bag and handed it over. “Is he here?” A car had just driven by, but though it had seemed to slow a little, it hadn’t stopped.

“Nah, I’m just getting prepared. Nothing bums me out more than waiting for hours, then missing the shot when something finally does happen.”

I watched as Erin turned on the power, then inserted a fresh cassette into the machine. Funny how comfortable I felt, sitting in this car with a woman I’d known for only a week. Usually it took me a while to warm up to strangers. Yet, I’d confided the details of my marriage breakup to Erin within an hour of meeting her.

“You’ve heard my life story, but I know hardly anything about you. Have you lived in Toronto long?”

“All my life—just like you. Well, maybe not just like you. My mom had a house in the Beaches—that was before the yuppies declared the place trendy and drove up the real-estate prices.”

“Must have been a fun place to be a kid.” I had enjoyed taking the girls to the Beaches when they were little. We’d stroll along the boardwalk on the shore of Lake Ontario, then walk up to Queen Street for an ice-cream cone and a little window-shopping.

“It was fun, yeah, until my mother remarried.”

I noted the injection of coolness into her tone. “You didn’t like your stepfather?”

“You could say that. I beat it out of there as soon as I could land a job. After that, it was sort of my policy to make the stupidest choices I could possibly make.”

All the while she’d been talking, Erin had been carefully scanning the road, passing cars and the occasional pedestrian. Now she let her gaze settle on mine for a second. “You name it, I’ve probably done it. The one good piece of luck I had is that I was never arrested. I wouldn’t have been able to get my P.I. license if I had a record.”

I wondered if I’d ever met anyone more unlike myself than Erin. You name it, I hadn’t done it. I’d even refused to try marijuana when I was in college.

But then, so had Gary. We’d been such a straight couple. I’d thought that was one of the things that made us so perfect for each other. But perhaps our lack of adventurousness when we were younger was exactly why Gary was rebelling now.

Wait. I was thinking about Gary, and about our failed relationship again. I was supposed to stop doing that.

There was something else I wanted to ask Erin about. “How long have you known Murphy?”

“I met him the night I moved into the neighborhood, when Shelley was still a baby. After an exhausting day of moving I couldn’t believe it when she wouldn’t settle for the night. By midnight I was almost crazy. She just wouldn’t stop crying.”

“Colic?”

“Or something. Anyway, I was almost out of my mind and I decided, to hell with the breast-feeding rules, I needed coffee. I didn’t have any in the house so I went to Murphy’s. You have to understand that when I walked into that diner, the kid was yelling at the top of her lungs. I expected to be kicked out onto the street.”

“But Murphy didn’t kick you out.”

“Nah. He poured me a cup of coffee, then came out from behind the counter and took Shelley into his arms. Damned if he didn’t hold her right, too, supporting her head and all of that. The little monster had the nerve to shut right up. I kidded Murphy it was because she was scared, but she wasn’t. She took to him on sight.”

Erin shook her head, as if it defied belief, and I had to admit, Murphy did not seem like the nurturing sort. Still I wasn’t surprised to find out that Murphy had a softer side. When he looked at Erin, it was clear that he cared about her.

“Are you and Murphy…?”

Erin’s eyes widened. “No way. Not that I don’t like the guy, you understand. It’s just that by the time Shelley came into my life, I’d had enough of men. It’s always been just the two of us, and that’s how I want to keep things.”

“But don’t you ever—” I stopped talking as Erin lifted a finger to her lips.

“Shh.” She turned the key to the auxiliary position, then lowered her window all the way down. As she did this, a dark sedan in front of us began to slow. The driver parked his car a discreet distance from Sherry’s boss’s place, then stepped out.

I scrunched as low in my seat as I could manage while still keeping an eye on the street. My heart was pounding so madly it was as if I was the one who was doing something wrong here, not Martin. I wondered if I would ever be able to do this job without feeling like a criminal.

The man we were pretty sure was Martin looked up and down the street. I was scared to death that he would spot us, but he seemed to find nothing amiss. He pocketed his keys then walked jauntily along the sidewalk headed for the Tudor house.

As he stepped under a street lamp, I got a clear view of his face. It was definitely Martin. Beside me, Erin switched on the camera and began training it on him.

Good thing Erin had remembered. I’d been so on edge, I hadn’t even thought about the need to shoot video.

But, disappointingly, there wasn’t much to capture on film. The front door opened and I caught only the briefest glimpse of a woman before Martin slipped inside and the door shut tightly again.

“Well, that was useless.” So Martin had gone inside the house. We couldn’t even prove he’d been met at the door by Sherry’s boss. “Are you sure we shouldn’t try and get some footage of the bedroom?”

Erin powered the camera off and returned it to the vinyl case. “Aside from the fact that the bedrooms are on the second story and I’m lousy at climbing trees, we probably won’t need to. This camera prints the date and time of the footage. Let Martin try and explain why he was at this house so late on a Wednesday night.”

“That is suspicious on its own right,” I had to agree.

“Besides, we might get lucky when they’re done. Usually cheaters are pretty cautious at the beginning of a date. But I’ve often caught a good hot kiss on the doorstep around midnight when they don’t think anyone will be in sight.”