Bundle of Trouble

•CHAPTER NINE•

I awoke in a state of panic, drenched in sweat. I’d read that the body rids itself of extra fluids from pregnancy by sweating. What I didn’t know was if the sweating was from a postpartum symptom or from the frantic dream I’d just had about Michelle.

In the dream I’d been able to revive her. I’d asked her over and over again who had killed her. She’d clung to me, mute.

I glanced at the clock. Five A.M. Laurie and I had both finally drifted to sleep around midnight. Had she really slept five hours?

Was she alive? Panicked, I leaned over the bassinet and frantically put my hand on her tummy.

Her stomach rose slowly and evenly.

I studied her for a moment, her arms raised above her head, a gesture of pure abandonment.

Wait. Five A.M.? She was still asleep? I couldn’t believe it.

At the hospital they had instructed me to wake her for her night feeding if she slept through it.

Give me a break. Hadn’t they ever heard the adage “Never wake a sleeping baby”? No way was I going to do it. Forget it. If she slept through her feeding, she must not be hungry.

I lay back on my pillow. The sheets crunched as if made of potato chips. I held my breath. Laurie was still out.

I shook Jim. “Laurie’s been asleep for five hours!”

“Great,” he mumbled.

“Honey, she’s been asleep for five hours,” I repeated.

“You go to sleep, too.”

I suppose new moms need to learn how to sleep through the night also.

Closing my eyes, I tried to clear my mind. Visions of Michelle popped into my head again, crowding out all other thoughts. I tried to think about something else. Laurie. Yes. I’d think of Laurie. Sweet Laurie. Innocence. Pure life.

Suddenly my breasts started to leak, soaking my night-gown. Great. Way to go, Kate.

Hold out on the baby and you leak anyway. I may as well feed her, right? Either that or lie here wet and have nightmares.

The breast pump was in the corner of the bedroom. I could get up and learn to use that. I’d need to start stocking up on milk to cover Laurie during the hours I’d be at the office.

The office? Ugh. How much longer on my maternity leave? Three weeks.

Three weeks. Twenty-one days. Five hundred and four hours. Wait. It was already 5 A.M. So that meant four hundred ninety-nine hours.

I closed my eyes. How depressing.

Wasn’t there a way to stay home with Laurie? I mulled over the question, drifting off to sleep, forgetting to feed Laurie, use the pump, or stress over Michelle and George.

It was 9 A.M. Jim had left for the office hours ago. Laurie and I lay in bed, nursing. It seemed like we’d been nursing all morning. Making up for lost nutrition throughout the night.

I felt even more drained now than I had at 5 A.M. We were about to doze off when the doorbell rang. Laurie nodded off. I groaned. I put her into the bassinet and grabbed a robe. Who could it be at this time of day?

I stumbled to the front door and peered out the peephole. All I could see was a broad chest in a blue button shirt. Definitely not UPS.

“Who is it?”

“Investigator Galigani. Is Kate Connolly in?”

The police? What now? Shouldn’t he flash his badge at me or something? Was I getting overly paranoid?

“Where’s your badge?”

“I’m not with the police. I’m a private investigator.”

“Who hired you?”

He bent down to look through the peephole. I saw one green eye peering at me. I involuntarily pulled away.

“Mrs. Avery,” he said into the peephole.

“Mrs. Avery is dead,” I said.

The eye shifted. “Gloria Avery is dead?”

Who was Gloria?

I placed the chain lock on the door and opened it two inches.

Investigator Galigani was tall, dark, and not handsome. He had a huge black mustache on a very round face. He frowned at the chain, which only succeeded in making him look mean and angry.

“I don’t know who Gloria is,” I said. “I meant Michelle Avery is dead.”

“Ah.” His face softened a bit. “Are you Kate?”

I nodded.

“May I come in, ma’am?”

There was the “ma’am” again. I glanced down at my pale green terrycloth robe. No! Why did I have to get interrogated again? Especially looking like this.

“I’ve got a newborn. I’m really tired-”

“It’ll only take a minute.”

“How do I know that you are who you say you are?”

The ends of his mustache turned up. “Here’s my card.”

What did that prove? I let his card hang between his fingers. He wiggled it at me. I took it.

“Would you like to call Mrs. Avery?” he asked. “She’ll verify that she’s hired me.”

“Do you have a photo ID?”

His face broke apart with laughter. Mustache going one way, bottom lip the other way.

I tried not to be offended. “What good would it do if she says she hired ‘Galigani’ when all I have to prove that you’re Galigani is a business card?”

“You’re right. Here you go.” He opened his wallet and shoved his driver’s license at me. “This, too.” He dug into the wallet and pulled out a worn private investigator license from the State of California issued to Albert Galigani.

“What’s her number?”

His face registered surprise. “You’re actually going to call her?”

“I’m a new mom, my car’s been broken into twice, my brother-in-law is missing, and I found my friend dead yesterday. I can’t let a stranger into my house. What if you try to kill me?”

“If I was going to kill you, I could have done it through the crack in the door. But please, by all means, call Mrs. Avery.”

He was right. He could have already killed me.

I shut the door in his face. He rang the bell again. I ignored him, got out the phonebook.

Ah! Here was an instance where actually using the phonebook would be faster than an online lookup. Okay, so maybe the books were still good for something.

I found two numbers under Avery, Michelle’s and another one. I dialed the second one.

The doorbell rang again. Let him wait.

I got voice mail. Of course. No one answers their phone anymore. I left a message. Why couldn’t anything be easy? The bell rang yet again. I opened the door with the chain in place.

“Stop ringing the bell. You’re going to wake my baby.”

He looked contrite. “Sorry. Did you reach her?”

I rolled my eyes. “No. You’re going to have to come back after I hear from her.”

Now it was his turn to roll his eyes, tilting his head back in a huge dramatic gesture. “Listen, lady,” he said on an exhale. “I got a job to do. People are unsafe, like you said yourself. Your friend ended up dead. If someone killed her, it sure as hell wasn’t me. I’m one of the good guys.” He opened his hands in an imploring gesture. “I’m trying to get to the bottom of this.”

I chewed on my lower lip. I believed him. I’d believed him from the start. But the logical part of my brain told me I couldn’t just let strangers into my house.

When had I become fraidycat Kate?

“Don’t ring the bell again,” I warned. I shut the door. I dialed the number on Galigani’s card marked MOBILE.

I watched him through the peephole. He stood on my doorstep and waited, ignoring his ringing cell phone.

“Pick it up, it’s me,” I said, through the door.

He laughed and dug his phone out of a hip pocket. “Hello?”

“What do you want to know?”

“I just need a little info. You knew Brad Avery?”

“No. Just Michelle.”

He pulled a little notebook from his pocket; scraps of paper flew out of the back. I watched him pick up the slips of paper from my doorstep, bunch them up, and shove them into his pocket. “Michelle, huh? The second wife.”

There was a first? Was that Gloria?

“You found her dead?” he continued.

“How do you know that?”

The ends of his mustache went up. He looked toward the peephole. “It’s my job to know. Are you going to open the door?”

He was right. This was ridiculous. I hung up and opened the door.

I motioned him inside. He stepped forward cautiously, eyeing me up and down.

He visibly relaxed. “You know, I’m probably more frightened than you. You know who I am and what I’m doing here. I never know who I’m talking to. For all I know, you could be the murderer.”

I opened my mouth to defend myself, but he raised his hand in protest. “I know! I know! You’re going to say you’re not. Everyone says that. I don’t think you are anyway. The guilty ones are never paranoid. They want you to march right in and start asking questions. They like to think they’re so smart they can fool you. Hell, sometimes they do.”

I gestured toward the sofa, then shoved a pillow and a blanket to the side to make room for him. “Do you want coffee or anything?”

He shook his head and sat. “How did you know Michelle?”

“We went to high school together.”

I recounted for him the details of my finding Michelle dead. I left every single George reference out.

He tapped his notebook and squinted at me. “Why do I get the feeling you’re hiding something, Mrs. Connolly?”

I shrugged. If he wanted to know anything about George, let him ask me directly.

“Do you know anything about Michelle’s investments?”

I frowned. “Investments?”

What exactly was he getting at?

“I understand she and Brad owned a restaurant.”

I pressed my lips together to remind to myself to keep my trap shut about George. “Yup, that’s about what I know, too.”

“Ever been there before?”

“I ate lunch there day before yesterday. My car got broken into in front. I don’t think I’ll be going back.”

He scratched at his mustache. “You mentioned that earlier. Second time, huh?”

What had I said earlier?

“Something about your brother-in-law missing,” he continued.

Big-mouth Kate. “That’s right,” was the best I could muster. I closed my eyes, willing myself to focus. How much did this guy know or need to know?

Could he help us locate George?

“What do you charge?” I wondered out loud.

He squinted at me. “You want your husband followed or something?”

I looked down at my robe. “Do I look that bad?”

His face flushed. “Uh. . sorry. . that’s the most common thing people want to hire me for. Two hundred dollars an hour.”

I gagged. Obviously, I was in the wrong profession.

“You need help locating your brother-in-law?”

I stared at him.

Yes. The answer was yes. Yet I muttered, “Ummm. . not sure. .”

Galigani nodded. “You mind telling me where you were on June fifteenth?”

Was he serious? I studied his face. He studied me back.

“I honestly can’t remember. I could look it up on my calendar.”

“Please,” he said, not taking his eyes off me.

“All right,” I mumbled as I made my way toward my bedroom, where I kept my appointment calendar.

I grabbed the calendar and peeked in on Laurie. She was as still as a statue. I stood over her, waiting for any kind of movement.

Her foot twitched, followed by some shadow boxing. She settled down after a moment, still asleep.

I heard Galigani shuffling in the living room and quickly made my way back. I paged to June. “Ah yes!” I said. “June fifteenth. I knew it sounded familiar. Our friend Paula’s little boy, Danny, turned two. They had a party for him.”

“You went to the party?” Galigani asked.

“Of course.”

“Was your husband with you?”

My breath caught. I felt as though Galigani had hit me in the stomach with a baseball bat. “Jim and I were at the party all day. Together. Plenty of people saw us.”

What I didn’t tell Galigani was that Jim had left the party early. He had come down with a terrible sinus headache, which he gets at least once every summer when the pollen count is at its highest in San Francisco. Although Jim didn’t like leaving me unescorted, I had insisted he go home, but there was no reason for Galigani to know that.

“Hmmm,” Galigani murmured as he scratched his mustache. “Can I see that?” He gestured to my appointment book.

“Sure.” I handed Galigani my book, trying to act nonchalant. “I’ve even got the invite somewhere.” I reached over his hands and flipped to the back of my planner. Sure enough, Paula’s invite with a picture of a smiling Danny peeked out under the flap. I pulled out the invite. “It says noon to four, but we ended up staying longer. The party probably lasted until about six or seven, then people starting leaving, we stayed. Paula’s a close friend. We ordered Thai, watched a movie, and just sort of hung out. Her little boy went to sleep early, exhausted from the excitement of the party, the toys, the people. He kept banging a drum that he got-”

“Yeah, yeah, I know how two-year-old boys can be.”

“We probably left around eleven or so.” I was using the euphemistic “we” as in the yet unborn Laurie and me. Not a lie, exactly.

Omission. Okay, maybe a white lie.

His mustache twisted to the side, then he nodded. “Your alibi appears iron tight. Mind if I take down your friend’s address and number?”

With Paula in France, even if Galigani went to her place, he wouldn’t find her home. That would buy me a little time to get to her before he did.

I handed him the invite. “No problem. But why? I mean, Jim and I didn’t even know Brad Avery.”

He jotted the address down. “I understand, ma’am. There are just a few things I need to check out. Your husband’s at work today?”

I felt acid churn in my stomach. “Yes.”

“And where’s that, ma’am?”

“Fortena and Associates, downtown. He’s an ad executive.”

Galigani nodded, making his way toward the front door, “Thanks for your time.”

I stopped him with a question, “What about yesterday?”

“Excuse me?”

“Don’t you want to know where Jim and I were yesterday, you know, when Michelle was killed?”

“I’m only being paid to investigate Mr. Avery’s murder.”

“Don’t you think they’re connected?”

He waved his hands around, palms up. “Maybe, but I’m only being paid to investigate Mr. Avery’s murder,” he repeated.