Creep - Jennifer Hillier [81]
His son stood up. “I should get going. I have to see that apartment in half an hour. It’s downtown, near the fish market. You still make a mean grilled salmon? If I get the apartment, you should come over, show me your secret recipe.”
Morris resisted the urge to rumple Randall’s hair. He wasn’t a kid anymore. “You bet,” he said instead. “What about football? You still play?”
“Not since I left Stanford. You?”
“Does it look like it?” Morris rubbed his belly and grinned. “Nah. Knees are shot. Not even a weekend warrior anymore.”
“I can’t remember the last time I saw a game.”
“I have Seahawks season tickets. What are you doing next Sunday?”
“Going to the game with you.”
For only the second time in six years, Morris embraced his son. “I’m glad you stopped by.” Morris’s voice was choked with emotion. “And that you’re doing so well, despite all the things I put you through as a kid. You deserved a much better father than you got.”
“It’s okay, Dad.” Randall’s voice cracked, too. “It was my choice to disappear. But we can deal with it later. I just want to move forward.”
Morris waved as his son drove off in the dented Jeep, feeling the best he’d had in weeks. Then he headed back into the house to call Jerry Isaac.
Happy day or not, who the hell was Tom Young?
CHAPTER : 28
Jerry had some information of his own to share with Morris.
The two men met for lunch at the Golden Monkey, a dive in the heart of the International District that was cheap and funky smelling even going by dive Chinese-restaurant standards. The place was packed. Men and women in business suits filled the room, happy to take advantage of the lunch specials.
“I love this place,” Jerry crowed, digging into a small plate of Cantonese chow mein. “It closed down last summer due to health-code violations, but it just reopened. Thank God.” Using his chopsticks, he scooped up a mouthful of noodles and chewed contentedly.
“Was it necessary to tell me that?” Morris stirred his wonton soup and suddenly wondered if the wontons were really wontons. His mind flashed back to the scene in the second Indiana Jones movie where the queasy actress asked for soup and they brought her a big bowl of steaming eyeballs.
Jerry belly-laughed. “I’m kidding. Really. The food here’s excellent. I know the owners.”
“I’m glad they put their money into the food, since they obviously don’t spend it on the décor.” Morris looked around dubiously at the peeling wallpaper and dusty window ledges. Sheila was Chinese, and she would have hated it here. But he took a spoonful of soup, not wanting to be impolite. He was surprised by how good it was.
Jerry leaned forward. “So, I thought you’d like to know that my friend was able to hack into your fiancée’s computer.”
Morris stopped eating. “And?”
“We found some interesting things in there.”
“Like what?” Morris couldn’t meet Jerry’s gaze.
The private investigator took another mouthful of noodles, then put his chopsticks down. “Did you know that Sheila was a member of an online dating service called Montgomery’s Den?”
Morris let out a breath. “No, I didn’t.”
“It’s geared specifically to married or ‘attached’ adults. In fact, you can’t sign up for it unless you declare that you are married or have a full-time live-in partner.” Jerry sipped his tea, looking uncomfortable. “The point of it is to meet people for sex.”
Morris slumped back in the stained upholstered chair. “So it’s a site that helps married people cheat?”
“Exactly. And it’s popular because it preaches discretion. The people you meet on the site would never rat you out because they don’t want to be caught themselves.”
“Fantastic. Where was this fifteen years ago when I was thinking of cheating on my wife?”
Jerry snorted. “Gotta love technology. Anyway, we were able to get into Sheila’s account. My friend has a password-retrieval program. It seems she was quite active until about three years ago. Almost nothing since.”
Morris put his spoon down, his appetite gone.
Jerry looked sympathetic. He took another bite of his noodles