Monument to Murder - Margaret Truman [3]
“I’ll need some up-front,” he said.
“Will a thousand be sufficient?”
He caught a small smile on Cynthia’s face. “Yeah, a thousand will be fine. You can trust me. I’ll give an honest accounting of my time and expenses.”
“Yes, I’m sure you will.”
“By the way, Mrs. Watkins, what brought you to me? There are bigger investigative agencies in Savannah.”
She stood and ran her hands over the front of her dress. “I don’t think I’d be comfortable with a larger agency,” she said. “I’m sure they have more-important cases to look into.”
He didn’t take it as a put-down.
“You aren’t from Savannah, are you?”
“No, ma’am, I’m not. I came here from Washington, D.C. I was born in Brooklyn.”
“I knew that from the way you talk.”
“I never got around to picking up a drawl.”
“When can you start on my case?”
“Well, I’ve got a couple of others I’m in the process of wrapping up but I’ll get to it as soon as I can.”
Cynthia’s raised eyebrows chastised him for stretching the truth.
“Cynthia will take down all your contact information in case I have to reach you,” he said. “And there’s a short retainer agreement for you to sign. Simple. You can bail out anytime—and so can I. I’ll be in touch.”
CHAPTER 2
Brixton did what he usually did after a new client left—he asked Cynthia for her take. Cynthia Higgins was savvy, with an antenna that picked up on subtleties Brixton sometimes missed. She’d been working for him since he started his private investigative agency four years ago, and not only had an uncanny talent for cutting through BS, she also put up with him. On top of that, he appreciated that she was a splendid-looking female, rounded where she was supposed to be, with an open face, a high-octane smile, and a mane of blond curls. She prettied up what was basically a drab office, which saved him the expense of buying decorative things. Her husband, Jim, worked for a company that conducted ghost tours of Savannah. Savannah is known as the most haunted city in America. Brixton wasn’t sure whether he believed in ghosts but kept an open mind.
“A nice lady,” Cynthia responded, “but I’m not sure what she wants you to do, find out who murdered her daughter or identify who the kid took the fall for.”
“Seems to me she’s more interested in finding who paid the daughter off than who killed her.”
“Maybe one and the same. Sounds like an archaeological dig you’re going on, sixteen years since she was murdered, twenty years since she went to prison. Lots a’ luck.”
Brixton endorsed the thousand-dollar check Mrs. Watkins had written and asked Cynthia to deposit it. “I’ll be back in a few minutes,” he said.
He paused in the hallway to look at the new sign he’d had installed on the door to his office “suite”—ROBERT R. BRIXTON, PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR. Many people called him Bobby, which annoyed him. “Bobby” was okay in high school, but it was no name for a grown man, any more than calling the lady he occasionally slept with his “girlfriend.” He was too old to have a girlfriend, and he hated “significant other.” He referred to her as “Flo” because that was her name.
He puffed away on the street and pondered the meeting he’d just come from. Mrs. Louise Watkins had handed him a formidable challenge. The Savannah PD hadn’t been able to solve her daughter’s murder and probably hadn’t tried very hard. Ex-cons with a history of drug addiction and turning tricks never ranked high on the priority list. Brixton didn’t see how he could do any better. As for the daughter having been paid off to go to prison on someone else’s behalf, any chance of coming up with that other person was zilch at best, since the answer had been buried with the kid. But he’d