"Gischler, Victor - Conner Samson - Velvet Clinch" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gischler Victor)

= Velvet Clinch
A Conner Samson story
by Victor Gischler


I was in the bushes outside Tad Hanson's fancy bay-front home when the cell phone rang. I fumbled to answer before the racket had the dogs on me. I didn't know for sure there were dogs, but with my luck....

I thought I'd set the thing on vibrate, but it wasn't my phone and I wasn't good with all the buttons yet. I'd taken the phone off a pimp named Cooper Stone whom everyone called Dr. Coop. He'd probably cancel the service when he got out of the hospital, but until then I could make free calls.

I flipped open the phone Captain Kirk style and said, "Flick's Bar & Grill, Flick speaking." This was a lie. I wasn't Flick. I was, in fact, Conner Samson, private investigator. But it was Billy Noonan on the other end of the line and he knew it was really me, so it was okay.

"Conner," said Billy. "I'm outside Hanson's office. He ain't budged. It's been like an hour."

"Keep watching." I hung up. I fiddled with the buttons again and was pretty sure this time I had it on vibrate.

Strange. His secretary was long gone. I know because I followed her from the office to Hanson's house, where she'd let herself in with a key.

But if Hanson was pronging his secretary, why would he do something as stupid as have the affair at his house? And why would he send curvy Gloria on ahead and keep her waiting for an hour? Maybe the wife had been wrong.

In my head, I replayed the conversation I'd had with Mrs. Hanson just two days before.

* * *

"You come with high marks, Mr. Samson," said Myrna Hanson. "A friend of mine used you for a divorce. Do you remember that business with the dentist and the theater student?"

"I remember." I paced her living room, let her do the talking.

She leaned back in her chair, folded her hands over her knees, her tennis outfit showing muscled legs and tan. Myrna Hanson was doing just fine for forty-one, but some men will go on the hunt no matter what's waiting at home. She told me as much and said she strongly suspected her husband's secretary Gloria.

"Why her?" I asked.

"Isn't it always the secretary?"

"Not always."

Myrna shrugged. "It's little things, I guess. The way she's so familiar with him. They do a lot of work here at the house, and I don't like her. She's just a little too at home."

"Anything else?"

"I found one of her cigarettes, a Virginia Slim, in an ashtray yesterday. I casually asked Tad if she'd been over working, and he said she hadn't."

"It might've been old. You said she spent time here."

"Maybe. But then I'd need to fire my cleaning woman. She's in every morning."

I told her what I charged and said I needed two days' pay in advance. She wrote me a check and said she'd expect to hear from me soon. I looked at the check, shuffled awkwardly.

She raised an eyebrow. "Did I fill it out wrong?"

"No." I folded the check, stashed it in my shirt pocket. "I just need to know what kind of report you want. Do you just want me to tell you if he's cheating? Or do you want...details?"