‘Come on what?’ If possible, Tucker Clancy sounded more outraged.
‘She wasn’t a virgin,’ Mary Clancy insisted calmly. ‘She’d been dating that Todd for at least a year.’
‘Dating, yes. But that doesn’t mean …’
Tucker Clancy’s wife gave him a pitying look. ‘It doesn’t do any good yelling about it, honey,’ Mary persisted. ‘If Mr Williams has found a suspect, or even a motive for someone to want to hurt Charlie, that’s progress. Especially if Missing have been keeping things from us – although I can’t imagine why they would have.’
‘Like hell it’s progress!’ Tucker Clancy roared, banging his fist on the table and getting to his feet. ‘It’s bullshit is what it is. You’re fired,’ he told Williams. ‘And I expect a full rebate for the additional week we paid you for, seeing as you managed to get yourself booted out of the goddamn country. Come on, Mary.’
With an apologetic look, his wife followed him out of Williams’ office.
A few minutes later, Williams’ own wife came in.
Thank God I got married, Williams thought, admiring Lorraine’s curvaceous bosom under her tight lemon
yellow sweater, the baby-bulge beginning to show in the pencil skirt that clung to her ass like saran wrap over a pair of peaches. It made it easier to bear the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune – in this case getting fired for doing exactly what you’d been hired to do – when you knew somebody had your back. Life was better as a team. Maybe later he’d take that trip to the doctor after all. And afterwards Lorraine could tend to his bruises and tell him how much she loved him and comfort him the way that only a woman could …
‘What the hell, Derek?’ Her waspish tone put an end to his fantasy like a pin in a balloon. ‘They fired you! We needed that money. Do you know how many paying clients I turned away so you could run off to Mexico for those bozos? And now you’re out?’
She made it sound like it was his fault.
‘I did a damn good job in Mexico,’ he shot back angrily. ‘A little support might be nice, Lorraine, especially after this.’ He pointed to his swollen face, the black eye and distended cheek making him look like a boxer who’d lost a title fight.
But Lorraine was unrelenting.
‘It was bad business. I told you that from the moment they walked in the door.’
‘Oh yeah? Well, that’s too bad. Because it ain’t over,’ said Williams, finally losing his temper. ‘I’m gonna find out what happened to Charlotte Clancy if it’s the last thing I do. Whoever’s protecting this lover of hers, this American, thinks they’ve won. But they’ve got another think coming. And so has Mrs Baden, if she thinks she can keep hiding from me.’
‘Is that a fact? Well, so have you, Derek Williams, if you think I’m going to stay married to a man who refuses to provide for his family and insists on throwing good money after bad. You think about that while you’re off on your wild goose chase.’
And with that she stormed off, slamming the door behind her.
Six beers later, the barmaid at Luca’s was a lot more understanding.
‘I think it’s great that you care about finding this girl, sweetie. I totally get it.’
‘I mean someone should care, right?’ Williams slurred, his eyes mesmerized by the steady rise and fall of the barmaid’s breasts. ‘Her ol’ man’s living in cloud cuckoo land. Doesssn’t wanna hear the truth.’
‘I hear ya,’ the girl said, refilling his glass.
‘And my wife … my so-called wife … ish all about money. All about the Benjamins.’
‘That’s too bad.’
Williams gazed morosely into his glass. He was at the stage of drunkenness where time lost all meaning, and the minutes and hours flew by, indistinguishable from one another. He wasn’t sure when, exactly, the red-headed man had sat down beside him or when he’d started talking. But at some point the guy was grabbing him painfully by the shoulders and squaring up to him like he was gonna hit him or something.
‘Now you listen to me, you fat moron,’ the man told Williams. ‘Back off the Clancy case or you’ll regret it.’
Belatedly, Williams shrugged him off, raising his own fists in a rather disoriented show of defiance.
‘I’ll regret it, will I? Says who?’ He jabbed the man in the chest with an angry finger.
‘Says the professionals.’ The redhead pulled out his badge and flashed his gun.
‘You call the FBI professional?’ Williams scoffed. ‘Don’t make me laugh.’
‘I mean it, Williams, you’re an amateur and you’re way out of your depth. You don’t know what you’re doing.’