That Makes Two of Us novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Retainer
Leona serves a cheating husband mid-toast, then takes the biggest case of her life from a chairman who wants his unknown wife divorced in five weeks; the witness line on the license is in her grandfather's handwriting.
The best man was halfway through his toast when I walked up to the head table.
"To the man of the hour," he said, holding his glass high. "The most loyal husband in Maryland."
Forty people laughed and clinked their glasses.
I set a manila envelope next to the husband's bread plate.
"Sir," I said. "You've been served."
The laughter died one table at a time.
The husband looked at the envelope and then at me. "Who the hell are you?"
"Leona Finley. I work for your wife."
His wife sat at the far end of the table in a green dress, very straight, with her hands folded in her lap.
She had hired us nine days ago, and she hadn't cried once.
"This is a private dinner," he said.
"It was private when you booked the room under your mother's name," I said. "It stopped being private when you brought her."
I pointed at the woman in red sitting at his right hand.
She was wearing a diamond bracelet that his wife had never seen.
The woman in red put both hands under the table.
"Photos are in the envelope," I said. "So are the hotel receipts and the lease on the apartment in Fells Point."
He stood up so fast his chair fell over.
"You can't do this here."
"The law says I can hand it to you wherever I find you," I said. "You were easy to find."
His wife stood next to me and picked up her glass of wine.
She poured it slowly over his plate.
Then she walked out, and nobody at that table said a word.
I followed her to the elevator and handed her a card with Gordy's number on it.
"Call him Monday," I said. "He's good at the next part."
She nodded and rode down alone.
My phone buzzed on the walk back to the office.
It was Gordy, and he didn't say hello.
"Where are you?"
"Walking. The husband is served and his wife threw a pinot at him."
"Good. Get back here. We have a visitor."
"At ten at night?"
"Kid, he's got a car outside that costs more than my building."
I started walking faster.
Davenport Investigations is two rooms above a tax preparer on Eastern Avenue.
Gordy was in the outer room with his bad knee up on a chair.
Across from him, in the only good armchair, sat a man.
He was huge.
He had broad shoulders under a charcoal suit, black hair swept back with grey at the temples, and a neat black beard.
He looked at me for exactly as long as it took to decide I would do.
"Ms. Finley," he said. "Colton Thayne."
I knew the name the way everyone in Baltimore knows it.
Thayne Harbor Holdings owned half the cranes and warehouses on the water.
His face had been on the business page twice that month.
"Mr. Thayne," I said. "You're a long way from the harbor."
"I need someone who finds people," he said. "Mr. Davenport says you're the one who doesn't give up."
"Mr. Davenport says a lot of things when someone's paying for the coffee."
Gordy lifted his cup at me.
Thayne didn't smile.
"I'm engaged to be engaged," he said. "There's a party on the twenty-ninth of November."
"Congratulations."
"There's a problem. I'm already married."
I kept my face still, which is the first thing they teach you.
"To someone else," I said.
"To someone I've never met."
He took a folded paper from inside his jacket and laid it on Gordy's desk.
"Seven years ago my grandfather was dying. His lawyer put a stack of estate papers in front of me. One page was marked as a proxy authorization. I signed it from Singapore without reading the fine print."
"And?"
"It was a marriage license. Last month, the same lawyer found it in a county file."
Gordy whistled low.
"The county recorded it," Thayne said. "As far as Maryland is concerned, I've had a wife for seven years."
"Who is she?" I asked.
"That's why you're here."
He tapped the paper.
"The name is Lenore Finlay. I don't know her age, her face, or where she lives. I want her found quietly. I want her to sign divorce papers before the twenty-ninth."
"Why quietly?"
"Because the people I'm merging with would pull out if they heard I was married to a stranger. And because she might have been in on this."
"On what?"
"My grandfather was dying and rich. A woman who gets married to his grandson in a hospice room is not a woman I assume is innocent."
"What are you offering?" I said.
"Five thousand a week while you work. One hundred and twenty thousand dollars on a signed divorce."
Gordy put his coffee down.
That was more than the office cleared in a year.
"Five weeks," I said.
He pushed the paper toward me.
I picked it up.
It was a photocopy of a county license, grey and smudged.
The groom's name was printed as "Walter C. Thayne."
The bride's name was "Lenore A. Finlay."
There was an officiant's signature, a date, and a county stamp.
At the bottom was a line marked "Witness."
Someone had signed it with a slanted capital F and a long tail on the y.
I looked at it for a long time.
I knew that hand.
It had signed my report cards and every birthday card I had ever opened.
The witness had written his name as "Finley."
And the date on the license was the week my grandfather died.
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