Renee Pawlish - Reed Ferguson 05 - Out of the Past by Renee Pawlish

Author:Renee Pawlish [Pawlish, Renee]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery: Crime Noir - Humor - P.I. - Colorado
ISBN: 2940046266429
Publisher: Renee Pawlish
Published: 2014-04-11T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Tuesday morning I awoke to the sound of my phone ringing. I shook myself awake, feeling groggy and sore, then answered the phone. And sure enough, because I was dazed and out of sorts, it was my mother. I swear she had some kind of motherly radar that detected when I’d been in danger.

“Hello, dear,” she said in her ever-cheery voice. “How are you? You sound tired. You keep telling me you’re not doing drugs, but when you sound like, well, how you sound now, what am I supposed to think?”

My mother has three worries where I’m concerned: that I’m doing drugs; that I’m in permanent danger because of my job; and that I’ll die unmarried, never having given her grandchildren. And so I teased her relentlessly about those concerns.

“I was doing drugs all last night, Mother, it was great. You should’ve been here.”

“Don’t be fresh, dear.” She sniffed, her way of showing scorn for my humor.

In the past, I’d tried to gloss over my befuddled state, but that only seemed to worry her more, so this time I tried a different tack. “I’m on a case, and I got hit over the head last night. I’ve got a concussion.” I left out that I’d been in a gunfight. No way she needed to know that.

“I wish you would choose a better profession, like that investment firm. I don’t know why you didn’t stick with that.”

I sat up, suddenly alert. “Why are you bringing that up?” She hadn’t mentioned Chancellor Finance in years, so why was she now?

“I got the funniest call a week or so ago, someone asking about Chancellor Finance and what you did for them.”

“Who was it?”

“He didn’t say. Forgive me, dear, but I bragged about you.”

“Mother…”

“You did such a fine job for them. I still don’t understand why you all shut the firm down.”

“It’s complicated.”

“That’s what you said then. Anyway, I wanted to catch up with you…”

And so we chatted for a little bit, and I got all the news on how she and my father were doing in sunny Florida. When we finished, I sat on the edge of the bed, thinking about what she’d said. Someone had called her about Chancellor Finance, and I’ll bet it was Forrest McMahon’s people. They wouldn’t have found out anything from my mother, but it was unsettling that they had contacted her. I knew Cal would be researching McMahon, but I made a mental note to do some more myself. I needed to know how he knew about Chancellor Finance because I didn’t want him, or anyone, to blackmail me again. But there was something else I needed to do first: figure out who exactly was after Stephanie.

I got dressed and gingerly combed my hair, noting that the cut on the back of my head still hurt, and then I headed over to Stephanie’s condo.

I’d done something I shouldn’t have last night at the hospital: while I was waiting in Stephanie’s room, I’d taken her keys from a bag with her clothes in it.

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