Tracy Hayes, Apprentice PI

Chapter Five

Ten minutes later we were back in Jackson's car. I was dressed in my jeans I'd forgotten at my parents' and one of Mom's T-shirts - I couldn't very well go on an assignment in my waitressing uniform - and armed with a thermos of coffee and sandwiches Mother had made us. Jackson eyed them with delight.

"It's nice to have someone looking after you."

That sounded lonely. "If only they wouldn't meddle with my life otherwise."

"You can't cherry pick with families," he said mildly, but I detected a bitter undertone. He probably hadn't had a nice childhood if he'd been on a path to juvie. I really wanted to pry, but I'd only just met him.

I'd ask Travis.

"What's the job?" I asked instead.

"A husband thinks his wife is having multiple affairs while he's gone, so I'm keeping an eye on their house."

"Multiple, huh? What happened to regular affairs?"

Jackson smiled. "So far I haven't seen any men go into the house, and this is the second time the husband's been away from town. I'm beginning to think he's imagining the whole thing."

Our target was one street over and a half a street down from my parents', and I knew the house well. A grandfather of a friend of mine had lived there before he'd moved to Florida a couple of years ago, when house prices started to rise in this area. It was narrower than my parents' house and painted red in a past so distant it had faded to pink.

"I see the new owners have done nothing with the place," I noted. Jackson made to pull over a couple of houses down the street, but I prevented him.

"Not here. Mrs. Bradshaw who lives in that house will call the cops if a strange car is parked outside her house for more than ten minutes."

Jackson grinned, but chose another spot. "You've proven yourself useful already."

I tried to hide my pleasure, but probably failed.

"Surveillance in a nice neighborhood like this can actually be trickier than in a shady one," he noted when he had parked the car. "People here pay attention to strangers."

"Hence the car that fits everywhere."

He smiled. "You noticed."

It was close to seven, but the sun wouldn't set for a while yet and there was enough light to keep an eye on the house from a distance. There wasn't a car in the driveway, so either Mrs. Jenkins, the wife, wasn't home, or she had parked on the street.

"Curtains are drawn," I noted. "Highly suspicious in this neighborhood at this hour."

"She should be home. She works as a pediatrician at the University Hospital of Brooklyn. Nine to five hours."

"Tessa is an ER doctor there!"

"She's a doctor? I always thought she'd become a supermodel." He had that dreamy look in his eyes men always got when they thought of my gorgeous sister. I was used to it and didn't mind.

Much.

"She actually put herself through college and med-school by modeling."

All my older siblings had paid for their education with scholarships and work. I didn't have skills or accomplishments that would've merited a free education, so my parents had had to pay for mine, but since I'd only done one year in college, it hadn't been that straining for them. And I intended to pay them back one day.

"That's impressive."

It was, but it hadn't done my self-confidence good that it had been constantly pointed out to me when I was a gangly and insecure teenager. Mostly by aunts and uncles, though; not by my parents.