The Private Investigator

Chapter 5: Following A Detective

"Why have you been acting like this? You have been acting strange lately, what has gotten into you?" Donna asked with tears streaming down her face. "Why are you being so dramatic?" Ray asked in return. "I just want to spend some time with you, that's all." Ray rolled his eyes at the comment, grabbed his jacket, turned to Donna with the evilest look in his eyes, grabbed his jacket, turned to Dana, said, "Drop dead!", and stormed out of the house. About a year ago Ray started going to the bar every night staying out late and sometimes it extended into all-nighters. Donna tried to talk to him about it several times when she noticed it was becoming a problem, but he wouldn't listen, he shoved her words aside as if she never spoke.

"One please." Jim said holding one finger up to the man running the sidewalk cart hot dog stand. "Better make that two!" He corrected his order when he spotted Cheyenne sitting alone at a table across the street. She was sipping coffee and shuffling through some paper work at the corner diner with a patio. The diner was known as Dane's, a dressy/casual kind of place. The patio had six small round tables just big enough for a group of four people, and three smaller tables just big enough for two. The whole patio area was fenced in with a short black metal bar fence that matched the tables. Cheyenne was sitting at one of the three tables just big enough for two. The man running the hot dog stand handed Jim his two hot dogs with everything on it, relish, mustard, mayonnaise, ketchup, you name it. "Hey there beautiful!" He said flopping himself down in the chair in front of her. She jumped as if her chair was about to tip over. She dropped her papers and slammed both hands down on the table in fear of falling. Jim held out one of the hotdogs offering it to her as he took a huge bite of his own, "Bought you a hot dog!" he said smiling while chewing an enormous bite he had just taken before he spoke. Some of the hot dog bun was hanging from the corner of his mouth and Cheyenne took immediate notice. "No, thank you. "she said with a disgusted look on her face slowly pushing his hand away with the dripping hot dog, staring at the food hanging from his mouth that he has yet to clean off as he shoved more in. "Fine, more for me!" he said shrugging his shoulders and shoving the last bite of the first hot dog in his mouth. "Don't you do anything else besides work?" he asked.

"No."

"Why?"

"Why not?" Cheyenne asked back beginning to feel annoyed. "What?" Jim asked. "What." She repeated. "You are confusing me." Jim said lowering his eyebrows and began stuffing the second hot dog in his mouth. "Don't take much does it." Cheyenne said mockingly. "Uh, rude!" Jim gave her a playful angry look. "Look, as exciting as this little head game is that you are playing here, I have a lot of work to do, so goodbye!"

"Bye!" Jim repeated with a smile. They sat staring at each other in silence waiting for the other to leave the table, which created awkward silence between them. "Aren't you going to leave?" Cheyenne asked. "No, I thought you were." He said still shinning that awkward smile. "Go, now!" she demanded. "No way! I got here first!" he joked. "What? I got here first! You just flopped yourself down in front of me almost knocking me out of my chair!" her blood began to boil in her veins feeling herself getting more annoyed with the situation. "Are you calling me fa?" he asked sarcastically placing his hand on his stomach. "What? No, I never, no!" Jim sat smiling at her listening as she tripped over her words as she tried to defend herself. Her phone rand interrupting her already scattered thoughts about how Jim could possibly think she was calling him fat.

Ray sat at the bar yet again with one of his closest friends sharing his troubles about his wife of ten years. During the conversation he made a disturbing comment. "If she doesn't sign the divorce papers, I want her dead." The man he made the comment to just so happened to be a mutual friend between Ray and Donna. Gary had been best friends with Donna since they met in middle school. He didn't take Ray's comment lightly either. As soon as he had the chance in a slight break in conversation, he excused himself to go to the bathroom, but instead he went to the payphone (which was out of Ray's sight) and contacted the police. The officer on the phone listened and agreed to take the case further to try and catch Ray on attempted murder charges. Ray's birthday was a week away so Gary came up with the idea to throw him a birthday party and there he would introduce Captain Culp (the undercover police officer) to Ray as a friend that would be willing to take Donna down for him (for the right price of course).