Job or death in Philadelphia

Getting outside, I squinted at the shiny spring afternoon. I thought it could happen only to a book character, to have your life completely overturned in a moment. This morning I didn't know what to do and felt useless while my life was slipping through my fingers. My husband worked day and night looking for war criminals and defending their victims. My daughters opposed my slightest attempt to mother them. My house was cleaned, and food cooked by somebody who was making a living out of my laziness. Suddenly, it all started to make sense because I realized what I should be doing my entire life. I would be a lawsuit investigator! I would gather all the bits and pieces of information that would constitute our victory over evil.

Angels blew their trumpets, it was my life calling, I knew that.

"I'm a lawsuit detective," I repeated to myself over and over again, driving home. I felt a sharp intense energy boiling inside of me. "I'll become the damn best lawsuit detective ever." Since it was almost four in the afternoon, I decided to start my investigation right after dinner.

CHAPTER 4

The monkey see, monkey do principle would be the best way to describe my way of life until this point. I have always been worried about my future. I felt terminally ill most of the time. I always hoped to end up with a bigger paycheck and a balance of my long-term investments. And always, I was taking on new relationships and new jobs with the mad enthusiasm of somebody who has never been beaten and never been abandoned.

Pulling into the driveway, I cursed secretly, because Larissa's car was parked right in the middle of it. Larissa was my aide, but somehow, she tried to take a special place in the family. Alex insisted on hiring her as a part-time shopping aide for me and a part-time tutor for our girls. My husband believed modern children need a grandmotherly influence in order to grow into stable and mature adults. He used to say that in his old country, grandmothers constituted a special social institution: more influential than the Orthodox Church, and more advanced than an academic school.

We couldn't possibly get a grandmother in our own family. My mom was still working on her retirement plan. My husband's mother was a grand dame, socialite and full-time Londoner. There was no way she could fit two teenage girls in her schedule between lunch with the Prime Minister and dinner with Rupert Murdoch. That's why Larissa, being an old Jewish lady, fit right into our puzzle.

Entering our home, I received a doggy attack from Elvis. Forgetting that he had begged me out of my breakfast this morning, this source of eternal love jumped and slobbered all over me.

"Rachel!" Larissa summoned me to the kitchen. "I think the girls are upset with each other. Something happened in school. They don't want to tell me what. As a mother, I think you should talk to them."

As a mother, I would rather have a cup of coffee right now, especially seeing Larissa sitting at the table with her cup of Earl Grey and biscuits. Of course, I didn't say that. Alexander thought that the European system of rearing children was superior to the American. In his eyes, Larissa, after teaching English at some schools in Moscow, Berlin, and New York for thirty years, was an embodiment of this system. I went to the entrance hall and shouted for the girls at the top of my lungs. I knew it was a no-no, but I would rather have the girls come down to the kitchen, than walk up to their rooms. Frankly, it is healthy for kids to get in a fight now and then, because this way they build up their conflict-solving muscles for future adult life.

First, Iris showed up with a thunder of heavy footfalls. She was taller than the other eleven-year-olds, with long blonde hair and dark brown eyes.

"Mom," she crashed into a chair with a moan. "When is dinner? I'm starving."

I took her words about starvation with a great deal of healthy doubt, looking at her slightly bulging tummy and peach-like cheeks, but Larissa sprang into action. She turned to me with her well-groomed head with a strawberry blonde hairdo and offered to feed the child with something healthy.

"A couple of spoons of nonfat cottage cheese with a bit of sour cream will do her just fine before dinner," she let me know.

"Sour cream? Yuck." My sweet angel made a retching sound.

"What is so yucky?" Evana asked, entering the kitchen with a quiet grace of hers. She was my daughter's age, but shorter, slimmer, with dark brown hair and bright blue eyes.

"Mom wants us to have cottage cheese for a snack. Can you imagine?"

Evana considered the news for a moment. "Well, it might not be that bad," she said flatly.

I opened the fridge, found a tub of cottage cheese tucked away in the door compartment, and sniffed it. It looked fresh to me, but I tasted it, just in case.

"It's not even sour," I announced after taking a bite. "Tastes kind of chalky, but this is the healthy part, I guess." I spooned the white substance into tiny ice cream bowls for the girls.

"Mom," Iris looked at me with alarm. "Where did you get this jar?"

"In the fridge… No talking, just eat and go. We have to cook dinner."

"Mom," Iris insisted. "Show me the jar."

I showed her.

"Ah, this is not the cottage cheese. This is my dough clay, for my science project."

Somehow, eating clay gave me a burst of energy, because I stayed in the kitchen to help Mark, my British cook, to make turkey soup. I have my special way of cooking turkey soup, which I invented while living in Center City and driving a cab. This soup, like any other great invention, came into existence by accident and lack of resources. It was the day after Halloween, and Iris had overdone it with sweets. Her stomach hurt, so she stayed home from school. I did a six-hour shift and went home. The best treatment for stomach sickness is chicken soup, no doubt about it, but we had only turkey breast. I found two potatoes, a tomato, a white onion, a red bell pepper, and moldy spaghetti squash. Cooking a vegetable stew, I saut,ed chopped onion and pieces of turkey in olive oil. Then I dropped in tiny slices of bell pepper, potatoes, squash and tomato, and I poured some water to top the stew. I let the soup cook slowly for two hours on medium heat; finally, I just added a little garlic and soy sauce to it.

The result was amazing. My strictly no-soup-please daughter finished two helpings and announced that her stomach hurt no more.

After dinner would be the best time to tell Alex about my new investigating job. Five minutes before six, he called and said he was running late. The girls got their dinner in the TV room. Larissa ate in the kitchen, and I just sat in my favorite recliner, reading a mystery novel. Glistening with silverware and china, the dinner table remained untouched.

Around midnight, my husband's car pulled into the driveway. I ran outside to hug him, and his smell made my head spin. It was okay that we missed a family dinner, because at the end of the week we would have two days all to ourselves. I'll be able to be with him for two days!

"I'm starving," he said, entering the kitchen, still in his business suit. "Oh, soup."

I poured soup for him and ran to the bathroom for a quick makeover, feeling all fuzzy and romantic. It took two minutes to shower, slide into my silk nightgown, brush my teeth, and put on a touch of French perfume. However, when I returned to the kitchen, he wasn't there. I ran upstairs to our bedroom and found my beloved husband lying on the bed, still fully dressed.

"Honey, do you want to take it off?" I pulled the sleeve of his jacket. He didn't respond. Only when I was pulling his pants off, he said, "Phew, what's that smell? It's awful."

I lay next to him in the dark, hoping that he didn't mean my expensive French perfume he praised so much when fully awake.

I tried to shut out the annoying ringing in my ears when I realized it wasn't an alarm clock. It was my cell phone.

"Rachel," I croaked, picking it up. It was two o'clock in the morning, and I hate phone calls in the middle of the night.

"Joe Madnick. How are you?"

"I don't know. I was sleeping."

"Come here this instant. I need your help. Don't ask questions; just come to my office now." He hung up and left me staring at the darkness in disbelief.

Why would Joe call me in the middle of the night? And then I remembered; he appointed me as his detective. I'm a lawsuit investigator! I jumped out of my bed, pulled on jeans and a t-shirt, grabbed a jacket and went outside. My red Jaguar greeted me with its lights when I unlocked the door. I looked around our dark property, breathing the chilly spring wind, smiling to the dawn of my new life.

Driving, I thought about some crooked ways life rewards us. I wasn't even thinking of becoming a detective, with all my love of mysteries and whodunits. I didn't have any special training and education. I would never get this job if I tried to look for it. Joe would reject me if I asked him to hire me. But I was in the right place at the right time. He was backed up; I came with a pack of sandwiches. Voila! He asked me to do some investigative legwork for his law firm.

I felt so much pity for Debbie. I have been through the hell of single motherhood. Her case seemed obvious to me. If this Philippine woman accused her new co-worker with such ease, she probably did something similar to other people before. In twenty years, she stepped on some toes. I had to find those people and talk to them. I needed to find a couple of witnesses who would testify against Gamma Woods.

Joe's voice boomed in my ears, "Get out there and talk to people, find as many as possible whose who can tell that Debbie is a nice decent lady. I don't want to paddle to court just to meet a material witness saying that Debbie stole before."

For his office, Joe used his own house, a two-story red brick townhouse with a lawn up front and a parking lot in the back. At two o'clock in the morning, the house looked spooky. All the lights were off. I knocked at the door, and it opened a crack, just enough for me to get in. Once inside, I was grabbed and pressed against the wall.

"Shish!" Joe put his fat fingers on my lips. "Don't talk." Moonlight in the entrance hall was just enough for me to see that he looked exactly like I left him in broad daylight. Which means he wasn't attacked or injured, just mildly paranoid.

"Did anybody see you coming here?"

"I don't think so…"

"Rachel, don't think too much!" he whispered and cleared his throat. "It's my job." He stood plastered on the wall, peeking out the door window in complete silence for a very long time before saying, "Okay, now, it's time."

He opened the door, let me outside, and ushered me into his car soundlessly. With his bulky body, he moved in the dark like a cat, reminding me he served some years as a Navy Seal, doing who knows what, who knows where.

Getting into the driver's seat, he didn't put a seatbelt on, just started the car and pulled off his driveway onto the street. There was something eerie in the way we were moving through the neighborhood, and it took me some time to realize he hadn't turned his headlights on. Plus, the car had tinted windows.

"What's going on?" I whispered. "What do you want to do?"