Fast Lane Read Online Free PDF Page A

girl peeked in.
    “ Hi,” she said. “I’m Mary Williams. We have an eleven o’clock appointment?”
    I apologized for keeping her waiting and asked her to come in. As she entered the office, I felt a funny feeling start to kick in my chest. It was more than just the way she looked, though. More than just her slender body, or her soft brown eyes, or the way her long black hair flowed past her shoulders. There was a freshness to her, a sweetness. I realized that for the first time in God knows how long I was actually feeling pretty good and it surprised the hell out of me.
    “ I read your column every month,” she said, looking around her. “This office is so cool. Exactly the way I pictured it.”
    “ Yeah, it’s not much, is it?”
    “ It’s perfect!” she said. “Just like a detective’s office ought to be.”
    “ That’s certainly good to hear,” I said. “Otherwise, I guess I’d need to find a new job.” A little red tinged her cheeks. “I hope you weren’t waiting out there too long.”
    “ Not too long.”
    “ But long enough?”
    She shifted in her chair. “I’m sorry,” she said. She fidgeted for a moment with her handbag. “I couldn’t help overhearing what was being said. I guess I have the opposite problem of the woman who was just here.”
    “ You’re sexually abusing your father?”
    “ What?”
    I shook my head, waving off my comment. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. I’ve been having a rotten couple of days.”
    “ He’s abusing his daughter? Is that why you beat him up?”
    “ No,” I corrected her. “That’s why he fell down a staircase.”
    She spotted the pictures on my desk. “Is that her?” she asked, a concerned look forming on her face. “That poor girl.”
    I gathered up the photos and dropped them into my bottom desk drawer, next to the rye. “Miss. Williams, how can I help you?”
    “ Please call me Mary.”
    “ Okay, Mary.”
    “ I’d like you to find my parents.”
    “ You lost them?”
    “ In a way.” She stared at her hands, a darkness clouding her eyes. “I was adopted. I’d like to hire you to find my birth parents. How much do you charge?”
    “ Four hundred a day, plus expenses.”
    She looked up at me, surprised and disappointed. “I didn’t think it would be that much. I’ve been saving up, but I don’t think I’ll have enough if it takes more than a week.”
    “ How long have you been saving?”
    She gave me a dejected smile. “Two semesters.”
    “ You’re a student?”
    “ Trying to be. I’m a sophomore at Denver University.”
    I asked her what she’d been doing to save up for this, and she looked away, sort of embarrassed, and told me she’d been working nights at a convenience store. After more prompting, she told me she was putting herself through school. Her parents wanted to pay, but she didn’t think that would be fair, not with her getting a job so she could hire a detective and the way they felt about it. From what she told me, I gathered they weren’t too thrilled with the idea of her searching for her birth parents.
    Watching her explain her situation, I wanted to break out laughing. Not out of meanness or anything, only cause of how sweet it was. I mean, here she was going to college all day and working her butt off all night so she could hire a detective to find her parents. I found it touching. I needed a case like this. I needed something where I could do some good for a change. Especially after the last few cases I’d worked on. Anyway, as my poppa used to say: it never hurt none to do a pretty young gal a favor. I told her I’d charge her fifty dollars a day with expenses coming out of my own pocket. Her face lit up brighter than any Christmas tree. I sat back and enjoyed the sight.
    “ If you don’t mind,” I said, “I might write about this for my newspaper column.”
    “ That would be exciting.” She lowered her voice, her face reddening a bit. “I’ve been saving your columns