Chapter 29: Dale Pruitt

Owen deleted her GPA at 7:40 Wednesday morning, and he made her watch.

That was her term, not his. She’d said it Monday night through the guest suite door, and Julian had said he’d ask Owen, and Owen had shown up at the dining table at seven-thirty with one laptop and the face of a man reporting for jury duty.

“Westchester Community College transcript,” he said, and turned the screen so she could see it. Two semesters. Her B-plus. “I had no right to it. A guy I know at a records vendor owed me.” He dragged it to the trash. “Your Honda’s VIN, from a DMV lookup I also had no right to. Your phone carrier. Your old address history.” Drag, drag, drag. “And the note where I called Tessa Grant the night you got here and asked what you were like.”

“You called Tessa.”

“She hung up on me. Then she called back and told me you’d give your last dollar to a stranger and your last nerve to a liar.” He emptied the trash and turned the screen so she could see that too. Zero items. “The server copy needs a deletion log Kessler will accept. Give me a few days.”

Julian was standing at the end of the hall. He hadn’t come in. She hadn’t asked him to.

“What’s left?” Rachel said.

“What’s about the company.” Owen scrolled. “Expense codes. Network logs. Things that are Julian’s to keep.” He started to close the lid, and she put two fingers on it and read the line under his cursor before he could stop her.

Cross Dynamics expense code 7140-PS. Investigative services, Westchester. Payee: Pruitt Investigations. Four invoices, September and October.

She’d had the name since the night she read Owen’s text over Julian’s arm. Now she had the paper behind it.

Owen looked at her fingers, then at her. He didn’t close it.

“That’s not about you,” he said. “It’s about who paid him.”

“It’s about me,” Rachel said, “from the other end.”

* * *

Dale Pruitt was licensed by the State of New York.

It took her four minutes on the Department of State’s license search, on the guest suite bed with the door locked. Private investigator, individual license, active. Pruitt Investigations, an office on Mamaroneck Avenue in White Plains. Renewal due in February. A license was a thing a man could lose, which made it the most useful thing she’d learned all week.

The second most useful thing was a two-star review with four typos.

DO NOT HIRE. Took my retainer and found my husband was at “the gym” which I ALREADY KNEW. Meets clients at the Silver Spoon diner on Central Ave, back booth, every morning like he owns it, and makes YOU pay for his pancakes. Mustache like a 1970s cop.

She thought about telling Julian the whole time she was buttoning her coat. She knew exactly what would happen. One flat word. Then Owen. Then two guys in dark coats who’d stand by the diner’s cash register looking like a bad movie, and Pruitt would take one look and go out the back.

And under that, smaller, harder: he kept a file on me for two weeks. I can keep one diner from him.

She left a note on the island. Errands. Back by noon. R.

* * *

The Silver Spoon had been there since Nixon and would be there after the sun burned out. Chrome edges, a rotating cake case, laminated menus the size of a Sunday paper. It smelled like bacon grease and Pine-Sol.

The gray Chrysler was out front. KTV9172. The KTV9 from Williamsbridge Road, the 7 from the Scarsdale bank lot, the whole plate at last, smeared with mud like somebody had wiped it on with their palm.

He was exactly what Brenda K. promised. Fifties. Gray suit, shiny at the elbows. A mustache so thick and brown it looked like it might crawl off his face and order its own breakfast. Pancakes, three high, drowned in syrup. A Daily News folded to the racing results.

Rachel slid into the booth across from him before she could change her mind.

He swallowed. Then he smiled, slow, like his bus had finally shown up.

“Well,” Dale Pruitt said. “Green eyes. You clean up nice, sweetheart.”

“Don’t call me sweetheart. Your license renews in February. The Department of State takes complaints online now. I checked.”

The smile stayed, but it got thinner. “Coffee for the lady?”

“Water.”

“Suit yourself.” He pointed his fork at her. “Most people send a lawyer.”

“Most people didn’t get photographed sleeping on cardboard and stapled to a divorce filing.”

“Ah. Exhibit F.” He nodded like she’d brought up the weather. “Four-hundred-millimeter lens, in the rain, at two in the morning. You know how hard it is to keep a lens dry under a train bridge?”

“You followed me. From the Bronx. Somebody threw a brick through my friend’s window the same night.”

“I followed you, sure. Bricks, I don’t do. Bricks are a felony and I got a bad back.”

“And the woman under the bridge? Sixty-something, shopping cart? She ended up in Lincoln Hospital with her face swollen shut after you asked her about me.”

Something flickered behind his eyes. Gone fast.

“The old lady fell,” he said. “Concrete’s slippery when it’s wet.”

Rachel put both hands flat on the Formica so he wouldn’t see them shake.

“Her name is Dottie,” she said. “Remember it.”

He held her eyes a second longer than he needed to. Then he went back to his pancakes, and that was answer enough.

“Anyway, I’m off the job,” he said, cheerful again. “Got paid, got told thanks for your service, don’t call us. You’re old news. No offense.”

Rachel leaned forward. “Your invoices. For following me. They went through a Cross Dynamics expense code. Michael’s company, Michael’s money. So let’s not pretend my husband didn’t pay you to make me look like trash.”

Pruitt put down his fork. He wiped his mustache, both sides, slowly, like he was fixing his tie for a photo.

“Invoices,” he said. “Sweetheart, I didn’t send anybody an invoice. That’s the beauty of a cash client.” He leaned in, syrup and aftershave rolling across the table. “Michael didn’t hire me. His girlfriend did. Paid cash, right here, and she wanted the photos before he ever filed.”

Rachel sat very still.

Cash. No invoice. And yet there was an invoice, sitting in Owen’s laptop with a code on it and Pruitt’s name for a payee, which meant somebody had written one. Somebody who knew which code to use. Somebody who could put a bill into the CFO’s expenses and press the button that said approved, because pressing that button was her job.

Chloe paid him out of her purse, and then she paid herself back out of Cross Dynamics.

Rachel looked at the syrup shining on his plate and saw long almond nails, blood red, counting twenties onto this same Formica, and then the same nails tapping a keyboard on fifty-eight. Approved. C. Sutton.