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“Stay away from Ophelia… and you better come back here… tonight, Tucker…” Phoenix trails off drowsily. Her eyes are fighting to stay open.
Always one for the last word between her and me—or so she thinks. “Would you be mad if I said ‘too late?’” I walk backward toward the bedroom door, dangling the keys to her badass black Ducati motorcycle in the air. “I’m also borrowing The Duke.”
“Bad. Man,” she says groggily, “you better… My Ducati home… Without… A scratch on…”
“Home?Now, don’t tease the big guy with that word! That’s not nice! The Duke will get treated as though he is mine.” I laugh, not at all feeling bad for assisting in sedating Phoenix, who is out like a light.
Time to surprise my woman.
Sixty-Five
IF THE WALLS COULD TALK
Ophelia
I am sitting alone indoors at Diamond Café, pretending to be engrossed in my writing project on my laptop while subtly watching the boss managing the café. He is the fiancé of the client’s very pregnant daughter.
My eyes stray briefly toward the two girls seated in the booth close to me. They look like just a couple of casual customers, but I know better.
The reason I have been sitting here for five days belongs to Mrs. Diamond, the owner of this establishment and one intuitive widow.
She is the soon-to-be mother-in-law to Mr. Mario Diego, who she has employed to run Diamond Café at her beloved daughter’s request.
Mario is as charming as he is mobster handsome. Slicked back dark hair, confidence oozing from every pore with a thick gangster New York accent, which seems to endear him to the female customers.
Mrs. Diamond thought the guy was up to no good when she noticed the takings each day had been consistently lower than usual for the past few months, yet the waitress she trusted had agreed the café was still buzzing with customers. She thought he was possibly gambling, but her inner voice told her it was something else.
We agreed to start with surveillance at Diamond’s and see where that led.
The trail was short.
Mrs. Diamond was right on the money.
Mario has been stepping out on his eight months’ pregnant fiancée.
Never doubt a mother’s intuition, but always back it up with a neutral party’s documented proof when meddling in the affairs of your daughter’s heart. Booking a private investigator to do what Mrs. Diamond could do herself is smart and removes her from being accused of tampering with the evidence.
Mario-the-asshole is the real-douchebag-deal. He has indeed been a naughty boy, enjoying himself behind door 4B, which happens to be the assigned restroom used only by the staff and patrons of Diamond Café. You ask for the key; walk down the hallway, past the kitchen, and out the back door.
It is the perfect setup for a wham-bam-private-bang during work hours.
Thirty-five-year-old Mario thinks so when his much younger female companions (usually arriving in a group of two) come to visit him, take up a booth, eat and drink on the café’s tab. One of them gets up and requests the key to the restroom. Mario receives a call on his phone, which of course, he must take outside, where he then slips away to restroom 4B for a little “afternoon delight,” which I would bet is paid for in cash straight from the register.
The girls wear short skirts or short dresses, and they are always in their early twenties. It is why I’m hedging my bets that they are sex workers, and this is a lascivious game Mario likes to play out.
I have been updating Mrs. Diamond daily, but today is when I get the indisputable proof of Mr. Diego’s philandering ways. Mrs. Diamond wants there to be no holes her slimy son-in-law-to-be can slip through, knowing all along Mario isnotMr. Right and has—in her words—“wormed his way into my beautiful daughter’s life. His charms blind her.”
Team Malia—short for Mack and Ophelia—have a well-thought-out plan to get the final pieces of proof we need. And I am happy to deliver after watching this creep and the setup he has going on.
Unfortunately, Mrs. Diamond has gotten diagnosed with terminal cancer, and wouldn’t you know it? Mario proposed to thirty-two-year-old Celeste after getting her knocked up.
Time is running out, and that is why Mack called me in for this time-sensitive job so that Mrs. Diamond can know her daughter and her grandchild will get financially looked after when she is gone, and no slimy husband can take any of that away from her.
Celeste’s father is already deceased, which leaves her mother passing away for her to receive a massive inheritance. In Mrs. Diamond’s words, “over her dead body was she allowing a slimeball like Mario Diego to get access to the portfolio of lucrative properties, holdings, and her unborn grandbaby.” Custody will become a fight for another day—one hurdle at a time—but for now, Mrs. Diamond wants to unveil to her daughter the despicable man she is engaged to.
The bride-to-be won’t be happy with the results, but her mother will have closure on her suspicions.
Today is essential everything goes according to plan because it will be a game-changer. I need to keep my mind sharp, but hearing Phoenix got shot four days ago is one hell of a shock and not something I needed to be thinking about while on this job. I couldn’t afford to get distracted by worrying about my friend, so I got Mack to message Slade on my behalf while I was fitting my wig on before we left the office to confirm my loveable feisty friend was genuinely going to be okay.
