5
Julia watched Aaron's car pull out of the lot with that private investigator, John Robertson, still in the rear seat.
She'd made a circuit and come back to the A&P to talk to Aaron after the detective left, but apparently they'd made other plans. She wondered where they were going and what they could possibly be talking about. She was tempted to follow but had a better idea.
Before, as she'd driven away, she'd realized she'd seen the investigator get out of his car shortly after she'd pulled into the lot. She hadn't paid it much mind at the time, just a man getting out of a big black car. But that man had turned out to be Robertson.
He was gone but his car remained.
Julia pulled up before it and wrote down the license plate number.
Probably thought he was smart. Aaron had told her about his assuming the identity of a dead investigator. She'd noticed he wore gloves so as not to leave any prints. Probably thought he had all bases covered, that he'd fully insulated his identity.
Well, he'd better think again. He wasn't dealing with the hoi polloi here. He was dealing with another kind of investigator—a scientific investigator used to probing the secrets of life itself. Probing the secrets of one man's miserable life would be a cakewalk.
That remark about her underwear still rankled. How embarrassing. Had he been spying on her? Well, turnabout was fair play.
She'd give the plate number over to the agency and let them run with it. In a matter of hours they'd know everything there was to know about this man. His life would be an open book.
Smiling, she pulled away.
John Robertson, or whoever he really was, had made his last snide remark. He'd rue the day he dared to cross swords with Julia Vecca.