Bogartesque

They say misery loves company, and that proved true as I reclined with nothing on my mind but a bottle of bathtub gin and a Lucky Strike cigarette. I'd been thinking about the rain pounding on the windows of my office and if the sun would ever shine again when I heard a knock on the door.

"Come in," I yelled, and the door opened. She was wearing a black dress that fit well in all the right places, accentuating her legs that went on for miles. She had the kind of espresso brown hair that reminds you of a great cup of coffee, bold and dark. Her eyes danced, taking in the d©cor of my place as she confidently stepped through the doorway. You could tell she was a strong woman just by the way she carried herself, striding into the room with determination. I could tell a lot about her just by her appearance, and she reeked of trouble, like the fishy legs of a girl from the Red Light District.

"You're a detective?" she questioned, though it was more of a statement, as though she was just baiting me to say yes. Even though my instincts told me not to get involved in this slippery case, I'll admit she won me over with her classy chassis. She seemed like the type to get down and dirty, and that's just how I prefer my cases to be - dirtier than a priest with the choir boys.

"Sure am, at least that's what it says on my door." I turned to face her and put the bottle down on my desk to give her my undivided interest. The rain picked up and thunder cracked the sky like a cymbal in an otherwise boring drum solo.

"I'm Claire Moreaux," she stated, batting her eyelashes, "and I have a problem I could use some help with." They say that's the first step, that you need to admit you have a problem before you can get help, or at least that's what my ex-wife told me. That always sounded a bit crazy to me, you don't admit you have a problem unless you want people to think you're like a watered-down drink, not as good as it looks on the outside.

"We all have our problems, toots, but what makes yours so special that you need my help?" I retorted as bluntly as possible as I reclined a bit in the chair.

She regaled me with a tale of how she came from a wealthy family from French wine country, and moved to the Big Apple to see the world as it is away from the protected confines of the ch¢teau in the vast fields of Burgundy. Influenced by Goethe, Byron, and Chateaubriand, she longed to get away from her privileged upbringing and start a life for herself in the land where streets are paved with gold, America. They say anyone can make in New York, and that's what she set off to do. She bid her homeland adieu just a few years ago before sailing across the ocean with her younger sister, Lynn. Life was going fine for them in the city, the young women opened up a European style caf© and were just starting to profit after years of trouble and hard work. It was the American Dream come true, but like any dream, you've got to wake up sometime.

Claire explained that her sister married a well-to-do lawyer, and their marriage was a passionate, spur-of-the-moment one that seemed fine and dandy at first, but over time it got worse. Got worse like a healthy body first catches a small fever, but then it turns into a deadly case of pneumonia. The relationship became marked with the bitterness caused by constant fighting, and that brought her to the reason she showed up in my office this dismal Thursday evening - someone bumped her sister off and Claire wanted to get the details and bring the killer to justice.

I took in the earful and thought I might be getting in a bit over my head, I'd dealt with petty crime and civil problems before but this was upping the ante. Though I'd never dealt with murder before, something already seemed rotten about this case. The husband seemed like an obvious suspect right out of the gates. It'd take a lot of convincing to get me to investigate this further, and she seems like she has money to spend.

"Sorry Claire," I muttered as I rose from the desk and walked over to her, "I'm not so sure that this case is up my alley."

She was taken aback for a second, but smirked and reached into her purse and pulled out a checkbook. "I'll offer five-thousand dollars up-front, plus expenses." She bit, hook, line, and sinker. "Well, when you put it that way, it's an offer that's hard to refuse."

Claire laughed and handed me a check for five large, enough to live off of for a long time but not large enough to satiate my thirst. She walked around me as I salivated over the thought of what else could be in store when I've cracked the case, and she picked my notebook up from my desk and scrawled a note on an empty page.

"I left you my address, meet me at my apartment at noon tomorrow, and I'll give you some further details to get started." With that, she left the office as commandingly as she entered, leaving me excited for the next day. With a case that seemed so simple, it couldn't be that hard to wrap up and enjoy the bounty. Little did I know what I was getting into.