Ward, Jacqueline Ward

Thelonious Monk’s Straight No Chaser was playing when she walked in. She was tall, like a statue in a rose garden. She swayed like a row boat on a rough lake but kept it together enough to get to a chair. She didn’t so much sit down as slithered down. The piano solo was interrupted when she said “Are you the best detective in the city?”
“Well you see the trophies on my desk. Those aren’t bowling trophies.”
“I don’t have time for incompetence and snark Mr. Stowick. My husband is missing.”
She looked me dead in the eye with some piercing baby blues but I wasn’t playing. A million baby blues on a million dames, I thought.
“You got the money I got the time Mrs….”
“Mrs. Ward, Jacqueline Ward. And yes, that Ward. So I can afford your dailies and incidentals Mr. Stowick. Can you find my husband?” She looked away and appeared to shed a tear but I can’t be sure because she got up and went to the window. Dames, all dramatic when they look out a window like the answers are out there.
“Where and when was the last time you saw your husband Mrs.” –“call me Jacqueline.”

 
The bar was a little too crowded at 2pm for my liking. Hard livers all of em with sharp axes to grind. Axes sharp from a life between two stones will do that to a person. I eyed up the bartender and ordered a Dewar’s on the rocks. He looked at me askance but poured it anyway. I couldn’t imagine someone with the means of Mr. Ward stepping foot in a place like this. Then she walked in, grace wrapped in glory, on top of dancers legs with non-stop beauty and radiance from head to toe. She was a fish so far out of water she might as well have had wings. She smiled at everyone and no one in the bar and made her way to the manager’s office in the back. Mr. Ward would have been a fish out of water in here too; maybe they were fishes out of water together – birds of a feather. She knocked carefully on the door three times as if keeping a beat. When the door opened no light came from the room and she was hustled in; a huge figure waited a second before shutting the door quickly after. I had to find out who owned this place and who she was.