“Out!”
I waited until Lula left, and then I turned to the receptionist. “Maybe I could leave a note for Dr. Martin.”
There was a long awkward pause, and I assumed the receptionist was contemplating hitting the police button on the security system… or at the very least unleashing Dobermans from a holding pen. This was a vet office. They had dogs, right?
Finally, the woman exhaled and slid a pad and pen my way. “I guess that would be okay,” she said.
I was halfway through the note when Gary Martin emerged from a back room and approached the receptionist.
“Any emergency calls?” he asked her. “Any, um, personal calls?”
She shook her head, no.
“Are you sure? Not a single personal call?”
Gary Martin looked like a big, forty-year-old cherub. He was about five foot six with chubby cheeks and a soft middle. He was wearing a light blue lab coat that was unbuttoned over tan slacks and a yellow button-down shirt. He was entirely adorable in a dorky kind of way. And he was clearly disappointed that no one had called.
I stuck my hand out and introduced myself. “Annie Hart is temporarily indisposed,” I said. “I'm her replacement.”
I wasn't sure what to expect after Charlene Klinger, but
Gary Martin seemed excited to see me. He ushered me into his little office and closed the door.
“I've been waiting,” he said. “I was expecting Ms. Hart, but I'm sure you're wonderful, too.”
“I understand you need help getting your girlfriend back.”
“I don't know what happened. Two weeks ago, she just said it was over. I don't know what went wrong. I must have done something terrible, but I don't know what it was. I was going to ask her to marry me on Valentine's Day. And now I don't know what to do. She won't talk to me on the phone, and she won't let me into her apartment. And last time I tried to talk to her she said I was a pest. A pest!”
“I'm curious,” I said. “How did you hear about Annie Hart?”
“It was odd. I found her card in my jacket pocket. Someone must have given it to me. It said Ms. Hart was a relationship expert… and I thought, that's just what I need! So I called Ms. Hart, and we had a meeting. That was four days ago.” Martin took a photo off his desktop and handed it to me. “Ms. Hart wanted a picture of Loretta.”
The sticky note attached to the back told me this was Loretta Flack, and Martin had neatly printed Loretta's address and phone number below her name. The front of the photo showed a smiling blond with a Barbie doll shape. It had been taken at some sort of street fair, and she was holding a teddy bear.
“She's a bartender,” Martin said. “She works the lunch shift at Beetle Bumpkin. It's a sports bar just up the road. They have good sandwiches at lunchtime, but Loretta said she didn't want me in there anymore.”
“She's pretty,” I said.
“Yes, she's way too pretty for me. And probably too young. I don't know why she even went out with me in the first place. I thought maybe you could tell her I joined a gym, and I have a private trainer now. And I think my hair is growing back.”
I looked up at the three strands of hair plastered to the top of his dome.
“I thought I might have seen some fuzz this morning,” Gary Martin said.
“Anything else you want me to tell her?”
“I'll leave it up to you. You're a relationship expert, right? I mean, you know the right things to say”
Oh boy, we were in trouble. I never said the right thing. Lula was right. I was a relationship disaster.
“Sure,” I told him. “Leave it to me. I'll get this fixed up.”
Lula settled her ass on a Beetle Bumpkin barstool and looked around. “Beetle Bumpkin is one of them new mini chains,” she said. “There's one just opened downtown. The sandwiches are good because they fry them. Everything's fried. That's the Beetle Bumpkin secret ingredient.”
Loretta Flack was taking an order at the other end of the bar. Her hair was yellow under the Bumpkin bar lights, and her breasts were packed into a red Beetle Bumpkin T-shirt. I figured she was maybe fifteen years younger than Gary Martin.
“Let me do the talking this time,” I said to Lula.