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missing operations, the stranger it got. That in mind, I decided the moment had come to break the golden rule of construction professionalism.
    I was time to pay an unannounced visit to the golden boy’s private residence.
     
     
     

Chapter 8
     
    No need to consult a phonebook for finding the Farrell home address. I already had a pretty good idea of its location. He lived about three miles up the road from me in a newly constructed McMansion that had recently sprung up alongside a thousand identical McMansions inside a posh pastel-colored development called East Hills.
    I couldn’t be certain which place belonged to him. But it wouldn’t be all that difficult to locate knowing his penchant for expensive cars and motorcycles. I simply drove until I located a cookie-cutter mansion that sported a larger than usual custom garage. When I found just such a garage, the name Farrell printed on the plastic Lowes mailbox out front, I thought, Bingo!
    I pulled into the circular drive, parked at the crest where a set of pretty marble-topped steps rose up to greet a massive center hall colonial. I got out, climbed the stairs up to the landing, fingered the doorbell to the sound of an ominous gong.
    My heart raced a little while I waited.
    But when I made out the sound of footsteps, I perked up, stood at attention. Pulling off my sunglasses, I stored them inside my leather jacket. Then I spit on the pads of my fingertips, brought them to my face, rubbed the damp fingertips into my skin, tried to bring out some of the blood in my cheeks. I could only hope that none of the black toner still stained them.
    When the door opened, she stood before me like an angelic apparition. Tall, fake blond, blue-eyed and Gold’s Gym slim, this woman could have fit the bill as Farrell’s female alter ego. But I recognized her for his wife.
    Tina Marino, Peter Marino’s daughter.
    “Can I help you?” Tina asked, polite, long lashes blinking.
    She was dressed in white tennis shorts, a tank top fashioned to stop just short of her flat belly exposing the silver hoop that pierced her naval.
    Why didn’t she recognize me?
    She had to be at least ten or eleven years my junior, which meant I vividly recalled the old days when she ran around the country club in Pampers.
    “I’m looking for your husband,” I smiled.
    She looked at me. Rather, looked into me with deep blue lasers.
    “I know you,” she said.
    “We met many years ago,” I said, holding out my hand. “Spike.”
    “Excuse me?” she said with scrunched brow.
    “You would remember me as A.J. or Ava Harrison,” I clarified. “Our dad’s were business associates…Competitors.”
    Her heart-shaped mouth went from pout to corner-of-the-mouth smile. Or was it a smirk? She took my hand in hers. It felt like a cold wet fish against my calluses. We both might have been born of similar construction stock. But I knew then that, unlike me, Tina had never shown any interest in entering the family biz. Standing there surrounded by all that marble, I had to wonder who’d made the right decision. Who chose wrong.
    I couldn’t pull my hand away fast enough.
    “Please come in.”
    The interior was an Ikea heaven, with a little Stickley tossed in to make things interesting. To my left was a large parlor filled with a big brown leather sectional couch, a teakwood coffee table, and a wall-mounted plasma. The screen on the plasma was almost as wide as the picture window that made up the exterior wall directly across from it.
    To my right was a dining room with its long table and chairs, the walls covered in an eclectic assortment of prints and original artwork. Directly ahead of me, a large marble-floored foyer and a wraparound staircase that led to the upstairs. Nailed to the wall beside me was a framed black and white photo. It showed Jimmy and Tina on their wedding day, posing for the lens directly in front of a large old oak tree on the country club lawn, he in black tux, she in pearl white