They’d met as students at the University of Houston. While Curtis was handsome enough and excelled in math, he was shy. Jennifer needed a calculus tutor, and he relished the opportunity to share his expertise. They began dating.
After graduation, Curtis landed an accounting job with a prominent NASA contractor. Jennifer skillfully groomed him to become a husband she could control, who would let her lead her life as she pleased. Curtis put his math skills to use in the stock market. Within a few short years, his and Jennifer’s financial well-being no longer depended on a paycheck. Until recently, he reflected as he sat in his car, marrying Jennifer had seemed like the greatest achievement of his life.
Curtis reached for the ignition and turned off the engine. He opened the door and unfolded from the low-slung sports car, carefully avoiding the many potholes in the parking lot. He stood at the glass-fronted office in the middle of the retail center that seemed otherwise devoid of tenants. The sign on the door declared in large red letters: DONOVAN AINSWORTH, PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR.
Curtis took a deep breath and opened the glass door. A bell jingled, announcing his arrival. There was an unoccupied dusty desk just inside the office. From the looks of it, no one had worked at the desk for some time.
Just as he was becoming uncomfortable standing in the empty office, he heard a toilet flush. A door opened from a narrow hallway at the back of the room. A man about his age, forty-five or so, raised his hand in a half-hearted greeting and walked toward Curtis. The man appeared to have slept in his clothes. From the pained expression on his face, he might have been hugging the commode a few minutes earlier, rather than using it for traditional purposes.
“I’m Ainsworth. What can I do for you?” he said in a hoarse, less-than-welcoming voice.
“My name’s Curtis Simon, and I’m looking for help,” Curtis muttered as he held out his hand.
Ignoring the outstretched hand, Ainsworth reached for the chair behind the desk and rolled it into an open space before plopping his body into it. “Pull up one of those other chairs,” he said, pointing to three chairs positioned in a semicircle in front of the desk. “If you want help, you’re going to have to be more specific than that.”
Curtis dusted the seat of the chair closest to Ainsworth’s and turned it to face the other man. As he sat, he wondered if he’d made a mistake. He felt vulnerable with no desk between himself and the man he hoped would keep him out of prison. He realized, however, based on the detective’s greeting and apparent attitude, that telling his story was necessary if he didn’t want to be thrown out of the office.
“My wife’s been murdered,” he mumbled, clearing his throat before continuing, “and I think the police believe I did it.” Lips tightened, he studied Ainsworth’s face in anticipation of a useful directive.
After a few seconds of silence, Ainsworth leaned back in his chair and asked sarcastically, “So, do you think you could give me a little more detail, or is it all a big secret?”
“No, no, it’s not a secret. I... I just wasn’t sure you wanted to hear more. My wife was shot in the head as she was getting in her car in a hotel parking lot on Bay Area Boulevard. It happened three days ago. The police have questioned me about it every day since. This morning, the detective asked me why I killed her. I’m not a murderer and, if I was, I would never have killed Jennifer. Marrying her has been the greatest accomplishment in my life.” Curtis’s voice was pleading and his face twisted in anguish. “Can you help me?”
Donovan Ainsworth would take the job, even if the prospective client had only a few bucks, because not one other person had jingled the bell on his front door for two weeks. But Curtis Simon didn’t know how desperate he was for a client.
“I’m not cheap,” Ainsworth began, “but if you’ve got a $5,000 retainer, I’ll try to help you.”
For the first time in the conversation, Curtis showed an inkling of confidence. “No problem, Mr. Ainsworth. Will you take my check?” He reached for the inside pocket of his sports coat.
The two men spent the next hour discussing Curtis Simon’s life. Ainsworth learned that Jennifer had an affair less than a year after their marriage and that she’d engaged in several more trysts in the years since. Curtis knew the particulars of some of the conquests. In fact, he’d considered one of the men his best friend. But nothing Jennifer did had been enough to cause him to end the marriage. He loved being married to her. Curtis chose to bury himself in his work in the hope that she would eventually mature and recognize the shallowness of flirtations with other men. He told Ainsworth he believed Jennifer had recently become involved with an astronaut, Brodie Bancroft.
As Curtis walked out the door, Ainsworth glanced at his watch. Still time to get to the bank and deposit the check. He wasn’t worried about it bouncing, but about several checks he’d written in the last few days. One was for the office lease. Since he’d been kicked out of his apartment for failing to pay the rent there, losing the office would mean sleeping on the streets.
After making the deposit, Ainsworth returned to his office. Past the bathroom, at the end of the hallway, was a room just large enough for an army cot, a small table with a George Foreman Grill, and a refrigerator, on top of which a microwave perched precariously. Under the table was a cardboard box containing Ainsworth’s drinking supplies. He retrieved a relatively clean cocktail glass and a bottle of Scotch. It was Johnnie Walker Double Black, the one extravagance he allowed himself, even if it meant hot checks and no food. At nearly fifty bucks, the bottle was more than twice the cost of what he referred to as bar Scotch.
Sipping the golden liquid at his office’s dusty reception desk, Ainsworth spent a few minutes pecking on his computer keyboard and learned that Bancroft had flown on the final mission of the American Space Shuttle program, on the orbiter Atlantis in 2011. He was a throwback to the old days, when astronauts were former test pilots — raucous, hard-drinking, and living life as if it would all be gone tomorrow. But Texas Monthly magazine had published a profile on Bancroft, noting that he had settled down since his marriage to a Houston socialite.
Two days later, Ainsworth discreetly obtained copies of the reports on the ongoing murder investigation from an old friend who worked homicide cases at the Houston PD. From these, he learned Jennifer was shot with a 9mm pistol. The slug had been recovered in good enough shape to be matched to a weapon, if one were to be discovered. The reports indicated that Curtis had told the detectives everything he’d told Ainsworth, including his suspicions about astronaut Brodie Bancroft. When interviewed, Bancroft acknowledged that he knew Jennifer, but denied a relationship beyond casual acquaintance. Ainsworth concluded that Curtis Simon was the focus of the homicide investigation. There appeared to be no more than a passing interest in Brodie Bancroft as a suspect.
After reviewing the reports, Ainsworth spent a few minutes on his computer and had Bancroft’s address. He wasn’t surprised that the man whose personality was much like that of the sixties-era astronauts lived in Taylor Lake Village, a small, elite community where some of those older astronauts still resided.
The following morning, he drove to the Village and located the stately lakeside house where the astronaut lived. It was easily worth a million, maybe two or three. He could imagine why Bancroft might want to deny an affair. He had a lot to lose.
As Ainsworth circumnavigated the block to make a second pass by the home, he spotted Bancroft ahead of him, pulling out of the circular drive onto the tree-lined street. He easily identified the astronaut because Bancroft was driving a Mercedes SL 450 Roadster with the top down. His face matched the photo in the magazine article Ainsworth had looked at again just before leaving his office. He fell in line behind the Mercedes.