Eleanor James sat across from me smoking her cigarette, the smoke billowing up into the air.
Something about her made me suspicious. I wasn’t certain her answers would be true, but I had to ask them, it was my job.
I said, “Mrs. James, when did you last see your husband?”

“This morning,” she said in a husky three pack a day voice.

“Where was he headed? To work?”, I asked.

“He was going on a business trip actually”, she said as she blew more smoke into the already stale air.

“Where?”, I asked, getting impatient with her vague answers. She was hiding something, even a newbie like me was able to see that.

She said, “The Cayman Islands.”

“Mrs. James, you do realize that it is essential to our investigation that we find your husband?”, I said, getting testy.

“Call me Eleanor, ” she said.

She was flirting with me, with her eyes, her lips, the way she kept crossing and uncrossing her legs. I was becoming unglued. I couldn’t allow this.. femme fatale to rattle me, I had questions to ask and answers to get.