by Lee Hollis
“A hundred and fifty.”
Matt handed her two one-hundred-dollar bills.
“I’ll get you some change.”
“No, keep it,” Matt said, locking eyes with her.
Kale finally relented. She took the bills and slid them into the register before asking, “So is this Chase guy really as bad as you say?”
Vigorous nods from both Poppy and Matt.
Kale reluctantly got onto her desktop computer and scrolled down a bit before she came up with a name.
Tracy Watson.
Her zip code to verify was 92202.
Somewhere very close to Palm Springs, California.
Poppy was confident Wyatt could locate her.
They thanked Kale and left the shop, walking a few blocks to where Poppy had found a parking space for her car.
Matt turned to Poppy with a grin. “You haven’t asked to see it.”
“See what?” Poppy asked, perplexed.
“My tattoo!”
“Oh . . . I’m not sure I want to.”
Matt lifted the sleeve of his shirt to reveal three small flowers on his bicep.
Poppy chuckled. “What made you choose flowers?”
“Not just any flowers. Take a closer look. There’s a poppy, a violet, and an iris.”
Poppy erupted in laughter. “I guess now you’re stuck with us forever.”
Chapter 38
Matt knocked on the door of the ramshackle crack den of a little house in a dusty, downtrodden, eerily quiet neighborhood in Indio. He had slicked back his hair and was decked out in a crisp short-sleeve white shirt, black tie, black pants, and black patent leather shoes. He clutched a book in one hand. He waited a few moments, then knocked again. Finally, the door opened to reveal a tiny wisp of a woman with flat blond hair, golden brown skin from laying out in the sun all day, sporting a revealing halter top and cut-off jean shorts. She was barefoot.
“Hello, ma’am, how are you doing today?” Matt asked brightly.
She gave him the once-over. “Fine.”
“I’m Elder Flowers, and what is your name?”
“Tracy.”
“Hello, Tracy, nice to meet you.”
“Don’t you guys usually travel in pairs?”
“I’m sorry?”
“You’re a Mormon missionary, right? I thought there is always supposed to be two of you knocking on doors, you know, so you can tag-team your marks.”
“Oh,” Matt said, momentarily caught off guard. “Elder Covey is under the weather today, so it’s just me.”
“Is Elder Covey as cute as you are?”
“I . . . I don’t know . . .”
“Aren’t you going to ask me if I feel God hears and answers my prayers?”
“Yes, that was one of my questions,” Matt said, fumbling with the book, checking a note inside where he had written down some questions. “Also, if there was another book that spoke of Christ, would you be open to reading it?”
“You’re new at this, aren’t you, Elder Flowers?” Tracy chuckled.
Matt nodded. “It’s my first day.”
“And the other guy got sick, and left you all on your own?”
“Yes, I’m afraid so.”
“Well, you’re doing great, for your first day. You had me at hello,” she purred.
Poppy, who was hiding off to the side of the house behind Detective Jordan and a few of his men, safely out of view, shook her head and sighed. This girl was utterly shameless. An unabashed flirt.
“I’m sure you’ve had a lot of doors slammed in your face today,” she said.
“More than I can count.”
She reached out and took hold of his tie, playing with it. “Well, I would love nothing more than to invite you in and see everything you have to offer me. . . .”
Matt took a deep breath.
“But unfortunately, I’m not alone,” she sighed, furtively glancing back inside the house.
“Oh, is your husband at home? Perhaps he would like to join us to discuss the doctrines and principles of the gospel of—”
Tracy held up a hand to stop him. “He’s not as open to new things like I am,” she sighed, dropping his tie, devouring Matt’s worked-out body with her eyes.
“Tracy, what the hell? I told you to get rid of whoever was at the door!” a man’s booming voice bellowed.
Poppy tugged on Detective Jordan’s jacket and nodded.
She knew that voice.
It was Chase Ehrens.
Tracy stepped a bit farther outside and whispered to Matt, “Maybe you could come back tomorrow. My boyfriend won’t be here and then we could—”
Suddenly without warning Chase appeared in the doorway behind Tracy and barked, “Whatever you’re selling, we’re not interested!”
He roughly grabbed Tracy by the shoulders and shoved her back inside the house before his eyes fell upon Matt’s face and instantly widened with recognition. “You! What are you doing—?” He took in Matt’s outfit and book. “What is this?”
Tracy pushed her way forward. “He’s harmless, Chase. He’s just one of those Jesus freaks who go door to door and—”
Chase reached out and grabbed Matt by the shirt. “He’s a detective, you stupid—”
Suddenly Detective Jordan called out, “Chase Ehrens, this is Detective Lamar Jordan, you’re under arrest. Step outside with your hands in the air!”
Chase froze in place for a moment, still clutching the poly-cotton blend of Matt’s crisp clean white shirt. Then he gave Matt a hard shove sending him stumbling back, whipped around, and made a run for it back inside the house, colliding with Tracy and knocking her to the floor. Matt hurtled forward, chasing after him as Jordan and his men, with Poppy bringing up the rear, ran to catch up to them. Poppy stopped to kneel down and check on Tracy, who was grasping her arm in pain from the fall.
“Who are you? What’s happening?”
“It’s probably best you stay out of it, dear,” Poppy said, springing to her feet and hurrying through the house after them. When she got to a sliding glass door that led to a mostly gravel backyard with overgrown palm trees and a tiny pool filled with algae and debris, she was just in time to see Matt close the distance on Chase, who was running for a wooden side gate to escape. When Chase stopped long enough to open the gate, Matt flung himself on Chase’s back to stop him. The two men grappled, punching and kicking each other, locked in a strange embrace until Chase lost his balance and fell into the pool, dragging Matt with him. Poppy cringed at the idea of poor Matt in that dirty, foul, contaminated water, and prayed he wouldn’t catch some kind of awful disease.
When the two men both splashed to the surface, panting and coughing, Detective Jordan stood at the edge of the pool, gun drawn, flanked by his men. Jordan signaled two of them to grab Chase by the arms and haul him out of the pool. One of the officers wrenched Chase’s arms behind him and snapped on a pair of handcuffs while the other read him his rights.
Matt crawled out of the pool on his own as Poppy rushed over to him.
“Matt, are you all right?” Poppy cried.
“Yeah, but my shirt is ruined. He tore it when he grabbed me and my Bible is soaking wet. I was going to save this costume in case I was ever cast in a production of Book of Mormon.”
Poppy laughed heartily and reached out to Matt but stopped short of touching him. He gave her a curious look. She shrugged apologetically. “I don’t want to catch anything you might have picked up in that nasty pool.”
Tracy suddenly appeared in the sliding glass doorway, and seemed almost resigned to her boyfriend being carted off by the police. “Does this have anything to do with Danika Delgado?”
Before they could answer, Chase was screaming at the top of his lungs while being led away. “I didn’t touch a hair on her head! I’m innocent! They’re trying to frame me!”
Whether that was true or not, Poppy was just happy Chase Ehrens was finally off the street, because whatever charges awaited him, there was enough evidence for at l
east one of them to be the attempted murder of Matt.
Chapter 39
As Poppy stared at Wyatt’s computer screen at the garage office, she thought she might be watching a trailer for some kind of war movie with fierce-looking men and women clad in military fatigues running around carrying guns, engaging in hand-to-hand combat, racing through the desert in high-tech vans. At the end of the thirty-second video, the brave men and women posed heroically, staring at the camera with dead-serious looks on their faces, arms folded, like an unbeatable superhero team line-up in the latest Marvel or DC blockbuster. An animated logo of a coiled snake popped up on the screen accompanied by a man’s commanding voice-over, “Cobra Security Force International . . . We’re there when you need us!”
Wyatt froze the image on the entire team of military operatives as they all gave a thumbs-up at the same time.
Poppy, who had been leaning down just above Wyatt’s shoulder, stood upright. “What am I watching?”
Wyatt swiveled around in his office chair. “It’s a commercial I found on YouTube for a high-tech private security firm. According to their Web site, they specialize in highly confidential and effective security-related services for governments, multinational corporations, and prominent individuals from corporate billionaires and royalty to Hollywood celebrities. They have offices in Los Angeles, New York, London, and Dubai with operatives, mostly elite forces types, dispatched all over the world ready and willing to face a wide variety of imminent dangers to keep you safe.”
Poppy nodded. “Perhaps a better question would be, why am I watching this?”
Violet, who had been sitting on the couch knitting a sweater, put her needles and fabric down and joined them at the computer. “Because of him,” she said, pointing her finger at one of the Cobra team now frozen on the screen with their thumbs in the air. He was in the back row, a big, hulking, handsome man in full battle dress.
Poppy squinted to get a good look at him. “Who is he?”
“That’s Sarge,” Wyatt said. “There’s a better picture of him on his profile page on the Cobra International Web site,” Wyatt said, clicking out of the video and opening the Cobra home page. Sarge’s biography popped up with a professional headshot.
Poppy studied the photo. “That’s . . .”
“Phil McKellan. Apparently he lied to me about what he did for a living. He’s actually some kind of soldier of fortune who works for this security firm. I feel like such a fool believing anything he told me,” Violet lamented.
Poppy was just grateful Iris was not around to dish out another “I told you so” to Violet, who was doing a decent enough job on her own of beating herself up. “You have to stop blaming yourself, Violet.”
“I am not a confrontational person by nature, but I swear if I ever see that man again, I will give him a good verbal thrashing!” Violet spit out, almost surprising herself with her outburst.
That was about as rough as Violet Hogan would ever get given her usual sweet, unruffled demeanor, which frankly was what Poppy loved most about her.
Poppy turned back to Wyatt. “How did you find him?”
Violet smiled at her cherished grandson. “He took the bugging equipment we found here in the office thanks to the tip you got from that poor journalist Fabian Granger, may he rest in peace, and traced it to a spy store in New York.”
“They’re the only place in the country that carries this brand of surveillance equipment,” Wyatt explained. “I called the store and talked to the clerk, but he wouldn’t give out any customer information, so I went to the shop’s online store and they had ads boasting about all the high-profile security companies, including Cobra, who purchased equipment from them. So I just started researching the various companies until I came across this commercial.”
“He had seen the selfie of me and Phil because I had posted it on my Facebook page . . . Wyatt liked it . . . I got over fifty likes on that one photo. Doris Cosgrove even left a comment that she was so jealous I had snared such a handsome boyfriend . . . I mean, as awful as he turned out to be, you have to admit Phil is a very good-looking man. . . .”
“I recognized the similarity between Sarge on the commercial and Grandma’s boyfriend Phil from the photo on Facebook, so I called her to come in and confirm it was the same guy. . . .”
“Which it is, obviously,” Violet said. “Gosh, you know, I have a feeling, it’s just a feeling, but my grandson is so talented and such a true genius, I’m going to go out on a limb and predict that someday he will get some kind of prestigious award, you know, like the Presidential Medal of Freedom.”
“Can we think a little bigger, Grandma? I mean it sounds nice, but even Rush Limbaugh got one of those,” Wyatt groaned.
Poppy gazed at the still image on the computer screen as her mind raced. She needed a plan to find evidence of a direct connection between Hal Greenwood, whom she suspected wanted to spy on them, and Cobra Security Force International.
And although unlike Matt, she had been reticent about doing any undercover work since starting this private investigation business, there was a character she had developed years ago for an improv class, Claire St. Clair, a spoiled rich heiress with her own cosmetics company, who might be the perfect force of nature to establish that direct connection.
Chapter 40
“Mrs. St. Clair, sorry to keep you waiting,” the tall muscled bronzed man with a buzz cut said as he entered the large conference room on the twenty-sixth floor of a towering high-rise in Downtown Los Angeles.
“Just Claire, I don’t want to be confused with my mother,” Poppy said, standing up in her multi-pink-checked boucle Brooks Brothers suit she had kept stored in her closet for a very special occasion. Poppy was not a particular fan of pink, but it seemed an appropriate choice for Claire St. Clair, the ridiculously successful makeup maven character she had not trotted out since a stage benefit for breast cancer way back in the early 1990s.
“Of course. This is Ty Hardy and Chava Levy. Ty is a highly decorated Army helicopter pilot who served in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and Chava is former Mossad. They’re two of my top operatives.” The big boss stuck out his hand, disregarding the new social norm of simple elbow bumping. Poppy nevertheless accepted it and they shook hands. The top dog in the room, the big stud with the buzz cut, was Dan LeVoie, American businessman and former Navy SEAL who had founded Cobra and felt this meeting important enough to run it himself.
Wyatt’s Web site must have worked like a charm. The best way to make an impression on the Cobra principals, Wyatt determined, was to quickly build a Web site touting St. Clair’s billion-dollar share of the cosmetics company. He even built in links to fake stock prices and news articles, even doctoring Poppy’s photo on various magazine covers. He was so detailed and thorough, incorporating glowing fake testimonials from world-famous figures such as Kylie Jenner, Taylor Swift, Jennifer Lawrence, even Meghan Markle, he could fool even the smartest CEOs that St. Clair Cosmetics was a real thing and a big deal.
Poppy had remained skeptical. Fooling a world-renowned security firm seemed, well, foolish, but remarkably it had worked. An underling had probably been assigned to check out the company to see if it was legit, and been fooled by Wyatt’s impressive handiwork. And so here they were, Poppy, Matt, and Violet inside the lion’s den, ready to mix it up.
“May I introduce my executive assistant, Violet Hogan, and my head of security, Matt Cameron,” Poppy said.
She had decided to use Matt’s real name since Flowers might set off alarm bells in Dan LeVoie’s mind about the Desert Flowers Detective Agency, which they obviously had under surveillance. Since these three were high up in the firm, it quickly became clear they were not out on the street following the marks around, bugging offices and homes themselves, and so the likelihood of Dan, Ty, and Chava recognizing any of them was remote.
“Nice to meet you all, please, have a seat,” Dan said, gesturing for them to sit down, which they did. Dan and his team followed. Coffee and coo
kies had been set out, but no one in the room decided at the moment to partake.
Dan eyed Matt curiously. “Head of security? I didn’t think you would need a bodyguard in your line of work.”
“You’d be surprised. The cosmetics industry is a very cutthroat business,” Poppy said.
“Good to know,” Dan said, nodding with a smile. “How can we help you today, Mrs. . . . I mean, Claire?”
“Well, I’m not going to assume you know what’s going on in the world of makeup and perfumes, so I’ll try to bring you up to speed as quickly as I can,” Poppy said, reaching into her Valentino leather satchel bag in raspberry pink, extracting a pink perfume bottle in the shape of a woman’s high heel, and setting it down on the conference table.
“My company is about to release our newest fragrance, Cinderella, a floral bouquet of rose and jasmine with a touch of vanilla, simply divine, here let me show you. . . .”
Dan, Ty, and Chava sat across the table, dumbfounded at what she wanted them to do. Ty glanced at Chava since she was the lone woman in their group, expecting her to take the bottle and spray some on her neck, but Chava was definitely not the type that wore perfume of any kind so she sat back in her chair and folded her arms defiantly. Finally, Dan glared at Ty and he reluctantly reached his arm out, wrist up, so Poppy could spray some on him. He took a whiff and nodded approvingly, then raised his arm in front of Dan so he could awkwardly smell the fragrance, too.
“Nice,” Dan said.
“Thank you. I worked very hard to find the right balance,” Poppy cooed. “As you are probably aware, there is rampant corporate espionage in the cosmetics industry.”
Dan cocked an eyebrow. “No, I actually wasn’t aware. . . .”
“I can assure you there is, and I have heard through my own contacts that Maybelline is about to unveil this exact scent with this same bottle design, same shape but in crystal, in two weeks, beating our own release by a matter of days! It’s virtually impossible for two competing companies to come up with the exact same idea. There has to be a spy in my organization.”
