“Boring,” Marlena said.
“Excuse me?” Emma was boring the world’s most boring young woman?
“The meeting was boring. I didn’t go back.”
Perhaps Gavin hadn’t given them Marlena’s name at all. Emma hoped that was the case, that instead, Michael Specht had copied a list of all the people CoXistence claimed as members and sent Emma chasing after them.
Marlena stared at Emma with barely a flicker of life in her eyes. Emma didn’t even know what the girl did in this pitiable office. Surely nobody had hired her to interact with customers.
She felt sick. And sick and tired of this. She wanted to go home and take aspirin and drink brandy until she killed all the flu bugs while she watched the most stupid TV show she could find.
“It’s like this,” Marlena said. She might have meant her tone to be civil, but she wasn’t good at it.
Emma thought with envy of her trainee, Billie August, sitting in comfort in front of the computer, conducting lovely on-line background searches while she, poor Emma, endured this idiot. From now on, Billie could do the Riddock interviews and Emma could sit in peace with a cup of good coffee—and food when she was hungry—letting the computer do the legwork. No traffic snarls, no tedious young women.
It would be good practice for Billie, anyway. She hadn’t gone out on interviews of this sort yet. Emma had wanted to give her more time, let her get her legs. She’d only been at the agency a few months.
Now, Emma felt that a few months were quite enough. Surely Billie—surely anybody—was quite capable of talking to people who said nothing back in return.
“It’s like what?” Emma prompted.
“I only meant,” Marlena said, rolling her eyes. “Isn’t it obvious? I don’t know anything.”
It was obvious. She knew nothing and neither had the five others before her. From now on, let Billie face the know-nothings. They’d be a good match.
Two
Zachary Park hung up the phone as Billie entered the office and pulled off her raincoat. He turned and smiled, raising one eyebrow. “Is that a Lego tower in your pocket or are you just glad to see me?” he asked.
Billie patted her hip pockets. Empty.
“The blouse,” Zack whispered, shielding his mouth as if they were conspirators.
Damn. She had felt relatively together today, too, liked how she looked in the bronze silk blouse and forest green wool slacks, her blond hair falling decently for once.
She pulled a red and white stack of plastic bricks out of her breast pocket. “The colors don’t go with the blouse, either,” she said dolefully. “Another fashion victim, but Jesse’s such a…you could break your…” She shrugged. Who cared why? Bits and pieces of her various lives stuck to her as she moved from one point to the other, and that’s how it was.
She went into her cubicle. After three months in the often frustrating job—working with Emma Howe was an exercise in learning patience—she nonetheless was delighted with this small space and its promise of a solid career.
The photo on her desk of her son reminded her of the Legos, which she put into her briefcase before she settled in at the computer. And then she remembered she needed coffee and returned to the small reception area where Zachary, office manager and all-around whatever-was-needed maintained a relatively fresh pot as self-defense against Emma’s foul brew.
Billie filled her cup and gestured toward the closed door of Emma’s office. “She in?”
“She? You talking about our employer, missy?”
Billie smiled. “Did your mother do that, too? You couldn’t refer to her as ‘she’?”
He nodded.
“Why do you suppose that is?”
“Beats me. But she is not in. She is home. Either getting sick, or being sick.”
Billie’s live-in sitter and entire support system, Ivan, had been showing signs of the flu this morning, too. The idea of what a sick sitter would mean made her feel ill herself.
“She’s nonetheless dragging herself in shortly.”
“Don’t let her in. People shouldn’t be allowed to spread their germs.”
“You’re so harsh!” Zack mimed horror. “She’s not that bad, not really.”
“Easy for you to say. She likes you. She has a thing for handsome men.”
“We have that in common. And more relevantly, we both have a thing for Emma’s son, whom she also loves.”
“So where does that leave me? Do you and Nathaniel want to make it a ménage a trois, so I, too, can enjoy her approval? Or make that a ménage a quatre—I’d have to bring my son the Lego-builder.”
Zachary shrugged. “Give her a decade or so, you’ll see. You’ll stop being afraid of her.”
“I’m not afraid! I’m…” Afraid. Or at least wary, with cause. Her employer was unpredictable and rough-edged, perpetually exasperated, as if Billie were the unpleasant by-product of a repugnant but necessary process.
“The two of you have different styles, is all,” Zack said. “She’s no-nonsense, and you’re—”
“Obviously, if you put it that way, then I’m nonsense.”
“Nonsense.”
“You talkin’ to me?”
Zack lifted the fishbowl from his desk. It contained, as usual, nothing aqueous, but instead, a variety of candies. “Eat chocolate.” The universal healing agent, he claimed.
“Too early.”
“Then you’re having a better day than I am.” He carefully unwrapped a miniature Snickers bar, and once again, Billie wondered how he avoided becoming blimp-sized, but when she’d asked, he’d said it was “a guy thing.” “By the way,” he said as he chewed candy, “what happened with the cowboy?”
Zachary complained that once he transmitted information he got over the phone to Billie or Emma, neither remembered to tell him the rest of the story. This was not a valid complaint, since he constantly requested—and received—updates.
“It’s my mother,” the client had told Zachary. “She’s seventy-eight and engaged to a man she’s never met, a man she calls ‘a diamond in the rough’ when she isn’t calling him her ‘soul mate.’ She met him on the Internet, and she will not listen to reason. I think she’s already sent him money.”
The betrothed mother found out what her son was up to and phoned. At that point, Billie spoke with her. “At first, I was furious with his meddling,” the woman said. “But I’ve changed my mind. I accept the challenge. I’ll show my suspicious son how wrong he is. I didn’t raise him to be heartless, but look how he’s turned out. Just because he believes old people can’t be in love, doesn’t mean it’s so. And I have the right to send gifts to whomever I like. It’s my money.”
She was right about the money and possibly right about her son, but what Billie actually heard was a searing, hard-core terror behind her forced jolliness, and a need to have her Internet lover be precisely who he said he was.
And she was wrong about “Potter,” as he called himself. It was, he said, his middle name, his mother’s maiden name. James Potter Redbranch, sixty, retired Texas Panhandle rancher, “but not one of the big ones, mind you,” he’d told mama. “Sheep, not cattle.” But big enough. “Took care of me and my family and as long as I watch it now, I’ll be okay.” A widower with one son who was off in the Peace Corps in Africa. Interests: golf, travel in his RV, and computers.
The woman called again. “He might think I’m a bit younger than I actually am,” she said. “I didn’t have a brand-new photo around, you understand.”
By then, Billie had understood too much. “A complete fake,” she now told Zack. “Con man. No Redbranch—he’s James Potter, age forty-seven. He must juggle his age to be whatever his correspondent wants. And of course in this case, his correspondent dropped seventeen years from her age. The man never had a ranch or a son in the Peace Corps, no dead wife, but five ex-wives. If they’re all ex. Been in jail twice for extortion, once for auto theft.” She waved her hand in the air, brushing away all the James Potters
and the pathetic women who were so desperate to find love that they ignored all danger signs and all logic. “He’s always temporarily short of liquid assets because of a deal that’s pending. He can’t visit them without a short-term loan. He can’t complete the deal without a cash infusion. That sort of thing.”
“I wonder how long he could have kept it up—this long-distance extraction of funds,” Zack said.
“Doesn’t have to be that long if he’s got a big enough stable,” Billie said. “New people always come on-line and he can have dozens and dozens at all times. But guess what the grand finale was.”
“The newly disengaged mama is tracking Potter down and accusing him of extortion.”
“Wrong. Try again.”
“She’s apologized to her son for being a fool?”
“Wrong once more,” Billie said. “Mama’s no longer speaking to her son.”
Zachary shrugged. “I knew it all along. The basic truth of life is: Steal anything except my illusions.”
“Anyway, that’s done. I’m on another check and this one’s fine, as far as I can see. Is honesty as boring as it seems?”
“You want boring? That last caller would not shut up. Somebody’s been bothering her. Obscene phone calls. Actually, ‘kind of obscene’ calls, whatever that means. A month and a half ago. She meant to call sooner, but she was too upset. Then she thought the phone company would catch the person, but they didn’t read her mind. It’s making her too nervous to live, just about—even though the calls have stopped. Still wondering who they were from, and on and on and then on some more. Didn’t matter that I told her the calls were over, she should perhaps talk to somebody about her anxiety, and that there wasn’t much we could do after all this time.”
Zachary was great with those people. Billie had heard him field crazies and cranks and this last and most difficult group, the hysterical “Do Somethings!” as they privately called them. There was nothing to be done in most cases, nothing that would help or change the situation or ease anyone’s mind, but these people didn’t care.
Emma had instituted a new fee category which was filed under PA, as in “Permanent Acquisitions,” people who didn’t know what they wanted, but were going to keep on wanting it forever. Most clients were given an estimated fee, usually a few hundred dollars for a routine search, such as the one for the imaginary suitor. But the PAs were assured that there was little to be done, and then if they persisted, were asked to pay a thousand dollars up front for the non-service. It helped weed some out, though not all. Mostly, the firm relied on Zachary to sound sympathetic and compassionate while simultaneously keeping the vaguely needy at bay.
Billie took her coffee back to her cubicle and directed her attention to the screen, searching for liens or judgments against the client’s anticipated partner. She thought again of the furious woman who’d been suckered by a false fiancé. Nothing was as hard as an on-line search for love.
Except, perhaps, an off-line search.
*
She called it quits and decided to check the health status of her household when she heard the outer office door open and the somewhat hoarse voice asking Zachary about calls. Even through its scratchiness, Emma sounded softer-edged when she spoke to Zachary Park. Billie envied that tolerance, that bemused acceptance, despite what Zachary himself called his “time out for bad behavior.”
She accepted the idea that Emma was incapable of being the friendly mentor Billie had fantasized, and that in fact, Emma would choke if forced to say the word “mentor.” Billie had tried to convince herself that Emma had become how she was through working in a man’s world for too long, except that most men were more gracious than Emma Howe, and her brusque, battering approach seemed inborn.
But Emma was fair, in her fashion. Ethical in a profession where ethics were as fluid and unpredictable as mercury, so working for her more or less balanced itself out. It was a job with a paycheck and relatively flexible hours, and Billie was doing well enough. Not that the woman said so, but after three months of the Emma Experience, Billie interpreted a declining rate of criticism as her employer’s equivalent of praise.
“Not leaving, are you?” Emma said as Billie emerged from her cubicle.
“I thought…actually, I…” Billie paused, furious with herself for not simply saying “Yes I am” with equal force.
She reminded herself that she was not afraid of the older woman. “I have to be home early today,” she said firmly. Much better.
“I want you to take over the Riddock interviews for a while,” Emma said.
As if Billie’s answer had been nothing more than static. White noise.
“Michael Specht’s case,” Emma said. “We’re gathering whatever nondamaging information we can. Also damaging, if it comes to that. Character witnesses, anything that can help Michael’s case.”
Billie waited for more instructions, even though she’d learned not to expect anything resembling adequate explanation from Emma. She wasn’t surprised when Emma simply handed her a list of names. Six had check marks beside them. People she’d already interviewed? Check marks for special interest? People she meant to interview? Names supplied by whom? Any background Billie should know?
“Feel free to add anybody else you think is related or relevant, too,” Emma said. “The budget is considerable. I mean, you’ll talk to Michael, of course. Don’t go off without cause, but you don’t have to be in a panic about time. The family wallet is bigger than God’s .”
Was Emma suggesting that Billie could use her own brain following leads? That would be a quantum leap forward from anything else she’d worked on. A leap of faith on Emma’s part, too.
Billie knew that the Gavin Riddock case was stratospherically high profile. It was also important to Michael Specht’s career and reputation as the hotshot criminal lawyer du jour and therefore very important to the PIs Michael Specht hired.
“I’ll oversee it,” Emma said. “Maybe do one or two. This is for now, and we’ll see. Keep me informed, as well as Michael. You know the drill, right? You report to him in person.”
Billie nodded. Not that Emma had deigned to mention it; Zachary had explained it to her. Investigators’ reports were given verbally, to keep them out of the prosecution’s discovery process. Nothing written, nothing to subpoena.
Billie felt reanimated; she was tired of staring at the computer. She craved the drama of a quick glimpse into another life. Plus the acting—playing a role herself.
Emma was handing her a major case. Maybe that meant, in Emma-speak, that Billie was truly doing well. In fact, it had to mean that. Why else?
“I did these,” Emma said, pointing to the names with check marks. “My notes are attached. Nothing, really. A gum-snapper with ten hoops in one ear; a woman who lectured on our polluted Earth and what it was doing to the animals; a guy who couldn’t remember ever meeting Gavin; a movie starlet named Marlena; and two others so boring I can’t even remember what was boring about them. Nobody knew a thing worth knowing. But…” She looked at the list with something like affection and definitely with interest, and Billie feared that she was reconsidering her decision to entrust it to her. And then once again, Emma nodded, giving the transfer her stamp of approval. “Start in the morning. Maybe go see Michael Specht first, introduce yourself and get a handle on what he wants at this point.” She cleared her throat. “Make it clear I’m having you take over because—”
Billie tried not to smile, although the joy of validation so filled her, it wanted out. She mentally completed Emma’s sentence: Because:
—you’re such a quick study.
—I’ve been so impressed by your instincts, your style, your diligence, your wisdom, your learning curve, your…
—you’ve shown you can handle anything I toss your way…
—I’ve seen how your natural talents make you able to blend into a variety of situations and…
—in three short months, you’ve—
Emma blew her nose, then be
gan again. “Because,” she repeated, “I feel like hell and these interviews are meaningless time-fillers. The kid murdered the girl and the only reason we’re doing this is because his parents have too much money and we don’t. I don’t want to waste my time and health, but I can’t afford to turn this case down or hand it back, and I’m afraid if I have to listen to one more idiot, I’m going to say all this to Michael Specht himself and lose an important client.”
So the answer was: none of the above. The answer was: You’re doing this, Billie, because it’s a stupid waste of time and energy that nonetheless earns me money.
Emma coughed. “Tell Michael I’m under the weather and you’re subbing.”
Not the script Billie would have written but she could live with that.
In fact, she would live with that.
What choice did she have?
Three
Gavin didn’t want to talk to Mr. Specht anymore. He didn’t like him.
But he was supposed to talk to him and to like him. Mother said Mr. Specht was here to help him get out of this mess. Mother was paying Mr. Specht to do that. She’d said so. Mr. Specht had to help him. He promised to. It was his job, and he was the best, she said.
But he didn’t like him. Didn’t believe him.
His mother wasn’t right about everything. She told him things that were wrong. She said people meant well, didn’t know any better than to call names.
His vision grew watery as he thought about how in school it was worse being called “dummy” than being punched.
Tracy had understood. Tracy had known the truth of how people were. She wasn’t like the other people, but she understood them and she never lied about how it was.
Nobody punched him anymore. He was too big now, and he was strong from the running and the weights, and Tracy had said to do that, too, and that was good. But his mother said people didn’t hate him, and she was wrong. They didn’t know better, she said. But Gavin was sure that somebody had told them that calling names was wrong, that it hurt, too. And even if nobody had, couldn’t they see for themselves?
Whatever Doesn't Kill You (An Emma Howe and Billie August Mystery Book 2) Page 2
