How long he'd been watching me, I had no idea. Bo Beemish looked exactly as I'd imagined he would. Prematurely gray hair, lightly tanned face with red apple cheeks, icy blue eyes, deep cleft in his chin. He wore a nubby-weave silk sport coat, fashionably pleated khaki trousers, blue dress shirt open at the neck, with a necktie stuffed in his pants pocket. He wore no wedding ring. The large class ring on his left hand looked to be from Georgia Tech.
"You're the detective?" he said, in a voice that could only be called incredulous.
I scrambled to my feet, deposited my cleaning rag in a nearby bucket, and tried to regain my composure. The worst part of the cleaning business is having people treat you as though you were slave labor. I'd never gotten over the mixture of embarrassment and indignation I felt every time a client addressed me like a field hand.
Fuck you, buddy, I thought. You're the one in trouble here, not me. Out loud, my voice was cool, professional.
"I own the cleaning service your wife has contracted with for the heavy cleaning of your house. I'm also a former Atlanta police detective with ten years' experience. I have a master's degree from Georgia State University in criminology. I'd offer you my references, but as we've already seen from your experience with your missing nanny, references really don't mean all that much."
Beemish's eyes blazed for a moment; then he laughed. "Ain't that the goddamned truth," he drawled. "Well, come on back to the study and let's talk about what you're going to do to find this missing nanny." He walked over to a glass cabinet, reached in, pulled out a bottle of Johnnie Walker Red and a heavy cut-glass highball tumbler. "You drink Scotch?"
I shook my head. I'm a bourbon drinker myself, but I don't like to drink with people I don't know or with people I don't like. I didn't think I'd be drinking with DuBose Beemish.
I followed him back to the study, hurriedly smoothing my hair and wiping my hands on the seat of my jeans.
He seated himself behind the desk, poured himself two inches of Scotch, and took a long sip.
"Well." He sighed. "Lilah tells me she's filled you in on our little domestic crisis here. She also tells me she's tentatively agreed to hire you to see if you can't track down Miss Ewbanks."
"That's right. We haven't discussed terms or a contract or anything, though."
He smiled faintly. "Tell me, just what exactly do you propose to do for us? Should we sign a contract?"
I tried to hide my annoyance, but I think he got the picture. "I intend to do just what Lilah asked me to do: find the girl and, as far as possible, return your property to you. Whether or not you press charges will be entirely up to you, of course."
"Of course," he said, stirring the amber liquid with his index finger. "I was wondering how you intend to track her down without bringing in the police."
It was my turn to smile now. "Your wife has given me the file she assembled on Kristee. I'll start with the service that placed her. I'll also ask a friend to check the NCIC, that's the National Crime Information Center, to see if she has a prior history of criminal activity. I may eventually have to have someone out in Utah do some legwork for me, unless you want to authorize me to fly out there myself, but that wouldn't be something we'd need to decide immediately. I'll get in touch with the local church she attended, see if she told anyone she intended to leave town, and I'll talk to the people there who knew her. And of course I'll check local coin shops, once you give me a description of what's missing, to see if anything has turned up. I have a friend at a travel agency, who has friends at the airlines; I'll check to see if Kristee has flown anywhere. That's how I'll start. How I proceed from there I won't know until I get more of a feel for this girl."
I paused to catch my breath.
Beemish studied me for a moment more, and it appeared he had something else he wanted to ask, but after a second or two he apparently thought better of it.
"Fine," he said finally. "We'll need to talk money, naturally." A smile played about the corners of his upper lip. "What exactly does a private eye charge these days?"
I did some quick mental arithmetic. It had been a year since I'd last priced the other investigators in town, so I upped my hourly rate by 30 percent.
"I charge sixty-five dollars an hour, or a day rate of five hundred," I said. "Plus expenses for long distance calls, computer time if any, and, of course, mileage. I charge 30 cents a mile. If I have to contract out any work, I'll let you know ahead of time. I usually bill on a weekly cycle, and you'll receive a written report along with your first bill."
Beemish looked taken aback. "Five hundred a day!" he sputtered. "My God, that's more than I pay my bulldozer operator, and he owns his own equipment."
"Get your bulldozer operator to find the girl, then," I snapped. I hate discussing money, especially with someone who can clearly afford to pay whatever it takes to get a job done.
Lilah Rose slid in the door and quickly took up a position behind her husband's chair. "I think that's fine, Bo, don't you? I don't think I told you on the phone, honey, but your grandmother's amethyst ring is missing from my jewel case, and so are the diamond earrings you gave me for our fifth anniversary."
She addressed herself to me.
"A lot of the things she took were pretty ordinary, but that ring has been in Bo's family for at least a hundred years. It has a great deal of sentimental value, and of course the diamond earrings do too, plus the fact that they're about two carats. I don't even want to think about what Bo paid for them."
Her husband's face twisted into a scowl. "Goddammit, Callahan, I want that amethyst ring back. If my mother finds out it's gone, we'll never hear the end of it."
Just then the study door flew open and the two blond hellions burst in again.
"Daddy, Daddy," the little girl caroled, taking his hands in hers. "Kristee's gone, did you know? And she didn't even tell us good-bye."
Lilah moved to the children's side, quickly taking each child's hand in her own. "Daddy knows all about it," she told them. "Now give him a kiss, then let's hop upstairs and get ready for Jessie's party."
The two pecked their father quickly on his cheek and went running from the room.
Lilah Rose looked at me apologetically. "Callahan, we'll talk when I get back, I promise." She started to follow the children out of the room, then ducked back in. "You will be able to finish cleaning, won't you? I'm having a luncheon tomorrow, and there won't be time to get anybody else on such short notice."
"Yeah," I said, staring up at the cobwebby chandelier. "I should be able to get things under control in a few hours. Then I'll head for my office and start making phone calls about Kristee."
"Thanks ever so." She blew a kiss to her unsmiling husband and left the room.
I started to follow her, but Beemish leaned across the desk and put a hand on mine.
"Wait," he said, and then added a halfhearted "please."
"There are some things I need to tell you about Kristee that I don't want Lilah Rose to hear."
5
I'VE always had a lousy poker face. Edna tells me that when I was a snot-nosed kid, whenever she wanted to find out whether I'd committed some heinous offense, she had only to ask. I'd lie, of course, but she said the guilt was always written all over my face. I got away with very little. Which is why I try to keep fairly straight these days. It simplifies things.
So when Bo Beemish seemed ready to bare his soul to me, I was pretty sure I knew what he'd say. I squirmed a little on the sofa. Looked studiously at my hands, which were bleached out and pruney from the suds they'd been in earlier. Wondered if he knew I knew what I knew.
Fortunately, Beemish wasn't nearly as observant as my mother. Few people are.
He cleared his throat a couple of times, then picked up a pen and started doodling on a scratch pad. Without looking up, and in a fast, low voice I had to strain to hear, he began talking.
"This is absolutely confidential, Callahan. And I mean confidential." He glanced up, then ducked his head again.
"Besides the coins and the bonds Kristee took from the safe, she got some business records of mine. Highly sensitive business records.
"I'm in the middle of putting together a multimillion-dollar deal right now, the biggest deal I've ever packaged. If those records get out, the deal will be ruined, and so will I."
He looked at me now, and I could see real fear in those icy blues.
"You've got to find this girl, and find her quick. I mean it. If we have to pay to get her to hand over the records, I'm willing. There's much more riding on this thing than even Lilah Rose knows."
I blinked. "What kind of business records are they, Bo?" I had already decided that if he could call me by my first name, I could call him by his. "And how would Kristee know where they were or what they meant to you?"
"Just what are you insinuating?"
"I'm not insinuating anything," I said, in danger of losing my cool. "But the other things Kristee took are the kind of stuff a common burglar takes, stuff that can be converted to cash fairly easily. I need to understand what records she took and why so I can figure out what she might do with them. How she could get something out of them. If you don't want to tell me, fine. But I gotta tell you, that's gonna severely limit my ability to find this girl and get your property back. And another thing: my fee stays the same, whether I find the girl or not."
I knew that would get Beemish, tightwad that he was.
A nerve twitched below his right eye. He ran his tongue over his lips and beat a tattoo in the palm of his left hand with the pen.
"OK," he said. "I guess I'll have to trust you. Kristee knew about the deal because we had—uh, a relationship."
"A relationship," I repeated. "Are we talking employer-employee?"
"Not exactly. We were sleeping together."
I cocked one eyebrow in what I hoped was a surprised but nonjudgmental expression.
"It was no big deal," he said. "It had nothing to do with Lilah or the kids or our marriage. It was strictly a little fling. Everybody does it. It was just that Kristee— my God, she was a sexy little thing! I'll tell you, they teach those Mormon girls stuff they don't teach Presbyterians. She was always running around the house in these little shorts, or showing up in the kitchen in some oversized T-shirt with nothing on underneath. She made it very clear she was attracted to me too. I was terrified Lilah would notice, so I told Kristee to straighten up. But she thought it was funny, sleeping with the boss right under Lilah's nose. She came on to me first, by the way. I swear.
"Anyway, she seemed real interested in my business. She said she wanted to go back to college. Maybe get a degree in business administration." He sighed. "I suppose I was flattered. Lilah's a good gal. She runs the house fairly well, she's a good mother and a terrific hostess. But she doesn't have the slightest interest in how I make all the money she loves to spend. I guess I talked pretty openly to Kristee about this deal I've got cooking. She acted like she was fascinated. She wanted to hear every tiny little detail. I never showed her any of the documents, but she knew where everything was in this study."
For the first time, he looked slightly embarrassed. "We—uh, spent a lot of time in here. It's the only room in the house with a lock on the door."
I looked down at the overstuffed chintz sofa I was sitting on. A mental image of the two of them—buck naked, flailing away—flashed through my mind. I gingerly scooted to the edge. Made a mental note to take some fabric cleaner to the cushions the first opportunity I got.
"Did she know the combination to the safe?"
"No, but it wouldn't have been hard for her to figure out. It's the months and days of my kids' birthdays, March twenty-fifth and fifteenth."
For all his business smarts, it was painfully clear to me that Bo Beemish was dumb as a stump when it came to everyday common sense.
"You gonna tell me what these records were? Are they bigger than a bread box? Smaller than a cash ledger?"
He shook his head. "I can't tell you everything. Not yet. I will tell you that they pertain to a parcel of land I'm developing up in Kensington Park. It's an eighty-seven-acre tract with twelve hundred feet on the Chattahoochee River. It'll be mixed use: houses, some small boutiques, an exercise club, and a couple of really nice restaurants. I'm gonna put up the best, most beautiful, million-dollar townhouses ever seen in Atlanta. L'Arrondissement, I'm calling it. Classy, huh? There are some problems with the project, though. And like the horse's ass I am, I told Kristee about some of them. With the documents she has, she could really hurt me."
"Blackmail?" I asked.
He nodded. "And worse."
"Can you at least tell me what these records look like?"
"They're in a brown accordion file marked with a label that says L'ARRONDISSEMENT. There are some deeds, some promissory notes, and a yellow legal pad with some memos. That's really all I can tell you."
"Swell," I said. "That's better than nothing."
I got up and headed for the study door. I still had a lot of cleaning to do before I finished the day, and I needed to get going. "Anything else you want to tell me before I start on the bathrooms?"
"That's it," he said. "Except for one thing."
"Yeah. What's that?"
"Don't forget to clean the tile grout in the sauna in the master bath," he said. "Goddamn maids never get all that black stuff out."
6
I detached a small tray of cleaning supplies from my trolley and went up the back stairs to the second floor. The upstairs chez Beemish was just as impressive as the downstairs. There was a thick-textured carpet the color of clotted English cream. I examined it and decided I could get away with just spot-cleaning the scattered stains. There was an expensive-looking Oriental wallpaper lining the walls and a long hallway punctuated with half a dozen doors.
I could hear voices coming from one, so I peeped in. The room was a pink-and-white fairy tale: canopy bed, white wicker rocker and dressing table, pink chintz ruffles everywhere. In the middle of it all, Lilah Rose was struggling to pull a fluffy party dress over the head of her daughter, who was struggling just as hard to keep it off. The skirmish must have been a protracted one because Lilah was speaking to her daughter through clenched teeth.
"Now, Meredith, you have to wear a dress to Jessie's party. All the other little girls will be in dresses. Don't you want to look pretty like your friends? Let's put on the nice dress Mama bought for the party."
"No, no, no, no," the child hollered, her face growing crimson. "I want my turtle shirt."
"Looks like a standoff," I offered.
Lilah Rose gave a start. "Jesus, Julia, I didn't know you were standing there. Is there something you need right now? As you can see, I'm having a little difficulty with Meredith. She's a very strong-willed little person, you know. Bo and I try hard not to stifle her self-expression."
Meredith jerked open a dresser drawer and began dumping the contents on the floor.
Lilah Rose turned her attention back to me. "Now what was it you needed?"
"Kristee's room. I'd like to look around, see if I can get any idea where she might have gone."
Lilah Rose plucked a folded pink and white seersucker sunsuit from the pile on the floor. "Here, sweetie. You love this." Her daughter scowled, but stepped into the romper and began fiddling with the shoulder straps.
"Oh, yes," Lilah said. "You won't find anything. She pretty well cleaned it out. But it's up that short half flight of stairs at the end of the hall. Bo built it as an exercise room for the family, but when we decided to have live-in help for the children, it made perfect sense to put her there. There's a stairway that goes directly down to the garage, so she could come and go in privacy." A wry smile crossed Lilah's face. "Of course, I don't guess it ever occurred to me the kinds of comings and goings the little slut would be involved in."
Meredith looked up at her mother with interest. "What's a slut, Mama?"
Lilah looked like she'd been smacked with a week-old mullet. "Nothin', honey. That's just a
word grownups use sometimes. But little girls don't ever, ever say that word, do you hear? Not ever."
"No," Meredith agreed, nodding solemnly. "Never."
I left mother and daughter to their party preparations. As I started up the back stairs, I turned and saw the little girl hopping down the front stairs two at a time, all the while chanting, "Slut. Slut. Slut. Slut."
The maid's quarters were an abrupt change from the opulence of the rest of the house. For one thing, it was noticeably hotter up there. I'd have been willing to bet old Bo Beemish hadn't cared to install a zoned air conditioning unit to handle a room over the garage, doubtless the warmest room in the house.
I pushed the bedroom door open. The room looked like what new money thought a maid's room should look like. The windowless plasterboard walls had never been properly painted, and the burnt-orange carpet looked like a cheap industrial brand. Here and there, the room's occupant had made attempts to brighten the place up by hanging posters of bare-chested rock stars decked out in chains and tight black leather pants. There was a double bed, covered with an old aqua chenille bedspread. A nightstand beside the bed was made of that awful blond wood you see in 1950s-era motels. The stand held a gooseneck metal reading lamp and a few tattered paperback books.
Sharing space on the bed table was a new-looking white princess phone. There was a set of Atlanta telephone books underneath. I picked up the receiver and heard a dial tone.
I leafed through the paperbacks and the phone books, looking for handwritten notes. Nothing.
The only other furniture in the room was a matching blond dresser and a torn brown Naugahyde La-Z-Boy recliner. A small black and white television stood on an old milk crate. I pulled out each of the four drawers in the dresser. Empty, except for a forlorn-looking pair of pantyhose in the top drawer. I saw a scrap of black fabric and managed to tug it free from where it had caught at the back of the drawer. It wasn't much more than a snippet; actually, it was a tiny pair of black lace bikini panties. The label read VICTORIA'S SECRET.
Every Crooked Nanny Page 3
