A Job to Kill For

by Janice Kaplan

  I followed Kate down a short hallway and into an office with thick beige carpet, classically elegant furniture, and elaborately framed oil paintings, including a portrait on the far wall of a gentleman in eighteenth-century dress. A woman sitting behind an English writing table looked up from her paperwork, removed her reading specs and got up to greet me. I considered Kate in her red frames and realized everything flipped upside down as you got older. At age twenty, you stopped reading and put your eyeglasses on. At forty (or fifty), you took them off.

  “I’m Elsa Franklin,” said the woman. “How nice to meet you.”

  She extended a hand. Her long tapered fingers were ringless and her short nails neat but unpolished. She had hints of age spots on her neck and her gray hair was pulled back in a chignon. Dressed in a white shirt, tan trousers, and beige pumps, she looked sensible and serious, though a Gucci scarf tied at her neck gave a hint of sophistication.

  Elsa gestured for me to sit down. I picked a hardback chair, imitation Louis XIV, and we exchanged pleasantries about the beautiful campus and lovely day. Elsa brought over a silver serving set from a side table. Picking up the graceful coffee pot, she filled a delicate china cup and offered it to me.

  “Such a tragedy about Cassie Crawford,” she said, clearly done with small talk and getting right to the point of my visit.

  I took the coffee and added milk from an engraved pitcher. “Awful,” I agreed. “I’d known Cassie only a few weeks. I can imagine your shock when you heard.”

  “I knew her well. She worked here about a year.”

  “Doing what?” I asked.

  Elsa settled down in a high-backed chair across from me. “The development office raises money for the university. We deal with alumni, parents, corporations, foundations—you name it. The professors on campus may get all the attention, but they couldn’t do their work without us.”

  I heard a hint of defensiveness in her voice. Okay, so I’d discovered one fault line at the university. Probably at any university.

  “I’m sure your work is well appreciated,” I said.

  “Not always. But we all understand that a large school requires a large endowment.” She passed me a floral Wedgwood plate arranged with expensive chocolates and Godiva biscuits. I carefully picked out a Vosges truffle. Delicious. This must be the same routine Elsa used to pamper prospective donors. I understood how it worked. Much more upper-crust coddling and I might end up writing a check for a new library annex.

  “How did Cassie do at her job?” I asked, taking another chocolate and popping it in my mouth. This one had a cherry-cream center. Yuck. Forget the library.

  “Oh, I’d call Cassie first-rate. Really outstanding,” Elsa said. “Many of the young women who start here want to deal with the biggest donors immediately. They’re usually not experienced enough to warrant that. But Cassie had”—she paused—“a certain talent.”

  “What kind of talent?” I asked. Unlikely that she tap-danced in front of donors or played them Moonlight Sonata. Unless she wanted to become Miss America.

  “Cassie had a very seductive way of talking to people. Gently wooing them. Men responded quickly to her.”

  “Did she ever step over the line?”

  Elsa smiled tightly. “We don’t have lines here. I assume the people I hire act appropriately.”

  “No need for moral codes? Lectures to the young fund-raisers on avoiding temptation?”

  Elsa took her linen napkin and dabbed an imaginary crumb from her mouth.

  “Wealth always has its temptations. Our job is to direct the money where it does the most good.”

  “And Cassie did good?”

  “Very good. Or very well, I should say.”

  “I gather she met her husband working here.”

  Elsa nodded. “I knew he liked her right away. She had a number of private meetings with him and then brought in a big check. I hadn’t expected them to get engaged.” She paused, then hastily added, “But of course I was very happy for her.”

  Something about her tone seemed off. She sounded as credible as a late-night infomercial for Trim-Fast diet pills. But I couldn’t quite figure out why Elsa wouldn’t want Cassie married to Roger.

  “So she gained a husband and you lost a fund-raiser,” I said, taking a stab at one possibility.

  Elsa shook her head. “Cassie asked to stay on part-time. She made it clear that Roger had to be her first priority, but she wanted to come in whenever he didn’t need her. We worked it out.”

  Given the expression on her face, I gathered that Elsa didn’t usually subscribe to the idea of flextime or “family first,” but she hadn’t had a lot of options. It would be hard to fire a fund-raiser who has dinner parties with billionaires. If Cassie wanted to keep the job to have some identity apart from Roger, Elsa had to cave.

  “How much did she work?” I asked.

  “Not much.” Elsa took a large gulp of coffee, as if to wipe the sour taste from her mouth. “But Cassie had her connections. She always insisted it’s not the time, it’s the results.”

  “Did Roger continue to make donations? His friends?”

  “I won’t discuss that,” Elsa said brusquely.

  She put down her coffee cup with a noisy clink, and the tension level in the room suddenly soared. An awkward silence followed.

  “You have such a lovely office,” I said, hoping to get us back on neutral ground. I gestured to the oil painting on the wall. “Is the portrait a university founder? An early settler of California?”

  Her shoulders relaxed just a bit. “Neither. He’s my great-great-great—well, I can’t remember how many greats—uncle from back East.”

  Well, that made sense. Nothing Californian about this office, and any guy who’d traveled west in a wagon train probably wouldn’t be posing in knickers and a frilly shirt.

  “So your roots are on the East Coast?” I asked.

  “Connecticut,” she said, fingering the pearl circle pin on her blouse. “My family’s lived there for generations. I attended Connecticut College for my BA, then did graduate work at Columbia. I worked at both schools for many years.”

  “What brought you here?”

  “Oh, you know,” she said vaguely. She brought a hand up to her ear and adjusted her pearl-stud earring. “Life takes unexpected turns. We have moral responsibilities. I came about nine years ago.”

  “I’m also a transplant,” I said, eager to find something we had in common. “I grew up in a small town in the Midwest and went to Ohio State. I came here on a whim after college with my best friend Molly and met my husband. Dan Fields.”

  “Dan Fields, the plastic surgeon?” she asked. When I nodded, she seemed to perk up, then raised her coffee cup as if making a toast. “Well, what a pleasure. We gave Dr. Fields an award at our Humanitarian Dinner two years ago.”

  “That was from this office?” I hadn’t made the connection. “I remember it well.”

  “Who could forget? He filled three tables at the benefit, at twenty thousand dollars each, and the hospital took several full-page ads in the program. He brought in quite a tidy sum. I’m always pleased when we honor the right person.”

  “Actually, I thought he got honored for providing free treatment to poor children with cleft palates,” I said, a tad tartly.

  “Of course.” Two bright spots of color popped out on her cheeks as she realized her faux pas. “I mean, we certainly don’t give honors to people to get money from them. We give honors to…um, honor people.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  Silence, as the tension in the room built again. But now it was Elsa Franklin’s turn to do something about it.

  “So how else can I help you with Cassie?” she asked, eager to talk about anything but Dan’s dinner.

  “I need some leads,” I said. “Names of people who might have liked her—or disliked her. Donors she encountered. Problems she might have had. Any hints that could help us understand what happened.”

  “You’re m
aking inquiries on behalf of Roger, is that right?” she asked.

  “More or less,” I said. I’d dropped Roger’s name when talking to the dean and didn’t need to explain more now.

  Elsa Franklin nodded briskly. “Roger Crawford has always been a very generous contributor to the school. I’d hate to think any suspicion could rest on him.”

  Sure. Not good to name a building after someone who could end up in jail.

  “Who’d be on your list of suspects?” I asked.

  “I hadn’t really thought about it.” She stood up abruptly and went over to her desk. Sitting down at her computer, she began typing, and after a couple of minutes I wondered if she’d forgotten that I was still there.

  “One name that comes to mind is Billy Mann,” she said finally. “Cassie had been seeing a lot of him when she started working here. I let her know he wasn’t an appropriate companion.”

  I looked up, surprised. “I thought you said you didn’t have moral codes or lines that couldn’t be crossed.”

  “Meet him,” Elsa said. She hit a key on the computer, waited as a page spewed from her printer, then handed it to me. I glanced down and saw Billy Mann’s name, address, and phone number.

  “Let me know if you find any line he wouldn’t cross,” she said.

  Chapter Seven

  Mann’s Motorbikes was a graffiti-covered storefront on a grim stretch of La Cienega, south of downtown. I’d probably passed by here dozens of times, driving to the Los Angeles airport and trying to avoid the traffic on the 405 freeway. But just as the glitterati on both coasts referred to my home state of Ohio as “fly-over country,” this was drive-by country. You ignored it on the way to someplace else.

  But now I paid attention.

  I pulled up at the address Elsa had given me just as a broad-shouldered man with long hair, gold-stud earrings, and a tattoo on his muscular arm burst out of the shop.

  “Help you, lady?” he asked, rubbing his index finger against the side of his nose.

  “Um, yes,” I said, “I’m looking for Billy Mann.”

  “Well, lucky you. You’re looking at Billy Mann.”

  Staring, more like it. He had the handsome, sexy appeal of Russell Crowe playing ultimate bad boy: worn black leather jacket, tight but tatty jeans, and scruffy beard. If Molly had been with me, she’d have cast him in something immediately.

  “I’m Lacy Fields,” I said, extending my right hand. Instead of shaking it, Billy grabbed my fingers and pulled them close to his face. Inspecting my pale-pink nail polish, now slightly chipped, he gave a loud snort.

  “I skipped my manicure this week,” I said, apologetically. “I’ve been busy.”

  He snorted again. Could he possibly be au courant enough to scoff because I liked natural shades instead of Chanel black satin? Really, that fad was going to be replaced faster than Justin Timberlake’s girlfriends.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked. “I run a bike store. You’re not a biker.” He ran his thumb across my fingers. “Soft skin. Long nails. No calluses anywhere.” He dropped my hand and took a step back. “You a plainclothes cop?”

  “Not a cop,” I said. For his information, these weren’t exactly plain clothes, either. My simple silk skirt happened to be Escada, and the ruffled blouse came from the first collection of a talented young designer with her own section at Fred Segal.

  “Why would I be a cop?”

  He shrugged. “I’ve been expecting one to show up since Cassie died.”

  I nodded. “I did come to talk about Cassie. But only as her friend.”

  “Lacy Fields?” He looked at me suspiciously. “If you’re a friend, why don’t I recognize the name?”

  “I probably got to know her long after you two had split. She hired me to decorate her penthouse.”

  “Oh, sure. The decorator.” He nodded knowingly. “We talked about you.”

  “You did?” I wondered what they’d said. Had Cassie mentioned my talent for tracking down antiques? Vanity aside, the bigger point didn’t escape me. They’d talked in the last couple of months.

  “Yeah, Roger had recommended you, right?” He looked me over carefully. “She always got nervous when Roger talked about a woman, because she worried that he screwed around. It wouldn’t have been with you, though.”

  “It could have been,” I blurted, unexpectedly insulted.

  He gave his sly, Russell Crowe smile. “Sure, it could have been. I didn’t mean it that way. I’d screw around with you anytime.”

  Well, that was better. I mean, not really better. I didn’t want to screw around with him. But I took yoga, waxed my legs, and highlighted my hair. I got rose-petal facials and never went to sleep with my makeup still on. I shouldn’t be immediately dismissed.

  “I’m just trying to figure out what could have happened to Cassie,” I said, getting down to business. “I’m making some inquiries to get to the bottom of it. She collapsed in the apartment when I was there. Horrible.”

  “Goes to show you,” Billy said, kicking a pebble underfoot with the edge of his square-toed boot. “I always say, ‘Live fast and free, because tomorrow you may die.’ But I’m the one who was supposed to die young.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  Billy looked surprised. “Why? Because I ride hogs and compete in dangerous races where people smash and crash. I spent two weeks in intensive care once, but other than that, I’ve never had a scratch.”

  “Good for you.” Then trying to be delicate, I said, “I understand you and Cassie used to date.”

  “Date?” Billy smiled, and his teeth were unexpectedly straight and white. Either he had good genes or biker dudes in LA went to cosmetic dentists.

  “Not date,” I amended, realizing I’d used a word that was, well, dated. “So how would you describe it?”

  “Probably as mind-blowing, earth-moving, proof-that-God-exists sex.”

  “Now you’re bragging.”

  “Just being objective. As I’d be glad to show you.”

  “No thanks.” We both smiled, and the little flirtation didn’t hurt. I’d been around long enough to understand that earth-moving sex didn’t depend on positions, practice, or never-ending potency. Forget the Kama Sutra or even Viagra. Nothing could beat lying naked next to my husband, the man I’d adored for nearly two decades. We’d gotten married on a faraway beach, then come to LA, had children, and learned to deal with teething pains and teachers’ meetings, bills and mortgages, disappointments and disagreements. But at the end of the day—okay, not every day, but enough of them—we still turned to each other for passion and sex. Nothing could be more mind-blowing than that.

  Billy gazed at me with his green eyes and stroked the three-day stubble at his chin as if deep in thought. Then he stood up straight and snapped two fingers together.

  “I’m going to do it,” he said.

  “Do what?” I asked.

  “Show you the e-mails. I know we’ve just met, but I’ve got to trust someone and better you than the cops. You seem a lot like me—no agenda but the truth.”

  That sounded like a motto of the FBI. Or at least the local Cub Scout troop.

  “No agenda but the truth, right?” he repeated. He raised his hand, as if taking an oath.

  “The truth is always good,” I said.

  “High five!” he shouted. He stretched his hand higher, and when I didn’t move, he said, “Come on, give me five!”

  Not sure what else to do, I awkwardly raised my hand to reach his. Instead of just smacking palms, he clasped my hand tightly, then twisted his fingers in what I guessed served as some odd biker’s salute. Could be we’d just become blood brothers—or else I’d pledged to be his Harley chick.

  Maybe the latter, because he put his arm on my elbow and steered me toward the side of his shop.

  “These e-mails from Cassie,” he said. He stopped, hesitating. “Well, maybe I won’t say anything until you see them. They speak for themselves.”

  “What do they say?”
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  “Volumes.”

  “Give me a hint.”

  “Casssie kept talking about how Princess Diana had worried that her husband might off her, and how after she died, nobody believed Charles had anything to do with it.”

  “He didn’t,” I said. “She got killed in a car accident, remember? Chased by photographers through a tunnel in Paris.”

  “Cassie wasn’t so sure. She seemed scared.”

  Cassie as Princess Diana? My client didn’t exactly arouse the passions of the paparazzi, but I got the not-so-hidden agenda. Cassie worried that she might die—and Roger would never be a suspect.

  We were standing in front of a shiny motorcycle now, and Billy handed me a helmet.

  “Come on,” he said. “I’ll take you over. Just a ten-minute ride. I really want you to see these.”

  I looked dubiously at the helmet. Riding a Harley made my list of “top ten most dangerous things to do,” right up there with hang gliding, bungee jumping, and arranging blind dates for Molly. But what the heck. As Billy said, he lived fast and free—and still lived. Cassie, protected in her gilded cage, had died. Maybe I’d relabel my list “top ten things that could be darn fun to experience if I weren’t such a chicken.”

  Should I launch those experiences right now? I didn’t have to rush home. Dan had arranged to take the kids out to dinner tonight at Tijuana Taco. I rarely came along for his Mexican family feasts. Stated reason: Dan deserved bonding time alone with the kids. Real reason: Who wanted to eat refried beans? My thighs couldn’t handle food that had been fried once, never mind twice.

  Enchiladas or not, I had three kids who needed my attention and devotion. On the other hand, my client Cassie had been murdered and my best friend, Molly, had gotten herself entangled with Roger—and she needed help. Friendship mattered, and the kids needed to know that, too.

  I held the helmet uncertainly. Billy obviously knew his way around a motorcycle, but I’d only trust him sane and sober. Mothers Against Drunk Driving had made vigilantes of us all.

  “So, Billy, are you high?” I asked bluntly.