by Maisie Dean
State of the Art Heist
A Booker Brothers Detective Agency Mystery
Maisie Dean
| FIRST EDITION |
CHAPTER 1
My name is Mrs. Kacey Booker, and yes, I am married to one of the infamous Booker Brothers. I met the guys before they became household names. Before the three of them tied for People magazine's Sexiest Man Alive.
Back then, I was just another dime-a-dozen aspiring actress in LA. When I accepted the job as a junior agent, I didn't know I was getting the role of a lifetime. A role that nearly got me killed. Multiple times. But also a role that led to laughter, adventure, and even falling in love with one of the brothers.
So, which brother did I marry? Not so fast! I could tell you now, but what's the fun in that? Wouldn't you rather hear about all the cases from behind the scenes, and see if you can guess which brother won my hand in marriage?
That's what I figured. You're a romantic at heart, just like me. And you love guessing while you read, also like me. So, here's the deal. I'll tell you about a case, and I'll give you just enough clues to solve the mystery before I tell you the solution. And maybe, after a few of these cases, you'll figure out which incredibly sexy Booker brother stole my heart.
Today, I'll tell you about the time I went undercover dressed in a skimpy French maid uniform. What a mess that was! I can still feel the cheap polyester sticking to the small of my back. How could something so small, so unable to cover my flesh, also be so itchy?
But I'm getting ahead of myself. First, we need a name for this story. I call this particular adventure the State of the Art Heist. You'll see why shortly. And this case isn't just an early one, it's my very first.
It all began the day I started working for the Booker brothers.
* * *
The door was heavier than I expected. It was a real door, not a film set prop. I had to jump inside quickly before it closed on my ponytail. A little bell jingled above me, echoed by a mechanical chime at the top of the stairs, where a second door awaited.
Was I nervous? No way. Sure, my palms were sweaty and my heart was racing, but my favorite acting teacher always said anxiety was just another form of energy, and who doesn’t like energy? Energy is good. Especially when it’s your first day at a new job.
I climbed the stairs at a steady rate and confidently opened the interior door for the Booker Brothers’ Detective Agency.
My eyes quickly adjusted from the morning sunshine of Los Angeles to the dim office interior. The space was empty—empty of people, anyway. The open-plan office was crowded with five desks, no two alike. Around the desks was an eclectic mix of furniture and equipment, both old and new, but mostly old. I spotted a dot-matrix printer, the kind that took a continuous feed of paper with tear-away margins. Did they still make paper for those things? By the looks of it, the printer was still in use.
I called out, “Hello?”
There was only a rattling hum, coming from an old—possibly antique—fan on the far side of the room. To my left was a hallway leading to storage rooms and a washroom, according to the door signs. Still no sign of any other humans.
It wasn’t the first time in my career as a temp that I’d arrived ahead of my employers. I should have taken a seat at the reception desk and started making myself familiar with the phone system. However, the fact that I was standing inside a detective agency—an honest-to-goodness detective agency!—put me on edge. Had something happened to the detectives? Something sinister and criminal and exciting?
I set my purse on the reception desk and finally forced myself to take a seat, even though I wanted to snoop around. The Booker Brothers had practically no internet presence, so I knew nothing about the agency.
A mechanical chime sounded. It was the same one I’d heard on my way in. I yanked open the reception desk drawer and dropped my purse inside it, crumpling an assortment of junk food packages. I’d closed the drawer again and picked up a pen, which I held poised over a notebook, when the door opened and a woman walked in. She wore an elegant suit, high heels, and dark glasses. I heard an old-timey voice from a noir movie in my head: Then this dame walked in, and I knew from those legs o’ hers that I was in trouble.
“You must be Tracy,” the woman said as she pulled off the dark glasses. A pair of cool-blue eyes pierced into me.
“Kacey, with a K and an E,” I said. She didn’t react, so I spelled it out. “K-A-C-E-Y.”
The icy eyes blinked once. “Kacey, with a K and an E,” she said, her lips puckering snobbishly. “I suppose your parents could have done worse.”
“They could have done worse,” I agreed. Rule number one of both temping and improv: Be agreeable!
“You may call me Tippy,” she said. “Not Mrs. Booker or Ms. Booker.” She waved an elegant hand. “Everyone calls me Tippy. Except Owen, but he’s my special boy.” She smiled knowingly and winked, as though she and I were both in on the same secret.
She didn’t explain where she had been when I’d arrived, but I saw the bag of coffee beans in her hand and figured it out.
Tippy Booker switched the coffee to her left hand and offered me her right. I jumped up and shook it at once.
Her hand was soft, like my grandmother’s had been. They might have been the same age, albeit from different worlds. Tippy looked like the fashion models who appeared in the magazines my grandmother kept around the house. She wore a dark-gray, classic Chanel suit. The blazer was held closed by two elegant pearl buttons. By comparison, my own blazer, not Chanel, was held closed by a hidden safety pin because the button was too small for the hole.
Tippy’s hair and makeup were impeccable, and her lipstick was red. The absolute perfect shade of red. My grandmother would have been thrilled that I would be working for a woman so admirably stylish.
“Actress,” she said, looking me over. It was more statement than question.
“Not anymore,” I said, though not anymore was a bit of a stretch because it implied that at one point I had been an actress. What I had been was a cliché. A starry-eyed nobody who’d moved to sunny LA with dreams of fame and fortune, or at least a SAG card and a few commercials. But I wasn’t a cliché anymore. The acting bug had run its feverish course and I’d been cured. I was ready for something new. No more pretending to be someone. I was ready to be someone. A junior investigator. Sure, why not? I’d always loved detective stories. Why settle for acting in a detective show when I could be one in real life? I was trading up.
Tippy’s eyes were still on me. I self-consciously tugged at my high ponytail to ensure that my stream of brown hair ran smoothly down past my shoulders. I adjusted the white collar protruding from the edge of my navy blazer, then patted the front to make sure the hidden safety pin was still doing its job. It was. The older woman’s gaze stopped on my shoes, a pair of black flats.
“Those must be comfortable,” she said.
“I love your heels,” I gushed. Her black suede pumps looked like the kind of designer shoes that “inspired” the cheap knockoffs found at the discount warehouses where I’d found my sensible flats.
Tippy turned on her elegant heel and gestured for me to come with her. She led me through the mix of ancient and new office equipment. Her hair, a flattering shade of blonde, stayed perfectly in place, even at her brisk pace. I interrupted her monologue about the vague workings of the filing system with a question about the file drawer labels.
“Don’t worry about that,” she said dismissively. “It bores me to talk about, and I’m sure you’ll be out of here in a few weeks, just like the other ones.” Tippy paused in front of a tired looking photocopier that made the well-dressed woman look out of place.
“I thought this was a permanent placement,” I
said. “The temp agency told me—”
She cut me off with a hand wave. “But you’re an actress.” Tippy gave me another glance up and down with a tight smile. “You’ll be out of here when the next juicy audition comes along. A day job and acting do not go well together. That’s why most of your type chooses to waitress.”
Most of my type. Ouch.
I followed at a safer distance as Tippy wound through a few more stacks of boxes and pointed out three desks in the space. They were spaced out around a longer table in the middle of the room. Unlike the desk by the door, these ones had name placards. The corner desk with the least antiquated computer belonged to Owen Booker. The desk at the back of the room, near a faded door that led into a conference room, belonged to Harrison Booker. The third, and closest to the reception desk belonged to Lucky Booker. I wondered, were all three her sons? That would put them around fifty years old. Why, then, did Owen have a collection of comic book collectible figures in a row on his desk? Perhaps he was a grandson. That would explain why she’d winked at me and called him her special boy.
The matriarch of the Booker family gestured at the fax machine and said, “Try not to break it when you’re in a bad mood because an audition didn’t go well. I’m afraid the poor thing barely survived the last one of your type.”
“Ms. Booker,” I said, planning to set her straight about my career plans.
“Tippy,” she corrected.
I took it on the chin. “I was once an actress, or an aspiring actress, anyway. It’s true. But that’s all behind me now. I’m looking for a real job. A career. I’m here to stay.”
Her cool blue eyes pierced into me. The old fan continued to hum. Street noise filtered up through the walls and single-pane windows.
I smiled and added, “If you’ll have me, of course.”
She pursed her perfectly-lined red lips. “Duly noted.”
I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.
Tippy turned away from me and picked up a stack of mail from Harrison Booker’s desk. She wrinkled her nose and furrowed her brow. I guessed the envelopes contained mostly bills. A minute passed. She wasn’t paying any attention to me anymore. Kacey with a K and an E whose parents could have done worse, you’re dismissed. Grand tour over.
I picked up the bag of coffee from where she’d set it next to the ancient dot matrix printer.
“Shall I brew a full pot?” I asked in a cheery tone.
“Heavens, yes,” she said without looking up from the mail. “And make it strong.”
“That’s the only way I know how.” I grinned in a manner I’d been told was charmingly impish.
She still didn’t look up.
I found my way to the office break room on my own, where I discovered the newest and most deluxe piece of equipment in the entire office: a very high-end coffee maker.
* * *
I heard the first two Booker brothers before I saw them. I had just brewed enough coffee to fill the insulated carafe. The brew was, if my tongue was to be trusted, both strong and delicious. Sure, I’d needed to pull up some video tutorials on my phone since the machine’s manual was written in German, but I hadn’t wasted too much time, or even a single bean.
I stood in the break room and listened, fascinated to finally learn more about the mysterious Booker brothers.
“Harrison, I’m telling you, it’s all part of the business,” one was saying.
“Lucky, we can’t keep paying for your monthly stack of parking tickets. Are you working for De Voss? You must be. That’s the only logical way I can explain your constant attempts to bankrupt this agency. You’re working undercover for our nemesis, aren’t you?”
The other one, the brother or son or whatever, Lucky, chuckled. “Nemesis? Who says nemesis?”
I smirked and snorted under my breath. Nemesis was a great word. I used it all the time to describe my own nemesis, a young woman who’d been at every audition I’d ever shown up for. She was always booking jobs, too. Well, if this detective thing worked out, I’d have to send her a thank-you letter for encouraging me to change careers.
The two brothers continued to argue over both parking tickets and vocabulary, simultaneously.
I wiped the stray coffee grounds from the counter and walked out to meet my new bosses.
The two Bookers were still engrossed in their argument and didn’t notice me. But I noticed them. They weren’t fifty years old, that was for sure. Maybe thirty, if that. Both of them looked like the hot, young actors you’d cast to play detectives on a TV show. Had I stumbled onto some secret reality show set? It wouldn’t be unheard of. I was still in LA, after all.
Tippy, who’d seen me emerge from the break room, said, “That’s Harrison and Lucky.” She nodded at each of them in turn then raised her voice. “Boys, this is Tracy.”
“Kacey,” I said. “With a K and an E, and yes, my parents could have done worse.”
Lucky caught my eye and gave a little wave. Harrison gave me a business-like nod.
I hadn’t been expecting to see such attractive men outside of a casting office. My mind went blank. My cheeks felt warm.
Even through my blushing, I could feel the additional heat of Tippy’s gaze on me. The matriarch—their grandmother, apparently—came over to my side and spoke in a hushed tone. “I’ll answer the questions at the top of your mind so you don’t need to waste time beating around the bush getting up the courage to ask. Neither of them are married. They’re thirty-one, and twins, though not identical, as you can see for yourself. And if they still make your cheeks flush in a year’s time, then we’ll talk. But not before then. The rules are set in stone.”
I wasn’t sure what she meant by that but I got the gist.
The detectives went back to arguing about a car lease and parking fines.
The chime sounded, and a moment later the interior door of the office swung open.
I ran to the front and greeted the newcomers, who were two men in their late sixties. Tippy, who’d been hot on my heels, swished ahead of me. She smiled warmly and opened her arms in greeting, as though the two gentlemen were old friends.
“Well, if it isn’t Tippy Booker,” one of the men said. He brought her hand in for a light kiss.
The older man was average height, with hazel eyes and uniformly dark hair that must have been dyed. He appeared rather fit and athletic, almost vibrating with energy under his lightweight summer suit. “You look ravishing, as ever,” he said to Tippy. “And you’re here! They can’t get rid of you, can they?” He laughed.
Tippy pulled her hand back. “Someone’s got to keep an eye on troublesome clients such as yourself,” she said evenly.
“But that’s not your job anymore,” the man teased. “You’re supposed to be retired. Like the two of us. Enjoying the good life!”
She shrugged nonchalantly. “What would the boys do without me?”
The man nodded knowingly, as if they’d had this conversation before. The other man nodded as well.
Tippy changed the subject. “Leo, dear, the party you threw this weekend was wonderful, as always.” She rubbed her chin and looked at him thoughtfully. “But there were none of my favorite shrimp puffs. I was so disappointed.”
He blinked and ran a hand over his dyed black hair. “No shrimp puffs? But I ordered plenty.”
The other gentleman, who’d been silent up until now, chimed in. “Oh, I can assure you there were plenty of shrimp puffs.” The man wore tortoise shell glasses with thick lenses. He had rheumy blue eyes with an opaque white hint of cataracts. His hair was brown with white roots. The two men were a matched pair, though this one was slimmer. He patted his flat belly. “I had quite a number of shrimp puffs,” he said. “Ms. Booker, you must have been looking the other way when they were served,” he said with a broad smile.
Leo said, “Tippy, you must remember my dear friend, August.”
“Yes, of course I know August,” she replied. “Though we didn’t get a chance to spe
ak much at the party, did we?”
August looked down and shuffled his feet. “I must have been too busy chasing those shrimp puffs,” he joked. He looked up again and pushed his thick-lensed glasses back up his nose. The three of them had a chuckle.
While they talked, I stood by a tall filing cabinet. I didn’t know what to do next, but I had an idea Tippy would let me know. Since I was near the filing cabinet anyway, I occupied myself reviewing the yellowed labels on the drawers. One label was too faded to be legible, and another simply said “Files.” The agency’s current filing system was... interesting.
“Leo,” Tippy said, her tone indicating it was time to get down to business. “What can we do for you this morning? Or is it August who needs our assistance?”
“It’s me.” Leo let out a weary sigh. His posture sagged, and the wrinkles across his forehead deepened. “I don’t have an appointment, but I was hoping to speak with the boys about a delicate issue,” he said solemnly.
Tippy gave him a reassuring pat on the arm. “Of course.” She turned, snapped her fingers, and both Harrison and Lucky jumped up from their desks and trotted up like a pair of golden retrievers.
In a hushed voice, she spoke to the twins about taking a meeting with Leo. Why was she speaking so quietly? I looked around. There was nobody else in the office except for me. I looked down at the vague labels on the filing drawers. I was no detective, but I had a hunch Tippy didn’t like the idea of someone else taking over the office administration, let alone little ol’ me. She must have been threatened by the idea of me filling her elegant black suede shoes.
Lucky said, “We’ve got it from here, Grand—”
She shot him an icy look that looked terrifying, even from where I stood.
“Tippy,” Lucky finished. “Thanks, Tippy.” He flashed a perfect smile.
Harrison shook Leo’s hand. “Mr. Fitz, we always have time to see our most valued clients. We’ll do our best, as always.” Harrison turned to the other man.
“August Ripley,” the man said, shaking Harrison’s hand, then Lucky’s. “Don’t mind me. I’m only along with Leo for emotional support.”