Fast Friends (Iris Thorne Mysteries Book 3)

by Dianne Emley

  During the few weeks that Kyle had been with the firm, Iris could almost see the wheels in his head churning as he tried to figure out the lay of the office political landscape. Now it was clear that he’d set his sights on cozying up to her. As she passed by, she smiled without showing teeth, a Mona Lisa smile, acknowledging him but remaining aloof. She’d seen them come and she’d seen them go.

  She flitted her fingers at Amber Ambrose before turning to unlock the door of her office in the suite’s southwest corner. Amber, an adult victim of parents who give their children cute names, was the only other female investment counselor at the L.A. office. She’d been with the firm for two years and was doing well. Amber flitted her fingers back as she continued her telephone conversation, displaying a perfect French manicure which made Iris conscious of her own uneven and broken fingernails.

  “Top of the dung heap,” Iris muttered as she unlocked her door and flipped on the lights. She stepped onto the carpet, which squished wetly under her feet.

  “Son of a bitch.” She dumped her purse and briefcase onto her desk, grabbed the telephone, and punched in three numbers with one hand dug into her hip and one pump toe tapping furiously. “Mario, Iris Thorne. I thought your guys were replacing my carpet last night. It’s been clammy and cold in here ever since the earthquake and I’ve had it. Today, Mario!” She slammed down the phone.

  She noticed Kyle cocking his head in her direction, his long lips held at a wry angle. She ignored him and jerked her chair away from her desk, grabbed a pair of athletic shoes from a drawer, flung herself into the chair, pulled off her pumps, and put them in the middle of the desk. “I’m not ruining another pair of shoes, dammit.”

  Amber came into her office and picked up one of the navy blue pumps. It had a slender strap across the arch. “Bally. Very nice.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Having a bad day?”

  “It’s been one long bad day since the earthquake three weeks ago.”

  “Maybe this will cheer you up.” She leaned forward conspiratorially. “I have some dish.” “Oohh, tell, tell.”

  Amber closed Iris’s door, then sat in one of the two chairs facing her desk. “I saw a fax—by accident.”

  Iris put her purse in the top drawer of a filing cabinet in the corner, took off her suit jacket, hung it behind the door, retucked her silk blouse into her skirt, and straightened her long strand of pearls. “By accident?” she said with a teasingly insinuating tone as she opened her briefcase on the credenza that stood against the western-facing window behind her desk. From the briefcase she removed several manila file folders and scribbled-on yellow pads and put them on her desk. She glanced at her phone. The red message light was not blinking. She thought it odd that she didn’t have any messages.

  “Well,” Amber smiled coyly. “Accidentally on purpose.” She abruptly leaned forward in the chair and announced, “Herb Dexter’s leaving. He’s going back to New York.”

  “No kidding.” Iris flopped in her leather chair, her mouth gaping.

  “It was from Garland Hughes himself. He said the district manager position in New York was waiting for Dexter and that he could be proud of the work he did getting the L.A. office back on track after the tragedies over the past couple of years.”

  “He actually used the T-word? How dramatic.” Iris took her BUDGETS ARE FOR WIMPS mug from a desk drawer. It had brown coffee stains on the inside and the rim was smudged with a multitude of lipstick marks. “I never figured Oz for a long-termer anyway. Guess the earthquake put the last nail in the coffin.” She smeared the lipstick with her thumb, trying to wipe it off, and raised an eyebrow at Amber. “Wouldn’t that fax have come in on Oz’s private machine in his office?”

  Amber grinned mischievously.

  Iris grinned back. “You’re such a slut, Amber Ambrose.”

  “The paper on his fax machine jammed and that ditsy temp needed help.” Amber innocently shrugged.

  “Excellent work. I am totally impressed.” Iris took some change from her desk drawer and stood. “I need caffeine. Follow me.”

  Warren Gray looked up when Iris opened her door. Amber followed her down the corridor past the investment counselors’ cubicles.

  “You taking ice princess lessons or something?” Warren asked Amber as they passed.

  Amber gave him a cool look.

  Warren turned to Kyle. “Just what we need. Two of them.”

  At the end of the corridor, Iris and Amber went inside the lunchroom, where they were again alone.

  Iris poured coffee into her mug. “Did Hughes mention who they might put in Oz’s place?”

  “No.”

  “Hmmm.” Iris looked thoughtful.

  “What?”

  “I could manage this office.”

  “They’d never promote you.”

  “Why not?” Iris asked warily. “Don’t you think I’m promotable?”

  “Of course you’re promotable. What I meant was, they’ll never let you manage this office. It’s too hard to manage people who were your peers.”

  Iris didn’t respond. She dropped coins into a vending machine and punched a button. A package of Oreo cookies slid from its wire holder and dropped into a metal bin with a brittle smack.

  Amber said, “If you think you’re ready, you should talk to Oz before he leaves or go straight to Garland Hughes. With your condo damaged the way it is, it’s a great time to move. I know a lot of people who are moving to Oregon, Washington, Arizona…”

  “Leave California?”

  “Sure. Why not?”

  Iris looked perplexed. “I don’t belong anywhere else. I think I’d implode or spontaneously combust or something if I moved out of L.A.” She took a cookie from the package, separated the two halves, and scraped the filling off with her bottom teeth, leaving pink lipstick behind. She offered a cookie to Amber.

  Amber wrinkled her nose.

  The lunchroom door opened and Kyle Tucker came in, holding the folded sports section from the newspaper in front of his face. “Hello, ladies.” He walked across the room to the coffeemaker as Iris and Amber watched. He was long-waisted and tight-bodied and wore loose-cut Oxford cloth shirts that just hinted at the musculature underneath. There was a relaxed tension about him that made him always seem as if he was about to break into a run or a dance.

  He picked up the pot and turned to face them as he poured coffee into his mug. Maybe he sensed they were watching him or maybe he was one of those guys who is not comfortable with his back to the door. His top lip wavered as he poured. Finally, both his thin lips spread across his face into a smile. “So. You decide to join my company softball team, Iris? First game’s in two weeks.”

  “No thank you,” Iris said.

  “C’mon, Iris,” Amber said. “I signed up. It’ll be fun.”

  “You don’t want me on your team,” Iris warned. “I throw like a girl, I hit like a girl, I run like a girl, and I don’t like getting knocked down or dirty.”

  “Aww, c’mon.” Kyle stretched his lips high on one side of his mouth. “It’s just for fun.”

  “I don’t like to have fun,” Iris deadpanned.

  He chuckled, revealing his small square teeth. “Now that surprises me.” He left the lunchroom.

  “He’s cute,” Amber said.

  “Adorable.”

  “He’s not married, you know.” Her eyes twinkled.

  “He’s too young for me.”

  “That’s the new thing. Older successful women with younger men.”

  “Good Lord, am I an older woman?” Iris winced. “Anyway, it’s my new policy not to get too close to anyone in this office. People come and go so quickly, it’s like chumming up to the farm animals that might end up on your dinner plate.”

  “Well, he’s certainly been asking a lot of questions about you. I overheard him asking Warren about the tragedy and the million in cash you’re supposed to have stashed somewhere.”

  Iris pursed her lips and gave Amber a distre
ssed look. “Won’t that rumor ever die? Does anyone in their right mind think I’d be hanging around here if I had a million bucks stashed somewhere?”

  “Oh, I know it’s not true, Iris.”

  “Anyway, I’m off men. Have been ever since John dumped me to go back to his ex-wife.”

  “You ever hear from him?”

  “Nope. I heard from a mutual friend that his house burned down in the brush fires last year.”

  “How awful.”

  “It’s a shame. It was a great house. I guess the good news is that he couldn’t have lost much in the earthquake.” Iris crumpled up the cookie wrapper and tossed it in the trash. “Guess I better go move some money. Do you know if the phone mail is down? My message light wasn’t blinking.”

  Amber nodded. “Everyone’s messages are lost in the void somewhere.”

  Iris closed her eyes with exasperation. “Not again. The last time this happened, people left me messages and it took me three days to get them. What have you got going on today?”

  “Cold calls.” Amber sighed. “I wish I could be like you and have lots of established, wealthy clients who refer their wealthy friends to me, making me fat and happy.”

  “You’re on the way to getting there, kiddo. Besides, there’s something to be said for staying hungry. Otherwise you get lazy and forget to watch your back.”

  “I hate trying to convince complete strangers to give me their money.”

  “It’s not so bad once you get the rhythm going.”

  “Easy for you to say. You were the cold-call cowgirl.”

  “Hee-haw!”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Iris returned to her office just in time to answer her telephone, which was ringing in the polite tone she had programmed it to emit. She snatched a yellow pad and pen from her desk, crossed her legs, and swiveled her chair to look out her southern-facing window at the office tower on the other side of the street that blocked her view. If she pressed her cheek against this window, she could glimpse the rolling hills of Northeast L.A., where she grew up. It was only a handful of miles from downtown, but it seemed far away.

  The telephone’s display indicated the call was from outside the office, so she answered it formally, using her low-modulated, you’ve-reached-the-person-in-charge telephone voice. “Iris Thorne.” She squeezed the cushion affixed to the telephone receiver between her ear and shoulder and poised her Mont Blanc pen above the yellow pad.

  “Your mother said you’d done something with yourself. I wish I could say the same for Paula.”

  Iris leaned forward in her chair, her posture stiffening. She clutched the telephone receiver in her hand. The voice had thinned and quivered with age, but she immediately recognized it. It was just like him to assume she’d know who it was even after all these years and the thought made her bristle. “Mr. DeLacey. What a surprise. It’s been a long time. How are you?”

  She felt short of breath. She closed her eyes and tried to block the image of a man being beaten to death. It had happened twenty-five years ago, but the memory— in spite of herself— was as vivid as if it had happened yesterday. Through the years, she had tried to forget it and acted as if she had. Hearing Bill DeLacey’s voice brought it all back.

  “Yes, it has been a long time,” he said in a way that seemed to sift the years through his fingers. “I could be doing better but I’m all right. I often wondered why you didn’t call.”

  Iris angled her eyes toward the telephone receiver like one might eye a vicious dog while stepping around it. She was about to respond when she lost her opportunity.

  “I guess you were in college the last time. Then your mother sold the house and all that mess and that was all she wrote. Would have thought your father might have called. After all, I was his employer for eleven years.”

  Eleven years under your thumb, Iris thought.

  “Have to say he was the best handyman I had. Haven’t heard from any of you Thornes except your mother every once in a while. Gave me your phone number. Said you graduated from college and taught deaf kids. I told her that was real nice. Then you went and got your MBA and I guess you stopped teaching to do this.”

  “Now I help people make the most of their money.”

  “Don’t get defensive on me. The economy needs people to get their money out from underneath their mattresses. Where would I be without people with the moxie to take a risk? It was probably my example that gave you the idea in the first place. I’ll take some of the credit for getting you down that road, anyway.”

  Why not take it all? Iris’s face burned.

  “Understand your sister’s married and got a couple of kids. You never married, huh?”

  “No.”

  “Huh. Well, like I always said, old Lily got the looks and Iris got the brains.”

  “That’s what you always said,” Iris responded flatly.

  “You know Thomas graduated from that Yale Law School over there back East. He’s still single. Getting married would be good for his political career, but he’s going to do okay in this election without—”

  “Election?”

  “He’s running for the City Council over here. Didn’t you know that?”

  “I live in Santa Mon—”

  “Next election he should have a wife and some kids in the picture, plus I want someone to carry on the family name. Guess you know that Junior’s still a bachelor too. Now, Paula, now I tried to get that Paula to go to college. Seemed like she’d do anything to defy me. Even when she was little…”

  As Bill DeLacey talked, Iris pictured him sitting behind his desk in his cluttered home office where he ran DeLacey Properties. At one point, the mess on his desk grew so high that he draped it with an old plastic shower curtain and started a second layer on top. DeLacey Properties primarily consisted of low-income housing acquired to take advantage of federal grants and tax breaks. DeLacey turned a profit by not maintaining his buildings. He was a notorious L.A. slumlord.

  “Where goes California?” DeLacey rambled on. “A businessman can’t do business here anymore!” His voice was strident. “You got your high Worker’s Comp insurance and your environmental regulations and your taxes and now you can’t hardly hire the illegals, who are the only Mexicans willing to work. The native born think the world owes them a living. Let ‘em go ahead and shoot the hell out of each other, that’s what I say.” He gasped several times with exasperation. “What’s the small businessman to do?”

  “It’s a big problem.” Iris plucked at her now damp silk blouse and glanced at a clock on her desk. He’d been talking for twenty minutes and hadn’t yet arrived at the point of his call. She recalled visiting Paula at the ranch house on top of the hill that abutted the Thornes’ property and getting trapped by Mr. DeLacey. She’d inch backward from him toward the door while he followed her, talking continuously, his body angled toward her, his index finger thrashing up and down with each ideological point made. Paula would follow him, making faces behind his back. Upon reaching the door, Iris would blurt, “‘Bye, Mr. DeLacey. I hear my mother calling me!” and dart outside, hearing Paula’s laughter fading behind her as she fled down the hill.

  “Old Doc Grimes over at the Mayo Clinic did a study on manic depressives with paranoid tendencies and found that megadoses of vitamin C mixed with an amino acid found in corn husks given daily over a three-month period reversed the symptoms. Some years ago, I ground up some of this mixture and replaced Dolores’s medication in her capsules…”

  Poor Dolly.

  Fifteen more minutes passed. Iris interrupted him in midsentence and lied. “Mr. DeLacey, I’m sorry to interrupt, but I have an appointment in a few minutes.”

  “Say! What do you hear from old Les?”

  “My father?”

  “He still living over in Azusa?”

  “Last I heard.”

  “You don’t talk to him either? You’re not much on keeping up with folks, are you?”

  “Mr. DeLacey, I really have to go.”


  “Oh, okay.” He sounded dejected. “Well, I guess you know I don’t make social calls.” He took a deep breath.

  In that moment of silence, Iris found herself imprinting in her mind the setting for the bad news that she sensed was coming. She became aware of her clothing, her tense, washboard-erect posture, the high, feathery, white clouds that streaked the warm January sky, the sliver of ocean that glimmered in the distance, and the telephone receiver that had grown slick with perspiration from her palm.

  “Happened day before yesterday. Can’t say I was surprised.” He laughed in that way: rapidly inhaling and exhaling, as if about to hyperventilate. “Course, I thought she’d gone down there to take the Christmas lights off the trees with that extension ladder I bought from that new Home Depot they built over there. Now that’s quite an operation. They’ve got plans—”

  “Mr. DeLacey,” Iris said sharply as if she was trying to wake him. “Please. What happened?”

  He laughed again in apparent awe of himself. “I guess I tend to go off sometimes. Anyway, before Christmas she’d got it in her head to string lights up in the grapefruit trees there, the ones up close to the street.”

  “Who?”

  DeLacey laughed again, sucking and expelling air, sounding more exasperated than amused. “Who? My wife! Who the hell else do you think I’m talking about? Are you even listening to what I’m saying here?”

  Iris angrily opened her mouth but thought better of it and stuffed the smart-alecky retort she’d almost blurted. Instead, she calmly responded, “I’m all ears.”

  “She’d kinda been coming out of the fog she’d been in and was getting into things that she wasn’t supposed to be getting into, so I told her to get the hell outside.”

  Iris was unable to remain sitting. She started to pace behind her desk and tried to goad him on. “Did she fall?”