by Chant, Zoe
“I remember you warning me. And it doesn’t matter. My lawyers will know what to do with this information, and that’s what counts. Also, it’s a relief to know the truth,” Courtney Winterhaldon Haskell said as she looked down at the folder and the data-stick that Mindy had laid on the glass table between them. Despite her exquisite skin care regimen, and her upright figure, she looked like she had aged ten years.
Then she straightened up, her expression brisk as she reached past the evidence of her husband’s infidelity and indicated the silver tea service. “More coffee, dear?”
“Thank you,” Mindy said. She really didn’t want any, excellent as it was—she was already on her fifth cup of the day, after a sleepless night. But sometimes her clients wanted to talk.
Mrs. Haskell was no different. As she poured out more Jamaica Blue Mountain, she sighed, “There’s no fool like an old fool, I suppose.”
“The last word I’d think about you is foolish,” Mindy said.
“Thank you, dear. Perhaps not foolish as much as ignorant. I was eighteen when I got engaged to Felix. We married the June he graduated. That was how we did it then—it was a scandal if a girl was still single at twenty.”
She shrugged, looking out into the garden. “Marriage with Felix wasn’t exciting, but he was faithful—came home every night—and of course gave me this magnificent home and let me decorate it the way I wanted. He died in the office at fifty-two, and after the funeral I realized there was no sign of him here except his clothes and toothbrush. His real life was downtown L.A at his office. In retrospect I think his first and only love was the stock market. Ten years a widow doing good works, and then I met Jerome, and discovered fun for the first time.”
Her smile was bitter. “My lawyers hated him. Said he was shady, and insisted on the prenup. I suspected Jerome was attracted to my wealth—he adored the gifts I gave him. But he was so fun, he made me feel young in a way I never had. Perhaps old fool fits after all. The excuses have built up so gradually it wasn’t until this year I realized I was spending more nights alone than I had before I married him. And he kept insisting it was all on account of this new picture he’s producing.” She looked up. “Be very careful before you marry. At least you girls now don’t have to rush into it like we did.”
Mindy said, “I don’t plan to marry at all.”
Mrs. Haskell’s brows rose. “I guess women do choose that now, but it seems a little sad to me. Especially when I think of your great-grandmother’s marriage. Now, there was a couple truly in love. He adored her, and only her. You could see it.”
Mindy remembered the frail, smiling old man in the wheelchair on his hundredth birthday. She was six. “I don’t think they make them like him anymore.”
Another sigh. “When I think of my mistakes, I wonder if you might be right,” Mrs. Haskell said sadly. Then smiled, and Mindy knew it was time to go. She rose as Mrs. Haskell said briskly, “I will see to it that these get to the lawyers immediately—and you can count on their discretion, as far as your part is concerned. You have done me a tremendous service.” Mrs. Haskell rose, too. “And I appreciate your discretion as much as I do your investigative talents. I shall keep you first in mind should any of my friends find themselves in this unfortunate situation.”
“Word of mouth is my sole source of clients,” Mindy said. “I can’t say I’m happy when I’m successful, but I do feel that those who want the truth deserve to have it.”
“Your dear great-grandmother was exactly the same way. People can say what they want about her, but I personally thought her one of the sanest, as well as the most generous, ladies of my acquaintance. You remind me of her.”
“Thank you,” Mindy said. “I still miss her.”
They parted with mutual compliments, and Mindy drove away, aware of a day with nothing scheduled. She went home and changed into dance clothes, then drove to the studio, where she knew her favorite instructor in American Tribal Fusion-style belly dancing was teaching a class in improvisation, which meant she could zone out mentally.
Weird. She’d nailed another lying, cheating parasite, but she felt like she’d lost the case. No, more like she’d missed something important. But she knew she hadn’t. Mrs. Haskell hadn’t wanted details about Haskell’s business dealings. She’d wanted to know if her suspicions of infidelity were true or not. And Mindy had unfortunately discovered the truth.
She knew what it was—she was still thinking about Red Hot. And not just thinking. When she’d gone through her cell to dump the bad pictures of Haskell and transfer the others to her archive in the Cloud, she’d kept all those shots of Red Hot.
A hard session of dance felt good, but her inner dog was restless, ready to pop out and howl. Mindy was restless, too, trying to get that guy out of her mind.
Maybe it was time for a trip somewhere new, somewhere she’d never been. That might help her clear her head.
Her cell beeped.
She stared down in surprise at a message from Mrs. Haskell, asking her to call at her earliest convenience.
“Wow, another mistress?” she asked the wall. “Haskell sure doesn’t waste any time!”
* * *
“There seems to be a new wrinkle,” Dennis’s old Signal Corps unit mate, Greg Ling, said as they sat down at a far table in a West End coffee shop. “Peretti and Sloane are checking out some new information as fast as they can, but what you need to know right now is that Haskell’s wife has apparently decided to throw lawyers at him in divorce.”
“Why?”
“Cheating on her.”
Dennis remembered the angry blonde at the resort. “Right.”
Greg leaned toward Dennis. “Sloane says that if everything checks out, we might need you to go talk her down—her and her unlicensed P.I., who sailed completely under the radar. But seems to have dug up more bones than our entire team.”
“I have to talk to them? Won’t that blow my cover as Dan Moore, rich idiot?”
“I’ve got to be at the airport to shadow Torvaldsen, who’s due at LAX in an hour, Sloane and Peretti are trying to nail down these new leads, and there is no one else we can bring in right now. Anyway, it should make it easier for the wife if you go explain your cover. Convince her to sit tight, and the P.I. to cooperate with us, just until we can get this wrapped up. We can’t let Haskell get spooked until we nail him—and the rest of his rats—before they jump ship.”
Dennis sighed. This job had gone FUBAR, as far as he was concerned, beginning that next morning when he hadn’t found the mysterious Payton anywhere—and further, no one knew who she was or what party she’d belonged to. Then Haskell had come slamming out of his suite in a rotten mood, pressuring Dennis for a check over a gentleman’s agreement, no contracts between friends, right?
Dennis had found it harder than ever to concentrate on Haskell’s crap when his mind kept zapping straight back to the hotel bedroom and that amazing woman. And every time he thought of her, his tiger stirred, distracting him further.
Head in the game! The sooner he got hard evidence on Haskell, the sooner this damn thing would be over and done with.
“All right. I’ll go,” he said to Greg. “Let’s get this wrapped.”
Dennis’s bad mood worsened when he stepped out of his car into the dry heat, his tie and jacket strangling him. God, how he hated suits. They should be outlawed in summer. And there should be a Constitutional Amendment forbidding men to wear these useless strangulation devices called ties—one of the many reasons he loved being a photojournalist was never having to wear a suit.
He walked up the long path to the gigantic Beverly Hills mansion. The door was opened by an honest-to-Downton-Abbey butler. At least it was cool inside. He breathed in gratefully, resisting the urge to yank the damn tie loose as he was conducted into a fancy room with glass walls overlooking a garden. Oh, hell. The room was filled with eighteenth century furnishings that looked like they’d break if he breathed on them. Growing up, he’d tried to avoid visiting
the mansion his boyhood buddy had grown up in, as his parents gave you the stink-eye if you so much as touched any of their museum quality furniture.
“Please sit down . . . what was it, Mr. O’Keefe? Or did I get it wrong?”
“Dennis O’Keefe,” he said. “But your husband thinks my name is Daniel Moore.” He eased himself down carefully onto a fragile-looking chair. May as well get it all out there. “You seen, there’s an investigation . . .”
The lady raised a hand. “If you will pardon my interrupting, I would rather wait until my consultant gets here.”
Dennis remembered the mysterious M. Maurek, unlicensed—but very effective—P.I. “He’s coming, then?”
“She. Would it not be easier to wait and tell us both, if you would be so kind? Coffee?”
“Sure,” he said gratefully—before he saw the tiny, delicate china cups. Another danger.
Mrs. Haskell poured coffee out of a gleaming silver pitcher that probably cost as much as the entire house Dennis had grown up in. He sipped carefully, and even more carefully set down the cup. It felt as flimsy as an eggshell. Same color, too.
Mrs. Haskell smiled his way, a smile that did not reach her large, veined blue eyes. “She investigates adulterous husbands, not to put too fine a point on it. She had just finished concluding a successful investigation for me, which seems to have occasioned your call. I’m delighted you requested her presence, if there are more problems with Jerome. Very discreet, she is, and scrupulously honest as well. Like her great-grandmother, who I was honored to count a friend, in spite of the whispers.”
Dennis stared at her, fascinated in spite of himself. “Whispers?” he repeated, thinking, crook? Player?
Mrs. Haskell looked away, then back, her lips pursing as if someone had cussed in church. “There were some who maintain that she said she was a Shetland pony.”
Dennis’s cup clattered on the saucer. “Sorry.”
“Needless to say, I never heard such a thing from her, and I knew her upwards of forty years. I’ve always believed it was nothing more than a private joke. She and her husband, an excellent man, did have quite the sense of humor.”
Dennis stared in dismay at the cup and saucer. Nothing broken. Resolving not to touch the china no matter how delicious that coffee tasted, Dennis was racking his brain for something polite to say about an old lady who may or may not have been a taco short on her combination plate, when a faint bonging resounded through the house, and Mrs. Haskell said with satisfaction, “Ah, Mindy has arrived. Elliott will bring her straight to us.”
Dennis rose politely as the butler opened the door to—
Her.
* * *
Mindy stopped short right inside the doorway.
It was him. Looking fantastic in light gray slacks and jacket that brought out the reddish undertones in his gold-streaked, shaggy hair. His tie was steel blue, leading the eye straight down to those narrow hips.
She wrenched her gaze back up to his pale gold eyes, vaguely aware of Mrs. Haskell somewhere a couple hundred miles away saying something-something-something Dennis O’Keefe, “and this is my very good friend as well as my aide in this unfortunate affair, Mindy Maurek.”
No, this wasn’t awkward, not at all.
Then it promptly got worse.
Dennis O’Keefe blinked. “Mindy . . . Mork?”
Mindy sighed. She’d been through this her entire life. To her surprise, having to deal with the old routine actually managed to help her wrench her eyes off him. Talking to the grandfather clock beyond his right shoulder, she said, “Technically it’s Maur-ECK, but everybody says ‘Mork.’ So my dad thought it would be cute to name me Mindy. Mork and Mindy being his favorite show in college.”
O’Keefe said with that wicked grin. “Will it piss you off if I tell you how much I loved Robin Williams as a kid? My buddies and I watched reruns until the tapes wore out.”
“Everybody watched it, judging by how many people called me Mork when I was a kid,” Mindy said, remembering Mork the Pork, and Mork the Dork. But that was a long time ago. She was a grownup now, and this was business, and she could keep her eyes away from his face—not his package—augh!
“Do sit down, dear, so that Mr. O’Keefe can explain,” Mrs. Haskell said kindly, and poured out some coffee.
Mindy clutched at the cup and saucer thankfully, glad to have something to do with her hands. And eyes. Especially her eyes.
As she busied herself with cream and sugar, her mind was reeling: It was him. Only wearing clothes. She was glad he was in clothes, but when she glanced his way, all she could remember was his shirt unbuttoned, revealing a muscular chest covered with soft ruddy fuzz narrowing over tights abs to a treasure trail pointing straight to—
Clink! The stirring spoon clattered to the saucer. “Sorry. Sorry,” Mindy said, knowing her face was radioactive red. “My finger slipped—it’s this heat.”
Like that would explain her red face in a room that had to be no warmer than 72 degrees.
“Unfortunately, Jerome seems to have gotten himself into far more trouble than is about to come down on his head from me,” Mrs. Haskell said.
Okay, this sounds serious, Mindy thought, gulping in a breath to steady her. She managed to meet Dennis O’Keefe’s jungle cat gaze, but not without another wave of heat shooting from hairline to hoohah.
She crossed her legs the other way as Dennis said, “I’m part of an investigative team from a sub-department of the FBI, looking into possible fraud. The vector is this film Jerome Haskell has been raising money for. Have you heard of Argo, the fake science fiction movie used as a front for rescuing hostages?”
“I remember reading about that,” Mindy said. “Is he part of a rescue operation?”
“I wish he was. What we believe is that there isn’t going to be any picture. He appears to be going through the motions of putting one together as a way of scamming money from rich but clueless investors. We’re trying to track these down so we can get a paper trail that will hold up in court. I’ve been acting the role of a new clueless rich target. He’s been wooing me, the idea being that I hold out until he introduces me to the rest, or at least I can get some names. Unless you got some?”
Mindy stared, the back of her neck chilling. “I don’t know anything about it. Sorry.”
“No, but that data you gave Mrs. Haskell here was really, really good. My department spent the last two days following up on everything you provided, except of course for these conversations you manage to record bits of. Hats off to some excellent work.”
Mindy thanked him, thinking: No one ever minds talking in front of a well-behaved poodle.
“I was to ask if you have any more.”
“You have everything I got. My job was to find out if he was cheating, and with whom. My following him to three different banks, and the rest of that, was part of my narrowing down who he was sneaking around with and where. He met the woman in question at one of the banks—a loan officer. It wasn’t my job to find out why he had to go to all the other banks, or to investigate all these other people he called, once I figured out they were business, and not personal.”
“Got it,” he said. “But it was your work locating those banks, and a couple references in one of those conversations, that opened up some investigative doors that so far we hadn’t found.”
Mrs. Haskell leaned forward. “Mindy, would you consider working with them? They’ve convinced me not to file for divorce until this is settled. Even though my lawyers point out that some of your evidence points to chicanery with my funds. Because I am also one of those investors—a major one, truth to tell.”
“If you’re interested in loaning us your skills,” Dennis said to Mindy, “we can put together an informal arrangement. We foresee only a day of work. Two at the most. We can set you up as an independent contractor with as much protection as we can offer . . .”
Mindy glanced at her hostess’s anxious face. She couldn’t look at Dennis without remembering t
hat he’d seen everything.
Enthusiastically.
But then, she scolded herself, he was a guy. They regarded these things totally differently. It didn’t matter to them. He’d probably forgotten it already—and that was just the way she wanted it. So if she pretended it hadn’t happened, well, then it would be like nothing had happened.
She crossed her arms over her tightened nipples. Drew a deep breath. Shoved the whimpering poodle back down to wherever-it-was she lived.
“Sure. I’ll help.”
“Wonderful!” Mrs. Haskell said, beaming from Mindy to Dennis. “I promise, there is no one more expert at exposure than Mindy.”
* * *
Dennis had to hold his breath as Mindy’s face bloomed an astonishing shade of rose on the word ‘exposure.’
A tremor of laughter fluttered behind his ribs, but he held it in. Not going there, not, not, not, his mind repeated as they went through the motions of saying their good-byes. Should he walk out with her, or wait—but that question was solved when the butler appeared to escort them together.
Dennis tried not to stare at her entrancing walk, those wonderful hips doing a slow figure-eight under that linen good-girl skirt, her sprightly step with a hint of prance. Did she have any idea how much firepower she exuded, and why did she lie about whatever that scent was she wore? He caught himself leaning toward her to sniff, but forced himself back a step. Damn! The last thing he needed was a woody while walking out of a mansion in the middle of Beverly Hills.
He forced his mind to the job. At least no one had asked what sub-department of the FBI, though Agent Sloane had given him official-looking ID as cover. But the real sub-department, whose mandate was to look for chicanery in the shifter world, was secret and had to stay secret.
The front door shut behind them and they began to pace down the long flagged walkway between ornamental plants toward the parking lot of raked gravel where two cars waited.