by Kate Benitez
“Oh, sorry, no. Just a little itch,” Anneliese chirped, her own smile feeling all the wider for Harriet’s answering stiff upper lip movement.
“You might want to get that looked at…” Leo began, but Anneliese cut him off.
“I think I’ll be ok. Thank you. Are you ready for Mrs. Fleck?” Anneliese’s eyes were trying to kill Leo where he stood, but he simply stared back at her impassively. Damn, but the man had a good poker face. She never knew if he was messing with her or being deadly serious.
“Yes, and I’d like you to join us to take notes, Anneliese.” Leo glanced toward Harriet and asked, “If that’s ok with you, Mrs. Fleck?”
Harriet’s eyes flicked between Leo and Anneliese then the woman sighed and nodded. “This isn’t going to be good, is it?” Harriet asked as she stood and slung an impressively large Louis Vuitton purse over her bony shoulder. Even though she was wearing a luxurious tan leather sheath dress, it had to feel heavy on her wiry frame.
Anneliese followed Leo and Harriet up the staircase and into the office. It was a beautiful old space, marble floors and a big bay window with leaded glass. It was just so old Boston. Anneliese took her place at a small classroom-style desk then she opened her laptop and pulled up Harriet’s file.
She stifled a sigh—Mr. Fleck was cheating on Harriet. It had taken Leo a fair bit of work, and Anneliese had held out hope that Mr. Fleck really was one of the few good men left on the planet—that he’d kept the promises he’d made to Harriet all those years ago when he’d married her. He’d promised to love his beautiful wife and worship her as if she was the last woman on earth. It had sounded all so romantic in the waiting room all those weeks ago.
Anneliese had such high hopes for the Flecks. Stakeout after stakeout had shown Mr. Fleck actually attending all those late night business meetings and doing nothing but networking at conferences. He’d even been obsessive about his workout schedule, and when he bought jewelry, it was for his wife! Anneliese had even felt Leo grudgingly consider that Harriet Fleck was just paranoid.
Then there was the folder full of pictures of him with a young Asian woman—Anneliese was pretty sure she’d been in a Ferragamo shoe ad in the last Vogue magazine. She thought the most hurtful part of it all was that no amount of plastic surgery was going to make waspy Harriet Fleck, Asian. The poor woman was only clinging to human-looking by a thread as it was.
Anneliese dutifully took notes as Leo explained that her husband was meeting the model—she really was the shoe model—on the rare weekends that business brought them to the same city. Other than this one blip, Mr. Fleck was utterly devoted to his wife.
Not that Leo framed it like that. No, she’d learned that in situations like this, Leo simply presented the facts. First, he walked them through his findings verbally, with visual materials if they were relevant. Then he answered any questions his client may have had, often times defending his methods and his findings—Leo was never wrong. He then left them with an electronic dossier of his report—never a paper trail— and finally, Anneliese was left to deal with the fallout.
In the previous month, she’d been screamed at, numbly ignored, sobbed on, and in one case, almost decked by an angry pixie of a woman whose aim was, fortunately, horrible. Harriet Fleck was of the crying variety. Sobbing seemed to be beyond the scope of her surgeon’s abilities, but liquid still managed to leak from the corners of her wide-open eyes.
Anneliese directed her to the kitchen and applied equal parts of lotion-enhanced Kleenex and coffee with just a hint of Bailey’s. It did the trick and Harriet left Anneliese with a hug and a promise not to make any rash decisions. She hoped Harriet would follow her heart and something told her that there was room for forgiveness in there. She also hoped Mr. Fleck was as decent in real life as he was on paper... for the most part at least.
Anneliese sat back down at her desk to finish up the notes from the meeting and record the final hours both she and Leo had spent on the Fleck case. She typed away as the caffeine from her coffee kicked in when someone pressed the buzzer at the front door. She answered by confirming the visitor’s name then buzzed him through, but when he appeared in front of her desk, she had to do a double-take.
“Hello, sugar. I’m here to see Leo about a very important matter. My name is Andrew Bernard. I have an appointment.”
The black man standing in front of her was a sight to behold. At least six feet tall, he wore a pair of tasteful heels and a sleek, black leather and a gray suit that could be described as nothing other than bespoke. His eyes were a natural, shocking green, and he had a fade cut into his hair, highlighted with a cluster of stars shaved into his head, just above his right ear.
All in all, he was downright delightful, and Anneliese was suddenly very excited about the upcoming meeting.
“Yes, Mr. Bernard. If you wouldn’t mind taking a seat.” Anneliese stood and motioned for him to sit in the waiting room. “I’ll let Mr. Mackenzie know you’ve arrived. Can I get you anything? Coffee? Water?”
“I am just dying for some water. Have you hiked that hill in heels? Girl, talk about a booty buster.” Andrew fanned a hand at his currently cool-as-a-cucumber face.
Anneliese shook a foot clad in a leopard pump at Andrew. “Every day! I can’t quite bring myself to wear running shoes and change.” She grimaced and said, “I still think it looks silly, so up the cobblestones, I hike. I’ll be right back with your drink.”
She stepped into the kitchen to grab a bottle of water and as she did so, she called up to Leo using the kitchen phone.
“Hey, Mr. Bernard is here.” Anneliese tucked the phone into her shoulder and opened the refrigerator and with a silent smile, she questioned, “Hey, do you have the specifics of his case yet?”
Leo paused. Anneliese assumed he was sifting through his files looking for the one labeled, Andrew Bernard. “No. He claims that it’s a matter of life or death, though,” he said calmly.
Anneliese’s eyes went wide with sarcasm. There was no way the man sitting out in the waiting room was afraid for his life. However, she signed off the phone without comment after ascertaining that Leo would be calling Andrew up shortly.
Within a few minutes, once everyone was settled, Leo began the interview. He never accepted a client without an initial interview and fact check.
“So, Mr. Bernard, what brings you to L.M. Agency?” Leo said as he tapped a pencil on his open notebook. Though he always had Anneliese take copious notes, he still wrote his own whenever he spoke to clients.
“Please, you can call me Andrew, and I’m here because someone is stealing my hair.”
Leo and Anneliese just stared at him. First off, he didn’t have much hair to begin with, and what he did have seemed meticulously groomed.
Andrew must have gathered how his statement had been misunderstood and he let out a deep, booming laugh when he caught them both looking intently at his head. “No, not my hair. My hair extensions—the ones I supply to my clients. I just started my own line of product, and it’s selling like hotcakes.”
Andrew turned to Anneliese and said, “You know, girl, you’d look great with some purple curls threaded through that brunette mass of yours. It would look spectacular!” Anneliese glanced at Andrew with a bemused smile but didn’t have time to reply as Leo tried to get the interview back on track.
“So someone is stealing your stock? Are they stealing it out of the warehouse? Or directly from your salon?”
Andrew shook his head. “No. They’re stealing it right off of their heads!”
Anneliese and Leo both tilted their heads simultaneously in confusion, but Anneliese waited until Leo asked the next question. She’d learned as soon as she started the job that she was to remain a silent observer during client meetings.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Bernard, but can you walk me through this? How is it being taken off their heads without them knowing? I assume it’s attached in some way.” Leo’s eyes cut to Anneliese for just a second, and she gave a little nod
to confirm his thoughts.
“They’re not permanently attached, at least the type that’s being taken. These are clip-in extensions. Something girls wear out to change up their appearance. They’re supposed to be fun.”
Leo made a note in his book, and his blue eyes narrowed slightly. “Alright, so they can be fairly easily removed then?”
Andrew nodded. “Yes.”
“And where is this happening?”
Andrew’s head rolled around with his eyes looking in every corner of the room and his hands flew in a huge circle. “Everywhere. All over Boston, they’re being stolen when the girls are having a good time at bars.”
Leo nodded. “Okay, but wouldn’t the girls notice who was taking them? I mean, you’ve only got to touch your hair and you feel it.”
“You’d have thought, but it’s being done very well. Some of the girls don’t even notice until the next morning that they no longer have their extensions.”
“Is this an issue with all brands of extensions of this type? Why yours?”
“Well, mine are of the highest quality, and I mean the highest. They cost thousands,” Andrew said sitting back smugly with his arms crossed.
Leo raised an eyebrow as Anneliese tried to pick her jaw up off the desk. “Ok, I understand, but you also mentioned in your email that this was a life or death matter…” he paused, waiting for Andrew to fill in the missing link.
“Yeah, of course, it is. I live and die by my reputation. Already there are titters amongst the boutiques and I’ve invested a lot of money in this. If my extension line fails, my reputation gets shot and my entire operation fails. I’d just die.”
Leo nodded and wrote another line in his notebook, but Anneliese could see by the set of his face that this wasn’t going to end well for poor Andrew.
“Alright, thank you for your time, Mr. Bernard. I’ll go over the facts and let you know my decision as to whether I’ll take your case by tomorrow.”
Andrew stood and shook Leo’s hand, thanking him profusely, but Anneliese bit her lip. This wasn’t a life or death case to Leo and she knew Andrew was going to get bounced. The thing was, Anneliese liked Andrew, and something in her gut told her that Andrew really was suffering and a targeted victim of a crime. Surely, if she looked into the issue herself, on her time off, Leo wouldn’t have too much trouble with it, right? Not with the big Tate case, anyway. Yeah, that would be okay, she convinced herself.
Chapter 5
Leo walked down the stairs of his brownstone, the refinished wood floors gleaming in the early morning light. He knew it wasn’t his smartest decision to set up his office in his place of residence. The job of a private detective could get hairy at times and having it be semi-public knowledge that your home was your office? Well, that could be an issue.
The first two floors of the brownstone were plain vanilla and somewhat austere. Leo wanted them to look defining yet understated, only because they had very few defining features apart from the windows. The walls were a forgettable, basic white. The artwork rotated on a regular basis, and the furniture was readily available from any Ikea store. While the combination of the interior design may have been laid out in a tasteful and upscale way—his clients would expect nothing less—it had been crafted to leave the least impression on their memories as possible.
When Leo turned the corner into the kitchen, he was pleasantly surprised to find a pot of warm, fragrant coffee waiting for him in the expensive maker called a Coffee Ninja or some other wildly enthusiastic moniker. All Leo knew was that it made his Dunkin breakfast blend taste awesome. What the aroma meant this morning, however, was that Anneliese had beaten him into the office.
Leo poured a steaming cup, leaned back against the counter top and considered the situation. His secretary was always prompt, but rarely early, and he wondered why today was different. As he moved into the waiting room, Anneliese’s domain, he was immediately struck by the one defining feature of the office—the stunning brunette beauty wearing wild colors and with equally wild hair.
He watched silently as she tried to tuck a flyaway curl behind an ear, only to have the dark ringlet pop out again as if it had a mind of its own. The keyboard clicked and clacked away under her currently purple nails, and her green eyes flew across the screen, interpreting and fixing the information they found. He concluded she must be editing some of the company documents and with each pause, she reached up to her face again to adjust the ringlet. It was an unconscious gesture, and one he’d watched with rapt attention since her first day on the job. Hundreds of times a day she would fix one rebellious ringlet or another. Every time it happened, Leo’s hand itched to tuck it back himself to see if the bouncy, shiny strands really were as soft as they looked.
Anneliese was becoming an issue for him. It was just too bad that she really was as good as her resumé had promised. Leo watched as her nose twitched, a tiny movement that preceded her head lifting and looking in Leo’s direction. The smell of the coffee had given him away and Anneliese’s face brightened in a warm glow of welcome.
Damn, but her smile was so good.
“Morning, Leo! I came in a little early because I’m taking a longer lunch today for an appointment. I hope that’s ok? The schedule is clear for the afternoon. You’re out doing research for most of the day, aren’t you?”
Leo nodded and took a small sip of coffee. “Yes, I’m meeting with the auction house that catalogs the Tate’s valuables. They’ve been called in to do an immediate inventory to see what might be missing.”
He paused, waiting for that information to sink in. Not many of the public could imagine wealth so abundant that a third party service was needed to tell you what you owned. Leo’s childhood had left a bad taste in his mouth with the unnecessary excess of it all. It was another reason why he had a rotating art gallery in the office—all the pieces he displayed were on loan.
“Huh? Well, it’s good for people to know what they own. It helps if you have to report that something is missing.” Anneliese finished the statement with a dry sarcasm she reserved only for their private conversations.
“Yes, I’m thankful that they, at least, had someone take a record of it all. It’s going to make my job a bit easier. Once we find out what’s gone, we can think about exactly how it went missing.”
“Fair enough,” Anneliese said, just as her email pinged.
Leo took that as his cue to leave. “I’ll let you get back to work. If I don’t see you until tomorrow, have a good day.”
He knew his dismissal was rather abrupt, but the one thing he wanted to avoid was getting more involved with his secretary, other than on a professional level. She was good at her job and so far, proving to be good for business, if her excellent rapport with the notoriously upper-class auction house were any indication to go by. Leo returned to the kitchen and took a moment to finish his coffee, cleaning and placing the mug on the drying rack then checked himself one last time in the mirror so he’d be ready to leave the office. The light blue button-down and dark jeans were expensive, yet nondescript. He was ready for the day ahead.
He passed by the waiting room on his way to the door and forced himself not to glance over at Anneliese. He wanted another glimpse of that wild hair, her colorful dress, and her ruby red lips. Anneliese was like one of his rotating art pieces, he thought as they exchanged goodbyes and he let himself out of the brownstone. The office artwork changed often enough to keep him interested, though he was almost a little sad to be leaving her to a day alone in the beige space. But mystery and money called, and Leo always followed through on the cases he took.
*****
As Anneliese sat in the waiting room of Hair Today, she reminded herself that everyone was allowed a lunch break. She picked up the latest In Style magazine to flip through and justified her decision to take a long one that it was also perfectly acceptable for a woman to take her lunch break at a hair salon. Framing her situation with those facts, she felt comfortable in herself that there was nothi
ng dubious wrong with sitting in a posh black leather chair waiting for her name to be called—like every other woman in the room. Nope, this could all be business as usual.
Except Anneliese had never used a single lunch break for a hair appointment before, and she surely hadn’t made extra time for one by coming into work early, but she just couldn’t fake it to herself. She knew she wasn’t here to get a quick blowout or a set of the famed hair extensions in brunette, auburn, or even peacock, as modeled by the waifish blonde who strode past her. Nope, Anneliese was here for research. What she was looking for, she wasn’t sure, but Anneliese thought that chatting with Andrew Bernard in person, hairstylist to the stars in his natural habitat, would be the best way to start.
It was just too bad that Leo hadn’t taken him on as a client so Anneliese had taken the job all on her own—risking the anger of the only employer in the greater Boston area who’d give her a job. Anneliese consoled herself that Leo wasn’t a mind reader. Surely he’d never be able to tell that she’d gone out on a recon mission in secret?
“Anneliese Nottingham?” the young woman in red manning the front desk said from behind a modern confection of glass and shiny black marble. She stood up from her chair and repeated the name as she scanned the packed and noisy waiting area and when Anneliese stood, the girl smiled at her.
“Andrew is ready for you now.”
Up until then, Anneliese had blended in with the crowd of chattering women all waiting for a spot on the long gallery line of black leather swivel chairs. At least twenty stylists were expertly cutting, dying and tweaking their clients’ hair while still managing to carry on complex conversations with them about their vacations, their love lives and whatever else came to mind. It struck Anneliese that they had to be more than just hair stylists—they had to be full-blown psychotherapists as well!