Then she met someone who would change that.
His name was Jack Powers, which was the perfect name, she thought, for what he was: a private investigator. He ran the one-man L.A. office of a Denver firm that Kafer kept under retainer for running background checks on employees, clients and spokespersons.
He was not at all her idea of what a detective should look like—neither the brawny Magnum or Rockford type, nor the sloppy Columbo or Sipowicz variety. Powers fit neither Hollywood mold.
The fortyish man seated at the round conference table in her office, sipping black coffee out of a china cup, was average in all respects—five eleven, medium build, pleasant features, brown suit and white shirt and brown-and-gold tie—and could have been an accountant or insurance salesman. Her first impression was that if they passed on the street tomorrow, she would fail to recognize him.
Once she’d spent a little time with him, however, she realized there was something memorable about his manner, which exuded intelligence, and his slightly tousled dark brown hair, along with the hint of a playful smile in the corners of his mouth, made her think he was completely confident about himself.
And his eyes were a deep, deep brown—gentle and knowing, at once, indicating a compassion that seemed unlikely in a career cop.
“You understand,” she said, pouring cream into her coffee, “why our corporate clients are becoming quite skittish about using the entertainment world anymore to promote their products.”
“When you spend years and a large fortune polishing your image,” he said dryly, “you don’t appreciate it getting tarnished by some young drug addict.”
“Exactly.” She stirred her coffee. “But the beautiful people in the entertainment business are still the fastest way to get the attention of every generation, young or old.”
“Pharmaceutical companies skew mostly older, don’t they?”
“Not anymore—not when you’re tackling allergies, migraine and the like.”
Jack had a white legal pad and a Cross pen in front of him, but he wasn’t taking any notes. He leaned back casually in his chair. “Dinah Shore selling Chevrolet...Jimmy Stewart slurping Campbell’s soup...it was a lot simpler back then. Now everybody seems to have a skeleton in their closet.”
“They probably always did,” Joy smirked. “But with the media as hungry for blood and instant scandals as they are, the landscape is very different. It might work for Versace to use Courtney Love in their ads, but can you imagine her associated with General Mills?”
“Not unless it’s crack-flavored Rice Krispies.”
She laughed. “You seem a little young to remember Dinah Shore hocking cars....”
“What, and a little old to make a crack crack? Well, I used to be an LAPD cop—and got around. As for Dinah, I took advertising in college, but decided it was too boring. No offense.”
She smiled one-sidedly. “None taken. It can sometimes be incredibly boring.”
The playful smile cropped up again. “Like now?”
“No, actually, I’m managing to stay pretty well awake.”
“Nice to hear. Anyway, Chuck told me you had an unusual sense of history for one so young.”
“You’re a friend of Mr. Kafer’s?”
“Friendly acquaintance. He’s a hell of a guy.”
“Well, I’m just glad you think thirty-five is young. In this town, that’s ancient.”
They fell silent.
“What were we talking about?” she asked.
He laughed. “I don’t remember. But I assume you want some backgrounds checked.”
She nodded, and passed him a folder; she had an identical one in front of her, which contained a list of entertainers and sports figures. “These stars are the ones being considered,” she said, “roughly in order of desirability to our clients.”
The brown eyes narrowed as Jack studied the names with corresponding numbers. “Well, I can tell you right now,” he said, “you can scratch number two...unless your client is Betty Ford.”
“Really.” It wasn’t a question. She drew a black line through the name, thinking it was too bad that she wouldn’t get to work with the popular nighttime soap star...but at least he wasn’t gay.
Speaking of which....
Jack was saying, “And number five...forget her. Unless it wouldn’t bother your client if she pulled an Ellen.”
“As long as she’s in the closet, no, we wouldn’t want to risk it—the gayness isn’t the issue, really, it’s honesty.” Another black line.
“Number six, also gay.”
A male. She crossed him out, shaking her head; those bitches in the bathroom back at Thomas Advertising had been right: all the really cute ones...
“Surely you know about number eight?”
Joy looked at him warily. “What about her?”
He shrugged. “She was featured in People magazine last year, telling the world her father raped her.”
“Huh. Must have missed that issue. Still, for certain products...” Joy sighed. “Hey, this isn’t going to be a picnic, is it?”
“Sure it is—heavy on the ants.”
She tapped her pen against the table. “You know, if they have a background or affliction that ties into the drug being advertised, that’s a plus...”
“Each has gotta be an exact fit, though. Anyway, off the top of my head, without really goin’ to work, those are the ones on the list I can tell you about, right now. So? Want me to start diggin’?”
She nodded. “Get out your Sam Spade.”
“Ha! You do know your history.”
A muffled ring announced Jack’s pager summoning him.
“You can use the phone in here,” she said, gesturing to her desk.
Then, to give him some privacy, she exited her office and went over to Susan, her secretary, positioned just outside her door, working at the computer on some letters Joy had dictated.
Joy had a nice rapport with Susan, who was a petite, pretty brunette of perhaps thirty-five, prone to colorful print dresses and funky plastic jewelry. Maybe the woman was a little high-strung and nervous, but the photos on the secretary’s desk of two beguiling little boys and an almost-too-handsome husband went a long way toward explaining that.
Anyway, flighty or not, Susan was a hard, highly skilled (and highly paid) worker—an executive on Joy’s level required, and received, only the best in the secretarial field.
Approaching Susan—who was hunched diligently over the computer, almost like an air traffic controller in her dictation headphones—Joy smiled at this typical display of dedication; but her smile faded and turned to a frown when she noticed that the secretary was typing with some difficulty.
Joy put one hand on her shoulder, and the woman jumped.
Joy jumped, too.
“Oh, Ms. Lerner!” Susan said. “I didn’t mean to startle you!”
“I didn’t mean to startle you, either, Susan,” Joy said with a gentle laugh.
Susan removed the dictation headphone. “That’s all right, I just didn’t hear you. Is there something...?”
“I’m going to walk down to the lobby with Mr. Powers.”
“Lucky you.”
“He isn’t hard to like, is he? Anyway, I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
“All right.”
“Susan?”
“Yes?” The woman looked up with big light blue eyes, her expression almost childlike.
“I couldn’t help but notice your hands. I hope you’re not getting carpal tunnel syndrome. Everyone will think I’m working you too hard.”
Susan smiled one-sidedly. “You’re not—you’re the best. They’re just a little stiff...you know, the weather.”
“It has been awfully humid. I’ve been using chamomile, an herbal—free sample from a client? It works as an analgesic. I have some in my purse...why don’t you take it?”
“Thanks!”
Jack appeared at Joy’s side.
“Thanks for the use of the phone,” he
said. “I made a few international calls—hope you don’t mind.”
Joy grinned, enjoying his deadpan humor. “I bet some people don’t know when you’re kidding.”
“That’s right. They’re called idiots.”
And when he turned to leave, saying, “I’ll be in touch when I got something,” she blurted, “I’ll see you out.”
He shot her that playful smile. “You think a detective can’t find his own way out? Well, you’re right.”
Susan, rubbing her wrist, said, “Oh, Ms. Lerner! Those herbal pills?”
“In my office,” she said. “Help yourself.”
Joy and Jack were the only ones in the elevator on the ride down, and when the loud Muzak began to play an absurdly awful version of “Purple Haze,” they both broke out laughing.
“Jimi Hendrix is probably rolling over in his grave,” she said.
“It’s probably just the drugs kicking in,” he replied wryly. “But this isn’t as bad as what I heard earlier, coming up.”
“What was that?”
“Strings and flutes having at ‘In a Gadda Da Vida.’”
In the marble, deco lobby, they lingered; she felt like a teenager, grabbing a few precious moments with a new boyfriend in the school hallway between classes.
“Listen...I don’t mean to be forward,” he said, suddenly schoolboy awkward himself, “and I know the company policy against fraternization....”
“But you’re not a company employee. This would be different.”
“What would?”
“You asking me out, sometime.”
And she stepped onto the elevator, smiling just a little as the doors closed on Jack standing there, half-grinning, rubbing his chin.
On the ride back up, serenaded by an obscenely soft-rock instrumental version of “Revolution” by the Beatles, her smile wilted, and it wasn’t just the terrible music.
If his specialty was background checks, she wondered, what was there to prevent him from investigating her?
Chapter Eight
“(LISTEN) DO YOU WANT TO KNOW A SECRET?”
(The Beatles, #2 Billboard, 1964)
By noon the next day, the California sun had finally burned away the morning fog. Light streamed in the windows, turning everything it touched white.
Joy had spent the morning at her spacious desk in her modern, black-and-white, well-appointed office, working on the ad campaign for one of her clients, a pharmaceutical conglomerate moving into the herbal supplement market. But she couldn’t seem to get her mind to focus on echinacea or kava or even Saint-John’s-wort.
That brown-haired, quietly sarcastic private investigator kept insinuating himself into her thoughts, turning them into daydreams....
“Earth to Joy,” a female voice said.
Susan, standing in the doorway, was wearing her usual bright print dress, a sleeveless affair as perky as she was.
“You look like you could use lunch,” Susan said, brown hair bouncing off her shoulders. “I’m buying.”
The offer blindsided Joy, who had gone out for lunch with Susan only a few times—Secretary’s Day and the woman’s birthday—and, though she liked Susan, Joy didn’t particularly want noon get-togethers to become a habit. Habits had a way of becoming hard to break.
It wasn’t that Joy didn’t want to spend her lunch hour with Susan; it was that she didn’t want to spend it with anybody. This was her private time, time to recharge herself by strolling the streets, eating an apple, not stuck in a noisy restaurant ordering food she couldn’t consume, or even afford (unless she could expense-account it on a client).
She was comfortable being Joy Lerner—she even relished being Joy Lerner; but there were times when she liked to be herself, and not play the role.
“We could split a shrimp salad,” Susan coaxed.
That did sound good....Joy hadn’t splurged like that in some while.
Screw the apple.
“You are such a bad influence,” Joy said, reaching for her purse.
Eyes bright with her boss’s acceptance, Susan said, “I know just the best place.”
They walked along Wilshire, which was bustling with noon traffic, and, like life, going by much too fast. A pleasant breeze, with a westerly hint of ocean, tousled their hair and teased the hems of their dresses.
Susan led her boss to a small café on a side street, a recently opened place Joy wasn’t familiar with, a typical, vaguely French indoor-outdoor thing; the breeze was just insistent enough that they opted to dine inside.
In the back corner at a small linen-covered table for two—the last available in the noon rush—Susan ordered the shrimp salad from a billy-goat-bearded Sean Penn wannabe, who gave them a disdainful look before he left, when Joy added, “And an extra plate” (as if he wouldn’t know what it meant to save a few dollars).
Joy leaned forward, putting her elbows on the table. “This is really a nice spot,” she said, in an attempt to get the conversation going. But what she really thought was that the restaurant was so mundane, it would be lucky to last the week.
Susan, sitting straight in her chair, like a child reprimanded by a mother, nodded as she glanced at the other tables, occupied mostly by business and professional types.
Susan’s perkiness had evaporated. What the hell was this? The woman had seemed so anxious for Joy to come for lunch....
Joy shifted in her seat, and tried again. “How are your boys?” she ventured.
“Pardon?”
“Your boys. Your sons—Robbie and Clint, right?”
“Right, right! Oh...they’re just fine.”
All of a sudden getting a sentence out of Susan was like pulling a tooth—an alligator’s tooth—with pliers. What was the matter with the woman? The secretary’s cheerful chattiness on the walk to the restaurant had disappeared, replaced by a sullen nervousness that made Joy wish she hadn’t accepted her subordinate’s invitation. That shrimp salad had better be goddamn good....
“And your husband?” Joy asked. “Sorry...I’ve forgotten his name.”
“Jerome. Great. He’s great.”
“Uh-huh. What line of work did you say he’s in?”
“Construction. He’s in construction.”
“Well, that’s certainly a booming business right now,” Joy replied. “Tear something down, build something up, tear something down, build something up. That’s L.A. for you.”
Joy had never heard herself spout such inanities.
Thankfully, the waiter brought their salad, along with the extra plate, which he set down with a glower and a clunk in front of Joy. Then Susan divided the meal, and the two women began to eat in silence.
Looking over her shrimp-speared fork, Joy studied Susan, who was listlessly pushing lettuce around her plate, and concluded that the woman wanted something from her—a raise, some time off, a recommendation for a promotion, perhaps—but had lost her nerve to ask.
The notion irritated Joy. Why hadn’t Susan used company time instead of wasting this precious lunch hour?
Putting her fork down, sitting back, Joy asked somewhat pointedly, “Susan—what is it?”
“Pardon?” Susan’s eyes were on her plate.
“What do you want? And don’t say extra dressing for your salad.”
The secretary looked up, her dark eyes empty—then suddenly they were full: brimming with tears.
And Susan was sobbing into her napkin, as Joy’s irritation faded and compassion kicked in.
“Susan, dear,” Joy whispered, leaning forward, repeating again, patting the woman’s hand. “What is bothering you?”
But Joy—who prided herself on reading people, as it was part of her business—already had a good idea. Did the poor woman really think she could keep that hunk of a husband just by dressing like a go-go girl? A woman should never marry a man who looks like a male model; it was asking for trouble—if they’re not gay, they’re banging the babysitter....
“Is it Jerome?” Joy asked.
; Susan wailed into her napkin.
“It is Jerome, isn’t it?” Joy frowned. “Haven’t you learned yet that all men are bastards?”
Joy was really starting to hate that cheat Jerome, a man she had never met.
But, surprisingly, Susan shook her head, arcs of brown hair sweeping across flushed cheeks. “No! It’s not...him,” she replied.
So what else could it be? Joy waited patiently while Susan dabbed at her eyes with the napkin.
Finally, Susan—glancing around the nearby tables, making sure other patrons weren’t listening—whispered, “I have rheumatoid arthritis.”
By the seriousness of her voice, Joy would have thought the woman had said cancer.
“Is that all?” Joy responded, laughing a little. “Millions of people have arthritis. I’m even stiff in the morning until I get going.”
“You don’t understand,” Susan continued whispering, “my father died of it.”
Was that possible, Joy wondered, in this day and age? “Surely there’s some kind of medication you can be taking.”
“There is. It can slow the process, but it won’t stop the disease. And the shots are very expensive.”
“You’ve seen a specialist, of course.”
Susan shook her head.
“Why not?” Joy sighed. “If something’s wrong, you see a doctor, you get the best care possible. Hell, Kafer’s insurance will pay for it.”
Tears returned to Susan’s eyes, and desperation to her voice. “But then everyone will know and I want to keep working....”
“Well, you can...you can....”
“If you could just be patient with me, with my work...” The woman was pleading.
“I will...I will...”
“...And cover for me.”
Cover for her? Now wait just a damn minute. Joy could certainly be patient with Susan’s disability and slowness of work...but “cover”? Cover, exactly how? As much as Joy liked the woman, as much as she sympathized with her illness, Susan had just crossed a line....
“You were so sweet, yesterday,” Susan was saying. “Sharing your herbals with me...”
“A little over-the-counter remedy ain’t gonna cut it,” Joy told her sternly. “You must see your doctor.”
Susan swallowed, not replying; then she reached in her purse and withdrew something, fingers closed over whatever-it-was; then she gazed gloomily down at her tight hand, resting it on the table.
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