by Maisie Dean
She entered casually, and had started on her familiar path toward the break room before she noticed she wasn’t alone.
“My goodness, Kacey. Why are you working in the dark?” Tippy squinted around the room as if it was a bat cave. “No wonder you need those glasses. Your eyesight must be deteriorating by the minute.
“My eyesight is actually quite good. These are for show. As for the lighting, I prefer the big lights to be off when it’s just me here.
Tippy stared at me blankly. She took a couple steps forward to inspect my glasses and waved her hand toward them. “They’re a prop, then?” She raised an eyebrow.
I stared back at her. “I guess you could call them a prop.”
Tippy scoffed and swatted the idea away.
“Wearing something to intentionally age you? The very idea…” She trailed off as she set her sights on the hallway to the break room. “Coffee?”
“Yes, please,” I said.
I always accepted Tippy’s offers for coffee, regardless of how caffeinated I already was. Our interactions went better when I did. Sometimes I actually poured it down the sink when she wasn’t looking. Other times, I offloaded it to Owen, since he never seemed to be affected by the buzz.
On her way to the break room, Tippy flicked the light switch for the overhead panels. They were momentarily blinding. Tippy herself was glowing too, dressed in a white Chanel-inspired pantsuit. The sunny glow made my eyes droop and my brain feel sleepy. At least I would soon be plied with caffeine.
This wasn’t the first time I’d told Tippy about my bright-light aversion. I must have been speaking a foreign language, for all she heard. Maybe she remembered a time without electricity and was especially grateful for it. Not that it was possible to tell she was as old as she was, with her bright, dewy complexion and classy style.
I could hear Tippy humming an old show tune under her breath as she fixed the coffee. I hoped that none of the Booker brothers had had a chance to tell their grandmother about the disasters of the previous day. She had been the most difficult to win over when I started at the agency, and to be honest I still wasn’t sure I had succeeded at winning her over entirely. It certainly wouldn’t help my score if she found out about the current case.
Tippy returned with two steaming mugs. One of them was a mug I’d brought in myself. I’d gotten it from a drama workshop I’d attended when I’d first arrived in LA. The handle was yellow, and the name of the workshop had all but rubbed away, but the two masks were still clear. The image was black on white, with one of the masks smiling and the other frowning.
Maybe the Bookers had told her about the previous day. Was this Tippy’s indirect way of telling me to go back to acting?
I had made minor errors in judgement before on cases, but entering the subject’s home while I was supposed to be observing from a distance was definitely more significant.
I focused on Tippy’s face to determine whether her mug choice was a message or purely coincidence, but she seemed distracted.
She sat at the edge of my desk where Lucky had inspected me earlier that morning. Her gaze was distant and directed somewhere past my shoulder and straight through the back wall, by the looks of it. She held onto her own mug tightly, the one Owen had made her as a child. It was a hand-painted mess of colors that mixed together to make brown in some places, and it had the word “Gamma” spelled messily across the side.
“Are you feeling okay?” I asked hesitantly.
Tippy snapped her focus back to me. Her gaze locked onto my glasses.
“Kacey, do you think I’m old?” Tippy’s right brow furrowed ever so slightly in the middle and lifted up at the far end. It was an expert expression that I knew was useful to acting. It had taken me hours in front of the mirror to get somewhere close to it.
I opened my mouth to speak but she cut me off.
“Don’t answer that. It’s just…” Tippy trailed off.
I waited patiently, sipping my coffee, until she spoke again.
“It’s just that this morning was the third time this week that I’ve called someone I know and I’ve interrupted their nap! Their nap, can you believe it?” She shook her head.
It was too early to talk about naps. I hoped the coffee would work fast so I didn’t start napping myself. The fluorescent bulbs made my eyes so tired.
She continued ranting. “And yesterday, I asked Fitzy if he remembered the name of the restaurant we’d been to the week before and he said, ‘Why don’t you check the machine?’ He meant the computer! He couldn’t remember for himself. And don’t even get me started on Leanne’s bowling club. I don’t care if it’s for charity. You won’t catch me in those awful shoes. They’re all acting like a bunch of old ladies,” Tippy said, her voice dripping with disdain. Her whole face puckered, as though she was tasting something extremely sour.
Her friends were acting like old ladies? I was at a complete loss for words. If there was a non-offensive way out of the conversation, I couldn’t think of it.
Tippy made a huff sound. “Let me try those,” she said, gesturing toward my glasses.
I slid off the thin, rounded tortoiseshell frames and handed them to her.
Tippy slid them on and snatched up a page from a document that was on my desk. She inspected the page for a few moments before she dropped it and handed my glasses back.
“They have some really great styles these days, you know,” I told her gently. “Glasses can often make you look younger too, if you choose the right ones.”
Tippy didn’t appear to be paying much attention to me. She’d picked up the same page from before and was doing her best not to squint as she read over it again without my glasses. She straightened her suit collar and sat up tall.
“You may need them for your little charades, but prop or not, I have no need for them,” Tippy said. The way her eyes lingered on the glasses said otherwise.
I shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
The phone rang.
I held up a finger and gave her an apologetic look, but the truth was, I felt lucky to escape the conversation.
I picked up the receiver and pressed the button for line one.
“Booker Brothers Detective Agency, how can I help you today?”
There was no reply on the other end, only the garbled sounds of cars going by, and distant talking. The line sounded fuzzier than normal. I pressed my ear more firmly against the phone so that I wouldn’t miss anything.
“Hello? Is someone there? This is the Booker—”
A hoarse voice cut me off. “Are you the brunette who invited herself into Annie’s residence yesterday?” I couldn’t tell, because of the raspiness, if it was a man or a woman I was speaking with.
“Who is this?” I asked. I tried to keep my voice steady, but the peculiar sound quality of the call had begun to make the little hairs on my neck and arms rise. I swallowed.
“It doesn’t matter,” the voice said. The tone was menacing, but the attempt to disguise the speaker’s true voice also made me think of kids making prank calls. If it was a prank, though, how would they know anything about the case?
The person spoke again. “I’ve never seen a more unprofessional operation. You should be very careful about how you continue on from here. You need to try harder if you’re going to get to the bottom of this case,” the voice said. “And you will get to the bottom of it.”
I’d seen enough movies and crime shows to know a threat when I heard one. The line clicked and suddenly the scrambled street sounds gave way to a dial tone.
I put the phone down in its cradle. I felt rattled and nervous. I tried to think rationally about who it could be. Lucky would know about all of it. He liked to mess with me, but a call like that would be low, even for him. I knew Lucky’s voice too well, anyway. I knew that it got raspy before he got sick or if it was late at night. And I’d heard all manner of his weird and funny voices. It couldn’t have been Lucky. Busty? She would have had to do some real sleuthing of her own to
figure out who I was and what company I worked for. The Booker Brothers didn’t even have a website. They still did everything old-school.
My mind continued to race toward a plausible and benign answer. Whoever it was, they were mad that I’d messed up and violated Annie’s privacy, but mystery caller had also said they wanted me to keep pressing on with the case? It didn’t make sense.
Tippy had wandered over to Harrison’s desk while I’d been on the phone and she was gently thumbing her way through a few pages Harrison had left on his desk. I was about to tell her about the strange call when suddenly I heard the muted, electronic “ding dong” that sounded every time someone opened the door into the foyer we shared with the diner downstairs. My heartbeat nearly thudded to a halt. My wild imagination jumped to it being the caller coming to make a more visceral threat. I held my breath as I heard footsteps move quickly up the stairs.
CHAPTER 11
Owen clumsily swung open the door clutching at his laptop messenger bag. He was carrying about six notebooks and a travel mug with the tag of a tea bag waving about. I’d never been so relieved to see him. All of my nervous energy dissipated and I let out a large exhale.
“Hello, darling. Let me help you with that,” Tippy said. She swept across the office from Harrison’s desk to the front door and offloaded Owen’s notebooks and mug.
“Thanks, Grandma,” Owen said.
Now that I knew that there was no stranger coming up the stairs to threaten me about the case, for now at least, I leaned back in my chair and gave Owen a big smile.
“This is quite the welcome for an average Tuesday,” Owen said. He raised his eyebrows at Tippy and me and slid the messenger bag off his shoulder and onto his desk.
“I didn’t know if you were coming in today,” I said.
“Of course, it’s my job…” Owen said. He looked at me as if I was wearing bunny ears.
“I heard you’ve got the PM shift again, is all,” I said.
Owen scratched his head. “Wait, did Harrison tell you guys I was napping again?” he asked, looking between Tippy and me.
“Possibly,” I replied.
Tippy ruffled Owen’s hair affectionately. “You do whatever you need to do, sweet pea.”
Owen’s cheeks reddened and he groaned. “Yesterday was an anomaly. I’d had very little sleep the night before and I didn’t want to risk the success of the case by dozing off.” Owen sat down heavily in his seat, which squeaked in resistance. “Did you know that Lucky actually calls the night shift ‘Doze Duty’?” Owen asked me. “Yeah, it’s true. I, on the other hand, take my job seriously, thank you very much.”
I put my hands up in front of me. “Hey, you’re preaching to the choir, sister.”
Owen frowned and opened up his laptop while he waited for his main desktop to boot up.
Tippy drifted back into the break room, for a refill I presumed. Once I considered her out of earshot I whispered to Owen.
“Owen,” I said, but he kept his attention glued to his screen. “Owen, hey,” I tried again. “Owen, hello—”
“Yes, what is it, Kacey?” he asked at regular volume.
I shushed him quickly.
“Will you take the rest of my coffee? It could only help for later…” I said. I held up what was left in my mug and gave him my sweetest smile.
“Sorry, no-can-do. I’m switching to green tea,” he said, and patted his travel mug. “It’s a far more efficient delivery system of caffeine, and contains way more antioxidants. It’s a no-brainer, really,” Owen said.
I crossed my arms. I felt irrationally irritated by my side-of-the-roommate.
“We’ll see how long that lasts,” I said. “You love coffee.”
“Human beings are incredibly adaptable, Kacey. I fit into that category, thus...” Owen didn’t complete his sentence; rather, he picked up his mug and presented it to me like it was a fancy watch on a gameshow.
I rolled my eyes. I’d already taken quite a few swigs of my coffee while Tippy had been hovering around. I was beginning to get the sweats, and as my armpits prickled I realized I’d forgotten to put on deodorant that morning in my speedy preparations. I unbuttoned my collared shirt as far as I felt was appropriate for the office, and reached down into my purse to search for my spare deodorant stick.
Owen’s chair squeaked again as he swiveled to face me. “I thought you’d be thrilled I was making the switch to tea, you encourage it almost daily. I even…”
“Even what?” I said. I looked up to see why he’d trailed off. Bending over to rummage through my purse, my shirt had unbuttoned even further. I had given Owen nearly a full frontal view of my cleavage.
Owen’s face was tomato red as his eyes darted across his computer screen. His fingers raced across the keyboard. I didn’t even know he could type that quickly.
I turned away from him, not out of embarrassment, but so that he wouldn’t see the smirk I was fighting to keep from taking over my face. Owen ignoring me was ideal for the task of giving my armpits a quick swipe beneath my shirt.
Tippy caught me pulling my hand out from beneath my blouse when she returned. She wasn’t holding a coffee, which was surprising.
“I’ll be on my way,” Tippy said slowly. She raised an eyebrow at me and narrowed her eyes which were darting between me and her youngest grandson.
I started doing up the buttons of my shirt, trying to be as nonchalant as possible. Whatever was going on in Tippy’s mind, Owen’s face sure didn’t help.
I cleared my throat. “Okay then, great to see you. We’re all good here,” I said.
Tippy nodded but didn’t move to leave.
“Bye, Grandma,” Owen said without taking his eyes off his two screens.
I forced a smile and tried my best to convey that there was zero funny business going on here. Unfortunately, I don’t think all the nuances came through.
Tippy kept her eyes on me all the way back to the door.
“Have a nice day,” she singsonged. “I could drop in at anytime.”
“Please do,” I called back.
Tippy disappeared down the stairs. I didn’t sit back in my chair and undo my top button until I heard the door downstairs make its electronic doorbell sound.
***
I gave Owen some time to recover from his embarrassment. I knew how rattled he could get. Sometimes he’d partially forget how to speak and drop a random number right into the middle of his sentence. But by the time my stomach started rumbling, and I grabbed my roast turkey and pickle sandwich from the fridge, I decided to break the silence.
“Owen, something happened earlier this morning,” I said, taking a big bite out of my sandwich.
Owen’s shoulders tensed. He must have thought I was bringing up the cleavage situation.
“No, er, before you got here today,” I said.
“What was it?” he asked.
“A phone call. A strange one,” I said. “The voice, I couldn’t tell if it was male or female, was talking about the current case. They seemed mad about what happened at the house yesterday but they were clear that they wanted the case to be solved.”
Owen listened carefully while he pulled out a stainless steel box and a bottle of salad dressing from his messenger bag.
“You’re sure it wasn’t Lucky?” he asked.
“Pretty sure,” I said.
Owen shrugged. “Weird stuff like that happens at the office, Kacey. You must know that by now. It’s probably an ex of the claimant, or the restaurant owner whose insurance premiums will go up if the case doesn’t go their way. Maybe even that roommate with a jealous grudge.”
I accidentally bit the inside of my cheek instead of a pickle and brought my hand to my cheek.
Owen leaned toward me from over by his desk. “Don’t sweat it Kacey, between the four of us we’ll get this case sorted. You won’t have to worry about strange, unsolicited calls anymore,” Owen said.
“Not work-related ones, at least,” I said. It was meant to be
a joke but Owen frowned.
“Are there men harassing you by phone?” Owen asked. His grip was tight on the armrests of his desk chair.
“No, not lately. I meant like scam calls or those surveys that never actually only take five minutes,” I said.
Owen eased up and turned back toward what he was working on.
The coffee was uncomfortably exploring my nervous system. I felt restless, so I stood up and walked over to Owen’s desk. He was editing an old poster for a missing kid. It was a cold-case and had been for a number of years. I hadn’t been working at the agency when the Bookers were on it, but I made a habit of checking over the photos we had on file periodically, just in case I ever saw someone while I was out on a different case. The Booker brothers didn’t have too many of these cases, maybe a handful each year. They were often funded by the families of the missing person as a last attempt, once the police investigation slowed down. They were sad, heartbreaking cases. Not even Lucky could lighten the mood when one landed on our desks. A few of the clients would follow up each year to request that the Info-Wanted posters be updated and re-circulated. I hadn’t known anything to come from it while I’d worked at the office, but I certainly couldn’t judge anyone for trying.
Owen, between bites of quinoa salad, was intently focused on using a Photoshop-like program. He was carefully using it to age the image we’d been provided of a young boy. He’d been eleven when he’d gone missing. If he was found now, he would be thirteen. Owen widened the jaw slightly, and drew out the nose to better fit the boy’s face. He had brown eyes and short, curly brown hair. A smattering of freckles on each cheek crossed over the bridge of his nose.
I leaned on the edge of Owen’s desk and sighed.
“Those are so sad,” I said. I was stating the obvious, of course, but in those situations there wasn’t much else to do.
Owen nodded. “I try to imagine that they’re still out there, healthy and living a different life somewhere new. Maybe there was some reason for it all, and they disappeared for the better.”