Kiss Me Now: A Romantic Comedy

by Melanie Jacobson

  Brooke was considerate enough to do it on the first afternoon.

  “I got something, boss,” Sherrie said, ducking into my office. “She just pinged at 21305 Glen Forest Drive in Richmond.”

  I pulled up the address and gave a low whistle. “Why is innocent Brooke Spencer, high school science teacher, driving an hour to visit Highmark Wealth Management?” It was one of the largest wealth management firms on the East Coast with branches in most major cities. They wouldn’t touch a client with less than a million in assets.

  “If you’ve taught me anything, it’s to follow the money,” Sherrie said. “If you find the answer to that, you find the answer to everything.”

  “You’ve been paying attention,” I said. “All right, good work. Keep watching her. Let me know if you see any other red flags.”

  “You got it.” Sherrie went back to her own desk, and I stared at the link on the screen for Highmark. I didn’t need to read up on them. Many of the firm’s clients also had their assets managed by Highmark. Many of their wealthy clients. Nothing in Brooke’s work history suggested that she’d been able to earn the kind of money she’d need for Highmark to bother with her.

  Family money, then? I turned up her parents’ info quickly enough. Her mother was from Charlottesville as Brooke had explained, and she had a current law license, but she didn’t seem to have practiced law since 1992. Brooke’s father worked for a defense contractor. I located their house on Google maps, a comfortable suburban home in McClean’s best school district purchased when Brooke was seven. Even though their 3500 square foot home would cost upward of a million in today’s market, it still didn’t speak to the kind of family wealth that would merit attention from Highmark.

  I spent another hour pulling on internet threads, further scouring for other traces of her, but didn’t turn up anything new. That meant it was time to do some old school sleuthing. I wanted to retrace the steps of Brooke’s life to see if I could find the point where a woman from an upper middleclass family became a predatory con artist. I started with her volunteer service listed in her yearbook profile at the Landsdowne Senior Center.

  “Hello,” I said to the receptionist who answered the phone. “I’m calling to do a reference check on a former volunteer. Can I speak to your human resources director?”

  “Sure, hold please,” said the young-sounding guy on the other end.

  A minute later, a woman’s voice came on the line. “Landsdowne Human Resources, how can I help you?”

  “Hello. I’m calling for a reference check on one of your volunteers we’re considering hiring.”

  “Name, please?”

  “Brooke Spencer.”

  “Please hold.” I did for about a minute then she was back. “I don’t see a record for anyone by that name, but we only retain volunteer records for five years. When did Ms. Spencer work here?”

  “Farther back than that, I’m afraid. Twelve years.”

  There was a pause. “That’s pretty far back to go in someone’s job history. Who did you say you work for?”

  “I didn’t. Suffice it to say, in our place of employment, it’s absolutely essential not to leave a stone unturned.” I knew she would infer that it was a security check for one of the federal intelligence agencies. It’s exactly what I meant for her to infer. It was the logical place for her mind to go so close to DC. It was a crime for me to impersonate federal law enforcement, but there was nothing illegal about this woman drawing her own conclusions.

  “I see,” she said. “Well, our director has been here for fifteen years. Let me see if she can help you out. Hang on.”

  I waited another five minutes and had begun to wonder whether she’d forgotten me when a new voice came on the line.

  “This is Kathy Burgess, the director here. I understand you’re doing a...sensitive background check on a former volunteer.”

  “That’s correct,” I said, offering no further information. In these situations, it was always best to let the mark’s imagination fill in the blanks. They were eager to imagine themselves as an ally to protecting national security.

  “That’s a long time ago, but I do remember Brooke Spencer. She had a particular knack with our residents. She was always going above and beyond to make them happy, working far more hours than her service club at school required. She organized a Senior Prom and made sure every resident had a young person to dance with. Every resident who went talked about that long after she left us to go to college. All of the ones she would have worked with have long since passed, but she was a ray of sunshine.”

  None of this surprised me. I would have been shocked to discover she didn’t have an ease with the elderly. “Did she have any special connections with any of the residents in particular that you remember?”

  “All of them, honestly. When she got into college, they pooled their resources and came up with a five-thousand dollar scholarship to help her pay for it.”

  The fine hairs rose on my neck, and alarm bells went off in my head. I’d expected to find that the trail started here, but this was a trailhead that began with a flashing neon sign. This was where Brooke Spencer must have learned that a little kindness toward the old could pay off literally.

  “Did anything concern you about this transaction? Were you concerned about boundaries between her and your residents?”

  “Oh no,” the director said, almost rushing to reassure me. “In fact, she came to me, very worried about it because she said her parents could afford her tuition, and she didn’t like our residents spending their money on her. But I told her to accept it with grace because it made them happy to feel like they were giving back. The fact that I can remember her so many years later despite all the volunteers who have come and gone should tell you that she was special.”

  I was unmoved by her praise of Brooke. The more someone’s inner voice tried to whisper that something wasn’t quite right about a person they trusted, the more they talked themselves into believing in that person’s integrity. It was known as a “default to truth,” a setting that allowed human society to thrive based on assumed honesty and trust. In reality, people who lied about important things were rare. That was a statistical fact. But the tiny fraction of deliberate liars who exploited that trust profited disproportionately.

  Brooke may have even started at Landsdowne with the best of intentions but gotten a taste of what befriending old people could do for her. The temptation had proven too great, and Brooke’s innate ability to win people’s confidence had served her too well to allow her to walk away.

  I thanked the director and hung up, moving on to my next “reference check,” the think tank she’d worked for after college. It was well-known for its focus on public health, and as I researched it, I found multiple articles from politicians on both sides of the aisle quoting the think tank’s findings in defense of their bills, amendments, and public health positions. Typical cherry-picking. The institute itself appeared reputable, but I had no luck getting in touch with anyone who had worked with Brooke directly. I was only able to get human resources to confirm that she had been employed there during the dates she listed and assure me that she had been marked as “eligible for re-hire.”

  That led me next to her job with her delegate to the Virginia General Assembly, a woman named Margaret Leeds, but I didn’t bother trying to contact the assemblywoman. Even a state delegate wouldn’t have time for a call like this, and chances were good she may not remember Brooke or have worked with her directly. This was a situation that called for the person who truly knew everything: the delegate’s chief of staff.

  “I’m sorry,” the man said when he returned my phone call two hours later. “I’ve only been with the delegate for a year, after her former chief of staff retired, but I can give you her contact info. I’m sure Ellen would be happy to talk to you.”

  “That would be great,” I told him, copying down the information. This was the part of private investigation work that got skipped over in TV and movies, the
tedious chasing down of tiny details, the calls that sent you in circles, the emails sent that never got answers. But I was used to it, and it didn’t bother me. I was a patient man when stalking my prey.

  Especially when that prey was stalking Gran.

  I emailed the former chief of staff immediately, but it was two days later before I got a response while I sat on a bench spying in the National Arboretum. It was a pretty park for sure, but a strange place for the vice president of a large credit agency to meet with one of K Street’s most notorious lobbyists. I’d tailed the VP to the parking lot then did a quick clothing change in my car, switching into one of several outfits I kept on hand. My daily uniform was gray dress pants with a button down because I could easily throw on a sport coat and tie if I needed to blend in at the capitol or one of the popular power lunch spots in town, or I could remove the button up to reveal the T-shirt I wore advertising a 5K I’d never run if I needed to look more like a tourist.

  I’d swapped out my pants for shorts and switched my office shoes for flip-flops, then grabbed my camera and headed into the arboretum a minute behind the VP, spotting her easily. I had settled onto my bench with my binoculars looking for all the world like a birdwatcher, when in reality I was watching them closely.

  I didn’t have any sound equipment, but I didn’t need to. I needed only to establish a pattern of meetings between these two, so once I had a few closeup photos on my phone, I checked my email and found a reply from Ellen Brown.

  Dear Mr. Norton,

  I did indeed have the pleasure of supervising Brooke Spencer during her time with Delegate Leeds and would be happy to vouch for her.

  Please call at your convenience.

  Kind regards,

  Ellen Brown

  I pretended to follow another bird as it flitted in the opposite direction from my subjects, then exited the grounds when they were out of sight. I’d captured what I needed to for today.

  I called Ellen Brown from the car, impatient to pick up Brooke’s trail again. I was getting closer to the edge of the black hole in her resume. “Hello, this is Graham Norton calling for a reference check on Brooke Spencer,” I said when a woman answered the call. I gave the name of the British talk show host I often used when I didn’t want to advertise that I worked for Fleming, Roth, and Schill. No one ever recognized the name here. “Is this Ellen Brown?”

  “It is. I’m happy to discuss Brooke with you. I have nothing but good things to say.”

  “Great. This should be a short call then. Let’s start with the basics.” I launched into a few questions for a standard reference check, and Brooke definitely sounded like a model employee.

  “I find it interesting that her undergraduate degree was both in biology and political science,” I noted. “That’s an unusual pairing.”

  “Not really, not when you understand why,” Ellen said, in her polite, professional voice. “She added political science late to her major after she took her semester of personal leave.”

  “Personal leave? Like a gap year?”

  There was a pause. “Not like a gap year, no. But I don’t think her reasons are relevant to an employment check.”

  Ah, here was another thread to follow, but I could sense that Ellen Brown was sharper than most. I would have to step carefully. “Back to her double major, what reason did she give for it?”

  “Circumstances in her personal life prompted her to take on Big Tobacco, so—"

  “Whoa, I’m sorry, did you just say she took on Big Tobacco? In Virginia?” She said it like someone might say, “Brooke decided to go on a Sunday walk.”

  “Yes. I’m surprised this isn’t in her resume.” Ellen’s voice had grown a degree cooler.

  “She was being modest, I guess. Tell me about her advocacy work.”

  “She lobbied Delegate Leeds to introduce a bill to the General Assembly to ban the marketing of flavored vaping products to underage consumers. I think she thought studying political science would help, but she didn’t need it. She was so effective that the delegate drafted the legislation based largely on Brooke’s arguments and research, and it passed, making the Commonwealth the first state in the nation to explicitly outlaw some of the questionable marketing tactics of Big Tobacco. It was quite a feat given our state’s long history with tobacco companies.”

  I had to concede that it was. “She sounds like an impressive young woman.”

  “I assume that’s why you’re considering her for a position with...”

  “My company,” I supplied, appreciative of her efforts to fish.

  “Yes, your company. Well, as I said, she was a truly gifted young woman, and that’s why we recruited her to our staff. It wasn’t a surprise when Senator Rink’s chief of staff lured her away, but it was a blow nonetheless.”

  There was no mention of Senator Rink’s office in her Linked In profile. This was it. The missing piece. I pretended I knew this already. “So she went directly from your staff to his if I’m reading her resume correctly?”

  “Correct.”

  Bingo. I’d found what should go in that employment gap. Why would Brooke choose to omit a prestigious job from her professional profile? The answer, I suspected, would unlock the whole mystery.

  “Thank you for your time, Ms. Brown,” I said. “You’ve been very helpful.”

  “Don’t mention it. That’s a young lady who deserves a fair shake.”

  We hung up with me pondering Ellen Brown’s final words. “Deserves a fair shake,” I mused aloud, using her same inflection. Something in the way she said it implied she felt Brooke had not been treated fairly, and I’d bet my next paycheck that she was referring to the time in the senator’s office that Brooke had tried to scrub from her history.

  Unfortunately for Brooke Spencer, like the finest Virginia bloodhound, I had caught the scent of a trail, and I would chase down the truth. She would regret the day she’d ever crossed my path.

  Chapter Six

  Brooke

  The basket on my arm was heavy with more butternut squash as I slipped into my kitchen. I was finally coming to believe Miss Lily’s assurances that her garden produced far more than even both of us plus Mary could eat.

  “Why plant it all then?” I had asked that afternoon when Miss Lily plunked a third squash in my basket.

  “I bring the extras over to the church. First Presbyterian. Lovely pastor. You should come with me.”

  “I might do that one of these Sundays.”

  “Anyway, we don’t have a lot of great need in our congregation, but people sometimes get too busy for keeping a garden, and I love to bring them freshly picked vegetables to enjoy.”

  I smiled, remembering her answer. Miss Lily reminded me so much of the generous souls at Landsdowne when I’d volunteered there in high school. I was sure I’d gotten far more from the experience than the seniors I’d been assigned to befriend. Old people were my hands-down favorite, and Miss Lily was quickly becoming my very most favorite of all.

  I settled in at my laptop to research butternut recipes, wondering if I was brave enough to try handmade pasta, when my phone vibrated with a call from my mom. I eyed it and considered sending her to voicemail. But she’d keep calling, leaving increasingly sad messages until I gave in and called back before I collapsed under the weight of all the daughter guilt. Best to get it over with.

  I allowed myself a long, preemptive sigh before I answered. “Hey, Mom.”

  “Hey, honey. What are you doing?”

  “I was out working in the garden.”

  “For that woman next door? Surely she can afford to hire someone.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Not for her, Mom. With her.”

  “But why? You complain about how busy preparing for the school year keeps you so that you can’t come home, but then you spend all this time in the garden. Which is it?”

  Linda Spencer did this often, simultaneously playing prosecutor like she had for five years out of law school before she stayed home to raise me,
while also playing the role of neglected mother who needed her child to come dote on her and fill her empty nest.

  In reality, she had an active social life, busy with home decorating, entertaining, and volunteer work. What she actually wanted was for me to abandon my job in sleepy Creekville and return home to McClean, take up the political career I’d left behind, and polish up the tarnish my stint in Senator Rink’s office had left on the Spencer name.

  I would absolutely not be doing that.

  “The garden is giving me all kinds of ideas for lesson plans. And I might look into forming a club at the school where the kids put in a community garden on campus. We could even partner with the home ec class to have them cook things we grow. There are so many possibilities that I’m giddy just thinking about them.”

  This was met with a sniff, then silence as she marshalled her next argument.

  I waited patiently, knowing there was no use trying to deflect it.

  “Well, if you’re already this busy, I can’t even imagine how bad it will be when school starts. We won’t see you until the holidays, and it’s already been forever since you came to visit. You should come this weekend, before you’re so overwhelmed that you can’t get away.”

  “I was there a month ago,” I reminded her. She had insisted we eat at the country club, nagged me into dressing up, then had conveniently run into a judge friend and his wife who had their son—an attorney my age—in tow. We’d ended up sitting together, me and the son who’s name I’d already forgotten, soldiering on in polite conversation and trying to ignore the sidelong glances of our parents monitoring our progress.

  “It seems so much longer,” she complained. “And it’ll be so long before you’re here again. Come home this weekend.”