For Blood or Money
2. Eight Months Later
TROUBLE BLEW INTO MY OFFICE with the scent of lilacs on a spring breeze. A tear collected in the corner of my eye.
I sneezed.
Damn allergies.
“Are you Dag Hamar?” she snapped, turning toward me.
“Yes ma’am,” I responded, standing. There were still tears in my eyes. Floral scents really kill me.
“I liked you better with long hair and a beard.” I wiped my eyes and looked at her—above the spike heels, tight skirt and ample bosom. The bubble burst. What she meant was she liked me better 30 years ago.
“You found your way in, I assume you can find your way out,” I growled as I sat back down.
“I want to hire you,” she said. “I need a private investigator.”
I was about to tell her to have her privates investigated elsewhere when Maizie came to the rescue. She slipped up behind my unwanted guest and stuck her cold wet nose in the back of her right knee. The lady gave a short screech, tottered on her high heels and fell over backward into the chair behind her. I couldn’t help it. I laughed.
“What the hell is that?” she asked indignantly, clamping her knees together to block Maizie’s assault on her next target.
“My dog,” I said. “Maizie, here! No personal sniffing.” Maizie came scrabbling around the corner of my desk with all four feet skidding to gain purchase on the hardwood floor. She leaped up into my lap and began licking my ear.
“I can see it’s a dog, but what is it?”
“She’s a mix,” I said. Then I went ahead, “A Pit Bull and Dachsund mix.” I could see the wheels start turning.
“Which was…?” she started. “Never mind,” she finished, shaking her head. She started again. “I need your help. Not some other detective. It has to be you. Please treat me as you would any client.”
Any client? Not likely. This woman was one of Seattle’s most prominent women. Her picture was in the paper at least once a month shaking hands with the mayor, the governor, or the president of a major corporation. Rumor had it that she had a finger or some other body part in any arts, politics, or business plan in the city. There weren’t many reasons I could think of for her to want me on an investigation, and those I could think of weren’t good.
“Okay, Mrs. Barnett” I said. “Let’s suppose you just came in here to hire me. If the job interests me, won’t interfere with my other work, and if I like the client, I might take it. So spill.”
“Simon is missing,” she plunged in. “I haven’t heard from him since he left Sunday before last. I need you to find him.”
Simon Barnett was the president and majority owner of a privately held conglomerate with revenues in nine or ten figures and a net measured in billions. His office was on the top floor of the Washington Building, but for all the space, I’d heard he employed relatively few people there.
The Simon Barnett that I knew was more than a corporate bigwig—and much less. If I were in his position, I’d probably disappear too. One reason was sitting right in front of me. I stared fixedly at Brenda Barnett. As much as Simon shunned publicity, Brenda lived for newspaper photographers and famous handshakes. While she smiled for the cameras, he quietly bought and sold people in the form of stocks and corporations.
“That’s only ten days,” I said at last. “Surely it can’t be that unusual for your husband to go away for a while. He probably has a mistress.”
“Yes, well…” She paused. “This is different,” she sniffed.
“Did you go to the police?” I asked.
“No. Simon wouldn’t want it.”
“And you think he’d want you to come to me?” Something was fishy here and it wasn’t just the smell of Puget Sound lapping up against the pier where my office was located. “I don’t do missing persons. I’m a computer pathologist.” Computer forensics is actually the field. Most of the time, I try to recover data erased from hard drives. Sometimes the job includes extracting evidence of computer crime for the police. I don’t do missing persons.
“That’s why I’ve brought you this,” she said. She reached into her bag and pulled out a sizable laptop computer. Not the latest model by any means, but a good little computer. I held up both hands to stop her from putting the thing on my desk.
“Hang on,” I said. “Keep that in your lap and not on my desk. I want to know more before it leaves your hands.” She sat back with the laptop on her knees. “Why are you coming to me? I’m not the only one in this business anymore.”
“Simon says,” she answered.
“So we’re playing that game again,” I sighed. Simon Says. The very phrase transported me back to college days with two friends I thought would be with me for the rest of my life. I was older by a couple of years because of my military service, but Simon and Brenda were my constant companions from Freshman Orientation on. Most of the time we agreed on what we were doing, where we were going, and when we were doing things. We were tight. But whenever there was a question, we always yielded to Simon. He was clever about things, knew where things were happening, how to get in, and which direction to take to avoid the campus cops if we were out past curfew. (Yeah, we still had curfews back then.) We started calling it “Simon Says.” If there was a question, we waited for what Simon said, and that’s what we did. Now Brenda was telling me that Simon says he wants me on the case, in spite of the bad blood that had kept us apart for decades.
“Look,” Brenda sighed. “I wouldn’t come to you. Simon left instructions. We have uh… an open relationship. Hell, he’s probably slept with more women than Wilt Chamberlain. And I’ve… Never mind. But there’s always been a code. Check in at least once a week. If he doesn’t check in within the week, open the envelope.”
“A week was three days ago,” I said.
“I didn’t want to open it. I didn’t want to know what was in it. I was afraid that it might be a farewell note; that he’d left me. I stared at it all day Monday. When I opened it Tuesday, I couldn’t believe what he said.” A tear gathered in a corner of one of her eyes and she dabbed at it with a tissue. I reminded myself that I was dealing with Brenda Barnett.
“What was in the envelope?” She handed me an envelope that had been torn open along one end. I shook the sheet of notepaper out and unfolded it on my desk. The writing was clear. Simon always printed in block letters. Something about having studied drafting way back when. The note was short and simple:
“If you are opening this, I’ve been gone for at least a week without a word. Take my laptop to Dag Hamar. Dag, Simon says, FIND ME.”
I was going to be plunged into the regretful past whether I wanted or not. “Simon says.” Old habits die hard. I found myself unable to say “no.”
“Brenda, presumably you’re holding Simon’s laptop. Do you know what’s on it?”
“I don’t care what’s on it. I’m interested in finding Simon. He says give it to you.”
“You need to know that if I have that laptop, I have all the information that is on it. If he does on-line banking, I will know your bank accounts. I’ll be able to read his e-mail. I’ll know if he visits pornographic websites. In essence, I will have his entire identity at my disposal, and probably yours. Are you ready to trust me with that?”
“Are you saying you’d steal my identity?” she asked, coyly, as if it were a great compliment.
“No. I like my own identity, thank you.” I reached in a desk drawer and took out a blanket release form and pushed it across the desk toward her. The form gives me permission to access any and all information on a hard drive and affirms my confidentiality. She signed it without reading.
“I’ll need a $5,000 advance,” I said nonchalantly. “I charge $1,000 a day plus expenses. I’ll bill you weekly for everything I’m working on. I won’t bill you time that I’m working on other cases.” She didn’t even blink as she wrote out the check and pushed it across the desk to me.
“You said you’d have access to all my banking information,” she smiled. “Just deduct your expenses from it.” The smugness in her voice made me cringe as she set the laptop on the desk and stood to leave as my assistant, Riley, burst into the office.
“Dag, I’m sorry I’m late. It’s time for your pills,” Riley said as she rushed in pulling off her jacket. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know you had a…” she looked at Brenda and then at me, “client?” she finished.
“Oh, your new squeeze, Dag?” Brenda asked with a smirk. “I’d heard you grew out of your juvenile phase. I see I heard wrong.”
“Riley’s my assistant,” I said, irritably.
“Then she won’t mind if you have dinner with me tonight,” Brenda said. I thought better of what I’d just said.
“Sorry, no can do. It’s employee appreciation week and I’m taking Riley to dinner tonight. I promised.” Poor Riley was standing staring open-mouthed, but her eyes went wide when I said I was taking her to dinner.
“Well, I’m sure the invitation will still be open when you get tired of her,” Brenda said. “Tomorrow?”
“I think we’ve finished for today, Mrs. Barnett. If you want results on this case, I should get to work. Now as I said before, I assume since you found your way in you can find your way out. Good day.”
I turned my attention away and Maizie jumped down from my lap to run around and greet Riley. Brenda saw the dog move and took the hint to leave.
“Sorry, Dag,” Riley said. “I didn’t mean to interrupt. I just realized that I hadn’t gotten back to get you your pills and I knew you’d forget. So who was the muffin-top?”
“It’s okay, Riley. It didn’t make a difference. You could have been Mother Teresa and Brenda Barnett would have thought the same thing and said the same thing. It’s just the way she is.” I took the pills that Riley shoved at me and pulled the laptop closer to me.
“What’s a muffin-top?” I asked absently. Riley laughed.
“It’s a size 12 woman stuffed in a size 10 dress… and bra,” she answered. “Come on, now. Don’t tell me you didn’t notice. Her cups overfloweth.” Riley is pretty blunt about some things. I had to chuckle.
“That’s our new client, Riley: Brenda Barnett. Her husband is missing and she wants us to find him.”
“Probably ran away. And it’s only you she wants, not us.”
I looked up. Riley was sitting on the front edge of my desk with her feet propped up drinking a cup of coffee. Maizie sat on her lap licking the breath she exhaled. I envied her. This heart dictates that I lay off the caffeine.
“Well, she gets the pair, whether she wants it or not. Brenda has a very low opinion of women. She has already dismissed you and expects that you will be gone before she ever sees me again. That’s a big advantage for us. She doesn’t know you will be investigating.”
“Really, what do I get to do?” Riley asked excitedly.
“Number one, rush this check to the bank. I don’t want to invest a minute on this case without cash in hand.”
“You think she’d cheat you?” Bad choice of words. Would she cheat on me? I guess that’s not what she was asking.
“She wouldn’t even recognize it as cheating. She’d be reckless. She might not have the funds in her account. She might assume that I won’t cash it for a couple of weeks and not be concerned, or that the bank would cover it if there was a problem. She might figure that I’ll just forget about it and it won’t make a difference. But there’s really only one reason that I’d take a case like this.”
“What would that be?” Riley said shoving her limited cleavage together and then dropping the check down her front.
I swear, I wasn’t watching that.
“Money.” I said. “She and Simon can pay more than any client we’ve ever had.”
“There’s another reason,” Riley probed seriously. “You don’t do missing persons and it would take more than money to get you into this.”
“Yes, that’s what Simon says,” I mumbled. She didn’t probe anymore which is good because I really wasn’t ready to say anything else.
“You’re really taking me to dinner tonight, though, aren’t you? Say to the Ninety-Nine?”
“Look Riley, you know I’d like to, but I need to get home. I’ve got Maizie and this laptop to start tearing down.”
“You said. And besides I’ll take Maizie home on the way to the bank. Then I’ll go home and get changed and pick you up at 7:30. That gives you another four hours this afternoon to stare at the outside of that computer case and then hide it before I get back.”
“Okay, but I want you to do some real work while you are at it. We are looking for Simon Barnett, CEO of Barnett, Keane, and Lamb. I want you to start compiling dossiers on Simon, Brenda, and the business. What are his patterns? Where does he go? Who does he see? There are probably some public records, but BKL is privately held, so there won’t be anything in the way of stockholder filings and such. You’ll have to use those pretty little legs of yours to do some old fashioned investigating. Got it?”
“Really? For fun!” She swung her gams off my desk and headed for the door grabbing Maizie’s leash off the hat rack. I’m not sure if she was more excited about dinner tonight or getting to dig into Brenda Barnett’s affairs.
She bolted out the door with Maizie in tow, and I had the promised four hours to stare at Simon’s laptop. With Simon, you never could tell. The clue he was trying to get to me could literally be on the laptop, not in the data. What I understood from the moment I read the note was that Simon wasn’t missing.
He was hiding.
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