Man-eater

She blew through my open door like the scent of lilacs on a spring breeze. I was transported back to my youth. An age of innocence. An era of infinite possibilities. A tear collected in the corner of my right eye.

I sneezed.

Damn allergies.

I looked up to see who had entered and was looking around my office like she would sell it to the highest bidder, only no one would bid on this. She was the kind of woman who commanded the attention of anyone in a room she entered. About my own age, she had the maturity and sense of command that younger women aspire to. Her very presence made you want to stand up and say “Yes Ma’am.”

“Are you Dag Håmar?” she snapped turning toward me.

“Yes ma’am,” I responded standing up from my desk chair.

Damn. That is not on my list of the top ten ways to answer that question.

• That’s the name on the door.
• I’m sitting in his chair.
• Are you with the IRS?
• Do you have a subpoena?
• Are you Ed McMahon?
• I’m collecting his debts. Pay up.
• No, I’m Wrench, Håmar is across the hall.
• According to the name in my underwear, I’m Calvin Klein.
• I’m the pope, I left the hat at my other office.
• And my personal all-time favorite: Are there purple birds flying around over my head? It has nothing to do with the question, but I like to check now and then.

“I liked you better with long hair.” I looked at her again, above the spike heels, tight skirt and ample bosom.

Damn again.

“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 take her privates elsewhere when Maizie came to the rescue. She slipped up behind this society dame and stuck her cold wet nose in the back of her right knee. My unwanted visitor 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 Pitbull and Dachsund mix.” I could see the wheels start turning.

“Which was…” she started. “Never mind,” she finished. “I need your help. Not some other detective. It has to be you. Please treat me as you would any client.”

Any client. As if. This woman was Seattle’s grand matron of the arts. You could see a picture of her at least once a month in the newspapers 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, political, or corporate endeavor in the region. There weren’t many reasons I could think of that she wanted 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. First off, I don’t take every job that comes through the door. I decide if the job interests me and won’t interfere with my other work, and then if I like the client, I take the job.” I lied. I knew from the moment she said she wanted to hire me that I’d take the job. Old habits die hard, even after all these years. She knew it too.

“Simon is missing,” she plunged in. “I haven’t heard from him since he left Thursday. I need you to find him.”

Simon Barnett is the president of a privately held conglomerate that some people say would match the Gates fortune. Those people lie. But it is a sizable operation with revenues approaching half a billion if reliable estimates were to be believed. But no one really knew what he did. 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.

But the Simon Barnett that I knew was more than a corporate bigwig, and much less. I knew that if I were in his position, I’d probably disappear too. The reason was sitting right in front of me. I stared fixedly at Brenda Barnett.

“That’s only six days,” I said at last. “Surely it can’t be that unusual for Simon to go away for a while. He probably has a mistress.”

“This is different.”

“Did you go to the police?”

“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 the Puget sound lapping up against the pier where my office is located. “I don’t do missing persons. I’m a computer pathologist. I work on computers.” Computer forensics is actually the field. Most of the time I’m trying to recover erased data from hard drives. Sometimes it goes into getting evidence for computer crime cases ranging from embezzlement to child porn to identity theft. I don’t go out and find people.

“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 lap. “Why are you coming to me? It’s not like I’m the only one in this business any more.”

“Simon says,” she answered.

“So we’re playing that game again,” I sighed. Simon says. I was instantly back in college with two friends. I was older by a couple of years because I did a stint in Viet Nam before going to college. I needed the money. But Simon and Brenda were my constant companions from my first night on campus. Most of the time we were in agreement 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 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 Simon says, and that’s what we did. Now Brenda was telling me that Simon says he wants me on the case. She’d have to prove this one.

“Look,” Brenda sighed. “I wouldn’t come to you. Simon left instructions. We have a… an open relationship. Hell, he’s probably slept with more women than Wilt Chamberlain. And I’ve… never minded. But there’s always been a code. Check in every three days. If you don’t hear within five days, open the envelope.”

“Five days was yesterday,” 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 yesterday. I didn’t open it until this morning.” She looked really broke up. I reminded myself that I was dealing with Brenda Barnett.

“Let’s see it.” She handed me the envelope that had been torn open along one end. I shook the sheet of notepaper out of it 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 five days without a word. Take my laptop to Dag Håmar. Dag, Simon says “Find me.”

I could tell already that I was going to be plunged into the regretful past whether I wanted or not. Simon says. I couldn’t really say no. But I’d try.

“Brenda, you are holding Simon’s laptop, presumably. 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. I have your bank accounts, your e-mail, your history of websites you’ve visited. In essence, I will have your entire identity at my disposal. If not yours, then Simon’s. Are you ready to trust me with that?”

“Are you saying you’d steal my identity?” she purred. I swear, she purred.

“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 $1000 per 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. I am not under exclusive contract to you.” 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.

“Dag, I’m sorry I’m late. It’s time for your pills,” Riley said as she rushed into the office 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 irritated. ‘

“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. I’m taking Riley to the Highway Ninety-nine for dinner. I promised.” Poor Riley was standing staring open-mouthed, but she sure lit up 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 that since you found your way in you can find your way out. Good day.”

I turned my attention to Riley and Maizie jumped down from my lap to run around to greet Riley. Brenda saw the dog move and took the hint to leave.

“Sorry, Dag,” Riley said. “I didn’t mean to start a cat fight. 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 wouldn’t have made a difference how you came in, or what you looked like. 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 14 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. Now that she’d brought the idea to mind, I knew I’d never look at those particular breasts without imagining cinnamon and sugar sprinkled over the top.

“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 and Riley was sitting on the front edge of my desk with her feet propped up drinking a cup of coffee. There are days when she brings coffee in that I could just lick her face, it smells so good. This heart dictates that I lay off heavy caffeine consumption though.

“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?”

“She wouldn’t even recognize it as cheating. She would 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. She might figure that I’ll just forget about it and it won’t make a difference. But there is really only one reason that I’d take a case like this.”

“Cinnamon and sugar muffins?” Riley said shoving her limited cleavage together and then dropping the check down her front.

Damn. 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 any more.

“You’re really taking me to the Ninety-Nine tonight, though, aren’t you?” she said. She caught the bait I tossed at Brenda. I knew it.

“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 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 a dossier. On Simon, on Brenda, and on the business. What are his patterns? Where does he go? Who does he see? There’s probably some public records, but SKL 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?” 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 motivated by the thought of dinner tonight or getting to dig into “the muffin-top’s” interests.

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 could be literally on the laptop, not in the data. What I understood from the start was that Simon isn’t missing, he’s hiding.

Table of Contents Thursday, Nov 2