While the files from the Florida PI’s office arrived in her email in-box, Cassie left her office to confront Isabel. She knew it wouldn’t go well. It never did.
“Mom, what happens in this office needs to stay in this office,” Cassie said. “You know we’ve talked about this before. It’s important to keep our work confidential.”
Isabel looked up from her desk and cocked her head. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Downstairs in the coffee shop,” Cassie said, jabbing her finger toward the floor. “Did you mention to the staff down there that I was looking into the Sir Scott’s Treasure? That I’d been hired by the person who wrote the poem to try and find him? That a courier had delivered a retainer from him?”
Isabel blinked at each accusation as if Cassie had struck her every time.
“Maybe in passing…” she said, looking away.
“You can’t do that again,” Cassie said. “It’s the reason our office was broken into.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m not going to go into it because I’m not sure I can trust you not to blab again. But I know it to be a fact.”
Isabel teared up, which is what Cassie had expected. And despite herself, even though she knew it was a ploy, she felt sorry for her mother.
“You’ve really hurt my feelings,” Isabel said.
“I’m sorry about that, but your feelings have nothing to do with this. I have a bunch of balls in the air right now and I’m trying to juggle them. When you talk to baristas about our business they repeat it to others. It just makes everything messy and more complicated.”
Cassie didn’t want to mention that the perpetrator was Kyle Westergaard.
She continued, “So at this point you should say, ‘Sorry, Cassie, I won’t do it again.’”
Instead, Isabel reached for a Kleenex to dab her eyes. The tissue became discolored quickly from Isabel’s mascara.
“You’re talking to me like I was a child,” she said. “I won’t stand for it. I’m not a child.”
Cassie knew it was the closest Isabel would get to an apology. Her mother never owned up to her mistakes. Instead, she deflected. It was one of Isabel’s worst traits, and one Cassie hoped she’d not inherited.
“Take off the rest of the day,” Cassie said sharply. “Take some time to think about it. Think about whether or not you truly want to work here because I don’t like these conversations, either. I appreciate it that you stepped up when I started the business and couldn’t find any help, but the situation has changed now. If you do decide you want to come back you’ve got to follow my rules. This is my livelihood and my reputation at stake. It isn’t a game.”
Isabel stood up unevenly and reached out to the desktop to brace herself. It was remarkable how her bad knee always flared up when she wanted sympathy, Cassie thought.
“How did I raise such a tyrant?” Isabel asked herself out loud.
“That’s me,” Cassie said. “A tyrant.” Then: “I’ll bring dinner home tonight. I’ll text you.”
She wanted Isabel to know there was a sharp line between being her employee and being her mother, for better or worse. Cassie didn’t want those lines to cross.
“What about Ben?” Isabel asked, tacitly acknowledging the line.
“He should be back in an hour or so. I just heard from April that they’re wrapping up. I’ll give him first choice on what we eat because he’s been doing physical labor all day and he’ll probably be really hungry.”
“Which means a big slab of meat,” Isabel said sourly.
“Probably. I’ll let you know. April might join us.”
“Do you mean your new golden girl?” Isabel asked sarcastically. “My future replacement?”
“That’s a conversation for another time.”
“Humph.”
Cassie turned her back on Isabel and went into her office and closed the door. She knew that it would take a while for Isabel to work her way to the door with that bad knee and all.
In fact, April had sent an intriguing text a few moments before.
It said: We’re about to head back. We’ve got some intel.
Intel, Cassie thought with a smile. April was embracing the idea of being a spy. She guessed Ben was as well.
Cassie brewed another cup of coffee before tackling the Florida files. She rarely needed caffeine in the afternoon but she wanted to be as sharp and alert as possible when she read them. It had been a long day already.
She started with J. D. Spengler’s expense report that spanned three months and ended abruptly on May 19 in Montana.
The PI had been to Miami, Boston, New York City, LA, Washington, DC, Chicago, Seattle, Santa Monica, and Sun Valley before he came to Montana. He’d stayed at five-star hotels and ate expensive meals in fine restaurants.
No surprise, Cassie thought, that Candyce Fly went broke.
She wondered what he was doing in all of those cities. Chasing Marc Daly? She doubted it. Living high on a client’s dime? Possible, but she hoped not for the sake of the general reputation of private investigators like herself.
No, she thought. He was onto something.
What wasn’t in the tranche of emails from Florida was a day-by-day report of what he was doing and why. That was bothersome to Cassie and it meant Spengler didn’t want to write down his activities. Apparently, he kept his theories and overall investigation close to the vest. That was annoying, she thought. And she couldn’t ask Candyce Fly what he had reported to her.
There were three separate files included that didn’t seem to relate to the expense report and travel that Cassie could discern. Each was labeled by a name: MONICA WEATHERBY, RUTHANNE SOMMERS, and BROOKE ALEXANDER.
She opened them one by one. All three had been compiled by “E.D.” They were obviously the work of Ellie Dana, who had been given their names by Spengler from the road. Dana had written a bio on each, no doubt using the same kind of investigative database software Cassie used.
Monica Weatherby, fifty-eight, was a New York socialite and widow who lived on the Upper West Side. She was heir to a shipping fortune and her husband had died of brain cancer. Photos of her from The New York Times archives showed her to be trim and attractive with a gleaming white boxlike smile. There she was at the Met Gala, and at a fundraiser for Alzheimer’s. Cassie discerned from the photos that Weatherby was a shy and cautious woman from the way she held herself. She seemed demure, and unlike the ebullient socialites who surrounded her in the shots.
RuthAnne Sommers, sixty-two, had married into an old and established Chicago family that had once owned meatpacking facilities. She was twice divorced but known as a generous philanthropist and party girl based on the number of sightings of her at fundraising and cultural events both in Chicago and at their second home in Sun Valley, Idaho. She’d been involved in a high-profile divorce from her last husband, Armond Sommers, which was followed closely by all the city’s newspapers. RuthAnne’s attorneys alleged that Armond had conducted numerous affairs and that he’d also hidden away a fortune in offshore accounts.
Apparently, RuthAnne’s attorneys convinced the judge because she’d been awarded tens of millions. Most of the photos of her in the file were taken in and around the trial. She was tall and willowy with a full mouth and dark eyes that she was often dabbing with a hankie. In several of the photos she appeared to be keenly aware of the photographer.
Brooke Alexander, fifty-five, was a Realtor to the stars in Santa Monica. She was also divorced. Alexander was a hard-charging businesswoman who had run for and won a seat on the city council. Her attractive, pixie-like face was on billboards and bus stop benches throughout the city. There were press rumors of her being romantically involved with several Hollywood B-list actors after her divorce, and photos of her decked out in English riding gear on a sleek horse.
Cassie sat back. There wasn’t a single mention of Marc Daly in any of the profiles. So why did they exist in Spengler’s investigation?
Cassie took a chance that Ellie Dana would take her call again. This time, she called Dana’s cell phone number that had been listed on the company website.
“Yes?” Dana said cautiously.
“It’s Cassie again. Thanks for taking my call.”
“I thought we were done. I sent you everything in the Fly file.”
“And I really appreciate that,” Cassie said. “Are you still at the office? I was hoping I could ask you one more favor.”
Silence. Then: “You’ve got five minutes tops. Then I need to leave here to pick up my kids.”
“Five minutes should do it,” Cassie said. “Can you please tell me if Monica Weatherby, RuthAnne Sommers, or Brooke Alexander were clients of your agency?”
“Hmm. Those names are familiar.”
“You did profiles on them,” Cassie said. “But I was wondering if they’re in your database separate from the Fly files you sent me.”
“This is a question for J.D. or our office manager,” Dana said. “Neither one is around.”
“Can you check, please?”
Dana sighed. Cassie could hear a keyboard being tapped.
After a minute, Dana said, “Yes, all three became clients in the last three months, which means we opened files on them.”
Cassie felt a trill of excitement. “Does it say why they became clients?”
“No. Our database doesn’t work like that. It just gives their name, contact details, and when we started working for them. Oh, and whether or not they paid the retainer. Apparently, all of them did.”
“Interesting,” Cassie said. “All are wealthy and single. Just like Candyce Fly.”
“I suppose,” Dana said. “Who knows what kind of scheme J.D. was working here.”
“Maybe it wasn’t a scheme. Maybe J.D. was onto something and he picked up more clients along the way.”
“I’ll pretend I understood that,” Dana said with a chuckle.
Cassie said, “I know I can look them all up from here, but to save time could you forward their contact details? I’d like to reach out to them. Maybe they can fill in some of the gaps when it comes to your boss and his investigation.”
“Sure, why not?” Dana said.
“Thank you,” Cassie said as her in-box chimed.
“I’m still thinking of sending my resume,” Dana said. “Are you against remote work?”
“I haven’t given it much thought.”
“I mean, I can do research just as easily from Tampa as from down the hall in your office, you know?”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Cassie said.
She reread their profiles and decided to contact RuthAnne Sommers first. Sommers appeared, to Cassie, to be the one most likely to be available and to be inclined to talk. She’d certainly not been shy about answering questions from Chicago reporters during her trial. The photos of her from her divorce proceedings showed that she enjoyed attention. She also seemed to have plenty of leisure time.
Monica Weatherby, the New Yorker, on the other hand, might seem suspicious of a cold call from an area code as obscure as 406. Brooke Alexander seemed to be too busy and hard-charging to take a call from an unknown number.
Cassie was wrong about RuthAnne Sommers. She didn’t pick up. When the voice message followed, Cassie said, “RuthAnne, my name is Cassie Dewell and I’m a licensed private investigator in Bozeman, Montana. I’m currently working on a case that involves your relationship with J. D. Spengler, who might or might not be missing. It also involves a subject from Montana who allegedly defrauded an innocent woman out of a lot of money. Please call me back at…”
The message recording time cut short.
Cassie cursed and wished she’d been more brief. Then she realized that if Sommers got her message and listened to it she also had her callback number.
That’s when line one of her handset lit up.