Storymania - The Million Dollar Detective by T C Lambert

The Million Dollar Detective (2)
T C Lambert

he flexed his muscles, such as they were, under his black T-shirt, and tried to
persuade himself that if anything went down, he could give that Bart guy a
surprise. "He doesn't scare me," he insisted. He tried to forget how he felt when
Bart did his special glare. "Can you finish setting up my kit? I gotta go pee."

#

     Bart smiled to see Sheila in her element, schmoozing with guests,
accompanied as always by her cloud of little dogs. The way they whirled around
her, Bart thought of them as little Pomeranian electrons orbiting a vivacious
blond nucleus, if the standard model of particle physics allowed for barking
electrons. Bart admired the female guests, beauty after beauty. He did note one
male guest in particular, however. Eddie. He'd have to speak to him later.
Eddie's girlfriend, Teresa, sat way far away from him, though. What's that
about? he wondered. Bart found his eyes drawn again and again to the
remarkable Meredith. She had parked herself on a lounger and had collected a
small crowd of male admirers. Even in this flock of beauties, Meredith stood out.

     Bart stood out, too. He was bigger than everyone except the head caterer,
who, though several inches shorter, outweighed him by a hundred pounds. He was
older than any of the guests, and, he self-consciously noted, he was the only
guest with chest hair. The other men either waxed or shaved their chests, or
couldn't grow any. Bart felt old and primitive compared to the others. But then,
he reflected, he sometimes felt old compared to the parents of these kids.
A psychic/fortune-teller/charlatan at one of Sheila's previous theme parties said
he had a "thousand-year-old soul." School buddies had voted him "most likely to
become a designated driver." He knew he possessed a compulsively responsible
streak, whether virtue or character flaw, he wasn't really sure. Probably, like
most things, it was a little of both.

     Bart strolled in Meredith's general direction. She had on dark glasses and
reclined on her lounger, not getting much sun due to the shade cast by her
admirers. Moths to the flame, thought Bart. He heard her laughter, a sweet
arpeggio of music, a thoroughly delightful sound. He imagined songbirds pausing
in mid-note and cocking their tiny heads to listen. He shook himself mentally.
When did he ever think in such sappy poetic terms?

     What was the name of the sandy-haired fellow who seemed like the boldest of
the flirts? If he could get rid of him, the others would follow, and give Bart a
clear field. Was it Joshua? Jason? No, just Jay, that's what they called him.
Bart moved in and said, "Hi, there, Jay."

     Jay looked up and said, "Oh, hello, Bart." He appeared pleased that Bart
remembered him. They all knew Bart, of course, or knew of him. They considered
him an odd sort of celebrity, an exotic, possibly dangerous variety of wild
beast.

     Bart said, "Say, Jay, I wonder if you could excuse us for a couple of
minutes. I need to discuss some business with Meredith. Privately. You
understand."

     "Oh! Yeah, sure, Bart. No problem." He looked slightly disappointed, but
began moving away.

     Bart swept his gaze across the crowd, and said, "Guys?"

     The others muttered reluctant agreement and melted away. They would soon
find other beautiful young women with whom to soothe their disappointment.

     Bart sat sideways on the edge of a seat near Meredith, facing her. Meredith
looked over at him, smiled slightly and said, "That was neatly done. You don't
really have any business to discuss with me privately, do you?"

     "No, not really," Bart confessed. She had seen through his manipulation.
There was something about her that seemed older than the others, too, though he
knew she wasn't. He thought of the other female guests as girls, but somehow
Meredith, in a few short minutes, had convinced him she was a woman. "At least I
got them out of your sun. If you want, I could say a few words about business to
make me an honest man again."

     "Sadly, I've grown quite accustomed to men lying. However, I would be
interested in a serious answer to my earlier question."

     Bart thought back. "How I can afford to live in this expensive
neighborhood?" he said.

     "Yes, precisely. Surely you can't finance it solely on the proceeds of
peeking in windows. Do you own your own agency, perhaps?"

     "No, not really. 'Peeking in windows?' Is that what you think private
investigators do?"

     "Don't they?"

     "Nooo," Bart insisted, with mock outrage. Then he smiled and cocked his
head. "Well, not entirely." Then he sighed. "Okay, sometimes, yes." Then he
smiled mischievously. "With the right equipment you can peek through walls."

Chapter Three

     "Goodness," Meredith said. "But how do you do it?"

     "With infrared cameras."

     "No, how can you afford to live here?"

     "Oh, that again. Are you trying to ask me if I'm rich?"

     "No, Bart." She spoke now as if patiently explaining something to a slow
child. "I assume if you live here you are rich. I'm trying to ascertain
how you came by your fortune."

     Ah, he thought, she might suspect my money comes from sinister
sources. Mysterious wealth usually did. He said, "It was all acquired
honorably, I assure you." Then he added, "Well, legally, anyway. Okay, there are,
um, three principal contributing factors. One, my mother left us pretty well
fixed, both my sister and me. Before she died, she arranged large life insurance
policies with us kids as beneficiaries."

     "You have a real sister?"

     "Yeah, a couple years younger than me. She lives in California, with her
husband and two kids."

     "Then Sheila is just your adopted sister."

     Bart made a sour face. "It's her doing, too," he protested. "She adopted me
as big brother as much as the other way around."

     "Hmm. Could be. Second?"

     "Second, when my father retired to Florida, he wanted to sell the house
here. He was a successful businessman--medical supplies and other things. I said
I wanted the house. He refused to just give it to me, but he did sell it to me
for a bargain price."

     "Oh, was it one of those one dollar sales?"

     "A little more than that. But that was the idea." He waited a moment, and
just as she was opening her mouth to say "Third?" he said, "Thirdly, I told you
the truth before. I do overcharge my clients. I demand a minimum fee of one
million dollars." Now he watched closely. People always reacted to this
outrageous statement. She did not disappoint.

     She tilted her head and asked, "Are you having me on?"

     He needed a moment to decode her question. But the British slang made him
smile. "Am I . . . putting you on?"

     "Yes, yes. Are you having me on? Are you putting me on? Are you joking? Are
you colly-twaddling?"

     "Colly-twaddling? Never heard that term before."

     "That's because I just made it up. You said you enjoy it when I say
'Britishy' things. Colly-twaddling sounds 'Britishy,' don't you think?"

     He laughed out loud. "Yes. Maybe a little obscene, too."

     "Your fee structure sounds obscene, likewise. Does anyone really pay such a
fee?" Bart compressed his lips, raised his eyebrows, and nodded. Meredith, still
skeptical, said, "Who would pay so much and for what?"

     He replied, "Well, obviously the rich, and for surprising things. One time I
handled a divorce case." Bart smiled inwardly. He liked telling this brainteaser
of a story. Maybe he would see just how quick the lovely Meredith really was. "I
don't usually. Divorce cases always border on the unsavory, and neither side
comes out happy."

     "Unsavory as in peeking in windows?" she teased.

     "Right. I hired that part out to others. I know the best professional
detectives and hire them to do the heavy lifting. I told the woman she could hire
good detectives herself and save stacks of cash. Nevertheless, she begged me, and
I sort of knew her, and she could afford it. She was getting fifteen million
under her prenuptial agreement. But," he pointed with his finger to emphasize his
next point, "if she could break the prenup, and it contained a clause to
invalidate it if her husband cheated on her with another woman, then she could
get half his net worth. Her attorney estimated that at somewhere between seventy-
five and a hundred fifty million. So, they thought risking one million to
potentially win tens of millions made sense. And she was positive he was cheating
on her."

     Meredith made a look of faint disgust, and shook her head in disappointment,
whether at Bart for taking the case, or at the deplorable behavior of the husband
and/or the wife, he wasn't sure.

     Bart continued, a little defensively, "I knew it was a bad business, but her
attorney had already tried two detective agencies, and gotten nowhere. They
couldn't penetrate his security. They couldn't get close enough to, well, peek in
his windows."

     "And you received a million dollars for this?" She still had trouble
accepting it.

     "More. I didn't like the case, so I pushed her fee up to one and a half
million, ten percent of her settlement under the prenup. Then I turned around and
hired a team who found out everything about the guy in short order. We found his
net worth was closer to a hundred and eighty million, he did cheat on her, and he
defrauded a number of his business associates out of millions. But," and again he
gestured to emphasize his point, "we still couldn't break the prenup."

     A smile flickered briefly on Meredith's lips and she said, "Hmm. What did
you do about the injured business associates? Did you notify them of his
wrongdoing?"

     Bart didn't know what to make of this at first. Every time he had told this
story before, people asked why they couldn't break the prenup if they knew the
guy was cheating. Some figured it out on their own. Others needed it explained to
them. But no one before had shown such an odd lack of curiosity. No, that wasn't
right, either. She did show curiosity, about something no one else ever asked
about, a question he couldn't answer openly.

     He tried to steer back to familiar ground. "Did you hear the part about us
not being able to break the prenup, even though he was cheating?"

     Meredith turned her head fully toward Bart and looked at him over the rims
of her sunglasses. Her eyes were magnificent--large, clear, a vivid blue, with
long lashes and perfectly arched brows. Her gaze, one part suspicion to maybe
four parts amusement, with plumbless depths of intellect, froze Bart where he
sat. He found his breath caught in his throat. She said, "Bartholomew, are you
presuming to test me? I read law at Oxford! My job largely consists of
reviewing multi-million dollar contracts, sifting them for irregularities. I
anticipated the punchline of your little story the moment you said, 'with another
woman.' Unnecessary verbiage such as that is what we professionals call a red
flag. You were no doubt going to say he cheated on her, with a man, or possibly
an animal, but at any rate not with another woman. Not only that, but this
despicable fellow obviously intended to cheat on her from the very beginning,
even before they were married. Otherwise, why include that weaselly language in
the prenuptial contract at all?"

     After a moment, Bart managed to breathe again. He said, "That's remarkable.
My team reached the same conclusions, but it took them a day and a half." He gave
her a nod of respect. "Any other deductions?"

     "Inferences rather than deductions really. You said if she broke the prenup,
she'd get half. Michigan is an equitable distribution state, not a common
property state. So this case, if real, occurred elsewhere. Possibly California,
Texas, Arizona--"

     "California," he said, amazed again.

     "Also, it's painfully obvious this poor woman did not have the benefit of
competent counsel, not when she signed that ludicrous agreement, nor during her
divorce proceedings."

     "You're being harsh, aren't you?"

     "No, I'm not. Her attorney underestimated the despicable fellow's net worth,
he twice hired ineffectual detectives, and he failed to appreciate the importance
of that ludicrous clause in the prenup."

     She had impressed Bart from the moment he first saw her. She was obviously
beautiful. Sheila said she was brilliant and in the changing room she had
demonstrated intelligence a few times in small ways. But this! He had met
potentates and presidents, doctors, lawyers, and Nobel prizewinners. They had
impressed him, too. But not like this.

     Meredith still held him with her gorgeous eyes and said, "Now, are you going
to answer my question?"

     Bart mentally rewound the conversation, then said, "Ahh, his wrongdoing. We
told the woman and her attorney about his financial sins. They insisted we sign a
confidentiality agreement, so I can't give names or specific details. Using our
information, but without our direct participation, they pressured the 'despicable
fellow' into voluntarily increasing her settlement. She came away a few million
richer than she would have without my involvement, enough to cover my fee and
then some."

     "That sounds like extortion."

     "Maybe. But my understanding is, it's the kind of thing divorce attorneys do
on a regular basis. And again, my team and I were not present during those
negotiations."

     With sympathy in her voice, she said, "You're technically innocent, yet I
can see you're suffering pangs of conscience over this."

     Bart sighed. "It does leave a bad taste in my mouth."

     She asked again, "So what did you do about the other parties he had wronged?
Nothing?"

     A sly smile grew on Bart's face. "Well, I will refuse to divulge how I know
this, but I heard that after he paid the divorce settlement, certain
parties received anonymous letters--very anonymous, with no fingerprints, and no
saliva on the envelope flaps from which to extract DNA--letters with details and
evidence of his bad dealings. I further heard that he spent the next few years in
litigation, and lost millions. It did not impoverish him, but it must have hurt."

     "So justice was served, after a fashion."

     With sadness in his voice, Bart said, "We seldom achieve perfect justice.
We're lucky to achieve anything near justice. I'd like to think this bad guy will
cheat less often in the future because he got burned once. He'll probably still
cheat some. It's his nature."

     "He's a scorpion," she said.

     Bart had planned with his next breath to tell her the old fable of the frog
and the scorpion, in which a scorpion persuades a frog to carry it across a
river, but stings the frog halfway across, dooming them both, because it was the
scorpion's nature. But Meredith obviously anticipated him again, and jumped
ahead. Bart struggled to reroute his thinking, but she derailed his train of
thought once more. She smiled saucily and said, "So, do you still want to see me
naked?"

     "Excuse me?" he said.

     "Come now. You are not going to pretend you came over her, chased off my
suitors, and tried to impress me with your clever case history, just to make
conversation, are you? You can't deny you've been sneaking looks at my body every
chance you get."

     Bart blushed a little. "I tried to be discreet about it. I hoped you hadn't
noticed, or might pretend not to have noticed."

     "Oh, you've done tolerably well. You made good eye contact, for seconds at a
time. Some men look half a meter south of my eyes and never look up. Still, you
clearly want to seduce me and get my clothes off. Not so?"

     "Well . . ." He squirmed a little, but took a deep breath and said, "All
right. You are a very beautiful woman. You seem aware of this. And I am a
man--"

     "Indeed," she interrupted, "I can testify as an eyewitness to that."

     "Right," Bart said through clenched teeth, remembering his earlier
embarrassment. "Well, so it goes without saying that I would like to see
you naked."

     "Even after you've learned I possess a brain?"

     "I don't see the relevance of that, counselor."

     "I find some men are repelled by a large IQ. Almost as much as they are
attracted by large breasts."

     She obviously had both, and Bart nearly made a tasteless joke about it. But
he wanted to take a turn jumping ahead, and said instead, "You use your
intelligence to scare men off, don't you? To deflect unwanted attention. The way
other beautiful women use bitchy behavior."

     She raised her eyebrows in surprise at his insight. And this made him feel
proud of himself. "Perhaps I do," she mused. "Yet you saw the number of young men
flirting with me earlier. I wasn't the one who drove them away."

Chapter Four

     "Hmm," Bart considered. He held up a hand to forestall Meredith while he
marshaled his thoughts. Then he began ticking points off on his fingers, saying,
"Okay, number one, I think you enjoyed their attention. Number two, you can hide
your intelligence to encourage amorous males. And number three . . . Oh, yes. Are
you trying to scare me off? Let's make that question number one. Question two, do
you want to see me naked--again? And question three, do you, and do
I, want to do anything more than just look at each others' naked bodies?"

     She laughed silently at him, her shoulders and other parts shaking
adorably. She said, "You do have a fondness for counting, don't you?" Then she
looked off into the distance, thoughtfully. Bart waited patiently, his
anticipation growing. In a softer, more serious voice, she said, "Number one,
no, I don't believe I am trying to scare you off. I think I was warning you,
and partly testing your reaction to my intellect, and to my intellectual
arrogance, for which I have been criticized more times than I care to count."

     Bart said, "Arrogance implies an exaggerated opinion of one's self,
doesn't it? Is it really arrogance if you can back it up?"

     "Thank you for that. I never think of myself as arrogant, of course. As to
your second question," here she smiled naughtily, "Sheila and I were lamenting
the fact that we did not get to see you in, shall we say, full flower."

     "'Full flower?'" he repeated. He raised his eyebrows in mock surprise.
"Ah, I see. I don't think I've heard it called that before. Women are usually
the ones compared to flowers."

     "Flowers have stamens as well as pistils," she pointed out.

     He laughed through his nose and shook his head. "Does this pass for
romantic banter on your planet?" Suddenly he held up two fingers and regarded
her with a sharp look. "Wait a minute," he said. "If you want to see me in,
shall we say, that state, does that imply an answer to question three?"

     She removed her sunglasses and pointedly ran her eyes up and down him from
head to toe. Squarely meeting his eyes, she said, "You are a hunk, no question
about it. You seem reasonably intelligent. And you seem like a decent enough
chap. But I hardly think it prudent to commit to anything more than further
negotiations based on a scant few minutes of acquaintance."

     Bart broke the eye contact, too intense for him, and shook his head. "A
firm 'maybe,' then," he said. "Part of the third question had to do with my
intentions, too. I did intend to offer you a tour of my house. We'd have a

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