The Temporary Detective Read online

  The Temporary Detective

  Joanne Sydney Lessner

  Copyright © 2012 by Joanne Sydney Lessner

  Smashwords Edition

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. Any reproduction or other unauthorized use of the material or artwork herein is prohibited.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Dulcet Press

  New York

  For my parents, who have always believed in me

  Table of Contents

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THIRTY-FIVE

  THIRTY-SIX

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  THIRTY-NINE

  FORTY

  FORTY-ONE

  FORTY-TWO

  FORTY-THREE

  FORTY-FOUR

  FORTY-FIVE

  FORTY-SIX

  FORTY-SEVEN

  FORTY-EIGHT

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  READ A SAMPLE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  LOOK FOR THESE MYSTERIES

  CONNECT WITH ME

  ONE

  “I’m sorry, but there’s nothing I can do for you.”

  Isobel Spice regarded the powerfully built, dark-skinned man behind the desk, who looked like he’d be happier thundering down a football field than dispensing temporary office jobs to aspiring actors. Or, in Isobel’s case, withholding them. This was supposed to be the easy part. She had arrived in New York on the first of October perfectly prepared to claw her way into acting auditions, but not into an office survival job, too.

  Isobel picked up the brass nameplate on the man’s desk. He’d obviously given it the once-over with his sleeve that morning. She could see the streaks.

  “James Cooke. Good stage name.”

  James snatched the nameplate from her and set it down. “You have no office experience.”

  “Of course I don’t. I just graduated from college,” Isobel said patiently. Having reenacted this scene at seven other temp agencies, all of which had turned her away, she knew her lines.

  “Look, I’m sure you’re very bright—”

  “I’m smart, I’m reliable, I’m available, and, no, I’ve never worked in an office before, but I’ve been in many in my lifetime. Doctor’s offices, professor’s offices, the principal’s office—” She flashed a disarming smile. “That was just once, in sixth grade. But I pick things up quickly, and you can’t tell me that all your employees with years of experience are any better than I am. If they were, they’d have real jobs!”

  James stared back stonily. “People temp for all kinds of reasons.”

  Isobel sighed. “I know that. I came to New York to pursue my acting career. I need to eat, I need to live, and I have no upper body strength. The one time I tried to wait tables, I dropped five boiled lobsters on a nun.”

  James glanced past her shoulder at the open door, then leaned forward, his left cuff pulling back to reveal a gold watch with half the gold scraped off.

  “Listen, I’ve only been here a week,” he said in a low voice. “The boss has strict guidelines about who we take on, and I can’t jeopardize…I mean…you understand.”

  Isobel returned his whisper spiritedly. “Of course. But you understand too, then, don’t you? I mean, how did you get this job?”

  He sat back, bristling. “I’ve been in the recruiting business for five years.”

  Isobel threw her arms wide. “Then what are you worried about? You have experience! You won’t have a problem getting another job.”

  James pushed away from his desk, but his chair bounced off a metal filing cabinet and sent him rolling back to her. He stood with a grumble and gestured toward the door.

  “I can recommend other agencies that are flexible about taking people with less experience.”

  Isobel tried to stem a rising tide of panic. She was pretty sure she’d been to all of them, and they weren’t flexible enough. Temp Zone was her last hope. If he didn’t take her on, she didn’t know what she’d do.

  “If you give me a chance, I promise you won’t regret it!”

  A resonant guffaw escaped, unchecked, from James’s gut. “Whenever somebody says that, I usually wind up regretting it double. I’m sorry, Miss Spice, but I can’t send you out.”

  “I prefer Ms. Spice. Otherwise it sounds like you’ve put in too much coriander.” She swiveled her chair and crossed her ankles daintily, recalling her favorite choreographer’s observation that it was more flattering to the leg than crossing at the knee. But despite her attempt to be offhand, her heart was racing as she tried to figure out how to get James Cooke to change his mind. Unfortunately, his broad jaw was set in a determined refusal to be charmed by her. There was nothing left but the direct appeal.

  “Can’t you just give me a break? This isn’t brain surgery!”

  James walked over to the small, dusty window, craning his neck against his overly starched collar. Isobel took his discomfort as a hopeful sign and crossed the fingers of one hand inside the other.

  He turned to face her again. “How many phone lines could you handle?”

  “Four.” She saw him frown. “Five—six! And I type fifty words a minute.”

  “Most of our temps type over seventy-five. Software?”

  “Mac and PC, Word, Excel, PowerPoint…”

  “Photoshop? InDesign?”

  She was tempted to lie, but thought better of it. Even PowerPoint was a stretch.

  “I could learn.”

  “The thing is—”

  The metallic jangle of the telephone interrupted them. They stared at it, as it rang a second time.

  “Aren’t you going to get that?” Isobel challenged.

  “Temp Zone, James Cooke speaking.”

  He sat down again and listened for a few seconds. Then he glanced at Isobel and quickly turned his back on her. “Mm hmmm,” he said into the phone.

  She leaped up, circled behind the desk, and thrust her face in his. “I can do it!”

  James put his hand over the mouthpiece and whispered furiously, “You don’t even know what it is!”

  Isobel shook her chestnut brown ponytail so vigorously that it smacked her in the face. “I don’t care!”

  James waved her off. “Th
is morning? By when?” He glanced at his fake gold watch. “I don’t have anyone…”

  Isobel didn’t know what the job was, but she knew she had to have it. This wasn’t simply a temp job at stake; it was her whole New York experience. She felt as if she were facing a cosmic test. If she landed this assignment, the rest would fall into place: her own apartment, her first professional acting job, new friends, and, with any luck, a boyfriend. Whatever this job was, it was a barometer of her future, she was sure of it.

  Isobel bounced on her heels and jabbed an enthusiastic thumb at her chest, but James ignored her. Scowling, she grabbed a notepad and pen from his desk and scribbled, “You’d rather send nobody than me?” She underlined the word “nobody” twice and shoved the paper in front of him.

  Beads of sweat dotted the ebony sheen of James’s brow. He swallowed. “All right, I’ve got someone. Name is Isobel Spice. Sure…no problem. Glad I could help.”

  He hung up and ran a hand over his coarse, close-cropped head as if he were trying to erase whatever impulse had crumbled his resolve.

  Isobel exhaled with relief and sank back into her chair. “Thank you!”

  James took the top sheet from a stack of forms and briskly started filling in blanks. “Okay, they need you by ten,” he said. “It’s a last-minute thing…phones and light typing. Half-day until one o’clock. I’ll be asking for feedback, so you’d better learn quickly.” He tore off a pink copy of the form and handed it to her. “InterBank Switzerland, One Madison Avenue, seventeenth floor. Ask for Felice Edwards. She’s the human resources director. And call me when you get settled.”

  Isobel took the paper and stood up. “James, you’re a peach.”

  As he brushed past her to the door, she realized just how imposing his physique was.

  James the giant peach, she revised.

  He grasped her hand hard, but Isobel, who was proud of her own unexpectedly firm handshake, gripped it right back.

  “Thank you for taking a chance on me,” she said.

  He glanced around, and then put his mouth close to her ear. “I gotta ask. What happened after you dropped the lobsters on that nun?”

  “They rushed her to the emergency room to treat her for burns, and then they fired me. Or maybe they fired me first, I can’t remember. It was a long time ago.”

  She flashed him another bright smile and hurried out before he could reconsider.

  James Cooke returned to his desk and picked up the completed employment request form for InterBank Switzerland. He rattled the paper nervously.

  Half-day, phones and light typing. How hard could it be?

  “James!”

  He started guiltily. His boss, Ginger Wainwright, was leaning against the doorframe. An officious, brassy redhead of a certain age who dressed down in an effort to mask her obsessive personality, Ginger had a habit of sneaking up on her staff. She always claimed to be “just passing by,” but she passed by an awful lot. After a week, James still wasn’t used to it.

  “How’s it going?” Ginger asked.

  “Fine. It’s all good.”

  “The young woman who was in here earlier. Potential employee?”

  He blinked away an image of Isobel’s long ponytail smacking her in the face and nodded. “Could be.”

  “Good. Okay. I was just passing by.”

  “Uh, Ginger, just out of curiosity—I mean, for future reference—what do we do with candidates who are smart and well-educated, but have no practical experience?”

  Ginger sniffed dismissively. “Send them to Temporama or Sally Nelson and let them get some training. Then if they’re any good, we’ll poach them.”

  “We don’t ever take a chance and send them out? If they seem to have a lot on the ball, I mean.”

  She gave him a stern look. “We don’t take chances at Temp Zone. That’s why we’re tops. Right?”

  “Right,” James answered, forcing his mouth into a deferential smile. “That’s what I thought.”

  He listened as Ginger’s heels clacked away down the hall, and her voice echoed into the office of another recruiter.

  “Anna? How’s it going? I was just passing by.”

  James got up and closed his door quietly. Then he returned to his desk and looked at the request form again.

  He had a feeling he’d just made a big mistake.

  TWO

  Isobel stepped through the doors of the tall, silver office building that housed Temp Zone and paused to inhale a noseful of diesel fumes. The scent was as pleasing to her as a whiff of Chanel. Everything about New York was exciting, even the polluted air. She was finally living the dream she had nurtured throughout her Milwaukee childhood and four years at the University of Wisconsin. She would work her way up through the ranks like generations of actors before her, starting with shoestring showcases in moldy church basements. Then she’d move on to summer stock in barns, regional productions in actual theaters, and national tours in refurbished vaudeville houses, before making her assault on Broadway from the Off side (okay, Off Off, if necessary). Now, by the grace of James Cooke, she was on her way to subsidizing this neatly plotted trajectory with her first paycheck.

  James Cooke. There was a story there, she felt sure of it. But this wasn’t the time to speculate about him; she had more pressing matters to contemplate. As Isobel elbowed her way down Madison Avenue, she reviewed her performance.

  Use of smile: effective.

  Persistence: the right amount of pluck tempered with sweetness.

  But she’d made that stupid comment about going to the principal’s office. And she’d told him about the lobsters.

  Isobel liked to think that others found her candor charming, but she knew from experience that this was not always the case. She tried to impose a one-second delay between her brain and her mouth, but sometimes she just couldn’t stop herself from blathering, especially when she was nervous. Her mother, her acting teacher, and especially her precocious younger brother, Percival, were forever telling her that she didn’t need to work so hard to make a good impression, but it was not a lesson easily absorbed. Her interview with James was a good reminder that a deep breath was never a bad thing, and as she paid for her venti latte at Starbucks on Twenty-fourth Street, she resolved for the umpteenth time to restrain her rebellious tongue.

  She left the coffee shop and turned the corner. Bright rays of October sunshine glinted off the art deco spires of One Madison Avenue like neon lights above a theater marquee. Isobel glanced at her watch. Almost ten o’clock. Right on time.

  Here goes, she thought, and made her entrance through the revolving door.

  She showed her driver’s license to the guard at the front desk, signed the visitors’ log, and waited patiently for an elevator, scrutinizing her reflection in the polished brass. She always dressed to emphasize her compact figure. Today she had chosen a tasteful rose-colored button-down shirt and black pants.

  It never hurts to look the part, she reminded herself.

  Isobel trailed a sea of suits and skirts into the elevator and allowed herself to be squashed into the corner. By the time it reached the seventeenth floor, there was only one woman left. Isobel followed her out.

  “Is this InterBank Switzerland?” Isobel asked.

  The woman sniffed sideways as if a bad smell had just wafted by, and pointed to a frosted pane of glass next to the heavy wooden door. If Isobel looked sideways and squinted, she could just make out the company name etched into it.

  “Thanks,” Isobel said, but she was addressing a flowered rear end. The woman swayed down the hall, nodding indulgent hellos on either side as if she were a duchess passing among her tenant farmers. The office, which seemed to stretch on for miles in every direction, was buzzing. There were cubicles upon cubicles in the center of the giant space, with conference rooms veering off into obscured corner areas. There didn’t appear to be a receptionist, so Isobel inched her way over to the first desk on the left. A stout, bearded man was on the phone, arguing. Isobel c
leared her throat softly.

  “What?” he growled, covering the mouthpiece.

  “I’m looking for Felice Edwards.”

  “Sixteenth floor.”

  “But I’m supposed to be temping on seventeen—”

  “Felice Edwards. HR. Sixteen!” He put the receiver to his mouth again. “They gotta move me. I swear, I’m like the freakin’ doorman.”

  Isobel returned to the hall and rang for the elevator.

  This is stupid, she thought. It’s only one floor down.

  She followed the signs to Stairwell A and descended the two half-flights to the sixteenth floor, but when she tried the door, it was locked. Cursing her luck, she darted back upstairs to seventeen and reached for the knob.

  The door had locked behind her.

  She pounded on the door, but it was solid steel. She called for help, but the thick metal absorbed her cries, and after a minute, her fists ached too much to continue. There was nothing to do except try every floor until she found a door that opened.

  But there was no reentry on fifteen, fourteen, thirteen or twelve. She began to panic more about getting out alive than being late. Fully expecting the door on eleven to be locked as well, she went flying through it with such force that she knocked into a delivery boy, whose paper bag burst against his chest, splattering him with scrambled egg and cheese.

  “Sorry! I’m really sorry!” she cried, ignoring the stream of accusatory Spanish as she ducked into an open elevator. By the time she arrived on the sixteenth floor, it was almost ten fifteen. The gracious gold lettering and wide glass-fronted doors made it clear that this was the main reception area. Isobel leaned against the rounded, wood-paneled front desk and steadied her voice as she addressed the receptionist, who was talking to a tall, curvaceous woman with coffee-colored skin and fabulously twisted hair.

  “I’m here to see Felice Edwards.”

  The tall woman disengaged herself. “That’s me. Are you Isobel?”