Cade Parris wasnât having the best of days when the woman of his dreams walked into his office. His secretary had quit the day beforeânot that sheâd been much of a prize anyway, being more vigilant about her manicure than maintaining the phone logs. But he needed someone to keep track of things and shuffle papers into files. Even the raise he offered out of sheer desperation hadnât swayed her to give up her sudden determination to become a country-and-western singing sensation.
So his secretary was heading off to Nashville in a second-hand pickup, and his office looked like the ten miles of bad road he sincerely hoped she traveled.
She hadnât exactly had her mind on her work the past month or two. That impression had been more than confirmed when he fished a bologna sandwich out of the file drawer. At least he thought the blob in the plastic bag was bologna. And it had been filed under Lâfor Lunch?
He didnât bother to swear, nor did he bother to answer the phone that rang incessantly on the empty desk in his reception area. He had reports to type up, and as typing wasnât one of his finer skills, he just wanted to get on with it.
Parris Investigations wasnât what some would call a thriving enterprise. But it suited him, just as the cluttered two-room office squeezed into the top floor of a narrow brick building with bad plumbing in North West D.C. suited him.
He didnât need plush carpets or polished edges. Heâd grown up with all that, with the pomp and pretenses, and had had his fill of it all by the time he reached the age of twenty. Now, at thirty, with one bad marriage behind him and a family who continued to be baffled by his pursuits, he was, by and large, a contented man.
He had his investigatorâs license, a decent reputation as a man who got the job done, and enough income to keep his agency well above water.
Though actual business income was a bit of a problem just then. He was in what he liked to call a lull. Most of his caseload consisted of insurance and domestic workâa few steps down from the thrills heâd imagined when he set out to become a private investigator. Heâd just cleaned up two cases, both of them minor insurance frauds that hadnât taken much effort or innovation to close.
He had nothing else coming in, his greedy bloodsucker of a landlord was bumping up his rent, the engine in his car had been making unsettling noises lately, his air conditioner was on the fritz. And the roof was leaking again.
He took the spindly yellow-leafed philodendron his double-crossing secretary had left behind and set it on the uncarpeted floor under the steady drip, hoping it might drown.
He could hear a voice droning into his answering machine. It was his motherâs voice. Lord, he thought, did a man ever really escape his mother?
âCade, dear, I hope you havenât forgotten the Embassy Ball. You know youâre to escort Pamela Lovett. I had lunch with her aunt today, and she tells me that Pamela just looks marvelous after her little sojourn to Monaco.â
âYeah, yeah, yeah,â he muttered, and narrowed his eyes at the computer. He and machines had poor and untrusting relationships.
He sat down and faced the screen as his mother continued to chatter: âHave you had your tux cleaned? Do make time to get a haircut, you looked so scraggly the last time I saw you.â
And donât forget to wash behind the ears, he thought sourly, and tuned her out. She was never going to accept that the Parris life-style wasnât his life-style, that he just didnât want to lunch at the club or squire bored former debutantes around Washington and that his opinion wasnât going to change by dint of her persuasion.
Heâd wanted adventure, and though struggling to type up a report on some poor slobâs fake whiplash wasnât exactly Sam Spade territory, he was doing the job.
Mostly he didnât feel useless or bored or out of place. He liked the sound of traffic outside his window, even though the window was only open because the building and its scum-sucking landlord didnât go in for central air-conditioning and his unit was broken. The heat was intense, and the rain was coming in, but with the window closed, the offices would have been as airless and stifling as a tomb.