Wombat Strategy

THIRTEEN

I put on the car radio while driving to Beverly Hills for my first proper day's work at Deerdoc. Tarrod Perkins was still the lead news item, popping up everywhere and never missing a chance to plug his latest project, a movie called Primitive Obsessions.

Last night Tules and I had picked up some of the frenzy about Jarrod Perkins on the late TV news, and the story was still going strong this morning. In the kitchen Fran had the teev turned up high. There'd been lots of angles of the Hummer's burning wreckage, breathless theories floated about who might conceivably be responsible-Homeland Security was hinting at an Al Qaeda terrorist cell-and roving reporters shoving microphones under the noses of local residents, who had been variously shocked, horrified, or oddly pleased about the bomb blast in their exclusive area. Unlike Aussies, these people never seemed to get tongue-tied but burbled on freely as soon as the media appeared.

"They'll never eat lunch in this town again," Fran had observed. She'd taken another bite from a ghastly-looking health food bar. "Beverly Hills doesn't forgive."

"What do you mean?"

"It's not done, talking to a reporter in the street. A studio interview, though, would be okay."

I'd been given directions to Noreen's car spot under the building, where there were three floors of parking. The patients had the first floor, the doctors the second, and the rest of the staff was relegated to the bottom parking area.

I didn't have a keycard yet, so I stopped beside the attendant sitting in his little box. He was a middle-aged bloke in a creased uniform who'd quickly hidden the magazine he was reading when I'd pulled up. Without even asking my name, he raised the arm and waved me through.

"Aren't you going to ask who I am? I could be a terrorist, deadset on blowing up the building."

He gave me a long look, a bit like Ariana's specialty but not nearly as effective. "Are you a terrorist?" he finally asked.

"No."

"Are you intending to blow up the building?"

"Not today."

Weary sigh. "Then go on through."

"Do you ever ask people questions, or is it open slather and anyone can get in?"

Another sigh. "If you look suspicious, lady, I ask. You don't look suspicious."

This wasn't good enough. I'd be reporting a security breach in the parking structure. "You know Fred Mills?" I said.

"Great guy. I count him as a friend. Why?"

"Just asking."

I located Noreen's parking spot without too much trouble. It was on the lowest floor, but at least it wasn't too far from the lift. I punched the up button. By the time it arrived, a crowd had formed behind me. It seemed everyone was clutching a carton of coffee or one of those insulated mug things. I got swept up as everybody squeezed into the lift.

As the door closed, I twisted my neck trying to find the notice that gave the maximum load for this particular lift, but it was blocked by bodies. I was visualizing the horror of being stuck between floors with this lot when the door opened and everyone spilled out. There'd been total silence for the short journey, except for one bloke who'd whistled "Oklahoma" under his breath and out of tune. Released from confinement, everyone started talking as they scattered toward their work stations.

Chantelle was already at her post. "Good morning, Kylie."

"Good morning, Chantelle. What's the good oil?" She seemed to need more, so I added, "What's going on? Anything interesting?"

"Not yet. The day is young."

I gave her a big grin. I really liked this woman's attitude. In fact, when I thought about it, Chantelle herself wasn't bad at all. She had lovely dark skin and beautiful hands. And her red mouth was, frankly, alluring.

"Alluring" was the last thing that came to mind where Fred Mills was concerned. He was waiting in Dave Deer's office, bubbling with impatience. "I'm a busy man, so this briefing can only take a few minutes of my time."

"You should know the bloke at the parking entrance let me through without asking any questions."

"So what?"

"I could have been anybody. I could have had a bomb in the boot."

He flapped a hand at me. "Yeah, yeah. I'll check it out."

If possible, Fred looked even less appetizing than the last time I'd seen him, so I concentrated on the surroundings. Dave Deer's office was the max in luxury. The white carpet was so thick you could turn your ankle if you weren't careful. The paintings hanging on the paneled walls were obviously originals, each subtly illuminated with recessed lighting. The furniture was sleek, with lots of chrome. The desk was perfectly clear.

The office had three rich, polished doors. I'd entered through one from the main office area. Another was ajar, and I could see it led to a private bathroom. I was guessing the third door would open into a black-and-white therapy room.

I became aware Fred was speaking: "…go it alone."

"You want me to go it alone?"

This earned me an exasperated grunt. "That's exactly want I don't want you to do. I've already pointed out that you're an amateur, way out of your depth. I don't want to rush around rescuing you from situations you've got yourself into. Low profile. Say that to yourself often. Low profile."

"Low profile. Got it." I couldn't resist adding, "But Fred, if I holler…?"

A sneer of superiority distorted his upper lip. "I'll be there, little lady, I'll be there."

I didn't need to holler for help even once during the day. Dave Deer was in San Diego, addressing a mental health symposium, so I was free to wander around meeting people and getting the lay of the land.

First I went down to the entrance of the building and made myself known to the doorman, Jim, and the guard in the lobby, Malcolm. I reckoned this was a good move, so that in case I needed a favor, these blokes would be on side.

My fun discovery of the day was Irma Barber, who was at serious odds with the dress standards adhered to by the most of the Deerdoc staff. Irma was wearing khaki pants, the sort with lots of unnecessary pockets everywhere, and Birkenstocks with striped socks. Her T-shirt proclaimed chickens rule over the picture of a cartoon chook. I didn't get the point at all and concluded it was some American thing.

Noticing my fascinated gaze, Irma laughed. "As you can imagine, I'm not allowed where the public or the patients can see me. I work behind the scenes with Oscar, keeping all the office equipment humming along."

Oscar had to be Oscar Sherwood, who'd left previous jobs under a cloud because of missing money, although he'd never been formally charged. He was Deerdoc's resident techo, who, as Irma said, kept everything electronic in the office, including the computer network, working smoothly. One of his duties was making sure each therapy session had an audiovisual record, so he was automatically a possible suspect for the theft of the disks.

Last night I'd argued to Ariana and Bob that he couldn't be the one, because with his knowledge he'd make a copy, not take the disks from the file. Or he could simply send the information to a distant computer using the Internet. While I'd been speaking, however, it had begun to dawn on me that maybe Sherwood intended for suspicion to fall on someone not technologically adept. And if the disks weren't missing from the files there would be no concrete proof blackmail material had been taken.

Irma introduced me to Sherwood in the manner of an indulgent mother showing off a talented child. Oscar Sherwood was young enough to make me feel like an older woman. His face made him look about fifteen, but a powerful fifteen. The muscles in his arms were truly impressive, and he wore an extremely tight sleeveless top to allow appreciation of his toned torso.

"Hi," he said, preoccupied with the innards of a copying machine.

"G'day."

"Filling in for Noreen?"

"That's right."

"Good luck."

Leaving him diving deeper into the mechanism, with Irma handing him tools when needed, I wandered off to explore further.

Deerdoc Enterprises was clearly a thriving corporation, leasing the entire three-floor building on Roxbury Drive. Dave Deer's Slap! Slap! Get On With It therapy room was on the middle floor, adjacent to his office. It had two entrances: one directly from his office, and one leading to a private corridor. The room was exactly as it had appeared in the demonstration disk and was, I discovered, one of three such black-and-white rooms. I peered closely at the white carpet, wondering if the hearty slaps delivered during treatment ever caused a nosebleed, but the thick pile was stain-free.

Next I checked out the walk-in safe where the theft had taken place. It had an electronic lock requiring a keycard to open it. I didn't have one, but that wasn't a problem, as the door wasn't shut. Inside were ranks of shallow drawers, all neatly labeled in alphabetical order. They had no locking mechanism, so I pulled one out to examine the contents. Patients had individual heavy plastic files, each with the name clearly shown. I pulled out another drawer. Stone the crows! Famous name after famous name jumped out at me. This was a blackmailer's heaven.

A bloke in a white coat came in, looking preoccupied. He paid absolutely no attention to me, going to one of the drawers and extracting a file. He was wearing a badge indicating he was Dr. Walter Yeats.

"G'day, Dr. Yeats."

"Mmmm? Oh, hi."

"I could be anyone, you know."

He looked up from the file, focused on me, and said soothingly, "I'm sure you can be. Ambition is a wonderful motor to power one's life."

"I don't mean that. I mean I could be an intruder, deadset on stealing files."

"Have you often felt this sense of alienation?"

"I'm not a patient."

"Of course not." He tucked the file he'd extracted under one arm, reached into the pocket of his white coat, extracted a business card, and pressed it into my hand. "If you feel the necessity to talk, please don't hesitate to call. Anytime."

A comforting pat on my shoulder and he was gone. Crikey! I knew the staff hadn't been told about the missing disks, so there was no security flap going on, but even so this was past a joke. If the fancy took me, there'd be nothing to stop me from helping myself to an armful of files and skedaddling with them.

I set off to run down the remaining three high-level suspects. Working on the principle that everyone eventually would end up in the staff dining area, if only for a cup of coffee, I staked it out around lunchtime-lurking, I hoped inconspicuously, by a staff notice board. It was a good move: In a few minutes I had a meeting with both Kristi Jane Russo of the PR department and Randy Romaine of Accounting.

Kristi Jane was one of those people who always talk too loudly, so I heard her long before I saw her. In her broad Aussie accent, she was yelling, "Keith's got the bloody hide of a bloody elephant. He says to me, 'Now, listen, Kristi Jane,' and I say to him, 'I'm fed up with listening. I want action.' And Randy, you just won't believe what he says to me then…"

I was betting this Randy would be Randy Romaine. I waited with keen interest for the pair to come around the corner. In a moment they did. Kristi Jane's voice proved to be much bigger than her body. She had the slight, flat-chested physique of a thin young girl, bizarrely topped by an exaggerated bouffant hairdo.

Randy Romaine looked like an accountant, which was what he was. Fittingly, perhaps, he was monochrome: brown hair, brown eyes, brown suit, brown shoes. He had a forgettable face and restrained body language. He certainly didn't fit my mental picture of a stalker. Perhaps he'd reformed and was leading a blameless life, with his stalking days behind him. Or perhaps he'd merely put his stalking on hold and was cultivating the new field of blackmail.

"G'day," I said, practically leaping in front of them. I beamed at Kristi Jane. "I couldn't help hearing your accent. I'm an Aussie too. I'm just filling in as Dr. Deer's assistant for the next few weeks."

That broke the ice. "Did you hear why Noreen resigned?" bellowed Kristi Jane. "Terrorism! You've got to stand up to the bastards. Noreen's a lily-livered little twit!" In a moment she'd swept me up into her conversation and into the dining room, where she bullied a mousy bloke into giving up his spot at a table and installed Randy, herself, and me in his place.

Apart from the desire I had to pop earplugs into my ears to mute Kristi Jane's deafening voice, I quite enjoyed myself. She was a mine of information as far as company gossip was concerned, and better still she wasn't a bit reticent about it.

Randy Romaine turned out to have a very dry sense of humor, which went rather well with his quiet demeanor. I tried but couldn't find any real distinguishing feature. The bloke was pleasant but not memorable. I did notice, however, how thick his neck was. "Do you work out?" I asked.

"Why, yes."

"Do you?" Kristi Jane regarded him with surprised irritation. "I never knew that. Why didn't you tell me?"

So by mid afternoon I had three down and one to go- Reuben Kowalski. I found Kristi Jane in the PR department shouting into a phone. When she'd finished, I said, "Dr. Deer told me to speak with Reuben Kowalski. He's supposed to be in the billing department, but I can't find him."

"That's because the bastard will be outside the building, smoking. Bloody pathetic, don't you think? Not being able to give up an addiction that's going to kill you is pretty piss-weak."

She added I couldn't miss him as he'd be the only one wearing a purple shirt. "Always wears purple, and he's not even bloody gay," she advised. I thanked her, wondering if Kristi Jane had defeated her own addiction to alcohol.

Reuben Kowalski was exactly where she said he'd be. Los Angeles, I'd been learning, had some of the strictest anti-smoking ordinances in the country, so smokers in office buildings were forced to go outside to avoid inflicting secondhand smoke on colleagues. There was a narrow alleyway running down one side of the building, and a small group of tobacco lepers had congregated there to puff furiously on cigarettes.

I stopped to examine the spot where the Hummer had been destroyed. The road was blackened, but every piece of the twisted remains had been removed, probably for forensic examination.

In the alleyway, Reuben was sucking on a cigarette and talking with great animation on a mobile phone. As Kristi Jane had told me, his shirt was deep purple, and oddly enough this color seemed to suit him. He had tight curly hair turning gray and a droopy, nicotine-stained mustache.

I'd manufactured a reason to see him-a billing that had supposedly gone astray. I introduced myself. Playing anxious-to-please temporary worker, I said, "So sorry to interrupt you, Mr. Kowalski, but Dr. Deer will be calling this afternoon about this matter and…" I let my voice trail off and sloped my eyebrows the wrong way.

He took a final mighty suck of his cigarette. "Okay, I'll come in now."

"Oh, thank you, Mr. Kowalski."

Melodie might have done a better job, but I had to admit I quite impressed myself. Not to skite, but I wasn't half bad at this acting routine. And now I'd accomplished step one, which was to establish casual contact with the suspects, I could keep up the act by getting them to accept me as just another member of the Deerdoc staff.

I left at five so I could catch Ariana in the office and give her my first day's report. I felt a bit guilty leaving early, which was stupid, as I wasn't really Dave Deer's personal assistant. I wasn't going to sneak around, so I said "Good night, Chantelle" as I passed her on the way out.

"Hold on a moment, Kylie."

I came back to her desk, ready to argue I could leave the premises when I wished. She said, "I've got tickets for a play Friday night. It's a little local theater. I was wondering if you'd like to come with me."

I wasn't lost for words often. This was one of the times. "Urn," I said.

Chantelle chuckled. "Yes, it's a date. I'm asking you on a date. Think it over and tell me tomorrow. Or you can call me." She passed me a Deerdoc business card. "My cell number's on the back."

"Right-oh."

I rode down to the parking structure deep in thought. I was looking at Chantelle in an entirely different light. It was rather flattering to be asked, I told myself, but how did she know…?

"Melodie!" The receptionists' bush telegraph had been at work.

"Excuse me?"

"Oh, sorry," I said to the bloke sharing the lift with me. "I was thinking out loud."

When I got to Kendall & Creeling, I was ridiculously disappointed to find Ariana had left for the day, however Melodie had a consolation prize for me. "You can meet Fran's husband, Quip, if you like. He's in the kitchen talking to Rich."

"Quip? Is that a name?"

"I think it's actually Bruce, but Quip wanted something that'd stand out on the first page of a script. Quip Trent. Comedy writer, so it suits, don't you think?"

"Would I have seen any of his work? Movies? TV?"

Melodie shook her head, a look of deep compassion on her face. "The biz can be so hard. Quip hasn't sold a script yet." She brightened up to add, "Any day now, though. Rich says he might use Quip as a script doctor for his new project."

This was one for the books. "How can Quip be a script doctor if he's never had any of his own scripts made?"

With a forbearing smile, Melodie explained, "You don't get how the biz works. Hardly any scripts get made. It's the writing of them that's important."

She broke off as the delivery bloke in the daggy brown outfit-who'd made me feel a real galah yesterday-came in with a pile of boxes. While Melodie was sorting through them, the bloke nudged me in the ribs.

"Well, well," he said, grinning. "Solved any big crimes lately?" He looked me up and down, noted my tailored dress, and chuckled some more. "Dressing for success, are we?"

"I am," I said, "but jeez, look at you."

"What?"

"It's hard to look good in brown. Especially that brown." I added, as my exit line, "It's cruel, really, making you wear that uniform."

"Hey, wait a minute…"

I strode off, mad as a cut snake. This blasted bloke would tell Melodie how he found me reading Private Investigation: The Complete Handbook. This news would hit the receptionists' telegraph. Soon everyone would know. Including Ariana.

There were four people in the kitchen: Lonnie, clutching his ever-present mug of coffee; Rich Westholme, lounging against the counter; Fran, frowning; and someone who must be Quip.

His handsome face lit with amusement, he was saying, "Oh, my God, I saw Molly Ringwald the other day. I mean, hi, can we say blast from the past? I mean, what has she done since Pretty in Pink? Hello!"

This bloke had to be gay. He was everything I loved in a man: humorous, delightful, and homosexual.

A hot glare from Fran caught my attention. "He's mine," she said. "Keep your paws off him. I won't say it twice."