So, seventy-five percent of consultations involving a new client led Mary to the Coffee Bean, just across the street and down a few blocks from her office.
Today, there were only two homeless guys in the coffee shop. One of them was playing chess, the other was staring at a pile of newspapers stacked next to the garbage can. Waiting for breaking news.
She got herself a low-fat cappuccino and saved the receipt for tax purposes. She thought of adding a “one” before the $4.50 price: $14.50 for a cappuccino in Los Angeles wasn’t out of the question. But she held back. No need to commit tax fraud. Yet.
Mary’s client walked in the door and made a beeline for the counter. Even though she’d never met her in person, Mary knew it was the woman who had called her. She was a strikingly beautiful Latina woman with long, black hair, beautiful eyes, and a figure Mary would kill for.
Armed now with a small black coffee, the woman turned and scanned the room, caught Mary’s eye, then approached her.
“Ms. Cooper?” she said.
Mary stood and shook her hand. “Elyse?” she said.
“Thank you for meeting me here,” said the woman, who Mary knew to be Elyse Ramirez.
“No problem,” Mary said. “I was having my office fumigated anyway. It always smells like bacon — not that that’s a bad thing.”
Mary watched as the woman pulled a folder and an envelope from her purse.
“How do we start?” she said. “I’ve never done this before.”
“Neither have I,” Mary said. She saw a brief flash of surprise on the woman’s face. “I’m kidding. Let’s start by talking about — if you are considering hiring a private investigator, namely me — what is it you want me to investigate?”
Elyse Ramirez let out a long breath. Mary caught the scent of coffee and mint.
“I called you about my daughter. She’s missing,” Ramirez said. “Her name is Nina. She’s seventeen years old.” She slid a photograph from a folder across the table to Mary.
“What did the police say?” Mary said, already knowing the answer. She looked at the photograph. Nina Ramirez was beautiful, like her mother, but in a softer way.
“The police will not be involved,” Elyse Ramirez said. “My husband is a very important businessman; he will not allow our daughter to shame our family.”
“So she wasn’t taken, she ran away?” Mary said, catching the meaning in the woman’s carefully chosen words.
“We don’t know. Maybe a little bit of both,” Ramirez said. “She has been dating a man involved in the pornography industry. She may have run away with him.”
Mary sighed. “There’s big money in porn. I spend a lot on those movies.”
Not again!
Mary quickly recovered.
“A lot of dangerous elements are involved in that industry, obviously,” Mary said. “Not a good place for a young girl to go.”
The woman furrowed her brow.
Mary realized Elyse Ramirez was torn between a total panic over her daughter and complete anger with her as well. Probably not an unusual emotional conflict for a parent, Mary assumed.
“All of the information regarding Nina, her boyfriend, and the last time we saw her are here,” Elyse Ramirez said. Her voice had started out a bit shaky; now it seemed to steady itself.
“I’d like to ask you some more questions,” Mary said, sensing the woman’s impatience.
Elyse Ramirez shook her head. “I don’t want talk about it. Everything you need is there,” she said, pointing at the packet. “And this is the first part of your fee.” She pushed the thick envelope across the table.
Mary raised an eyebrow.
“I’m sorry it is in cash, but my husband insisted.”
Mary nodded.
“Not a problem,” she said.
5
Five
Mary went back to her office and spread the paperwork from Elyse Ramirez out on her desk.
She still had the envelope full of cash in her purse. It wasn’t all that uncommon for clients to pay in cash. Usually it was to hide any record of the payment, either from a cheating spouse or any public record of the transaction.
Since Elyse Ramirez claimed her husband knew she was hiring a private investigator, Mary suspected the latter.
Still, it was a fair amount of cash. Maybe she should go to a strip club and go nuts. Those male strippers kind of grossed her out, though, all greased up and chock full of steroids. Of course, she could always take Aunt Alice with her. That would be fun. Watch the old woman spray whipped cream all over some dancer’s package. Snap a photo of it and put it on Facebook. Except Alice wasn’t on any kind of social media. Too bad.
The mental images of male strippers made her think of Jake.
Mary hit speed dial on her cell phone for him and listened as it went instantly to voicemail.
“Fucker,” she said.
There was a feeling growing in her gut, one she didn’t want to acknowledge. Because in order to admit she was actually concerned about Jake, she would first have to admit she actually cared for Jake. And ever since he’d betrayed her with his boss, the pale and frighteningly vicious Lieutenant Arianna Davies, she refused to acknowledge certain emotions regarding him.
Thinking about the LAPD gave Mary an idea. Mary knew that Jake had been moved from Homicide to Vice, so she made a call to a contact she had in that department. They agreed to meet for beers.
She put her phone back on the desk and thought about her new case.
The porn industry was the Bermuda Triangle for young women. They flew into town by the thousands and half of them just disappeared. They wound up dead or addicted to drugs, with different names and unrecognizable even to their families if they were one of the few fortunate enough to make the return trip home.
All of which posed great challenges to private investigators. Names were changed, fake addresses, fake identification. It was like trying to track a convict through a swamp without a bloodhound.
“Okay,” Mary said out loud. “Enough with the excuses, let’s get going.” Was it bad she’d started talking to herself? What next, a pair of Depends and hot flashes?
“Let’s have a look at you, Nina,” Mary said and slid the photographs from the folder.
Like her mother, Nina Ramirez was a beauty. Dark skin, hair, and eyes, beautiful white teeth, and judging from one photo of the girl in a cheerleader outfit, a knockout body.
Mary wondered how she herself would look in a cheerleader outfit. Probably pretty damn good. She could even use the pompons to make her boobs look bigger.
She waded through the documents. Mostly photos and a few newspaper articles. Mary took the time to read them, to learn that Nina was a smart, accomplished, and seemingly happy young woman. But Mary knew this meant virtually nothing. Everything was social media these days. Facebook. Twitter. And of course, the old dinosaur: email.
Mary had asked Elyse to provide her with Nina’s email, which she did. But Elyse didn’t know the password. Naturally. Parents never do. And the few times Mary knew of a child giving their parents the password to any type of social media account, it was usually a dummy account.
Kids these days, they were almost as bad as adults.
So Mary sent an email, attaching the appropriate information, to a friend who knew his way around computers and had been able to unlock email accounts for Mary in the past. This time, she wanted him to get access to Nina’s email account, and from there hopefully follow the digital trail to Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and whatever else he could find. For starters.