I was back in my office by 3:00. Heather was at her computer, which is where she usually is. She was busy pecking away at the keyboard when I walked in.
“Banker’s hours again,” she said. “You said you were meeting some guy from the Pentagon. I didn’t know the buttoned down military types went in for late lunches.”
There was a bit of teasing in her voice. She loves busting my chops. Now that we were full partners, she did it even more than she did when she was just my lowly paid assistant. Of course, I got my own licks in from time to time. For instance, I occasionally called her Honeybunch, which was a play on her name, Heather Bunche, and the fact that with her close-cropped blonde hair and diminutive size, she looked like a little pixie. It was all in fun, though. We’d been doing it for more than ten years, from the beginning, after I’d let Quincy Chang talk me into getting my PI license and opening up shop. I’m lousy at paperwork, and she’d just graduated from secretarial school and needed a job. She was a whiz at paperwork, and it turned out something of a computer expert as well, so it had worked perfectly for the both of us.
“We have a new client,” I said. I gave her the details for a contract, and the contact number.
“That’s a new one. With all the resources of the Defense Department, this guy needs us?”
I explained his fears and pointed out that the military types were currently more concerned with hunting down terrorists than nabbing crooked contractors. “You have to remember, Honeybunch,” I said. “You’re dealing with pretty straight forward, one dimensional minds here. These guys can only deal with one problem at a time. There’s also the problem of Sergeant Lake. The first thing they’re likely to do in his case is declare him AWOL. If he is in trouble, that won’t help.”
Her beautiful face scrunched up in a concerned look. “I see. Okay, what do you want me to do?”
“I want you to do what you do best,” I said. “I’d like you to find out everything there is to know about Armcor; what they do, where they do it, who owns the place; but, most importantly, I want to know if they have any skeletons in their closets.”
She pulled a pad from her desk and began making notes in her precise handwriting. “You think they’re up to no good?”
“Bill Raymond said the missing sergeant thought they were up to something. I don’t know the sergeant, but I do know Raymond, and he trusted the sergeant, so for now, that’s good enough for me.”
She stopped writing and looked at me over the top of the pad, which blocked the view of the lower half of her face. “You know, of course,” she said. “These guys will have more firewalls around their data than even the government, because they protect it against competitors. And, if they’re involved in anything shady, there’s likely to be even more security.”
“I trust you to find a way past their walls,” I said. I chuckled. “You always seem to be able to do that.”
“And, if I can’t?”
She made a good point. If she couldn’t get to them through their computers, that might present a problem.
“We’ll breech that firewall when we come to it,” I said.
Her face took on a pained expression at my lame attempt at a pun. Hey, I’m a PI, not a comedian.
I decided to use the rest of the day to see what I could find out about Rory Lake, so I left her pecking away at her keyboard again, and went back to the Bug for a little ground reconnaissance.
