“You want to drag your brother into it, that’s fine by me. I’ll be just as happy to talk to him. But I gotta tell you, it’s just gonna make you look that much more suspicious.”
“Suspicious? I’ve done nothing wrong! You know that.”
“Look, we can play it any way you want to, Mr. Lee, I’m just trying to give you a break.”
“Harassing me at my office is your idea of giving me a break? This is turning into a nightmare and you are the bogeyman.”
“Look, I said from the beginning I was gonna have to talk to her. You assured me it wouldn’t be a problem. It was gonna just be between us. Well, it’s been two weeks since your wife died and still no Violet Perkins.”
“I don’t know why she hasn’t contacted you. She assured me she would.”
“Why don’t you give me her number? I’ll call her.”
“I told you, she calls me. She doesn’t have a phone.”
“Look, I think we both know Violet Perkins doesn’t exist. At least that’s the way it’s starting to look. I’ve located four Violet Perkinses in the metro area, and I’ve talked to all of them except one. Two of them were grade school students, another was living in a nursing home, and the last one has been dead for seven months. The Hendrix Institute denies any knowledge of her. In fact, only one person can claim to have seen her-you.”
Adam pushed back his chair, stood, and looked out his office window. After a minute, he turned back around to look at Leo. “She exists. Look, Leo, I admit I’ve been lying. I haven’t had contact with her since that weekend. We more or less ended the affair. That weekend was the coup de grace. Don’t you think I want to find her just as much as you do? It’s my name, my reputation on the line.”
Adam faced away from Leo, turned back to the window. Leo smiled. The mouse trembles, and the cat licks beads of blood from its whiskers.
When the desk nurse didn’t look up from her charting, Leo cleared his throat a little louder. She looked up, mildly annoyed at being interrupted.
“Hi, my name is Leo Hewitt. I’m with the district attorney’s office. I was wondering if you could help me. I’m looking for a Violet Perkins. I’ve already been to administration twice, but I thought I could check down here, too, just in case.”
“Oh, yeah. There was a guy in here the other day. Looking for the same girl. I remember ’cause of the name. Violet. I told him I been here for years, never heard of her.”
Leo sighed and turned away. “Well, thanks anyway.”
“Then I happened to think. Maybe I didn’t know her because she’s not on regular staff.”
“What do you mean?”
“We hire out to a temp agency when we’re short on staff, which is all the time. Payroll cuts a check directly to the company and they pay their employees from their end; the person’s name never goes on our payroll. And when I fill in the schedules, I just pencil in the word temp because I never know who they’ll be sending over.”
“Is that a fact?”
The nurse cracked open her Rolodex and flipped through it. She scribbled a number on a scrap of paper and shoved it across the counter at Leo.
“BWB Temporary Services. Check with them.”
“Thanks, I will.”
Leo folded the paper over and inserted it into his breast pocket.
Halfway down the directory posted in the lobby of the building, Leo found BWB Temporary Services. He took the elevator to the ninth floor and introduced himself to a good-looking, youngish man eating a take-out sandwich at his cluttered desk.
“It must be exciting working for the DA’s office.”
“You’d be surprised.”
“I guess that was a stupid thing to say. I bet everybody says that. It’s probably boring just like everybody else’s job. Although I can personally testify that running a temp agency is never boring. Every day there’s another emergency. Some girl’s got her period and can’t work her assignment. Some boy’s got his period and won’t come in. You know how it is.”
“The thing is, I’m looking for a lady who might have worked for you.”
“What’s her name?”
“Violet Perkins.”
“Oh sure, Violet worked for us.”
“She did?”
“Sure.”
“I’ve been looking all over for her. I was beginning to think she didn’t exist.”
“Oh, she exists all right. But she’s not on my Christmas list, I can tell you that much. I had an assignment for her three weeks ago and she never showed. You have no idea what a bad impression it makes when one of our people is a no-show. The clients usually don’t call back. Anyway, I bet you ran her name through your computer and couldn’t find her.”
“Right.”
“I bet I know why.”
“Why?”
“Because you were right, she doesn’t exist. Her name isn’t Violet. It’s Constance. That’s what it says on her driver’s license. But she hates it, so she tells everybody to call her Violet. And I have to say, I don’t blame her. Violet is much more colorful. I’ve got a photocopy of it if you want.”
“What?”
“Her driver’s license. We have to keep one on file for everybody that works here.”
The youngish man, Leo could now see, augmented his good looks with a bit of makeup and was older than he had first thought. He opened a massive filing cabinet drawer and thumbed through the files until he got to the right one. He held out a photocopied page to Leo.
“Here, you can keep it. Since she doesn’t work here anymore, I won’t be needing it.”
“I really appreciate this. You don’t know how much.”
“Happy to help.”
“So, what does BWB stand for? I guess everybody asks.”
“Everybody does, and I always say they’re my mother’s initials, but for you, I’ll tell the truth. When Craig, that’s my partner, when we started the business, it was just the two of us. And it was just a cleaning service. We went into rich people’s homes and cleaned up. And we really did-clean up, that is. So we expanded into other areas and hired more people and eventually became a multiservice temp agency. We just never bothered to change our name, which has since grown to be an embarrassment.”
“Because?”
“Because BWB stands for Bitches With Brooms.”