“Pop” emerged from the walk-in freezer. A breath of winter wafted out. He was a big man in his sixties, with a benign face and mild eyes. “What can I get you?”
“How about the tri-tip to go.”
He winked at me, smiling slightly, and prepared it without a word.
Sandwich in hand, I grabbed a Diet Pepsi from the cooler and paid at the front register. I returned to my car, where I dined in style, being careful not to spill salsa down the front of my uniform. The flowers, getting limper by the minute, filled the VW’s interior with the smells of a funeral home.
I kept an eye on Bibianna’s driveway for two hours, perfecting my surveillance Zen. In many P.I. firms, surveillance work is charged off at a higher rate than any other service offered because it’s such a yawn. There were no signs of activity, no visitors, no lights coming on. It occurred to me if I intended to watch the place for long, I’d better contact the beat officer and let him know what was going on. Also, it might be smart to borrow another vehicle and maybe cook up some reason to be loitering in the vicinity. The postman came by on foot and picked up the letters waiting in Bibianna’s box, replacing them with a handful of mail. I would have given a lot to see who was writing to her, but I didn’t want to press my luck. Where was the woman? If her back hurt so bad, how come she was out all day? Maybe she was at the chiropractor’s getting all her vertebrae lined up or her head replaced. At three I started up the car and headed back toward town.
When I arrived at the California Fidelity offices, I gave the bouquet to Darcy at the front desk. She had the good taste not to mention my little run-in with Titus. Her gaze rested briefly on my uniform. “You join the air force?”
“I just like to dress like this.”
“Those shoes look like they’d be lethal in a kick-boxing contest,” she remarked. “If you’re here for Mary, she’s got some clients with her, but you can probably mosey on back.”
Mary had been hired as a CF claims representative in May, when Jewel Cavaletto retired. She’d been assigned the desk Vera had occupied before her promotion to the glass-enclosed office up front. Mary was smart but inexperienced, a young twenty-four, with the kind of face just pretty enough to net her second runner-up in a regional beauty contest. I gave her credit for the fact that she had flagged the Diaz claim. She had a good eye and if she could hang in long enough, she’d be a real asset to the company. She’d been married for three months to a salesman for the local Nissan dealership and was taking an avid interest in Vera’s wedding plans. One of Mary’s own wedding invitations (gauzy pink background depicting daisies blowing in a field) had been framed in brass and propped up on her desk. Where Vera had always tucked the latest issue of Cosmopolitan magazine under the stacks of claim folders on her desk, Mary read Brides, whose influence apparently extended from the engagement through the first year of marriage. Mary had once appealed to me for my recipe for chicken divan until Vera set her straight. Now she tended to regard me with the pity of the newly married for those of us determined to stay single.
I chatted with Darcy for a few minutes more and then made my way back to Mary’s work station, pausing to say “hi” to a couple of other claims adjusters en route. Word of my skirmish with Titus had apparently spread and I’d been accorded celebrity status, which I figured would last until I got fired, one day at best. Mary’s clients, a man and a woman, were just leaving as I reached her cubicle. The woman was in her thirties with a shaggy mane of bleached hair, the styling faintly punk. Her eyes were lined with harsh black, her lashes clearly false. Her patterned black hose and the trashy sling-back pumps with spike heels seemed at odds with the severe cut of her business suit. She seemed far less aware of me than I was of her, barely glancing in my direction as she passed by in the narrow aisle between cubicles. Her companion followed at a leisurely pace, an attitude of arrogance displayed in the very way he walked. He had his hands in his pockets as if he had all day, but I could have sworn he was keeping a tight rein on himself. His dark hair was combed away from his face. He had thick brows above big, dark eyes, high cheekbones, and a mustache cut so that it seemed to trail down around his mouth. He was well over six feet tall, the heft of his broad shoulders exaggerated by the padding in his plaid sport coat. He looked like the bad guy’s ominous sidekick in a prime-time television show. As he came abreast of me, he tried to sidestep but bumped me in the process. He caught my arm apologetically and murmured a “Hey, sorry” as he headed on down the corridor. I caught a whiff of the hair tonic he was using to subdue the wave in his dark pompadour. I found myself staring after them as I moved into Mary’s cubicle.
She wasn’t at her desk, but she appeared a half second later, eyes pinned on a Dixie cup filled with water to the brim. She wore a red cashmere sweater with the sleeves pushed up. Her complexion was fresh and clear, her skin shiny with good health. Her coloring was the stuff of magazine ads. “Here we are,” she said, and then she glanced up at me with some surprise. “Oh. Did they leave? The pair that was here?”
“They went that-a-way. You missed them by a half a second.”
She peered out into the corridor, but there was no sign of them. “Well, that’s weird. She said she wasn’t feeling good, so I went to get her this.”
“She looked okay to me.”
Mary’s mouth pulled down with puzzlement and she set the cup of water on her desk. “I wish they’d hung around. I was hoping you could talk to them.”
“About what?”
She shook her head. “They’re investigators from the Insurance Crime Prevention Institute. She was, at any rate. He’s a special agent with the California Department of Insurance.” She handed me the woman’s business card.
“Him? Are you sure?”
“He was hired last month. She’s been showing him the ropes.”
“He looked like a hood.”
She laughed uncomfortably as if she were somehow responsible for his appearance now that I’d mentioned it. “He did, didn’t he? It’s that tacky coat, I’m sure. I’d never let Peter out in public in a thing like that. Have a seat. Did you talk to Bibianna Diaz? God, now where’d I stick her file?” She sat down and began to sort through a stack of fat manila folders on her desk.
“Nope. She’s still out. I may take my camera with me next time I go over there. Maybe I can snap a picture of her doing backflips on the lawn.” I passed on the information about “Lola Flores” and the two other insurance companies. “Bibianna has to be running a second scam as Lola Flores. There’s no telling how many other claims she’s filed concurrently.”
Mary was properly incensed. “Oh, God, I don’t believe this. I’ll get on it right away and let ‘em know what’s going on.”
“Just make sure they start documenting any dealings they have with her. When we send the files to ICPI, they can send theirs along, too. It should make quite a splash.”
I was still half distracted by the couple who’d just left. I checked the woman’s business card. The ICPI logo was legitimate, looking somehow like a place mat complete with cutlery. According to the card, she was Karen Hedgepath from an office in Los Angeles. The problem was she didn’t look like any ICPI investigator I’d ever met. Most of them are real button-down types – ties, white shuts, dark conservative business suits. This woman looked like a rock star in civilian clothes. I couldn’t believe the regional manager would tolerate the punk hairstyle, let alone the spike-heeled shoes.
“Here we go,” Mary said, extracting a file from the middle of the stack. The folder was marked “Diaz,” a piece of scratch paper with the new address clipped to the front. She reached for an invoice stapled to the envelope it had arrived in. “I just got a whole new sheaf of bills. I guess she saw a chiropractor.”
“Probably a subluxation specialist,” I said, using the only chiropractic term I’d ever heard.
She punched some holes in the invoice and pronged it in the file. “Actually, they were here about Bibianna. That’s why I wanted them to talk to you. I guess ICPI got wind she’d moved up here. She ran a couple of scams in Santa Monica last year and they were hoping to track her down.”