Perri O'Shaughnessy - Unfit to Practice

“My fiancé,” Brandy corrected, looking conflicted. “We’re supposed to get married in June.”

“Right,” Paul said, tucking the photograph of Brandy and Bruce into his pocket.

He let Wish slip a picture of Brandy from the credenza into his pocket without remark. In the photo, she wore a demure red bathing suit, not a bikini, but the effect was obviously irresistible. Well, what harm could it do? Wherever Bruce was, he didn’t care at the moment, and neither did Paul.

They walked up to Il Fornaio for caffeine, coming out slightly brighter-eyed. “Shouldn’t we go through his diary?” Brandy asked. “I figured that might tell us where he would be. If he’s got another girlfriend, I might as well find that out right now.”

“On the relevant day,” Paul said, looking at the right page but keeping it well out of her line of sight, “he planned to attend a lecture at Stanford, then go to a French film at someplace called Aquarius.”

“He studied French in college. I never did.”

“Where did you go?” Wish asked, his notebook and pencil poised.

“Why does that matter?”

“You never know what might be important,” he said.

“I went to Mission College down near San Jose. He went to Santa Clara University and got a law degree. Now, are you going to tell me or not? Was he alone?”

“He was meeting someone,” Paul said.

“A woman?”

“Someone named Kirby.” That sounded safe. That was a male name.

The lines in her forehead cleared. “Oh, Kirby! Let’s go talk to him! Of course, I called him already when I called all Bruce’s friends. He said he didn’t know anything, but he’s a pal. He’d lie for Bruce. He’s from back when they used to make student films and Bruce was planning to become an auteur.”

“I thought you didn’t know French,” Wish said.

“I only know one line,” Brandy said. “Aimez-vous les pique-niques?” She said it artlessly, with no awareness of the impact of her words. Paul propped Wish up to make sure he could get out the door without fainting.

Kirby lived only a few blocks away, on a wide residential street lined with soldierly groups of luxuriant trees, in a compact thirties bungalow with a sky-blue-painted porch and generous front yard. Brandy led the way. “Kirby works nights, so he should be home.”

“Nice little place,” Wish observed. “I might like living in a neighborhood like this.”

Brandy laughed. “After you’ve made your first five million. This house would set you back at least a million.”

“How do people make that kind of money?” Wish asked, staggered. “And why would they spend a million of it to live in a house that’s half the size of my mom’s?”

“Kirby owns a chain of twenty-four-hour printing shops and he lives here because-oh, this is a great location. Between two major airports, beautiful weather, money growing on trees.” She sounded tired. “What more could you want?”

“Bruce likes this area?” Wish asked.

“Yeah.”

“What about you?”

“Where we live isn’t the problem between me and Bruce.”

“Then what is it?”

Brandy cast a cold eye on Wish, then Paul. “It’s personal.” She pressed the doorbell.

A small, sandy-colored man on the sunny side of thirty answered the door after several minutes, his eyes opened only halfway. “Brandy?”

“Sorry to wake you up, Kirby, but it’s important.”

He opened the door to let them inside, but didn’t move past the entryway. Brandy made introductions. After inspecting Paul’s license at great length and asking Wish a longer-than-polite series of questions about his role in all this, Kirby invited them to sit in the living room. “You’re still looking for Bruce, I take it.”

“Do you know where he is?” Brandy asked. “Because I really need to find him.”

A white-paneled door to the right of the fireplace opened. “Hi, Brandy,” said Bruce.

Bruce Ford, wearing thin black-rimmed glasses and hair trimmed and tamed since his photograph, was taller than Paul, which made Paul want him to sit down. Kirby excused himself shortly after Ford’s arrival, which left Bruce at one end of the room, Paul in a chair by the dining-room archway, and Brandy and Wish aligned in chairs by the fireplace, which held an ornate iron grille and tall candles instead of a fire.

Paul couldn’t figure out a way to get Bruce down, so after a moment or two, he stood and leaned against a squat pillar.

Bruce seemed to be waiting for something from Brandy, who finally realized it and got up to kiss him at the same time as Wish seemed to find something mesmerizing about his shoelace.

“As you can see, I was worried about you,” Brandy said, disengaging from Bruce’s grip.

“You hired a private investigator to find me?” Bruce asked.

“Not exactly.”

“Well, are you going to tell me why you took off like that, without a word?”

“I’ll get to that,” Brandy said. “Let me just tell you how we got here first, okay?”

He folded his arms and listened. When she got to the campground story, the agitation began. “Brandy, you owe me an explanation.”

“I know but…”

“You run out on me, then waltz in here and tell me you’ve been mixed up in a murder!”

“I’m not waltzing.” Brandy folded her arms, too. “And I tried to reach you but you left your phone at home!”

“My phone’s broken, so I left it behind. And, in case you’re wondering why I’m here and not home, it’s because your campground friend came around to my office and scared the hell out of my staff.”

His staff? Paul thought. She must be some dazzling part-time receptionist. “Cody Stinson came to your office?”

“That’s the name he gave.”

“What did he say?” Paul asked.

“First off, he was loaded on something and didn’t make a whole lot of sense. Second, he’s not the type we get in our offices usually. Not an easy man to talk to. He said that we were trying to get him thrown in jail for something he didn’t do. Well, when he got to the part about not strangling someone, I cut the conversation short. I got him out of there and came to stay at Kirby’s until things settled down. That seemed like a logical response, considering a very strange person with a scary story had shown up in my office.” He turned back to face Brandy. “I called Angel’s, assuming you were there, but I got the machine.”

“Sam’s out of town with the kids,” she said.

“Then I called your mobile, and got more mechanical messages. You need a decent message system! You’ve got to keep that thing charged up! I’ve been frantic, worrying about where you were and what was going on!”

“Bruce, I’ve been trying to call you everywhere! I went to meet that guy, thinking it was you!” By now, Brandy was in tears.

“Brandy, this is awful,” Bruce said. “No more fighting. C’mere.” He held out his arms, and she walked into them. “I’m so glad to see you.”

“We need to talk in private,” Brandy said, sniffling, to Paul and Wish.

Paul and Wish returned to the car to wait.

Wish took out his notebook and took his lip between his thumb and pointer finger. “So what have we learned so far?”

“We found him. I guess that makes her glad.”

Brandy stayed inside for a long time. Through the glass of the Mustang’s front window, Paul and Wish could easily follow the overall thrust, if not all the details, of the argument.

“Brandy is saying that she hasn’t been fair with him,” Wish reported, leaning his head out of his open window to hear better. “Bruce wants her to come back, but she’s not willing to live there again unless-unless they don’t sleep together anymore. Bruce hollered when she said that.”