acrylic nails bore decals of neon flowers, and her unruly gray hair was drawn up into a ponytail atop her head, resulting in a cascade of curls. Huge red dangle earrings completed the ensemble.
“Hey, Celeste.” Jillian leaned her elbows on the semicircular granite desk, designed to impress visitors. “What happened to the go-go dancer you mugged to get those earrings?”
“Buried in a shallow grave,” Celeste said in a stage whisper. “You like?” She gave her head a little shake. “Bought ’em on eBay.”
“Very retro cool. They look great on you.” Jillian actually admired Celeste’s fearless sense of style. The older woman didn’t care what anyone thought of her and dressed solely to please herself, and in the process had achieved a sort of thrift-store chic.
“So, spill it,” Celeste said. “Did you get the job?”
“I did.”
“Good for you.” Celeste took her through her complicated high/low-five sequence. “This is your chance to shine. You do realize, don’t you, that you’re the first female investigator at Project Justice?”
Jillian frowned. “What about Raleigh?” Raleigh Benedict, Griffin’s wife, was head of Legal but also managed her own cases. She was one of the most senior staff members.
“Raleigh runs things from a legal perspective,” Celeste said. “When it comes to fieldwork, she gets one of the guys to help her.”
“Well, I’m not an investigator yet. This is an important case—Daniel himself is coordinating the investigation. I’m just doing a small part.”
“Yeah, but you’re working undercover. If you do a good job, you have the chance to move into the vacancy Billy left.”
Billy Cantu had recently left Project Justice to return to the work he was truly meant to do, as a police detective. Only in her dreams could Jillian fill his shoes.
She voiced the question she’d been wondering about ever since Kendall’s put-down. “Do you think Daniel asked me to do this because of my experience as an admin? I can’t envision Griffin or Ford fetching coffee and making copies for some guy in a suit. Maybe I was the only one he could talk into it.”
“It doesn’t matter how you got the assignment,” Celeste said. “The important thing is what you do with it.”
True. But it still rankled.
“Daniel’s instructions were pretty clear. I’m not supposed to do anything except keep my eyes and ears open and report to him. He told me not to actively investigate.”
Celeste made a face. “Good thing you’ve got a mind of your own.” She shouldered her red patent-leather purse, too large to be legal as an airline carry-on, and made her way to the front door with her enormous ring of keys. “You listen to me, and you’ll come out of this operation smelling like a rose. The first thing you have to do is make friends with the other support staff—admins, legal assistants. They’ll gossip about their bosses, I guarantee it.”
“That’s a wonderful idea…in theory. But I suck at making new friends.” Oddly, though, Celeste seemed to like Jillian. The elderly woman was fierce and gruff with most everyone else, but she treated Jillian like her baby chick.
Celeste dropped her keys into her purse, then paused to look Jillian up and down. “You’re too perfect,” she said bluntly. “You intimidate other women. They despise you even as they want to be just like you.”
Leave it to Celeste to speak the unvarnished truth.
“Don’t worry,” Celeste soothed. “It’s nothing to do with your personality.”
Jillian wasn’t so sure about that. Last year, when Daniel’s eventual wife, Jamie, got sick, some people actually suspected Jillian of poisoning her.
“But you might try looking more…ordinary.”
“Ordinary.” Jillian wasn’t sure what Celeste meant. She felt she was ordinary.
“Like you don’t have a trust fund, girlfriend.”
“Oh.”
Celeste shut off the lights and set the security alarm. Phil, the night watchman, would arrive shortly. Celeste had left him a Snickers bar, Jillian noticed. She licked her lips, wondering if Phil would mind…
“Now,” Celeste said, snapping Jillian’s attention away from the chocolate temptation, “aside from the other secretaries, you need to get to know the janitors, or anybody who cleans or makes repairs. Those people are essentially invisible, but they see and hear much more than you think. Imagine what they could find out just by looking through the trash.”
“That’s the key? Getting to know people at work?”
“It’s the cornerstone of all undercover work, all police work, really. People have to get to know you before they’ll trust you. And they have to trust you before they’ll tell you their secrets.”
“Thanks, Celeste.” It sounded like good advice to her, and she could do it without disobeying Daniel’s orders to refrain from actively investigating, something he deemed too risky because she didn’t have police training.
“Oh, one more thing.” Celeste reached into her voluminous bag and drew out a small, black disk about the size of a quarter. “It’s a listening bug. Plant it in the office of someone you want to spy on, hide the digital recorder within a hundred feet. It’s voice-activated. The recorder has a memory card. You pop it into your computer and listen to the audiofiles. Elevates eavesdropping to a whole new level. Go on, take it.”
Jillian hesitated. “What if I get caught eavesdropping? I’d get fired and my cover would be blown.”
Celeste lowered her voice. “Daniel said to listen, right? This is listening. You gotta take some chances sometimes. I worked undercover in Vice playing a prostitute. Had to deal with some pretty shady characters. My life depended on keeping my identity and my true purpose a secret. You just have to be smart about it.”
Jillian took the bug and the small recorder with murmured thanks and hurriedly tucked it into her own purse. Despite Celeste’s confidence, she wouldn’t use it—she couldn’t take the risk of getting caught. Not only would Mayall Lumber fire her, but so would Daniel.
CHAPTER TWO
JILLIAN ROLLED INTO THE Mayall Lumber parking garage at 6:45 a.m., bleary-eyed but pleased to have missed the worst of the rush hour traffic. That was one benefit of showing up to work at the butt-crack of dawn.
She couldn’t think of any others.
No matter how hard she tried, she’d never been a morning person. Years of 6:00-a.m. swim practice, early college classes and working for Daniel—who also had expected her to rise early—hadn’t cured her of the tendency to sleep until noon if nothing woke her up.
Still, she was self-disciplined enough to manage to do a good imitation of a lark when called for. She’d driven through Starbucks for a Venti cappuccino and had been sipping on it nonstop during her commute. A healthy dose of caffeine now coursed through her system; at least her eyelids no longer drooped.
She opened the parking garage door with her new magnetic key card and smiled at the security guard seated at a desk just inside the door. The guard’s name tag identified her as Letitia, and she wasn’t exactly intimidating with her three-inch fingernails and an avalanche of springy curls pointing every which way. But Jillian tried not to judge by appearances.
Letitia looked at her quizzically, and Jillian showed her the badge on a lanyard looped around her neck.
“My first day,” she said.
The roly-poly guard looked her over, then decided to smile, revealing a row of crooked but bright white teeth in her round face. “Yeah? What department?”
“I’m