Chapter 10 #2
“Yeah, we don’t want to use email for contact anyway,” Jules said. “Hello, Emily Johnson. You may have just inherited twenty million dollars. Too Nigerian Prince.”
Sam winced as he laughed. “Let’s not do that. Can we call them?”
“Only if you don’t want to talk to any of the Emilys who are younger than sixty-five,” Robin said.
“They won’t answer their phones. You know, maybe it’s not so weird.
The lack of files and scripts. Maybe the place was cleaned out intentionally.
I mean, think about the sheer number of scripts that a producer would have.
My office is wall to wall paper, even though I get more than half my scripts digitally these days.
Twenty-five years ago, God, a producer at his level probably had stacks of scripts covering his office floor—to the point of it being a health hazard.
” He could tell from the looks on both Jules’s and Sam’s faces that they didn’t understand, so he added, “Someone probably moved it all out of the estate back during the worst of the threats from the wildfires.”
“Ooh, good point,” Jules said. “All that paper would go up fast.”
“But I’m not sure why he’d throw away his personal files,” Robin said. “That part’s still weird.”
“Rene said that any mail that came to the house was immediately couriered to the lawyer’s office,” Jules reported.
“Well, that’s not weird,” Robin said. “I mean, we’re still looking for a new personal assistant ourselves, so that, you know, we don’t have to open our mail.”
Their longtime and beloved PA Dolphina Patel had moved to Europe with her husband Will Schroeder, a former journalist writing a book on the war in Ukraine.
She was on the verge of having her second child—and Jules and Robin both missed her badly.
Every time they held interviews to try to replace her, all of the candidates came up ridiculously short, and they went with none instead of less-than.
“I bet you’ll have better luck finding someone here in Los Angeles,” Sam said as he tossed Dave’s massive list of Emilys onto the coffee table.
“Let’s find Emily Johnson first.” Jules told Robin, “Our last, big, it’s-gonna-be-easy hope rests with Gavin LaCrosse.
He’s an old friend and/or business associate of Devonshire.
He’s a producer or a director—I’m not sure which, but he’s been on Devonshire’s payroll for years, which seemed a little odd.
We think we found him in a nursing home, but I’m still waiting to hear back. ”
“LaCrosse is not our dead last hope,” Sam pointed out.
“He kinda is until we get that background info from Dave,” Jules said. “He’s swamped, Dave is, but he thinks—maybe—he’ll get to it tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow’s good,” Sam said.
“But he’s only gonna get to it tomorrow,” Jules said a tad testily. “Which means if we’re lucky, we’ll get his report tomorrow night. We really need access to the TS computers, and to whatever database they—shit, we—search for this kind of info.”
“That’ll happen eventually, too,” Sam said evenly, instead of pointing out that less than a week ago they were all spooning in Jules’s and Robin’s bed, and the idea of a TS branch in LA had been just that—an idea.
A very good idea, but this case had popped up fast, and now they were scrambling to keep up. Which was also good.
Scrambling to keep up was so much better than wallowing in despair. The light in Jules’s eyes was proof of that.
“I want to know more about Harper, too,” Jules said. “There’s just something about him...”
“You mean other than the fact that he’s a liar?” Sam, as always, brought it down to the stripped of all bullshit bottom line.
“Harper’s the lawyer,” Robin clarified.
“For the estate,” Jules said. “But not the client. The client’s the son of the deceased—”
“Casually referred to as Not-Dead Milt, or Milt the Junior,” Sam said. “Or, my personal favorite: Wig-Milt.”
Robin laughed. “Wig-Milt! I think I love him already.”
Jules was laughing, too, and God, that was so good to hear, Robin almost teared up again.
“Come on, Starrett. His hair was... interesting and awful and definitely needed a washing, but a wig? Nah. Sam got sucked into a what-the-fuck wormhole,” Jules told Robin.
“Okay, Squidward,” Sam said, laughter in his voice.
“Yes, you’re right. The what-the-fuck was strong in that room, and I swear to God, I could not look at Wig-Milt without going a little bit blind.
And yes, that might’ve been due to extenuating circumstances, but I abso-fucking-lutely believe he was wearing a wig.
And not like a tasteful hairpiece, BW. I know we’re in Hollywood where bald equals old equals nope.
I accept that we’re gonna get a lotta wigs while we’re here, and I’m not a hater.
I swear.” He put his hand over his heart.
“Let wig-wearers wear their wigs, I’m fine with that.
But this was epic. Picture, if you will, if Milt the Junior had a dog—a big dog—who ate his wig and shat it out, and Milt woke up—probably out in his front yard after he’d stumbled home from a weeklong trip to Reno, okay?
Milt crawls inside, doesn’t shower or change, looks at his calendar and says Oh, yeah that meeting with the team from Troubleshooters and Dead Milt’s asshole lawyer is in ten minutes, so he glances around through his bleary eyes, spots his shatted-out wig on the floor, rinses it off—half-heartedly—in the kitchen sink, sticks it on his head—possibly backwards—and drives to the meeting. ”
“He’s our client, be respectful,” Jules said, even though he was laughing at Sam’s description, too.
“Respectfully,” Sam said, “his wig looked like his dog ate it and shatted it out. He kinda smelled like that, too.”
“Please tell me there are photos.” Robin laughed as he looked from Jules to Sam and back. Jules was rolling his eyes, but he was still laughing, too.
“Oh there are photos, because I knew you would ask.” Sam happily pulled out his phone again, scrolled to his photos app, and showed the screen to Robin, swiping through a series of three.
“Oh my God,” Robin said as he took Sam’s phone and zoomed in. This was the client? Sam was not kidding. The man looked like... his dog ate his wig, yup. “Oh, my God. Please tell me he paid you upfront.”
“He gave us a very large retainer,” Jules confirmed. “In advance, via ACH. It sits securely in the company account.”
"What. The fuck!” Robin said.
“’Xactly,” Sam said.
“Although, okay, actually, if I squint I could make this make sense,” Robin said, again flipping through the photos that Sam had covertly taken.
“I mean, when you take all of the potential PTSD and mental illnesses into consideration... This is, after all, Milt Devonshire Junior, the son of the ultra famous, known-to-be-an-asshole TV producer, with all of that crazy-ass paparazzi bullshit that followed both of them around, 24/7. If I lived through what he’s lived through, I might look like this, too.
But after being Milt Devonshire Junior for all these awful, painful years, how does he not want those tens of millions, like, hasn’t he earned it?
Except he’s the one who hired you to find the woman—a stranger to him—who’s gonna inherit the bulk of the estate. ..?”
“Enormous quivering what-the-fuck, right?” Sam said.
“The wig is weird and hard not to focus on, but that’s the biggest what-the-fuck of all.
” He dropped his Texas drawl as he imitated someone with a flat, California accent.
“I really want to find her. The money’s hers.
I don’t want it. Wig-Milt’s gotta be lying about that. ”
“Nah, I believed him,” Jules cut in. “He really does want to find her. Emily. The lawyer, Harper, definitely doesn’t though.”
“Yeah, Harper,” Sam told Robin. “Whew. He’s his own separate orbiting moon of weirdness. He clearly despises Wig-Milt, plus he’s hiding something.”
“It was pretty strange,” Jules said. “If Harper hates Wig-Milt—and I’m only calling him that to be consistent—but if he hates him so much, and it sure seemed like he did, why did I get the sense that if he had his druthers, he’d contest the new will? Which would mean that everything would go to—”
“Wig-Milt,” Sam said, picking Dave’s list up off the table and riffling through it again. “It’s a definite mystery.”
“I’m gonna check with Troubleshooters’ legal department,” Jules said, “get some advice from Martell Griffin on what would happen if Emily doesn’t turn up.
There must be some way to proceed, you know, legally, if she’s not found.
It would be good to know exactly what that entails, because I was picking up from Harper a very solid sense that we’re getting in his way. ”
“Ditto,” Sam said. “Although we are gonna find her.” He tossed the list of Emilys back on the table and laughed, albeit a tad grimly.
“Even if we have to knock on hundreds of doors. Damn, I’m hungry.
And we haven’t even touched on the note.
” He stood up. “Let’s remember to show Boy Wonder the note after dinner. I’m ordering pizza.”
“There’s a note?” Robin asked.
“Dead Milt wrote a note to Emily Johnson, but left out her address. Or any other identifying information,” Jules explained.
“But Rob speaks fluent Hollywood,” Sam pointed out. “Maybe there’s something there we mere mortals don’t see.” He held out his hand to Jules. “I need your car keys.”
“To order pizza?”
“I’m gonna go pick it up. I hate it when they bring it and it’s cold.”
Robin looked from Jules to Sam and back and it was ridiculously clear that Sam was making himself scarce to give them a little alone-time.
“You really don’t need to—” Robin started to say, but Jules surprised him by speaking over him. “I put ’em on the table by the front door.”
“Thanks. I’ll be back in... oh, probably around forty.” And with that Sam left the room, and then the house, as the front door closed solidly behind him.
And there they sat on that sofa, still wrapped in each other’s arms.
Keep it light, keep it upbeat... Robin pulled back to look into Jules’s eyes. “FYI, after looking at those photos, I’m on Team Wig.”
Jules laughed. “Sam’s not always right.”
“Sometimes he is.”
“It’s fun to work with him again,” Jules said. “That’s for sure. To be honest, this doesn’t feel that different from, you know.”
Robin did know. Jules and Sam had worked together frequently in the recent past, but Jules had always been the FBI agent-in-charge, and Sam had been part of a civilian team working for the feds.
“He insisted I be team leader today,” Jules continued. “In the most ridiculous way, but... This isn’t a very important case. I mean, we’re not saving the world here, but my read on Harper is that he doesn’t care much about the law, so... Emily’s rights need protecting.”
“She’s lucky to have you,” Robin said, gazing into the eyes of this man he loved more than life itself. “Lucky Wig-Milt hired you.”
Jules laughed again. “Yeah.” He kissed Robin sweetly. “Don’t look so worried. I’m okay.”
“I know,” Robin told him. He was just about to use this non-Sam time to tell Jules about his meeting.
There were no wigs—at least that he could tell—and even though the show he’d been offered was a comedy, there was nothing funny or amusing in his story.
In fact it was very un-funny—the conversation he wanted to have with his husband about maybe, just maybe, trying again to have a baby.
But right now Jules was looking at him with heat in his eyes—heat that had been missing for way too long. “Forty minutes,” he whispered to Robin with a smile that could only mean one thing, “before Sam brings us pizza...”
So yeah. They went upstairs.
And this time Jules didn’t trudge.