Page 15 of Kiss Me Now
There was a pause. “That’s pretty far back to go in someone’s job history. Who did you say you work for?”
“I didn’t. Suffice it to say, in our place of employment, it’s absolutely essential not to leave a stone unturned.” I knew she would infer that it was a security check for one of the federal intelligence agencies. It’s exactly what I meant for her to infer. It was the logical place for her mind to go so close to DC. It was a crime for me to impersonate federal law enforcement, but there was nothing illegal about this woman drawing her own conclusions.
“I see,” she said. “Well, our director has been here for fifteen years. Let me see if she can help you out. Hang on.”
I waited another five minutes and had begun to wonder whether she’d forgotten me when a new voice came on the line.
“This is Kathy Burgess, the director here. I understand you’re doing a...sensitive background check on a former volunteer.”
“That’s correct,” I said, offering no further information. In these situations, it was always best to let the mark’s imagination fill in the blanks. They were eager to imagine themselves as an ally to protecting national security.
“That’s a long time ago, but I do remember Brooke Spencer. She had a particular knack with our residents. She was always going above and beyond to make them happy, working far more hours than her service club at school required. She organized a Senior Prom and made sure every resident had a young person to dance with. Every resident who went talked about that long after she left us to go to college. All of the ones she would have worked with have long since passed, but she was a ray of sunshine.”
None of this surprised me. I would have been shocked to discover shedidn’thave an ease with the elderly. “Did she have any special connections with any of the residents in particular that you remember?”
“All of them, honestly. When she got into college, they pooled their resources and came up with a five-thousand dollar scholarship to help her pay for it.”
The fine hairs rose on my neck, and alarm bells went off in my head. I’d expected to find that the trail started here, but this was a trailhead that began with a flashing neon sign. This was where Brooke Spencer must have learned that a little kindness toward the old could pay off literally.
“Did anything concern you about this transaction? Were you concerned about boundaries between her and your residents?”
“Oh no,” the director said, almost rushing to reassure me. “In fact, she came to me, very worried about it because she said her parents could afford her tuition, and she didn’t like our residents spending their money on her. But I told her to accept it with grace because it made them happy to feel like they were giving back. The fact that I can remember her so many years later despite all the volunteers who have come and gone should tell you that she was special.”
I was unmoved by her praise of Brooke. The more someone’s inner voice tried to whisper that something wasn’t quite right about a person they trusted, the more they talked themselves into believing in that person’s integrity. It was known as a “default to truth,” a setting that allowed human society to thrive based on assumed honesty and trust. In reality, people who lied about important things were rare. That was a statistical fact. But the tiny fraction of deliberate liars who exploited that trust profited disproportionately.
Brooke may have even started at Landsdowne with the best of intentions but gotten a taste of what befriending old people could do for her. The temptation had proven too great, and Brooke’s innate ability to win people’s confidence had served her too well to allow her to walk away.
I thanked the director and hung up, moving on to my next “reference check,” the think tank she’d worked for after college. It was well-known for its focus on public health, and as I researched it, I found multiple articles from politicians on both sides of the aisle quoting the think tank’s findings in defense of their bills, amendments, and public health positions. Typical cherry-picking. The institute itself appeared reputable, but I had no luck getting in touch with anyone who had worked with Brooke directly. I was only able to get human resources to confirm that she had been employed there during the dates she listed and assure me that she had been marked as “eligible for re-hire.”
That led me next to her job with her delegate to the Virginia General Assembly, a woman named Margaret Leeds, but I didn’t bother trying to contact the assemblywoman. Even a state delegate wouldn’t have time for a call like this, and chances were good she may not remember Brooke or have worked with her directly. This was a situation that called for the person who truly knew everything: the delegate’s chief of staff.
“I’m sorry,” the man said when he returned my phone call two hours later. “I’ve only been with the delegate for a year, after her former chief of staff retired, but I can give you her contact info. I’m sure Ellen would be happy to talk to you.”
“That would be great,” I told him, copying down the information. This was the part of private investigation work that got skipped over in TV and movies, the tedious chasing down of tiny details, the calls that sent you in circles, the emails sent that never got answers. But I was used to it, and it didn’t bother me. I was a patient man when stalking my prey.
Especially when that prey was stalking Gran.
I emailed the former chief of staff immediately, but it was two days later before I got a response while I sat on a bench spying in the National Arboretum. It was a pretty park for sure, but a strange place for the vice president of a large credit agency to meet with one of K Street’s most notorious lobbyists. I’d tailed the VP to the parking lot then did a quick clothing change in my car, switching into one of several outfits I kept on hand. My daily uniform was gray dress pants with a button down because I could easily throw on a sport coat and tie if I needed to blend in at the capitol or one of the popular power lunch spots in town, or I could remove the button up to reveal the T-shirt I wore advertising a 5K I’d never run if I needed to look more like a tourist.
I’d swapped out my pants for shorts and switched my office shoes for flip-flops, then grabbed my camera and headed into the arboretum a minute behind the VP, spotting her easily. I had settled onto my bench with my binoculars looking for all the world like a birdwatcher, when in reality I was watching them closely.
I didn’t have any sound equipment, but I didn’t need to. I needed only to establish a pattern of meetings between these two, so once I had a few closeup photos on my phone, I checked my email and found a reply from Ellen Brown.
Dear Mr. Norton,
I did indeed have the pleasure of supervising Brooke Spencer during her time with Delegate Leeds and would be happy to vouch for her.
Please call at your convenience.
Kind regards,
Ellen Brown
I pretended to follow another bird as it flitted in the opposite direction from my subjects, then exited the grounds when they were out of sight. I’d captured what I needed to for today.
I called Ellen Brown from the car, impatient to pick up Brooke’s trail again. I was getting closer to the edge of the black hole in her resume. “Hello, this is Graham Norton calling for a reference check on Brooke Spencer,” I said when a woman answered the call. I gave the name of the British talk show host I often used when I didn’t want to advertise that I worked for Fleming, Roth, and Schill. No one ever recognized the name here. “Is this Ellen Brown?”
“It is. I’m happy to discuss Brooke with you. I have nothing but good things to say.”
