Who Are You When I'm Not Looking

Do you pour a little something on the rocks?
Slide down the hallway in your socks?
When you undress, do you leave a path?
Then sink to your nose in a bubble bath?
My oh my, you're so good-looking
But who are you when I'm not looking?

 

Jim watched as his father and other local dignitaries cut the ribbon at Frayler Academy. He was surrounded by the Bob-Whites, his mother, and all the people to whom he was closest. Trixie clutched his arm and beamed up at him. He could never remember feeling more contented. He bent his head down to whisper into her ear when the cell phone in his pocket began to ring. Frowning, he apologized immediately.

“Sorry, Trix,” he murmured. “But I really need to answer this.”

His hand reached into one pocket, then the other. Feeling a slight sense of panic, he began to pat his pockets, searching for the ringing phone while Trixie looked on in amusement. Why wasn’t she helping him look for his phone? Finally, she laughed, held up her purse, and opened it for him to peer inside. Sure enough, there was the ringing phone. He made an urgent grab for it and pushed the button.

“Hello,” he barked, glancing around at the crowd, which suddenly seemed to be dispersing, trickling away as a canopy of umbrellas snapped open. The sun was sliding behind a cloud as the Frayler Academy supporters evaporated. He looked up to see if it was about to rain, then frowned as he realized he couldn’t see the sky.

“Barnes, is that you?” An unfamiliar voice spoke from the phone.

Gradually it dawned on him that he had been dreaming. It took a few moments to process the fact that he was stretched out in Trixie’s comfortable bed. A faint sound of running water behind the closed bathroom door told him where she was. The glowing light of her alarm clock seemed to mock the fact that they’d had very little sleep. The strange voice spoke again, and he realized he needed to say something. Jim blinked and cleared his throat. “Belden residence. How may I help you?”

“Barnes, is that you?”

He frowned, realizing the unknown owner of the deep voice on the phone thought Trixie’s employee, Sean Barnes, would be at her apartment this early in the morning.

“Where in the hell is my report, Barnes? You know I have to give a briefing this morning. Don’t tell me there’s nothing new, I’m not buying it.”

Jim cleared his throat again.

“Beatrix isn’t available right now, could I take a message?” He managed to sound normal, but his heart was pounding as the situation unfolded. After finally spending a night with his fiancée, he had awakened to a ringing telephone, and now some strange man was suggesting things Jim didn’t care for in the least.

“Dammit, Barnes, don’t try that ---” the voice stopped. “Identity code, please.”

Jim pulled the mobile phone from his ear and stared down at the display. He had no idea what to say, and no idea of his interrogator’s identity.

“Who’s on the phone?” Trixie’s voice penetrated his confusion, and he looked up. She was standing in the doorway of her connecting bathroom, a large white towel wrapped around her, her wet hair still a riot of curls.

“Someone who wants an identity code,” he said slowly.

Trixie moved to the side of the bed and practically snatched the phone from Jim’s hand.

“Belden speaking. Code 25695420.”

“Belden, who in the hell was that?” Jim could plainly hear the tone, as well as most of the words. The caller was irate, and would tolerate no arguments or excuses. Trixie inhaled a cleansing breath before answering.

“A friend, sir. I was, um, indisposed and he heard the phone ring.”

“Do you want to explain why I didn’t get my status report last night?”

“No sir, not right now,” she answered. “The circumstances are not conducive for a sit-rep.” She glanced at the clock. “Technically, sir, there is still almost an hour before the report is due. I know you usually have it by now, but it’s not late.” Jim realized she had slipped out of bed without waking him for the sole purpose of showering and taking care of whatever mysterious business she was involved with before a morning deadline. Evidently, her client had been surprised not to find a report waiting for him.

Silence greeted this answer and Jim watched as she bit her tongue. Clearly, she was not willing to say anything else in front of him; nor was she offering any additional explanation. He wondered again who was on the phone and who was going to win the stand-off of silence.

“Very well, Agent Belden,” the caller said slowly after a long minute had passed. “I’ll expect your report shortly.”

The line disconnected. Trixie sighed and turned off the phone, dropping to sit on the edge of the bed.

“What was that all about?” Jim strove to maintain some semblance of normalcy, but it still felt as if the question exploded from him.

Trixie didn’t reveal any emotion, but Jim thought he saw her hunch her shoulders against his outburst. “A rather demanding client,” she prevaricated. “He gets a report from us on his … um … his case. Usually, he would have it by now, although technically it’s not late.”

“I see.” Jim’s voice was cold. “Do you want to try and explain why he thought I was Barnes?”

Trixie’s eyes widened and she sat up straight and shivered as his icy tone registered. Swallowing hard, she held up the small BLISS unit with her right hand, while her left hand struggled to keep the damp towel in place. “Only Sean, Amy and I have the proper code to unlock our secure lines,” she explained. “It’s for the safety and security of the client. Unfortunately, I forgot to lock the unit this morning when I went to shower. I wanted to try to shower and get that report filed before you woke up.”

She flushed, recalling why he was in her bed.

Jim nodded slowly. He strove to rein in the green monster of jealousy that was trying to overpower him. “I didn’t realize phone technology had advanced to that level.”

She held the unit out to him. “This is the latest generation of smart phones. It’s a Broadband Long-range Internet Secure System, commonly referred to as a BLISS. It’s a phone, a PDA, a GPS, a computer ... some of everything. It should have been locked so that only I or another person with the code could answer the line. That was my mistake. I’m, uh, I’m not used to having someone else here in the morning.”

He took the phone from her hand and set it carefully on the table next to the bed. It took everything Jim had to control the multitude of feelings that were struggling to erupt from deep inside him. Fortunately, a damp Trixie wearing nothing but a towel went a long way to distract him from the mysterious client’s assumption that Sean Barnes would be with her at this time of the morning. Taking a deep breath, he blew it out in an almost explosive manner. The monster was under control.

“Do you like someone else being here?” He quirked a questioning brow as he gazed appreciatively at his scantily clad fiancée.

“I like you being here.” Suddenly he felt sure she was being totally honest with him.

He leaned forward and softly brushed her lips. “Exactly how much time do you have to get your client that blasted report?” he murmured into her ear.

“Um, about forty minutes” she answered after glancing at the clock.

“How long will it take you to write it?”

“About ten minutes.”

Jim dropped a string of kisses along her jaw line to her ear and tugged at the damp towel she still clutched to her body. “We might have enough time.”

“Enough time for what?” she gasped, as she felt the towel slipping.

Jim smiled slowly and pushed her shoulders into a supine position on the bed. He enjoyed the tantalizing view as the towel automatically slipped lower. One more tug, and it would be out of the way. “It’s really better if I just show you.”

 

 

Sean whistled merrily as he unlocked the door of the Belden-Wheeler Detective Agency. Juggling his laptop case and a cup of coffee, he expertly relocked the door behind him. He was determined to beat his boss into the office and impress her with the work he’d done the night before. The free time she had given him then had not been wasted. Continuing his cheerful whistle, he made his way to the conference room. She’s not the only one who can burn the midnight oil, he thought. Wait until she sees what I found on –

“Hey! What are you doing here?”

Amy Freeman was seated at the conference room table, her fingers flying over the keyboard of her computer. She shrugged in response to Sean’s question. “Getting a jump on the boss, and you. I guess you don’t need the coffee I got you.” She nodded toward the cup tray where two large cups of java sat, still steaming. One had his name scribbled on the side, and the other read Belden. “Thanks for thinking about the rest of us,” she muttered, obviously put out at the fact he’d only procured coffee for himself and not the rest of the office.

“Hey, that’s not nice. I figured I’d run out when it was closer to the regular time,” he offered in his defense. “Guess we both had the same idea to get a jump on the boss, huh?”

Amy nodded. “Wait until you see what I found.”

He grinned. “Same here. The information I uncovered on --” He stopped short, a sliver of suspicion pricking his expansive mood. “Who have you been digging up the dirt on?” he demanded.

“Uh, uh.” She shook her head. “You first.”

“You remember how disparagingly Madji’s girlfriend talked about his friend, Chris?” Pausing only a moment for Amy’s answering nod, he continued. “Well, it took some digging, but I’ve finally found something on the virtuous but geeky Emily Christina Williams,” he declared. “Can you top that?”

Amy grinned. “Madji Farsi’s former girlfriend. She had a whole new insight on our lover boy. She said he wasn’t ready for commitment, right?”

He nodded and she plunged ahead. “But it didn’t take him long to get married once he met his current wife. No one has done much looking at her! She must play a role in all this.” Amy snapped her fingers. “What do you want to bet he knew her before, when he was dating Sarah?”

“Madji, huh?” Sean chuckled. “You forget, Beatrix cleared him as a suspect. But it wouldn’t surprise me to hear Madji and Chris were very close friends. She wasn’t just a geek in high school; she was a promiscuous geek.”

“Oh?” Amy’s eyebrows went up and she stared at him. “How so?”

“According to her classmates at Brooklyn High, neither Reid nor Ted followed the geeky Miss Williams to MIT because she was playing the two of them off each other, trying to split up their friendship. She wanted both of them to want her.”

“No way!” she vowed. “I saw a picture of her in her high school yearbook, and there’s just no way. Besides, if she’d been that way, there’s no way they would’ve hired her to come back and work with them.”

“I’m just telling you what her classmates told me,” Sean protested. “Why would they make that up?”

Amy’s eyes narrowed and her stare went ice-cold. “Would this classmate be female, by any chance?”

“Well, yeah,” he admitted. “They said they were pretty tight with her back in the day.”

“They!” She rolled her eyes. “Oh, please. They are jealous, petty, heifers, who wanted Reid or Ted for themselves. They didn’t like that Chris was friends with both of those guys, and neither of them would give your pretty little cheerleaders the time of day.”

“I didn’t say they were cheerleaders,” Sean protested.

“But they were, weren’t they?” Amy asked sweetly. “Or dance team, or majorettes, or part of the mean girls club.”

“Yeah, they were cheerleaders,” Sean agreed. “But still, they don’t have any reason to make this up.”

“Nope, you’re right about that. But it sure wouldn’t stop them.” She shrugged. “Go find one of the guys who hung out with them. You’ll get a different story from them, or from one of the geeky girls. Surely there’s someone around who was friends with Chris in high school.”

“Yeah, Reid and Ted.” He felt deflated and demoralized at Amy’s reaction to his information. Worse, he had a sneaking feeling she might be right. He’d delved deeply into the social networking chat rooms to make that connection, and now it looked like wasted effort. But he wasn’t admitting defeat. “By the way, what dirt did you dig up?”

“Madji Farsi. He’s practically a boy scout.” Amy grinned. “But I’ll bet you a dollar his innocent-sounding wife is up to her neck in this mess!”

 

 

Jim sat on the side of Trixie’s bed, tying his shoe. He couldn’t help smiling as she came in and flopped down on the bed next to him, sighing heavily. “It’s done.”

“Did you make it on time?”

“Four minutes to spare!” She blew on her fingernails and pretended to buff them on her sweater. “Piece of cake.”

“There’s coffee if you’re interested.” He leaned back on his elbows, looking sideways at his fiancée, still wondering how to approach her with his suspicions.

“In a minute,” Trixie said. “Right now it feels like I’m in the Army. You remember that old campaign slogan from way back when? ‘We do more by nine than most people do in a day,’ or something like that.”

He grinned. “You’ve got almost an hour until nine. What time do you have to be in the office?”

“The sooner the better,” she admitted.

Jim stood and turned to pull her upright. “Come on. Grab your extra special BLIMP phone and let’s get that coffee. If you don’t need it, I do.”

"BLISS!" she corrected, with a playful punch to his arm.

In less than a minute, he poured two mugs of coffee and handed one to her, brushing her lips with another kiss. “It’s good to know that I didn’t wreck the schedule too much.”

Trixie took a sip from her mug before giving him a dopey grin. “Buddy, wrecking the schedule isn’t the right way to put it. You've created an entirely new and better schedule.”

“Where does someone purchase one of those special phones?” He took the phone and turned it over in his hand, inspecting it with interest.

“It’s a prototype. They’re not available for sale. Not to mention they have export-controlled technology embedded within them.”

Jim’s eyes narrowed. “Where did you get it?”

Trixie coughed nervously. He held his breath, praying she wasn’t going to try to fob him off with evasive answers. “My boss at the CIB got it for me.”

Jim looked at her for along moment in silence before asking. “Was that your boss on the phone?”

She nodded.

“It’s strange you refer to him as your boss and not your former boss,” he remarked, handing the phone unit back to Trixie.

Trixie said nothing and quietly pressed the keys to lock the phone. She placed it back on the kitchen table and tugged her jacket, seeming unsure what to say next. Jim could imagine the tongue-lashing she’d get from her boss over allowing him access to the coded phone.

“Trix,” he began slowly. “You don’t have to confirm this, but I’ve believed for a long time, almost from the beginning, that you’re working on a case for the CIB. I’m guessing that for some reason, they have you working undercover.” He glanced at her. Her facial expression remained impassive, but her eyes were blinking rapidly. “I just need you to tell me one thing … you and me … am I part of your cover?” he asked bluntly.

“No!” The denial burst from her. With a quick jerk of her hand, she set her coffee cup on the table, heedless of the hot liquid that sloshed over her hand. She leaped into his arms, and for a split second he struggled to keep his own coffee from spilling as he caught her to him. “Oh, God, no!” She pressed desperate kisses onto his lips and face before finally burying her face in his shoulder. “Jim, I love you. I knew it was a terrible idea to let this happen, to get together with you right now, but I couldn’t help it,” she blurted. “I wanted to tell you, but ---”

“Shhhh.” Somehow, he managed to set his own mug on the table with only minor sloshing, before his arms encircled Trixie. He held her close to his chest. “I understand.”

Trixie sighed and snuggled even closer, as if he was her life’s haven. But he could tell she had more to say, so he waited with a patience he didn’t know he had. He felt her draw a deep breath. “There’s more,” she murmured into his neck. “I need to tell you, this is a problem.”

“A problem?” Jim released one arm and nudged her chin, urging her face up to look at him. “You didn’t act like I was a problem last night,” he reminded her.

“That definitely wasn’t a problem!” Trixie replied.

Jim waited, realizing there more explanation to come; he dropped a reassuring kiss on her forehead. As he expected, a few moments later, she pushed away from his chest. Sighing as she glanced at the clock, she ran a hand through her curls. “There’s a lot to explain,” she admitted. “And unfortunately, if I don’t get to the office soon, there’ll be even more to explain. For now, just please – understand why I took this case.”

“Why?”

“Because I didn’t trust anyone else to believe Wheeler International would have no part in dealing with terrorists.”

Jim stepped back and studied his special girl. What was she now, really? The silence between them widened, and finally she spoke.

“What is it? Why are you looking at me like that?”

“It’s real. You’re real.” He noticed her confused look and tried again. “All this time, you’ve been at school and then working in Washington and Chicago. You told us a few things about your job and being an agent, but it never seemed real. It was like you were when I met you. You were good at figuring things out and solving mysteries. Usually with Molinson right behind you telling you to stay out of his way. But now you’re Molinson ---” He stopped and choked back a chuckle at the horrified look on her face at the comparison to the Sleepyside police chief. “Not exactly like him, but now you’re the authorities you were supposed to call then. Law enforcement, federal agent, and I guess, almost a spy right now. And it just hit me, this is your job. Not something you do for fun.”

Trixie shook her head. “My job is fun, most of the time. But that’s not the way to put it. I really enjoy my work. Cases are puzzles to be figured out. You wouldn’t believe all the stuff I’ve learned. Things that I never expected would help an investigation, especially things having to do with banking, computers, and accounting. So many of my cases have been about the money and ---”

She stopped and her eyes widened. “Ohmigod,” she whispered. “The money. I never even thought about the money.” She grabbed his arms and reached up, tiptoeing, to give him a quick kiss. “You’re brilliant, Jim!”

Like a whirlwind, she darted around the room, snatching up her phone and briefcase, and shrugging into her coat. “I’ve got to get to the office! Where are my keys? Are you going to be here tonight? I need to leave you an extra key so you can get in. Give me a call later, okay? It’s about the money; I can’t believe I didn’t realize it before.” With that, she dashed out of the kitchen and before he could follow her, Jim heard the front door slam.

Automatically, he checked to confirm it was shut. She was gone. Something bright caught his eye, something that hadn’t been there last night. On the table, next to the front door, a bright new brass key winked in the pale morning light. She’d stopped only long enough to leave him a key.

He crossed the room and picked it up, slipping it into his pocket. Smiling to himself, he returned to the kitchen to clean up the spilled coffee and turn off the heating element. He’d have to cross the city to his parent’s apartment to change clothes before going to work, but the delay seemed trivial just now. He whistled the bob-white call as he rinsed the two coffee mugs. Then, recalling the look on Trixie’s face as she realized she’d figured out a piece of the puzzle of her case, he spoke aloud.

“Trixie Belden is still attracting mysteries like a magnet attracts nails!"