TCOT Absurd Assumption C10

Paul Thomas Drake, Jr. jumped down from his Jeep to which he was clinging for dear life onto the wet pavement, frustrated with himself that he didn't get the license number of the car that had tried to run him over, and he doubted if he could identify the make or model due to the lack of light in the dingy alley. A good private investigator would have gotten the license number and/or been able to describe the car in some detail, he ruefully realized, no matter how crappy the light might be. The incident happened so quickly and was clearly meant only as a warning; otherwise he would be lying lifeless in the alley. But whether the warning was directed at him or had been for the benefit of the great Perry Mason he wasn't sure. He had to conclude the incident was connected to Della's case and the car had followed Perry to the club, because honestly, his caseload currently consisted of a missing dog, several skip-traces handed to him by a philanthropic bail bondsman, and a hopeless landlord/tenant dispute, none of which warranted such a heavy-handed approach to the possibility of investigation.

Paul re-entered the dark smoky club and for the first time ever, felt uncomfortable and claustrophobic. Nightclubs had become his holy place, where he felt the most at home, largely anonymous until stepping into those momentary spotlights and letting loose on his saxophone. Then the women noticed him, as well as the occasional drunk who in slurred speech would tell him he was too good to play in a dive like this. He accepted the humdrum compliments about his musical ability with conscious sheepishness and the flirty compliments about his talent with wolfish glee. He rarely went home alone the two or three nights he played at the club every week.

Della would be appalled if she knew about his weakness for vapid wannabe groupies; skinny, giggly girls who wore frosted jeans, cropped t-shirts and big puffy tennis shoes and had atrociously permed hair that looked and felt like sticky straw. He would make out with them, have some laughs, occasionally invite them to spend the night, maybe 'go steady' for a week or so. Most of them disappeared when he admitted his day job was being a private detective, so he stopped mentioning it, and let his caseload dwindle to the point where the agency phone had been shut off. Thank heaven for that bail bondsman and his philanthropy toward struggling private investigators. Paul had paid the phone company and just that morning service had been restored to his one-man agency. He suspected the bondsman's philanthropy was predicated on his last name, and he was becoming wise enough to swallow his pride when it really mattered.

Cripes. Who was he fooling? Della probably already knew about his gig at the club, about the girls, and the sad state of his father's revered agency; and would no doubt find the shut-off notice buried somewhere in the dusty papers on his desk tomorrow. On his father's desk. What had she been thinking when she surprised him with all that old-fashioned stuff? He couldn't and wouldn't hurt her feelings by telling her he didn't want to be surrounded by corporeal evidence of his grievously missed, beloved father – or that the legacy of the agency had been choking him his entire life.

But if Della wanted him to work on her case, then by God, he would summon every lesson his father had taught him about being a detective, and he would make her proud.

And make Perry Mason eat his words.

He possessed adequate enough acting skills to beg out of the late-night sets, admitting to having an unnerving confrontation with a drunk patron who took exception to the way he looked at his female companion during his last solo spot. Grabbing his sax and stuffing it into the velvet drawstring bag he preferred to use instead of a hard-shell case, Paul Thomas Drake, Jr. hotfooted it out of the Jazz Spot and drove straight home.

Alone.

And went to bed.

Alone.

Tomorrow he had to prove his worth to the woman who should have been his mother, and the man who if she had been his mother, would have been his father, instead of the terrific one he'd had. And that thought, as always, scared the hell out of him.

Della arrived at The Drake Detective Agency at ten, surmising that she could get a head start on organizing Paul's filing system, which consisted primarily of folders and loose papers stacked on every conceivable flat surface and held down with a wide variety of items drafted into service as paperweights. That was why she had raided the storage unit four months ago. The boy needed filing cabinets and a decent desk, as well as a conference table. While she was in the unit, she dug out lamps, framed art, and a few chairs as well to add to the furniture mover's truck. There had been no good reason the furniture was not being used, considering the desk Junior was using dated from when he was ten and had announced he was going to be a writer and needed a desk, so Della and Perry bought him one. The desk was wobbly now, scratched and dinged, and she wanted it preserved for when Junior had a son of his own, who would be called Trey, carrying on the tradition of nicknames begun by Paul Drake Sr., who had referred to himself as 'Ace' and his namesake son as 'Deuce', which the boy didn't like at all. "I'm a junior," he'd fumed, "not a second." At least she was hopeful Paul Jr. would one day settle down, because she was spending a pretty penny having the desk repaired and refinished for Paul Drake III to be a figment of her imagination.

After unlocking the old frosted glass door, Della stood for a moment in the anteroom, inhaling the familiar scent of the small office. Vestiges of spicy cologne, a faint smell of tobacco mingled with the odor of…hamburgers. She knew what she smelled was probably a true figment of her imagination, but it was comforting to think those particular smells still clung to leather and wood.

The office had once been much larger, occupying two additional adjoining offices on either side. The senior Paul Drake had moved his agency to this building at the same time Perry was shutting down his practice. "Change is good, Beautiful," he'd said wistfully, the omnipresent cigarette dangling from his lips. "I can't afford a suite of offices in the Brent Building without the ridiculous fees I charged Perry, but this building looks more like where you'd find a private investigative firm. Seedy. Mysterious. It suits me."

Paul Drake had lived only two more years after Perry agreed to sit out the rest of Harvey's appointment on the Court of Appeals. The combination of too many cigarettes, a life-long poor diet, very little exercise, and the stress of funding his ex-wife's insatiable need for money, ostensibly 'for the kid', felling him in an instant. Della bitterly maintained Paul worked himself to death so as not to have to live with Myrtle, whom Della had dubbed a 'scheming little package' from the moment they met. Living separately from Myrtle was fine with Paul Sr. after discovering for himself just how hard and calculating she really was and finally confessing his secret family to Perry and Della, but she refused to divorce him for years, effectively using their son's well-being as a shield against losing her reliable meal ticket. The divorce she criminally delayed for a Los Angeles County record five years and nearly bested Harvey Sayers, was finalized when Paul Jr. was eight, a crushing settlement and ridiculous alimony negotiated, and joint physical custody awarded. It was joint custody that Myrtle had fought hard against but Paul insisted upon, and Harvey eventually won with a mountain of depositions and recommendations from the legal, medical, and psychology communities.

When Paul Jr. was twelve his mother began running around with a 'real estate speculator' who made no effort to disguise his dislike for children. She abruptly dropped a year-old petition to have her ex-husband's custody rights terminated and turned the boy over to him when the speculator decided to speculate in North Dakota and wouldn't allow her to bring her son along. One of Myrtle's triumphs in the divorce had been her alimony settlement, which was to endure until she remarried, and which she vowed never to do. The divorce attorneys sat down one more time to renegotiate the financial settlement so Myrtle would be free to fulfill Paul's greatest wish and get the hell out of California. While giving, giving, and giving to Myrtle, Paul Drake had somehow managed to build up an account with enough money to pay for his son to go to a very good college, and Myrtle took it, every penny of it, to North Dakota, along with alimony payments limited to when their son turned eighteen, due to a judge noted for being more sympathetic to the plight of divorced women than to the facts at hand. Paul pretended to be pleased with the new terms, but leaving the courtroom he walked with a decided stoop to his shoulders, a decent, talented man with the capacity to earn a significant income financially undone a second time by the scheming little package that had given him the best thing in his life.

That Paul Drake died of a massive heart attack at fifty-seven wasn't much of a surprise, and that his son never saw one penny of his school money wasn't either. It was, however, a tragic and sad atrocity that surrounded by some of the best legal minds in the country, the beneficiary on Paul's life insurance policy was overlooked, and Myrtle wound up with another substantial sum courtesy of the man Della furiously maintained she had single-handedly destroyed. The detective's liquid assets didn't add up to much, and out of sickening guilt Perry ponied up the money for Paul Jr. to attend college, but the boy wasn't a dedicated student, possessing a grade point average that could be demonstrated with one finger, and therefore the 'scholarship' had been rescinded. Della couldn't argue much with Perry about it given Paul's irresponsibility, despite her own feelings of guilt, but she spent far too many sleepless nights worrying about the boy, who refused any kind of legal help in extricating money from his mother, and didn't seem to care that he sporadically didn't have electricity or telephone service.

Three years ago Junior had begun 'reducing overhead' by refusing cases, which ticked off all of the veteran field operatives, who one-by-one either retired or secured jobs elsewhere rather than work for a kid, even the kid of their revered boss. Two of those veteran agents formed their own agency and took with them a few of the younger agents as well as almost the entire client base of the venerable Drake Detective Agency. Della had employed that new agency on a few occasions for official Gordon Industries business because Paul refused any of her 'sympathy hand-outs'.

Junior plodded on, taking small cases that paid the rent for his small office, and his even smaller apartment. He claimed to need time to write his novel and take a class (that he paid for himself and attended exactly twice), plus the music bug had bitten him again, so he wanted to explore how far he could go with that endeavor. The agency currently paid the bills, sort of, and while Paul Jr. wasn't certain being a private investigator was his life's calling no matter how much his father would have wanted it to be, he stuck with it, after a fashion, out of respect for the memory of his father, in his own way.

The condition of the office was far worse than Della remembered, the mountains of paperwork having been unloaded from the old furniture and piled onto the new, filing cabinets completely empty. She wished she had arrived much earlier. Perry would not like working in such clutter, and he would certainly say something disapproving to Junior, and the boy would get defensive, which would lead to an inevitable shouting match. She slipped out of her coat, hung it on the coat rack and stood for a moment contemplating where to begin to avoid that shouting match.

First things first, and that would be coffee. The only clean thing in the entire office proved to be the Mr. Coffee coffee maker Della had given Junior for Christmas two years ago. At least the boy had his priorities in line. She filled the pot from the drinking fountain in the hall and after a bit of scrounging, located the filters and a stash of expensive grounds. The miraculous little gadget hissed and gurgled as the fragrant lifeblood of all secretaries from time immemorial began trickling satisfyingly into the glass pot.

She decided to start with the piles on the desk so Perry would have a place to work. Moving the files brought on a fit of sneezing from all the dust, and she gave herself a serious talking-to for not bringing cleaning supplies with her, although she doubted whether the elbow grease of only one person could remove more than one layer of accumulated grime. Obviously the cleaning service had been part of Paul's overhead reduction long before the reduction of staff, and she had no choice but to bring one in now if there was to be peace between her investigator and her attorney. She managed to clear enough space to properly sort the files and piles, and was bent over digging through the bottom desk drawer looking for the agency's perpetual files when she became aware of someone standing in front of her.

"What are you doing?"

Della smiled fondly at the young man who was more like his father than he realized. "I thought I'd tidy up a bit before Perry got here."

"No, I mean what are you doing here?"

"I'm working, goose. Perry needs a secretary, and if I didn't allow anyone but me to be his secretary for all those years, I'm certainly not going to allow it now."

Paul grinned. She sure was a feisty little thing. "Okay, how are you doing?"

Della sat down at the desk, holding a pasteboard file labeled UTILITIES in bold black marker. It was empty. "I couldn't be in better hands."

Paul dropped his zippered document pouch on the desk, exactly where she had just cleared space to work, and moved over to the credenza to pour himself a cup of coffee. "Perry doesn't want me working on this case. Everything I do will be put under a microscope."

"Don't let him get you down, honey."

His own mother had never, ever, not once, called him 'honey'. He felt warm all over that this beautiful, audacious woman felt such affection for him. "He doesn't get me down. I'm used to him by now. You know I've always thought of Perry as my own personal Vince Lombardy. He motivates me to complete the eighty-yard pass in life…then yells at me for taking chances."

Della picked up a few files from the pile in front of her. "Perry doesn't yell. He barks."

Paul turned back to Della, coffee cup halfway to his mouth. "Are you handling all of this as well as you're coming across? Having him around again has to be hard for you, not to mention this whole being accused of murder gig."

"I'll let you know," she replied demurely, enigmatically. "What are these?"

Paul took the ratty manila folders from her. "My case files. Not exactly crimes of the century, but they pay the bills."

"Sure," she observed dryly, fanning an incriminating document under his nose. "And just what is this?"

Paul snatched the paper from her hand. "This," he confirmed sheepishly after briefly scanning the document, "is the shut-off notice from the phone company."

"Uh huh," Della murmured.

Before Paul could retort, the door opened and both knew that Perry had entered the outer reception area. He stood in the doorway, presence as engulfing as ever, surveying the shabby confines of The Drake Detective Agency with distaste.

"Just give me two hours," Della said hastily, "and you won't recognize the place."

"I don't recognize it now," Perry commented drolly, moving toward the small wooden conference table and sitting down in a straight-backed chair. He set a tri-fold portfolio in front of him and turned toward Paul and Della. "The preliminary hearing is set for next week. We don't have much time."

The attorney's last comment was made over Paul's eager declaration of "I'm available". You lied to Della, the writer/musician/private investigator told himself. You've never gotten used to Perry Mason. You've just gotten good at hiding how inadequate he makes you feel. He unzipped the pouch and pulled out a manila folder. "Well, I've been busy this morning. Here is a copy of the police report on Arthur Gordon's murder, and an itemized list of the evidence being held in Property."

Paul stood expectantly beside Perry Mason as he glanced through the documents. The lawyer never looked at him. "We need to find out who bought the dress found in Della's trash can."

"Here, Paul, I have my receipt for the dress." Della pulled her purse toward her and rummaged through it, willing Perry to say something encouraging to the boy. Della insisted the dress couldn't have been hers – she had brought it home from the cleaners Thursday and saw it in the closet Friday evening when she changed from her work clothes, so Perry's thinking was another dress had been purchased specifically by the true murderer and exchanged while she was at the Gordon Estate after being summoned by Lt. Cooper.

"Track down everyone who bought that dress." Perry didn't look up from the police report. "And I mean everyone." Della's insistent belief that the dress found in her trash can was not the dress she bought needed to be delved into further. Secretly he thought it would be an incredibly simple task, as there couldn't have been too many women who had bought that hideous dress – at least he hoped not. He stared at a picture of it, and was of the opinion the macabre bloodstains had only improved the floral and tatted lace atrocity.

"How about a receipt for the shoes?" Paul asked.

Della once more scavenged in her purse.

"Need some help there, dear?"

"No thank you," Della said softly, fondly, handing him the department store receipt for her shoes.

"The sooner we have that information the better," Perry called after Paul as he headed for the office door. He set down the police file after the door closed with an emphatic bang. "I hope I'm doing the right thing with him."

"I'm the one who should be concerned, and I'm not," Della said brightly. "You'll see. He'll be just fine." She heaved a big sigh. "Now I have to get these files straightened out and put away, call in a cleaning crew, and order office supplies because if Paul owns a stapler, I can't find the darn thing."

Perry turned and appeared to really notice her for the first time. He got up and came over to the desk. "Della, I know we agreed you could play secretary, but remember that you are the client. Take it easy." He paused. "Please."

She frowned at him slightly, letting him know she didn't appreciate his words, which he knew she wouldn't, but he had to say them anyway. "I'd like to stay busy, Perry."

"In that case," Perry said quickly, eyes twinkling, "I need a detailed report on each member of the Gordon family, in particular information about their finances. Oh, and see what you can get on the housekeeper, Mrs. Jeffries. From what I gather perusing the police report, her testimony could be dynamite." He turned abruptly and reseated himself at the conference table.

"That ought to keep my busy for a while." Della slowly got to her feet and leaned her hip against the desk, arms crossed, eyes misty as she studied his grand profile. "This is nice. Just like old times."

Perry looked at her over his shoulder and his features, once described by a court reporter as 'granite-like', softened considerably before turning back to the police file. Aware of her lingering stare, just seconds later he noisily closed the file, stood, and took a few steps toward where she was still leaning against the desk. He reached an arm out to her. "Della, I –" his words broke off as the door was flung open and a breathless, nearly hysterical woman burst into the reception area.

Well-padded, effusive, blonder-than-blonde, Gertrude Lade was framed by the doorway, hands on voluptuous hips. "Well, I never!"