She hoped her voice didn’t reflect the roller coaster ride between concern and panic she was on.  She really wouldn’t look good in an orange jump suit. It would not be good with her skin tone and it would clash with her strawberry blonde hair.

“There are a couple of things I’d like to discuss with you.  I wondered if we could meet for lunch.”

Again, his voice, deep and thick like velvet, gave no indication of whether he was planning an interrogation, was merely on a fact-finding mission, or was just inviting her to lunch.  She looked at her watch, 10:45 a.m. and checked her calendar.  She was free until two o’clock.  She asked where he’d like to meet.  He suggested the Cheesecake Factory.  She countered with The Bristol.  They agreed on J. Alexander’s at eleven-thirty.

She was having an internal debate about calling Ben, still unsure if she needed a lawyer, when Bob Carlson stuck his head into her office.  She held up a finger as she dialed Meg’s number.  Meg and she had learned that it was best for only one of them to be in complete control of her calendar.  Meg had won.  Lane motioned Bob to a chair as she left Meg a message that she’d be out of the office between 11:15 a.m. and 2:00 p.m.

Bob shook his head from side to side, as he gave his evaluation of PROtect, the software package that they’d just seen.  Lane was glad to hear she and Bob were on the same page.  A lot of promises but not much experience or background.  They didn’t even know what Gramm, Leach, Bliley was.  She had to be suspicious of a company selling privacy software that didn’t know about the legislation passed at the federal level that had kicked off the whole privacy industry.  Bob had told them, that Telco was talking with other companies and he’d reach out if they made the final cut.  Lane grabbed her purse and keys, as she told Bob that she’d see him in the two o’clock status meeting.

As she walked to the elevator, she thought about her position at Telco Unlimited.  Lane often said that in the new “Information Age” there were no more secrets.  She didn’t like the total lack of privacy, and was pleased that corporations were becoming aware of their responsibility to protect personally identifiable information for and about their customers.  It was especially important for Telco who could boast high profile people from entertainment, sports, and politics among their customers.  Lane knew that it was probably fear of litigation and not altruism, which resulted in the creation of her position.

She took the elevator to the underground parking garage and got into her car.  It was a gorgeous day for late July.  The temperature wasn’t too high, mid 90’s and the humidity was low.  She put the top down.  There was more traffic than she’d expected, making her arrival later than she’d have preferred.  Lane had an almost obsessive compulsion to be everywhere early.  Her comfort zone was ten minutes for meetings and at least two hours if an airport was involved.

All heads turned as the woman dressed in a silk suit the color of ripe strawberries walked into J. Alexander’s.  It wasn’t just that she was striking with her red hair neatly twisted up at the back of her head; nor that she had great legs, nor that she stood at least six feet tall.  It was the presence with which she entered the room that drew everyone’s attention.  She moved slowly through the waiting area clearly not noticing the way the crowd parted as she made her way.

Mick McGuire stood in the waiting area taking in the scene.  The way the crowd parted reminded him of Moses parting the Red Sea.  The woman approached him and extended her hand.  He took it, and hoped that Lane hadn’t noticed that he hadn’t recognized her until she stood right in front of him.  During their other meetings, she’d been wearing jeans and sandals and had worn her long strawberry blonde hair in a ponytail.  The transformation was a bit unnerving.  She could have walked off a runway.

“Ms. Parker, I’m glad you could arrange your busy schedule so we could meet,” Mick said as he shook her hand.  He nodded to the hostess who approached menus in hand and led them to a quiet corner booth.

Lane looked around the room cautiously.  Her family often joked that she was always the most paranoid person in the room.  She usually countered telling critics that just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you.  Lane had never been involved in a murder investigation.  But she did read between three and five murder mysteries a week, and she’d seen murder investigations on TV, and the one thing she remembered about Colombo is that when he starts showing up to chat, anyone with half a brain should know enough to worry. Lane had more than half a brain and she was more than a little worried. Detective McGuire who had abandoned his uniform of black, for a charcoal gray suit may not be a short, rumpled, seemingly absent-minded detective, but three chats in three days sure didn’t give Lane a warm feeling. And, the Detective was trying so hard to make chitchat.

The waiter came and told them about the specials.  They both ordered iced tea and somewhere between “What do you do at Telco Unlimited?” and “What exactly does a Chief Privacy Officer do?”  The waiter delivered two iced teas and took their order, Salmon Caesar salad for each of them.  The chitchat continued.

“How long have you been with Telco Unlimited?”

“Three years.”

“What did you do before that?”

“I moved to Kansas City from Omaha where I was Vice President of Information Systems for one of the baby bells.”

The waiter delivered their salads.  Lane hoped the inquisition would be over now so she could enjoy her salad in peace.

Lane wondered if Mick was a brave man, or a crazy man.  Perhaps he just believed that the third time was a charm.  She’d managed to send him to the dry cleaner on both of their prior meetings and now here they sat with two full glasses of iced tea and food to boot.  She had begun to feel a slight throbbing behind her right eye.  She looked at her watch and decided to see if she could move things along.

“Detective, I have a question for you.  What’s the real reason for this meeting?”

He looked up from his salad.  “Two things actually.  Ben called me this morning. He said if you’re a suspect that he’s representing you.  I told him you weren’t a suspect at this time, more like a person of interest.”

Lane felt a small sense of relief before she started to dwell on his last three words. “Person of interest” was cop code for suspect and anyone who had watched a crime show or read a mystery novel knew it.  She took a drink of tea and waited for him to continue.  Patience isn’t a virtue anyone would ever attribute to Lane, yet she waited patiently, well as patiently as she could as he ate half his salad.

“And the other reason,” she finally asked as she began rubbing her right temple.

Mick may not have recognized Lane as she approached him in the waiting area, but he did recognize the signs of the headache he was sure had begun to bother her again.  “We have a preliminary cause of death,” he responded.

Lane looked at him quizzically, waiting as they say, for the rest of the story.   Her cell phone rang.  While the cell phone industry was the current source of her livelihood, and she wouldn’t go back to a time before cell phones, she sometimes wished she could be just a little less available.

Both the ring tone and the caller ID told her it was Ben.  She excused herself and stepped away from the table to take the call.

“So, Red, how’s your day going?  Got anything you want to tell me?”

“My day’s going fine.  I’m having lunch with your friend Mick.  He was just about to tell me the cause of death.”

“Really? I spoke with him earlier and he didn’t say anything about the cause of death, but he did assure me you’re not a suspect.”