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helped Rick uncover financial truths about potential partners. Occasionally, he had uncovered financial troubles that sellers tried to hide so they could drive harder bargains. Knowing someone was about six months in arears on their child support payments was very helpful when that person was insisting “I don’t need the money and I can wait for a better offer.”
    Rick was worried that his friend was wasting his brains, but Kent said he loved the serendipity of it, the unpredictability of his assignments, and the thrill of discovering things people thought they had hidden very well. 
    “Well, it depends.” Kent answered his question.
    “On what.”
    “How high their profile is, what kind of trouble they’ve been in, how much money they’ve borrowed over time,” Kent said. “If someone has never had a mortgage, never been arrested and arraigned, never run for mayor, it can be as little as their high school diploma and maybe their best friend’s maiden name. If they’ve made news, made a lot of money, or made a lot of enemies, I can find out a lot. Why do you ask?”
    “I am thinking of hiring someone and I just want to have some idea of what I’m getting into if I do,” Rick said.
    “Really? You found that COO candidate you’ve been looking for? Didn’t he give you a resume?”
    “Ah, no,” Rick said. He suddenly realized how silly his request would sound. “It’s for my admin. I’d like to offer the job to someone, but I know nothing about her.”
    “Then why do you want to offer her the job?”
    “I’m not sure.” Rick paused, and Kent—like any wise PI would—waited to let him hang himself filling in the void.
    “I met her the other day, and I can’t get her off my mind.”
    “Ah, Christ!” Kent nearly yelled into the phone. “You know how stupid that is! Ask her out, Rick. For Christ’s sake, don’t hire her! You’ve kept sex and business separate for years, to good effect. Why would you mess with success?”
    Kent was one of the few friends who knew why he had never hired a woman for more than an administrative function. Rick didn’t think of himself as sexist, although he’d been accused of it often enough. His business had been one singled out as one of the most successful local enterprises with no women in executive positions by the Desert Sun. He’d taken the criticism mutely. The analysis was correct, but he was damned if he was going to explain himself to some newspaper reporter who’d take his reasoning and blow it up into some sordid family drama.
    The reason he kept women out of the company was the same reason he had nothing to do with the business his father had started when he was in kindergarten. It was because by the time he was in high school, his mother had weaseled her way into the family business, taken it over, and literally pushed his father out.
    Women, he decided, especially those you sleep with, should never get involved with your business. And the best way to prevent that was to hire men.
    In a way, he wasn’t proud of it. He knew it was merely a couple of degrees of absurdity from there to a belief that all women should stay home so he wouldn’t be tempted to sleep with him. But, seeing what his father went through—finally giving up, moving across the country, and dying young— he couldn’t shake his conviction that it was for the best.
    “Yeah, I know,” he finally answered Kent. “It’s just that she really needs a better job, and I feel a little sorry for her. She’s obviously working for minimum wage, and clearly, she’s better than that. I’m thinking of calling it a temporary position. That way, if things get too complicated, I’ll just tell her it’s time to move on.”
    “What are the chances it will get too complicated?”
    “I don’t know. She seems pretty disinterested in me, so I guess that’s good. But, yeah, I’ll have to admit it. I think she’s special.”
    ~
    It didn’t take Kent long to come up with some pretty