Mary gave me a smile. “What can I do for you, Mike?”
First, I asked about her kids, a boy named Angus and a girl named Maggie who were very cute and very smart. They were fine, she said, Angus being pure boy and the little girl a true princess. She was doing fine, too, as was Wade and also the ranch was getting along “although we could use some rain.”
“Your computers up?” I asked.
“This one is,” she said, nodding toward the one on her desk. “Want to use it?” I did and she very nicely got out of her chair to let me sit down. “Need help with it?” she asked.
“I need the Internet,” I said and she leaned over my shoulder, clicked the mouse a couple of times and a browser appeared. “I think I’ve got it, Mary,” I said. “Thanks.”
“No problem,” she said and went into the back to give me some privacy.
I had several reasons to do some research on the Internet but the top one on my list was to find out something about Cade Morgan. I typed in his name in the browser’s search engine, and got back a number of hits although none of them seemed to be about our man. One was for a baby in Iowa named Cade Morgan, another a fireman in Massachusetts with the same name. I doubted either of them was my Cade Morgan so I typed in “Hollywood” beside his name and searched again. Nothing came back. Whoever he was, Cade wasn’t a Hollywood player, at least not under that name. I considered the possibility that he produced or directed under a different name. Thinking about this, I tried Cade without the Morgan and also “producer” and “director.” Interestingly, a “Morgan Cade” came back. Mr. Morgan Cade, it turned out, was both a producer and director for Shock and Awe Film Studios in the San Fernando Valley. A quick search gave me a return I expected based on the location of the studio. My work for the majors had included a few visits to one or more of the myriad porn studios out in the valley. Most of the people I met out there were nice folks, trying to earn an honest living in their own peculiar way, but there were some fly-by-nighters out there, too. They were run by, shall we say, unsavory characters? Yes, we shall. I had never heard of Shock and Awe Studios and clicked on their Web site, only to have it refused. A little embarrassed, I sought out Mary and asked her, “Is there a filter on the library’s computer?”
Mary gave that some thought, then said, “I don’t think it will let you look at naked girls, if that’s what you’re trying to do.”
“I’m not,” I swore, holding up three fingers in the Boy Scout manner. “But I am trying to look at the site of a Hollywood studio that makes, well, I guess you might say stag films.”
Mary’s eyebrows went up at that but then she said, “Is it true you used to be a police detective in California?”
“Yes,” I said. “In Los Angeles but I did some work in Hollywood, too. I was private, then.”
Mary cut to the chase. “Are you being a detective now, Mike?”
“Yes, and for a good cause,” I told her. I hoped it was true.
She sat down at the computer, did a few things to it, and said, “Try it now.” She got up and retreated to the back of the library again.
I tried the browser and up came the Shock and Awe Web site. It was pretty basic and so were the women shown on the covers of its DVDs. Basically naked, that is. I was glad Mary had not stuck around. A quick search around the Web site revealed a photograph of a producer-director named Morgan Cade who looked an awful lot like the owner of the old Corbel place. Mr. Cade, the Web site said, was a producer-director of many fine films and a winner of a number of adult film industry awards. There was no mention of him being retired and gone to live among the cows and conservatives of Fillmore County although I did notice that the last of his productions, a flick titled Dancing with the Stark Naked, had been released over five years ago. Apparently, Shock and Awe didn’t get around to updating its site very often, or maybe it was coasting on its past successes or maybe these kinds of films had an endless shelf life.
Having discovered at least something about Cade Morgan, I went after his buddy Toby, which I knew was bound to be more difficult as I only knew his first name. I also suspected it was fake or at least a nickname. I looked around the Shock and Awe site, hoping for at least a photograph of his ugly mug at a party but had no luck. I went back to the search engine and broadened my search, trying as many combinations I could think of that included Toby, director, producer, pornography, and so forth. Nothing came back that made any sense. I called Mary. “I think I’m through here,” I told her.