by Jane Hinchey
"Where have you been? I'm starving!" Thor greeted me at the door and a pang of guilt had me scooping him up into my arms for a cuddle. "I'm sorry. I—" I was going to say forgot but bit off the words before they left my mouth. I didn't want him to know I'd forgotten him. Also, what was I thinking cuddling this cat? I was about to put him down when he head bumped my chin. I froze. Was he about to attack my face?
"Awww, look at you two," Ben purred. "That's nice."
"Nice?" I squeaked, still frozen with an overweight cream puff with delusions of badness cradled in my arms. But the purring emanating from Thor told me he didn't dislike me quite as much as he let on. Either that or he was just incredibly thankful I'd arrived to save him from imminent starvation.
"Come on, let's get you fed. And I really should get you some new bowls, huh?" I carried the ball of fur through the house, setting him down in the kitchen while I went to collect the kibble from the pantry.
"Thank you, human." Thor wound his way between my ankles and I had flashes of falling flat on my face, but the Gods must have been smiling on me for I kept my balance, poured the kibble into Thor’s cereal bowl and returned the kibble to the pantry, all without incident. And then we had the coffee maker. The machine from hell. One coffee at the hotel had got me started. I'd need more if I was going to function further.
"Can you show me how to use this?" I jerked my head at the machine with all it's gleaming dials and buttons and longed wistfully for my ever so simple Keurig.
"Sure."
Ben's machine was the type where you add beans, press a button and the machine grinds the beans and makes your coffee. There was a steamer and frother and over a dozen variations of coffee I could make. I stuck with my very simple, very easy, long black. It was either master this machine or buy instant and I refused to buy instant. I wasn't a heathen.
Coffee made, I carried it into Ben's office and seated myself at the desk.
"Right, Sophie Drake. Who are you?" Shaking the mouse to wake up the computer, I opened the browser and then paused. "Do I need to erase your browsing history?" I said cautiously, a terrible thought occurring to me.
Ben snorted. "No. Why?"
"Oh, no reason." I gave a little hair toss and typed in Facebook. Best place to stalk a young woman? Social media. "Just want to make sure I'm not going to stumble across anything you wouldn't want me to see."
"Errr. Nope. I'm good." Then two seconds later. "Ooooh! You mean porn!"
Shaking my head, I blew out a breath. "Yes. Porn. Hence my question. Do I need to clear your browsing history because I don't want anything accidentally popping up."
"Popping up!" Ben hooted with laughter.
"You are so juvenile." Ignoring him, I began my search for Sophie. There were half a dozen Sophie Drakes with profiles on Facebook, but only one lived in Firefly Bay. I clicked it.
Ben got himself under control and muttered, "There's no porn. You're safe."
"Thank the Lord for small mercies." I was reading Sophie's profile. She was twenty, not the young teenager I'd thought, but a whisker off from being a fully-fledged adult. She was also a university student but didn't live at home, she lived on campus. Interesting. I wondered if that was to get away from a controlling father? Having your daughter’s boyfriend investigated is pretty out there. Most of Sophie's posts were public and I made a mental note to talk to her about cyberstalking and protecting herself online. Then I fell into the rabbit hole of flicking through all of her photos. Over an hour had passed when a knock at the front door jolted me out of my voyeuristic activities. Sophie was a very attractive blonde and led a very active social life.
Having kicked my flip flops off, I padded barefoot to the door and flung it open, heard Ben mutter behind me about safety and checking to see who it is first.
"Oh hey." I greeted Detective Galloway. "I wasn't expecting to see you again so soon."
He flashed a smile. "Thought I'd drop by and sign those papers."
"Papers?" Oh shoot. The PI school stuff. With my family arriving last night—and subsequent bottle of red wine—it had totally slipped my mind. I chewed my lip, guilt written all over my face.
"You forgot, huh?" He rested a forearm against the door jam in a pose that was straight out of a romance novel.
"Sorry." I ducked my head a little and shot him a look from beneath my lashes. "Come in though. We can do it now? If you've got time to hang around?"
I stood back a little and indicated he could come in if he wanted to. He did. He shot me another smile as he passed and my nose lifted to sniff the air in his wake, the scent of his cologne doing funny things to my insides. My eyes practically rolled into the back of my head. Mmmm. So nice.
"Fitzgerald. Head out of your pants," Ben whispered in my ear and I snapped to attention. Busted.
I followed Galloway, eyes glued to his denim-clad rear and berated myself the entire time for objectifying him this way. But man, he was put together just right and I couldn't help myself. He was a mixture of cowboy and cop—and while the cop part was a mood killer, the cowboy part more than made up for it.
"You got it all done then." Galloway stood in the living area with hands on hips while he surveyed the now tidy room around him.
"Yeah, sorry. It was a bit of a late-night with my family," I said.
"No need to apologize. You've got a lot going on, I get it. But I admit, I am here for another reason as well."
My heart picked up speed and my stomach did a little somersault in anticipation. He was going to ask me out. I knew it. I had to bite my tongue from blurting out yes before he'd actually asked the question.
"I was going through Ben's spreadsheet, and there were some links to some scanned documents that didn't get copied over to the USB. Could I get a copy of those too?" he asked. I knew my mouth dropped open. I felt it. Behind Galloway’s left shoulder I saw Ben laughing, and my face heated in embarrassment. I wanted the floor to open and swallow me whole.
"Sure," I croaked, snapping my mouth shut. At least Galloway was oblivious to what was going on, well, sort of.
He frowned at me and cocked his head to one side. "Everything okay?"
"Yep. Yep." I nodded. He did not know I had the hots for him and I decided it was best to keep it that way, no matter what my ovaries were currently screaming to my brain. We had to work together. He was about to become my supervisor. Mixing work with pleasure was never a good idea. With that little pep talk out of the way I straightened my shoulders and shot him a dazzling smile. "Coffee?" I didn't wait for an answer. Instead, I swiveled on my heel and headed to the office to retrieve my cup. "I'm set up in here," I said over my shoulder.
Galloway followed. I left him peering at the monitor and photos of Sophie Drake while I made coffee. I jerked my head at Ben to follow me. Over the noise of the coffee machine I whisper shouted, "I need you to either make yourself scarce or not distract me when I'm working with Galloway."
"Oh, is working what we're calling it these days?" Ben teased. I slapped him on the arm, only of course he wasn't solid, so instead my hand sailed right through him and smacked into the side of the cupboard.
"Ow." Rubbing my wrist and the angry red mark, I glared at him. "You know what I mean. If I don't want to find myself in a mental institute I need to stay focused around him. He's trained to see things others don't. You don't think he's going to notice things like this?" I was madly pointing from myself to Ben and back again.
"Okay, okay, don't have an aneurysm. I promise I'll stay in the background and won't utter a sound."
I eyeballed him for another minute. Between a talking cat and Ben's ghost it was going to be a gargantuan effort not to let anything slip in front of Galloway. We're not mentioning my hormonal response to Captain Cowboy Hot Pants either. Nope. We're pushing that down into a teeny tiny little box, closing the lid and throwing away the key.
18
"I wouldn't have pegged her as your type," Galloway drawled when I returned to the office carrying two coffees.
<
br /> Confused, I handed him his coffee. He was studying the monitor and the pictures of Sophie. "Oh!" the penny dropped. "She's not. It's one of Ben's cases. Actually, not her, her dad." I wondered if I should tell Galloway what I was working on. I mean, if he was going to be my supervisor I'd have to share information anyway, but it was going to take some getting used to...cooperating with the police.
It was like he could see the cogs turning in my head, knew the thought processes that were bouncing around like a very bad game of beer pong.
"I'll make this easy for you." He cradled his cup in both hands and looked at me solemnly. "I can see you're having doubts. About trusting me. And I get it, I know what happened to Ben. I know he was treated unfairly and if I'd been around when he was still on the force, believe me, it would never have happened."
"That's easy enough to say. In hindsight," I pointed out.
He inclined his head. "Fair point. But you know I'm working toward fixing that. So be honest with me. What has you so reluctant to tell me what you're working on?"
"I'm worried you're going to take it for yourself. Take credit for it. Snatch it all up and say it’s evidence in Ben's death and leave me with nothing." The words came out in a rush, running together so fast that even I had trouble understanding them.
But Galloway got the gist of it. He placed his cup on the desk, held one hand over his heart and the other up, palm facing me, and said, "I honestly swear that I will not take credit for any work Ben or you have done and that I will not steal his cases."
I smiled weakly. Now I felt like a knob.
"It's fine, Fitz," Ben said from the doorway. "Tell him everything. I'll vouch for him." I glanced Ben's way. If Ben trusted him that should have been enough for me and I wondered why it wasn't? Was it because I have such an overwhelming emotional response whenever he's around that it clouds my judgment?
"Fine." I huffed, pulling out the chair and sitting down. Galloway snagged the wooden chair from the corner again and dragged it over to the desk, making himself comfortable next to me.
Minimizing the browser, I pulled up the Delaney Investigations database and went through the open cases, giving Galloway a rundown on where I was at with each of them, finishing with this morning’s activities.
Galloway looked at me with one brow raised. "You broke into his office?"
I shook my head. "No. It wasn't locked. So no breaking."
He sighed and shook his head. "Okay. No more of that. Let's keep you on the right side of the law, shall we?"
Whatever. "The point is, he called his daughter—who he was having investigated, well sort of—immediately after my visit. I was curious as to why."
Galloway pointed out the obvious. "Could be that he had plans with his daughter? Could be anything, not necessarily related to your visit at all."
"Maybe. Still. I think there's something there." I dug my heels in. Ben told me to trust my gut and my gut told me there was more to the Drake family. Philip Drake had been quick to pay me off, to close the job.
"Go back to Sophie's social media page," Galloway instructed. I pulled up the web page. "Pull up her photos, the ones other people have taken of her." I did as instructed. "What do you see?" I looked at the screen, at the grid of smaller images, all with Sophie in them, but there was one where her back was to the camera that looked vaguely familiar.
Then the penny dropped. "Holy shit!" I jumped to my feet in excitement, only my foot got tangled around the leg of my chair and before I knew it I was flat on my back staring up at the ceiling.
“You okay?” Galloway asked, his face a mixture of surprise and mirth.
“Yep.” I clambered back to my feet and righted my chair before resuming my seat. Carrying on as if nothing had happened, I pulled up Ben's surveillance photos of Steven Armstrong and compared them with the photo of Sophie. Same hair, same build. "Could it be her?" I was talking to myself but Galloway answered.
"A strong possibility. So what should your next course of action be?"
"Talk to Sophie."
"Why not Armstrong?"
"Because he's older and is already used to lying to his wife. He'd have a cover story in place. I'm more likely to get the truth out of Sophie. Especially if I show her these photos."
"How so? What difference would that make?"
"Uh, hello? A twenty-something young woman on social media? Obsessed with her own image? She's going to want those photos."
Galloway smiled. "Good answer."
I sagged in relief, feeling like I'd passed a secret test. Okay, not so secret test.
"What about this next case? The Baxter one. What are your next steps?"
"Go through the journals he gave me, see if I can find anything remotely useful. Although I really don't know why Ben accepted this case. It's got me puzzled."
"This is the witch one, yes?" Galloway leaned over me to click the mouse. The Baxter file appeared on the screen.
"Yeah. I was curious because, one way or another, all three of these cases appeared to be linked to the Firefly Bay Hotel. I wondered if that was why Ben took it on?"
"Really?" Galloway flicked through the files on the screen, scanning the information—information I'd already told him. Eventually, he sat back. "You're right. But again, it could be purely coincidental."
There's that word again. When, in the PI business, did you put something down to being truly coincidental and when do you call it pure bull hockey?
"I'm happy for you to pursue those lines of investigation." Galloway nodded.
I admit, it ruffled my feathers, having to get his permission. This was going to be a long twelve hundred hours.
"Thanks." I tried to keep my sarcasm to a minimum, but the snark was strong and he didn't miss it.
"You wanna back out?" he asked.
I shook my head. No, I did not. Without a word I pulled up the link to the PI school and began to fill out the online application. He watched in silence, then leaned forward, reading the screen.
"Your middle name is — ?"
"Don't you even!" I cut him off with a glare. "That name is never to be spoken. If we are going to have a successful working relationship we need to be very clear on this."
He jerked back in surprise, but a smile curled the edges of his mouth and that dimple flashed at me. Damn him. "Got it."
I finished filling it out and hit print. Galloway signed it. All that was left to do was mail it in and then wait to be formally admitted to PI School.
After I found the extra files he needed, I copied them on to a second USB and handed it over.
"Thanks." He took it from me and slid it in his pocket.
"Now what?" I asked.
"Now I go take down these corrupt bastards and you go interview Sophie Drake and read Baxter's journals," he drawled.
I frowned. "I know that." I huffed. "I meant...with us. How does this work?"
"Just call me when you need me. And don't do anything stupid. Or illegal," he added.
I followed him out of the office and to the front door. He left without saying goodbye and I watched from the front door as he crossed the lawn to his car. It was never going to be a hardship watching this man walk away. I sighed. Ben, who stood by my side, gave me an icy blast in the side, which I translated to be an elbow to the ribs.
"Yeah, yeah, I know," I whispered out the corner of my mouth. "Stop drooling."
Ben chuckled. "It's going to work out, Fitz. You'll see. You're going to ace PI school."
"I am?"
"How can you not? You've got Kade as your official supervisor, and then you've got me, who'll be working by your side every step of the way."
He had a point. "That almost feels like cheating."
"An advantage for sure," Ben agreed, "but you'll learn in this business to use everything and anything at your disposal to get the job done. And you have me. You can't fail."
"Oh God, don't say that! Murphy's Law kicks in whenever you say something like that," I protested.
A car door slammed and I turned my attention back to Galloway who gave me a wave before pulling away. I saw Mrs. Hill's curtains twitch again and frowned.
"What?" Ben asked, following my line of sight. "Problem?"
"No. Mrs. Hill is a busy body, for sure. I'm thinking if she's constantly got her nose glued to that window, then who better to ask about your visitors in the days leading up to your murder?"
Ben shrugged. "The police will have that under control. They've already got her statement."
He was right. And I was in no rush to go and speak with Mrs. Hill. It was doubtful she'd tell me anything, anyway, since I was her least favorite person on earth. Sighing, I returned inside, grabbed my bag and keys and it wasn't until I was pulling away in my 1970s Chrysler that I realized I'd forgotten to take Ben's car. Again.
"Sophie Drake?" I approached the blonde woman who was currently posing with duck lips taking selfie after selfie.
"Yeah?" She didn't even glance my way. Instead, she flipped through the images on her phone and bit out a sigh of frustration. "I'm off my selfie game today."
"Sorry to hear that." I wasn't, but then, she wasn't listening to me anyway.
"It's an assignment," she explained without looking up. "Social Media. I'm doing an essay on how to be an influencer."
"Right." Another minute passed. Then two. Okay, enough was enough. "Sorry to interrupt." I wasn't. "I'm Audrey Fitzgerald from Delaney Investigations. I was hoping I could ask you a couple of questions. It won't take long."
Her head jerked up and her blue eyes studied me, taking in my worn jeans, faded T-shirt, and flip-flops. The look on her face said she didn't approve of my fashion choices. "Who from who?" she asked.
"Audrey Fitzgerald," I repeated. "Delaney Investigations."
"What's that? Like, a health service or something?" She frowned.