“Whales?” Riley repeated.
“Dunno. Younger gal,” Mrs. Penny said, ignoring Riley.
“Younger” didn’t help, seeing as how Mrs. Penny was eighty years old. That made a large chunk of the earth’s population “younger.”
“She’s waiting across the hall. Didn’t want to bring her in in case you two were already naked.”
As Mrs. Penny bellowed this information, Nick guessed the client had just learned how unprofessional her new PI was.
He dropped his forehead to Riley’s. “We need a new office with a lock on the door.”
She gave him a friendly peck on the mouth and squeezed his ass through his jeans. “Behave. We’ll revisit this later in addition to our fight.”
On a low growl, he let her up and tried not to think about how much he couldn’t wait until later. It was one thing to get caught mauling a sexy brown-eyed employee. It was another thing to meet a new client with an obvious hard-on. He’d never placed much importance on professionalism, but now that his offices were temporarily housed in a three-ring circus, he felt some pressure to deliver a reasonably professional experience.
“Fine. Come with me. You can start a case file if she doesn’t get scared off by our roommates.”
Riley perked up. He’d promised to show her the ins and outs of being an investigator but had been putting it off. It was a hell of a lot harder to get hurt or almost murdered by doing paperwork. So far, she hadn’t complained, but Nick knew the clock was ticking.
They followed Mrs. Penny across the hall and found Lily Bogdanovich plying the woman with tea and cucumber sandwiches. Lily was newly obsessed with the showThe Crownand now insisted on serving tea every day in 1950s-style dresses.
Tea usually bled into Mrs. Penny’s happy hour. Most residents didn’t make it to dinner, being too drunk and too full of tiny, weird sandwiches.
The client was tall and attractive, with her dark hair worn in a short puff above a colorful headband. She was in a killer business suit and hot pink stilettos. The purse she’d slung over her shoulder was the size of a Shetland pony. She paced back and forth in front of the bar as she snapped orders into her phone.
“Yeah. I gotta go. I’ll be back in time for the meeting. Uh-huh. I don’t care. Deal with it.” She disconnected the call and slid her phone into the gigantic bag.
“Hi. I’m Nick Santiago,” he said, offering his hand.
“Shelley Rupley,” she said. Her grip was brisk and firm as if she spent a lot of time shaking hands.
“Shelley, this is my office manager, Riley.”
“Hi.” Riley gave a little wave as she set up her laptop on the round parlor table near the organ.
“Nice to meet you,” Shelley said, glancing at her smart watch.
“I’ll just leave these teeny-tiny cucumber sandwiches here in case anyone gets peckish,” Lily trilled.
“Thanks, Lil,” Nick said.
Lily gave a curtsy and a toothy grin before backing out of the room.
“What can I do for you, Shelley?” he asked as they settled themselves around the table.
“My ex-husband, Larry, is missing,” Shelley said, interlacing her fingers on the table. The face of her watch lit up, and she glanced down at it. Riley started diligently taking notes, and Nick decided to spend time later fantasizing about a sexy secretary role play game.
“When is the last time you saw him?” he asked.
“A week ago. I picked up the kids at his place. We have three. Kids, that is,” she said, glancing down as her watch lit up again.
“How long has he been missing?”
Shelley shrugged. “I don’t know. I saw him last Wednesday. But he hasn’t responded to any of the kids’ texts since Saturday. Not even Ellen’s. She’s the good one,” she said to Riley.
Riley made a note that Ellen was the good one.
“So he hasn’t been heard from since…”
