Sesame folded her hands in her lap. “Well, it all started when I was born.”
“Nope. No way. I’m not here for your prequel. Fast forward to the second act or the relevant part,” Riley insisted.
Her captor’s pink lower lip protruded in a pout. “You know, I put a lot of effort into getting here and finding you. You’d think you’d be the tiniest bit interested in why.”
“I’m sorry. You’re right. Please continue,” Riley said. The smoothie really was making her feel better. She really should drink more fresh juice. Maybe then her skin would be more glowy and dewy like Sesame’s.
“Sesame isn’t my real name.”
Riley slapped a hand to her own chest in mock surprise. “No, really?”
“I know, right? Ilooklike a Sesame now.” She waved a hand over her face and chest regions. “But the lovely lady you see before you didn’t exist a few years ago.”
“You look pretty mature for someone who didn’t exist until recently,” Riley observed, staring pointedly at Sesame’s excellent rack.
“Oh, you.” Sesame giggled. “Anyway, as I was saying, my real name is Beth.”
Riley choked and sent a fine mist of green smoothie in a 180-degree arc all over Wilhelm’s precious upholstery.
8
12:14 p.m., Friday, October 25
“Is your phone-answering arm broken?”
Nick glanced up at the door to his office and spied Mrs. Penny and Gabe trying to wedge themselves through it at the same time.
“I’ll call you back,” he said into the desk phone before hanging it up.
He only just managed to dodge the burrito Mrs. Penny hurled in his direction. It bounced off the bookcase behind him and landed on the floor with a splat.
Burt bounded into the room, pounced on the floor burrito, and swallowed it whole.
The dog’s burrito radar never failed.
“Damn it, Penny,” Nick complained. “You know how he gets when he eats people food.”
“One burrito isn’t gonna kill him after what he ate at lunch,” the old lady insisted with a wave of her pale, wrinkly hand.
Nick did not have time to deal with a dog with digestive distress today. “What did Burt eat at lunch?”
“Burt consumed an entire platter of sesame chicken, including the egg roll,” Gabe announced.
“Riley is going to kill you two,” Nick told them.
“That’s why I threw the burrito,” Mrs. Penny said in exasperation.
“You threw a burrito at me because Riley is going to kill you?” Nick clarified. Conversations with his elderly business partner often ended in him experiencing a persistent eye twitch. He probably should have listened to Riley’s warning about his partnership with the old woman. But in his defense, he’d been drunk at the time.
Mrs. Penny threw up her arms, sending her triceps flapping. “It’s like talking to a damn toaster.”
“Mrs. Penny and I are concerned about Riley,” Gabe said, picking up the loose end of the conversation out of the knotted ball of twine.
Nick started to massage his eye, then winced.
After getting punched in the face at the prison, he’d come home and added several items to his Buy This Shit for Home Security list. Then he’d picked up where he left off annoying the witnesses listed in Beth’s case file.
He’d made it through three annoyed contacts, all of whom had expressed the strong desire that he give up on the case and leave them the hell alone. That alone was enough to give him a headache. These two were going to push him into a full-blown aneurysm.
