No one had ever accused Josie Chan of pulling punches.
“I think what Josie and Brian are trying to say is that we’re all happy to pick up the slack on other jobs so you can focus on finding Beth,” Riley cut in.
“In order for slack to be picked up, there has to be some,” Brian said. “We’re all waiting around, watching you turn down paying gigs while you comb through every detail of a cold case.”
So he’d turned down a couple of paying gigs over the past few weeks. So what?
Okay. Fine.Allof them. It wasn’t a big deal. He wasn’t going to divide his time between serving divorce papers, working some lame disability fraud case,andfinding Beth. Every single one of them knew how important this case was to him. They were the ones who should have been cutting him the slack.
“So I should just give up on finding her then. That’s what you’re all saying,” he said, ignoring what they were actually saying. “I should just settle for the fact that she’s probably alive and focus on cutting you paychecks.”
Burt leaned heavily against Nick’s leg, probably as a warning to shut the hell up before he said something even stupider.
“Oh, goodie. Here comes Selective Hearing Nicky,” Josie quipped as she studied her fingernails.
“You want slack? You want balance?” he railed.
“Well, yeah,” Brian admitted.
“Fine.” Nick turned to Mrs. Penny. “Penny, what did you bring us?”
“I brought a couple of real primo cases,” she announced, perking up and shifting on the couch.
Nick couldn’t tell if the ensuing sound was a fart or just the frame creaking under her.
“I’m all ears,” he said. The rest of his team looked like they wanted to escape.
It turned out that his new partner was eager for a post-retirement career. Unfortunately, she still hadn’t quite grasped exactly what they did at Santiago Investigations. The cases she’d proposed so far had included finding a set of missing car keys, investigating a kid she thought was cheating in one of her online video games, and solving Jimmy Hoffa’s disappearance.
She produced a digital tablet from the back of her elastic-waist slacks. “All righty. My pal Esther thinks her dirt bag grandson is stealing her Big Top figurines and selling them on eBay.”
Brian scrubbed his hands over his face and groaned. “Next.”
Mrs. Penny shifted again, and this time Nick was ninety percent sure it was a fart. “Fine. No biggie. There’s this guy at the gym who alters his selfies so he looks like he’s way hotter than he is on his online dating profile.”
“How would you know what his dating profile looks like?” Riley asked.
“Lily found him. They’re both on the Hook Up,” Mrs. Penny explained.
Great, now they had an octogenarian begging to get catfished on a dating app.
“I thought you put parental controls on her phone,” Riley said to Nick.
“It’s on my list,” he said defensively. There were a lot of things on his list.
“We can’t let him get away with that shit. A five needs to look like a five online. It’s illegal to pretend he’s a nine,” Mrs. Penny insisted.
“Uh-huh. What else?” Nick asked.
She adjusted her glasses and peered down at the screen. “My daughter-in-law’s niece’s cousin is being bullied at school by some overgrown jackwagon named Lance.”
Nick waited, knowing there had to be an even worse one.
“Then there’s the Dog Doody Bandit.”
Bingo.
“The what?” he asked mildly as his team’s eyeballs collectively rolled toward the ceiling.
