“Is Grandma okay?” I asked.
“She wasn’t there when it happened, but she’s pretty shook up about it. She told the cops, but you know how they are.”
My home town police force was known for their inaction. They mostly hung around the Main Street restaurants, drinking coffee and talking about people like a bunch of old church ladies. In their defense,Lakeview was a small town where nothing ever happened, so they had to be bored out of their minds.
“You said there were other seniors who were robbed?” I asked.
“Old lady Rogers, Ms. Samuelson, Jeff Long’s aunt, a few others.”
“Ms. Samuelson?” I asked. “As in my kindergarten teacher, Ms. Samuelson?”
“The one and only. She still asks about you every time I go in to visit Ma.”
“What kind ofasshat would steal from Ms. Samuelson?” I asked.
Where Grandma was an opinionated old goat who didn’t care about anyone’s feelings, Ms. Samuelson was a sweet woman with a heart of twenty-four karat gold. My class had been the last one she taught before retiring, and we’d run circles around that poor woman, but she was bound and determined to teach us a thing or two. She had the patience of asaint and the tenacity of a pit bull, and the idea of someone stealing from her made me want to turn into She-Hulk and smash up the guilty party.
“That’s what we’re tryin’ to figure out. In your new line of work, I was hoping you had some recommendations—maybe from the city—who might be able to help us out without charging an arm and a leg.”
“I see.” By ‘the city’ he meant Klamath Falls or Bend.They were two and three hours away from Lakeview, respectively, and where we’d have to go to shop for things like school clothes and Christmas presents. I didn’t want to admit that I didn’t know any other private detectives, so I said, “Let me do some research and get back to you.”
“Thanks, honey. Talk to you soon.” He disconnected.
I needed to talk to Addison, but she was hurting and I didn’tknow if now was the best time to bring up something related to the job that had just cost her a relationship. Still wondering what to do, I walked out to the living room to find Addison standing in the middle of the foyer staring at the door, her face expressionless.
“Addie?” I asked, glancing around. After the wine, ice cream, and our boyfriend bashing session where we both lied and swore wedidn’t need them, we’d both headed to our rooms to get some sleep. “What are you doing out here?”
Her chin quivered and a flood of tears poured down her face as she lost her composure and slid to the floor. “Addie?”
“I didn’t expect it to hurt this bad,” she said on a sob.
I crawled to the coffee table, which wasn’t far, and grabbed a box of tissues, handing it to her. Swearing under my breath,I hugged my friend. It was a good thing Jake was gone, because I’d kick him in the teeth if he was still there. When things got a little rough, he totally bailed. I thought he had more character than that, and I was disappointed to say the least. Addison cried herself out of tears, and then mopped up the mess and sighed. We sat in silence for a few minutes while I tried to think of somethingthat could cheer her up or distract her. Then I remembered the reason I’d come out to find her in the first place.
“I might have a job for us.”
She dabbed away the last of her tears. “Stupid Jake and stupid Asher and my stupid dad aren’t going to let us take any more jobs, Dylan. They’re going to lock us in this condo like we’re convicts for doing our last job.”
“Not if we leave town.” Igrabbed my laptop and gave Addison a rundown on the conversation I’d had with my dad while I searched for private investigators in Klamath Falls, Oregon. Klamath was about a hundred miles from Lakeview, and despite its population of a whopping twenty-one thousand, it was referred to as “the city,” since it was the closest larger town. I scanned the results of my search, and they did not look promising.
“You think we should do it?” Addison asked, still looking a little dazed.
“People are stealing from the elderly. If we can help, I kind of feel like it’s our duty.”
“Yeah. Even if the assholes would let us out of lockdown, Ethan doesn’t have anything else for us yet.”
Ethan was too swamped to give us a proper interview, but he suddenly didn’t have any other jobs for us? Not likely. EitherAsher and/or Jake had gotten to him and convinced him not to toss work our way, or he was upset about Greg’s wife dropping her case. After all, he did hire us to nail the guy, not to scare him straight. But, I didn’t mention any of this to Addison since she was already upset enough.
“If we go to southern Oregon, we can get off the radar of the Spiders, and to be honest, I’m kinda relieved,”she said. “I don’t know if I’m ready to take on another divorce case yet after Greg. I’d love to get out of here for a while and finally see your home town.”
I held up a hand. “All excellent points, but I have...concerns.”
Addison fiddled with the hem of her shirt. “Okay?”
“To start with, Lakeview is more than six hours away.”
“We do have cars,” she countered. “Mine’s even dependable.”
“Secondly, the population is two thousand, and it’s in the middle of nowhere. There’s no shopping centers, no fine dining, there aren’t even any hotels. Staying with my dad is off the table, so we’d have to stay in a motel. That’s motel, with an ‘M.’ Have you ever stayed in a motel in your life?”
