We spend the rest of the morning confirming that we’ve successfully deleted anything tying us to Teo Barlow’s household, and then Cassel cuts his control over their security system before someone starts looking deeper and finds any connection to us in the system.
And then… things go back to normal. A week of normal, to be exact, before Detective Patel comes knocking on our door.
ELEVEN
LELAND
I’ve just walked into the detective agency, having run some errands after taking Waylon to school, when Detective Patel waltzes in.
“Ooh, our first customer of the day. A pleasure to meet you,” I say as if I don’t recognize her.
“I’m pretty sure we’ve met,” she replies.
“Nah, I… I don’t think so. Mason, you know this lady?” I ask Mason, who runs the detective agency with us. He mostly got it started, and then took to a life of easy work and video games. And I would say that it annoys me, but any time we get the most mundane and boring task, I just shove it toward him. The more boring and tedious, the better in Mason’s eyes.
He looks up and smiles at her. “Good morning. I’d be more than happy to help you.”
“I’m sorry, I’m here to speak to Leland and Jackson.”
I nod and wave to the chair across from mine. “Ah, of course, of course. Cheating husband? Or do you have a wife? Cheating wife? Are your husbandandyour wife cheating on you? Is your husband’s wife’s husband cheatingwithyou?”
“What?” she asks.
“We do it all here.”
“It sure seems like you do,” Patel mutters.
This woman is going to be an irritation. I really should remind Henry to make sure the department is hiring less-annoying detectives. Ones who have worse intuition. Although… I don’t want others to suffer from their negligence. Maybe just detectives who adore me like Henry does.
“Do I have it all wrong? Are you perchance here because of another ailment? Noisy neighbor you simply wish to… dispose of?” I ask.
“Are you disposing of people’s neighbors?” she questions with a raised eyebrow.
“I mean, it depends whether we’re on the record or not!” I say as I give her a double wink. “Mason, how many neighbors did you dispose of last week?”
“Let me look real quick… uh… fifteen,” he declares without even looking up.
“Nice. You’re bound to win the Neighbor Disposal of the Month award. Cassel! Cassel, I see you over there stroking your keyboard. What’s your number?”
“Only seven this week. But I had ninety-two last week. One got away or I’d have ninety-three. I did get his arm though, so… maybe ninety-two point two-five. Does that count?”
“Oh nice. Does in my book.”
Patel’s eyes are narrowed as she stares at me, clearly quite interested in my number.
“Only four for me, I’m afraid. After the whole Waylon thing, Jackson and I have been rather paranoid and have been stalking our child to make sure he’s okay. I thought about never letting him leave the house again, but Jackson said that’d be illegal.”
“Is Jackson here?”
“Upstairs. Probably trying to hide that body we brought back with us.”
Patel scrutinizes me. “You’re not as funny as you think you are, Mr. Stein.”
I beam at her. “I’m hilarious, thank you very much.”
“Can I have a word with both of you? Is there somewhere private to talk?”
“Yeah, of course. Follow me, follow me,” I say as I lead her over to a door and pull it open. “I’ll go get Jackson and be right back.”
