She snorted. ‘Yeah. Sure.’ She opened the door, and this time, Ji-ho was standing there, a hand raised as if about to knock.
‘I didnotsee you here,’ Elvira told Ji-ho, and then she hustled past him and away.
Ji-ho’s lips were curled up. ‘Looks like we’ve got a real conspiracy cooking here.’
‘Something like that.’ I sighed. ‘Come in. Shut the door. We’ve got rules to break.’
He grinned and shut the door.
Chapter Ten
I had told Ji-ho to bring his computer, and being the overachiever he was, he’d brought three. He sat down at my small dining room table, pulled one out, and fired it up.
‘What do you need?’ he asked, looking up at me, fingers hovering over the keyboard.
‘First, I want a financial check on Troy Fairglass. I want full financial records of his spending for the past week, and please flag anything on the day Aspen died and anything since.’
‘You got it.’ Ji-ho started typing rapidly. After a minute, he set the computer aside and pushed it back across the table. ‘That’s running. What else do you need?’
‘A deep dive on Jude Jingo. Laura started a file before, but that only hasofficialdata. I want the unofficial data.’
‘The good stuff.’ Bouncing in his chair, he started typing on the second computer. ‘Now we’re talking.’
‘You want some waffles?’ Robbie offered the naiad.
‘No thanks, man. Though I wouldn’t say no to some coffee?’ he asked, but he eyed the instant coffee grounds by the kettle dubiously. Rightly so.
I was about to apologise for my paltry coffee offerings when Robbie lifted a small coffee machine from my cupboard, set it on the counter, and started it percolating. At my gaping, he winked, mercury eyes warm and amused.
Apparently, he’d bought me a new coffee machine. He and Ji-ho were cut from the same coffee-loving cloth, and my instant grounds weren’t up to the task. I’dthoughthis coffee this morning had smelled too good.
I didn’t mind that Robbie had bought himself a coffee machine to live at my flat. If anything Ilikedit. Still, we should probably talk about how much time he was spending at my flat and where we’d live when we eventually got married, but those conversations often fell away in the face of the long hard days we both had.
The last thing either of us wanted to do after work was discuss logistics. I shuffled such things into my “one day soon” to-do list. Not urgent, not immediate, but soon.
The problem with such a plan was that the items rarely moved from the “soon” category to the “now” list. Instead, they mostly lingered in task limbo, but I could feel theweight of it all growing. I couldn’t ignore the heavy conversations forever.
Robbie gave Ji-ho a coffee, then handed me and Channing waffles overflowing with butter and golden syrup.
I felt like I’d died and gone to heaven.
With his hands full, Robbie had left my tea on the kitchen counter, so Bob helpfully floated it over.
‘Thanks, Bob,’ I murmured.
Channing frowned. ‘Who’s Bob?’ He looked around before eyeing me. ‘You used the IR to float that tea over, right?’
‘No,’ I said absently. ‘That’s just Bob, my resident ghost.’
Channing paled. ‘Ghosts are real?’
‘Officially, no.’ I lifted my fork. ‘Unofficially, Idefinitelyhave one in my flat. But his main job seems to be taking care of me, and he’s most insistent that I have a good breakfast. He’s harmless.’
Channing’s eyes were wild. ‘But … where is he?’
‘Wherever he wants to be, I suppose. I don’t think he’s here all the time. Maybe he visits the other flats too.’ I cut into my waffle. ‘He’s a good guy. Don’t sweat it.’
Ji-ho’s hands paused on his computer. ‘I thought ghosts weren’t real.’
