She smiles and shakes her head. “I like that you think so.”
“It’s the truth. Why would I have any reason to make it up?”
“Because you wanna get in my pants?”
“You’re too smart to let a few compliments make you lose your mind.”
“Now you’re really buttering me up.” She swings the computer to me. “Look at this.”
I obediently shift my gaze to the computer screen. It’s less interesting than Josie, but we are here to find out who killed Cole. “He’s had a lot of unexcused absences.”
“Right, but do you see?—”
“That all of them start at the same time?”
“Every Wednesday he skips out on the last period, even when he has practice later that day. And this report here”—she brings up a different page—“shows his homeroom teacher saying that he’s struggling to concentrate during class and failed an easy exam.”
“‘I called his father who could not attend an in-person conference due to being overseas in Japan,’” I read. A thoughtstrikes me. “This sucks. The dad doesn’t even know his kid is gone.”
“I know. Should we tell him?” Josie chews on the end of her thumb.
“We can’t. He’s going to ask how we know, and until we figure out who did this to Cole, we’re probably the prime suspects.”
Josie sucks in a deep breath and shakes her head. “This is actually terrible. Can we pin down a time frame that he might have died?”
“Based on the attendance records, it would have been between Friday after school and Sunday afternoon. Niki and I were collecting some dues, and instead of paying us cash, the kid took us to the body.”
“Why’d he do that?”
“Information is worth as much as anything. There has been weird stuff going on in our territory. Recruitment numbers are down. Our headquarters used to be full, and now it’s empty. It’s eerie, but we’ve never had kids from your school try to join the Riders, so it didn’t seem connected at the time.”
“Does it now?”
“Not really. If Cole or his team were gambling with the Riders, it would be something I would know. I would’ve been sent out to collect if he was behind, and we don’t kill our clients because dead people don’t do business with us again. We like repeat business.”
Josie considers this. “If what Candace said is true, then the whole team must have been gambling.”
“Throwing games,” I suggest.
She nods. “And the principal’s office has proof of it. They pull the fire alarm. Everyone leaves, and they creep into the office and steal the files, not unlike me stealing the computer files fromthe teacher’s laptop. Are there other gangs like yours that they could be gambling with?”
“Sure. There’s the Pipefitters who have territory between Sixth Street to the south and Fifteenth to the north. The east side belongs to the Smoke Crew. We should talk to the captain of the basketball team and find out who Cole might have been dealing with. Can your stolen files tell us who that is?”
She rummages through the material. “Ryan Fields. Lives at 801 Sunset Road, Apartment 10.”
I check my watch. It’s close to dinner. It would be a good time to catch him at home. “Let’s go.”
“Together?” She’s surprised but already on her feet.
“Josie, I just got done saying that you’re too pretty to be outside, so you’re definitely too pretty to be walking around alone over on Sunset. And I know if I’m not going with you, you’ll go alone.”
She grins. “You’re really good at this assisting stuff. You already know my modus operandi.”
“Is that what MO stands for?” She gives me a cute smirk, making me want to kiss her, but everything she does makes me want to do that.
Ryan’s about ready to eat dinner based on the smells and sounds coming from his apartment. The scent of cooked hamburger floats out the door as the basketball captain greets us with a scowl. From inside the apartment, we hear his mom yell, “Who is it?”
Ryan opens his mouth, but he doesn’t get a chance to answer before Josie jumps in. “It’s Josie from school, Mrs. Fields. I’m here to interview Ryan for the school newspaper.”
