I huffed as he poured his coffee—black, just like mine. We both knew he’d never go through my duffle. He thought of it like his mother’s purse—foreign territory, and vaguely frightening. The great unknown. Which was pretty funny, because little else seemed to scare him, after fifteen years spent working for me.
“I’m doing this one pro bono.”
Lacey spewed coffee from both his mouth and nose, and I laughed as he reached for a paper towel. “Shit,” he muttered under his breath, wiping his chin and nose. “Don’t crack jokes when I’m drinking something hot!”
“It’s not a joke.”
He rubbed furiously at the new stain on his shirt. “You don’t do charity. You don’t even let waiters keep the change without asking for a receipt for a charitable tax donation. There’s something in this for you.”
“Fine.” I shrugged and swiveled away from him on my stool. A philanthropist, I was not. “Heispaying me. Just not in cash, other than for expenses. And I have a feeling this job will involve alotof expenses…”
“I’ll bet.” He wadded up the paper towel and tossed it into the trash. “So, what’s the job?”
“You ever heard of the money pit on Oak Island?”
Lacey raised both eyebrows at me over his mug as he took a sip. “Yeah. Big hole in the ground up in Nova Scotia, right? S’pposed to be some kind of buried treasure. Gold doubloons, or some shit like that.”
“Right. Kind of. Therewasa treasure, of sorts.”
“Somebody dug up the cash?” He leaned against his own work surface, opposite mine, resting one elbow on the spotless stainless-steel surface.
“Yup. Well, they foundsomethinganyway. I don’t know what exactly, but I will soon. I’m supposed to find it.”
“You just said someonealreadyfound it.”
“Yeah, well, it’s gone again.” I carried my mug into the front room, where I sank into the duct-tape-patched chair behind my gunmetal desk. Lacey followed and perched on the edge of the desk. “A subsidiary of the Devich Corporation dug it up two days ago—and promptly lost it again.” To a thief, likely an employee.
Lacey grinned over his mug. “Enter Lex Walker.”
“Apparently. Devich came to see me personally.”At my home. In the middle of the night. Without an invitation. But I saw no reason to worry him with the details.
“So how’s he paying you, if not in cash?”
“Information.” The most stable currency known to man. Or to me.
Lacey’s brows rose again. “Anything I need to know about?”
“No.” I watched for his reaction, but there was none. Lacey had no idea what I was—or rather, what Iwasn’t—and didn’t seem to give a damn, so long as I treated him right and paid him on time. He was the perfect employee. Competent, reliable, and completely uninterested in my private life. Ours was the single healthiest relationship I’d ever been a part of.
“’Kay. Be careful. And yell if you need anything.”
I could have kissed him—if he didn’t occupy the “little brother” space in my life. “I could use a car-sitter while I’m gone. My flight leaves at eight tonight.”
“Happy to. Rusty likes me better than she likes you anyway,” he teased.
“Bullshit!” Though hewasthe only man she would let near her ignition.
With that, Lacey went to work on the parasite’s television, mumbling just loud enough for me to hear about all the fun places he was going to take my car in my absence. “Drive-through restaurants. Drive-in movies. That car wash she likes on the corner, with the free wax finish…”
I laughed as I watched him work for a couple of minutes. Real repair customers were rare, but every now and then, people actually brought in broken appliances and electronics, assuming the sign out front to be an accurate description of the business within. Good sport that he was, Lacey would fix them at a very reasonable rate, just to keep himself busy. He made some decent extra money that way, too.
When he finally stopped talking, I drained my mug and pulled a thick stack of research printouts from my duffle bag.
When Troy Devich had left my apartment last night—actually early this morning—I’d sat down at my computer with an open bottle of whiskey and a box of Twinkies. Modern fitness experts say that to maintain good health, the human body should consume something like two and a half liters of water a day, along with a variety of fruits and vegetables. But over the years, I’d discovered that in a pinch, plenty of sugar and alcohol will do the job just fine—a fact Lacey and I had agreed to disagree on.
After three hours on the internet, I’d finished the whiskey and printed twelve pages of information on the pit at Oak Island, nearly twenty pages on Troy Devich and his multi-faceted corporation, and two different recipes for gourmet burgers.
By then I’d been hungry, even after the Twinkies.
