“Best I can do at the moment. Maybe after I finish this.” And she took another swallow.
“So the reason you haven’t called?” he prompted.
“Ah, right, the reason I haven’t called is because I didn’t have a good excuse—reason. Reason. Because the case hasn’t really started yet. I haven’t picked up a single lead. Nothing in the newspaper archives, nothing on the net.” She shook her head in obvious frustration. “Maybe my nemesis was right and I suck as a detective.”
“You have a nemesis?” Wolf raised his eyebrows and looked at her with new eyes. “I’m learning a lot about you today.”
“We both took the same accelerated course for the PI licensing exam last year. We competed for mock cases. The tougher the case, the better the potential for a high grade, so we wanted the good ones, and we both knew which ones those were.” She took another sip. The glass was almost empty.
He didn’t say a thing. He didn’t want to interrupt; she might stop talking if he did.
“Most of the people in that class couldn’t tell a great case from a misdemeanor, but we could. It was first-come, first-served. You had to go to the instructor personally to choose a case file, and you never knew when the list would drop. He’d announce it at random on a class-wide message.”
“Interesting instructor.”
“It was the best part of the class,” she said, smiling. “We pretended to hate each other, but deep down, I think we wereboth having a blast coming up with ways to delay each other when the cases opened up. I was, anyway.”
Her smile was real again. He liked that. “What kinds of ways?”
The waitress came back with a bowl of mixed pretzels and peanuts. “You need another?” she asked Camellia in English.
“No, gracias.”She bit off a piece of a pretzel, then after swallowing, said, “Let’s see, one time we were at the same party when the message went out. I saw it first, swiped her car keys from the key bowl, put them in the fridge.” She laughed at the memory. “I texted her after I got the primo case and told her where they were. Another time, she got the message first, saw where I’d parked, and let all the air out of one of my tires, then she went in and grabbed the best case.”
“This is getting really interesting,” he said, laughing softly. “Who won this ongoing competition of yours?” he asked.
Camellia shook her head. “We agreed it was a tie and that our final grade would be the tiebreaker.”
“And?”
“We got the exact same score. Perfect. One hundred percent, both of us.”
“Have you seen her since?”
“Not since she flipped me off with a smile at the reception after we aced the licensing exam. I returned it with both hands and asuperiorsmile.”
“I see.”
“So I won.”
“Noted.”
Her playful smile died and she said, “Maybe I should call her. Maybe she could help us figure this out. She’s the only snoop I know who’s as good as I am.”
“I have absolute faith in you,” he said. “Have you been in business long, then?”
“I haven’t really started my business yet.”
“Oh.”
She glanced his way quickly. “Declared absolute faith a little soon, didn’t you?”
“Not a bit.”
“Why? You don’t even know me.”
The teasing lilt had left her voice. “Oh, I think I’m getting to know you pretty well,” he said. “Highly competitive, holds a grudge long-term, likes her whiskey on ice, speaks Spanish, and not allergic to peanuts. You already have ideas about these roadblocks you’ve hit, I can see you do.”
“I have a couple. But the main one sucks.”
