Chapter 3
3
1:55 p.m. Thursday, October 31
“ I t could have been a small, bullet-size rock,” Nick suggested, eyeing the hole in Griffin’s windshield.
Of course the little prick had to drive an expensive little prick car. It stood out like a shiny luxury sore thumb in their driveway of weeds and overgrown shrubbery.
It served as an annoying reminder that he, Nick Santiago, had really slacked on his manly yard duties during the last case. Maybe he’d fire up the hedge trimmers in the garage. Shape some bushes. Cut off Griffin’s fenders.
“Nick, it’s clearly a bullet hole. Besides, I saw it happen in a vision,” Riley insisted. His girlfriend had her arms crossed over her chest. She looked adorably not thrilled with this turn of events.
He wrapped his arms around her and brushed his lips over her furrowed brow. “If someone really did take a shot at him, would the world actually be worse off with no Griffin Gentry in it?”
“Nick!”
He grinned at the good-girl indignation that had come just a beat too late. “What? I’m not a cop anymore. I don’t have to protect and serve every single body in the county. I became a PI so I could tell assholes they were assholes.”
“That’s not why you started your own business,” she argued. “Besides, twenty thousand dollars is a lot of money. The last few months have been pretty lean.”
Nick snorted. “We’re fine. The business is fine. We don’t need your ex’s money. Besides, it’s not like he’s actually going to write a check and hand it over. The guy thinks he deserves everything for free.”
The front door banged open, and Mrs. Penny limped out onto the porch, waving her cane in one hand and a piece of paper in the other. “Quit making out! We got work to do. I got a retainer!”
“Care to amend your statement, birthday boy?” Riley teased.
“What the hell is going on?” Josie asked from around the side of the porch, looking like a deadly bird of prey in head-to-toe black.
“Yeah, I can hear you through my noise-canceling headphones,” Brian complained, wheeling himself around the corner behind his wife.
“Just the woman I wanted to see,” Mrs. Penny said to Josie, stuffing the check into her bra.
“I’m definitely not depositing a cleavage check,” Nick grumbled under his breath.
“I need a bodyguard,” Mrs. Penny told Josie.
“Who’d you piss off this time?” Josie asked.
“Not for me. I can handle myself. Hi-yah!” Mrs. Penny kicked her orthopedic shoe three inches off the ground in a show of not-so-athletic prowess. “For our new client. His life is in danger.”
“Yeah, from me,” Nick said.
Riley gave him a squeeze. “Are you sure you’re up for a physically demanding job in your condition, Josie?”
Josie’s “condition” was pregnant.
“Yeah, aren’t you, like, tired and nauseous?” Nick asked from his extremely limited experience with pregnant women.
Josie narrowed her eyes in a deadly glare. “I am perfectly capable of doing everything I could do before I started growing a human in my abdominal cavity. And if any one of you needs to be reminded of that, I’ll be happy to rearrange your face.”
Nick would have taken the threat as legitimate if a tear hadn’t snaked its way down his cousin-in-law’s cheek.
“What the hell is that?” he demanded, pointing at the offending eye water. Normal humans cried. Hell, Nick himself had gotten choked up in the first five minutes of the movie Up when his niece had forced him to watch it. But Josie wasn’t normal or human.
“You okay, babe?” Brian asked, taking his wife’s hand.
“If one more person asks me that, I’m going to…” She trailed off midthreat.
“Back over us with heavy equipment?” Riley suggested.
“Entomb us in the walls of our own attic?” Nick asked.
“Cry like a big dumb baby until your big dumb baby gets here?” Mrs. Penny tried.
Brian grabbed his wife around the waist before Josie could take a swing at the elderly woman.
“Well, this pregnancy is gonna be fun,” Riley said out of the corner of her mouth.
“See? That’s the fight I need in a bodyguard,” Mrs. Penny said, pointing at Josie. “You’re hired.”
“I already work here.” Josie’s snarl turned into a sniffle.
“Look, Josie doesn’t need to do security because we’re not taking the case,” Nick interjected.
“Twenty Gs says we are,” Mrs. Penny insisted, glancing down at the check in her cleavage. “Well, the first five Gs at least. It’s a down payment for services rendered.”
“Twenty grand?” Brian repeated.
Josie quit struggling. “I like money.”
Nick groaned. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Riley cleared her throat.
“Not you too.”
She shrugged against him. “Well, I think he is in some kind of danger, and wouldn’t it be fun to take his money?”
Everyone else nodded in agreement.
“Seriously? Even if his check doesn’t bounce, he’s a litigious little shit. He’ll sue the fuck out of us, and then I’ll have to throw him in another dumpster,” Nick reminded them.
“I have no problem with that,” Mrs. Penny said. “Besides, my nephew or cousin’s nephew or whatever is a killer lawyer. He’ll sue the petite-cut pants off Gentry.”
Everyone nodded and turned to look at Nick.
“Fuck. Fine. Take the case. But don’t expect me to take it seriously. And if that tiny toadstool even attempts to make a move on Riley here, I’ll be the one threatening his life,” Nick warned.
“What could possibly go wrong?” Brian quipped.
A hunk of broken, bullet-ridden soffit fell from the porch ceiling, narrowly missing Mrs. Penny.
“You should fix that,” she said, poking it with her cane.
“You’re the one who shot it out last night,” Nick reminded her through clenched teeth.
“Okay, people. Let’s talk suspects,” Brian said, computer balanced in his lap.
They had moved their growing investigative team and new client into the living room. Josie had liberated the newly cleaned rolling whiteboard from Nick’s office, and Riley was manning the dry erase marker.
Mrs. Penny sat in a throne-like wingback chair while Griffin tried not to sink too far into the squishy sofa cushions. Burt made himself comfy on one of the window seats and was asleep within seconds.
Nick picked a seat on the other side of the room with his laptop so he could catch up on paperwork and heckle his team while they wasted their time.
He consulted his Get Shit Done list.
Pay bills.
Fix broken windows.
Evict the elderly.
Birthday sex with hot girlfriend.
Take hedge trimmer to landscaping and Gentry’s stupid car.
“Who would want to take you out?” Mrs. Penny asked Griffin.
“No one! Everyone thinks I’m wonderful,” Griffin insisted.
“Bullshit,” Nick sang.
“Well, almost everyone,” Griffin amended.
“You can’t think of anyone that you’ve ever wronged? Anyone at all?” Riley prompted.
He shrugged his elfin shoulders. “No. I’m delightful.”
Mrs. Penny popped out of her chair and yanked the shade off the nearest table lamp. She turned it on and shoved the bulb end in Griffin’s face. “You better talk fast, buster.”
“I–I don’t know!” he squeaked.
“Okay, how about Claudia Mendoza, the morning show anchor whose job you took?” Riley suggested quickly before any eyeball–light bulb injuries could occur.
“Pfft. That was years ago. Besides, it wasn’t personal. It was just business,” he insisted.
“Griffin, you took the woman’s job. She was fired because of nepotism,” Riley said.
He scoffed, blinking at the light bulb in his face. “It wasn’t anything like that. My dad just fired her so he could hire me .”
“That’s the definition of nepotism,” Josie said dryly.
Riley wrote Claudia’s name on the whiteboard.
“What about Bella Goodshine?” Brian suggested.
Riley was already adding the name when Griffin’s pea brain sputtered to life. “You think my fiancée would ruin my perfectly chiseled chest with hot-pink dye? She loves my chestal region.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure of that,” Nick muttered. He had unequivocal proof that both the news anchor and his weather girl fiancée were cheating on each other every chance they got.
“You say something, boss?” Josie asked.
“Nope,” Nick lied and entered the log-in for his bank. This birthday had gone downhill quickly. Maybe he could salvage it by cooking a nice quiet dinner for Riley and then?—
A resounding crash echoed from the kitchen, followed by Lily’s trilling, “Oopsie!”
Fuck. The geriatric circus from hell was going to put a cramp in his birthday seduction plans. He should have installed a moat.
“Griffin, sometimes you do things to benefit yourself that hurt other people,” Riley continued.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Griffin insisted.
Nick squashed the urge to hurl his laptop at the man.
“For instance, you cheating on your wife with the new, big-boobed weather girl,” Josie said.
Mrs. Penny pointed to Riley. “Put your own name on the board.”
“I already broke his nose for revenge. Besides, I have an alibi,” she argued.
“We’ll see about that,” Mrs. Penny said.
Dutifully, Riley added her name to the list of suspects. She glanced in Nick’s direction, grinned, then added his name.
Griffin gave a dismissive wave. “That’s all water under the bridge. It was nothing personal. I’m Griffin Gentry. Everybody loves me.”
“Not me. You suck,” Josie said.
“I think you’re a dick,” Brian agreed.
“I hope you’re run down in a crosswalk by a bus full of schoolchildren,” Nick chimed in.
“Maybe it wasn’t personal to you, but it might be personal to someone else,” Riley said to Griffin with the patience of a saint.
Griffin’s mouth puckered into a frown. “Are you saying not everyone thinks I’m incredibly handsome and talented and lovable?”
“For fuck’s sake,” Brian said under his breath.
“I’m saying there are consequences to your actions. You trample people to get what you want and don’t give a thought to how it makes them feel,” Riley said through clenched teeth.
Griffin was thinking so hard, Nick was surprised smoke wasn’t pouring out of his ears. “So when I complained to the country club president about how the large waitress made me lose my appetite and it turned out she was just pregnant but they fired her anyway, you think she’s mad at me?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying,” Riley said.
“You’re a terrible person,” Brian said as he continued to type.
“You got a problem with pregnant people?” Josie held one protective hand to her belly and a gripped knife in the other.
“Let’s not stab the new client until after his check clears,” Mrs. Penny suggested.
Josie shook her head and looked at Riley. “I gotta ask it. We’re all wondering it. What in the hell made you marry this fungal infection of a man?”
All eyes turned to Riley, except for Griffin, who was admiring himself in a compact mirror he’d produced from his pocket.
She blew out a breath. “Honestly, he wasn’t always this bad. He didn’t turn into this”—she waved a hand in her ex-husband’s direction—“until he got his first Dilly.”
“What’s a Dilly?” Brian asked.
“Only the most prestigious award in local daytime television,” Griffin said, snapping his compact closed.
“It was a fundraiser that spoofed awards ceremonies sponsored by Dilly’s Sports Bar.”
“I won Best Morning News Hair,” Griffin said proudly.
“I take it the Dilly went to his head?” Brian guessed.
“Literally. He was standing on a desk chair with wheels trying to put it up on a shelf in his office. He lost his footing and fell off the chair, and the Dilly bonked him on the head. The doctor said it was just a mild concussion, but he was never the same afterward. We separated a few months later,” Riley explained.
“That’s almost sad,” Brian said.
Nick snorted. “The only thing sad about it is now we’re stuck with him for the time being.”
“Hey, can one of you hold my selfie light? I need to take a picture of me being bravely heroic in the face of danger,” Griffin asked, waving a small LED ring light.
Nick tuned out Gentry and his team and scrolled through the business’s bank statement with a wince. His bottom line had fallen—make that plummeted—into the basement. Shit.
He pressed his fingers into his eyelids and looked again just to make sure he wasn’t seeing things. Unfortunately, clearing his vision didn’t distort reality. The bank balance was looking more like the allowance of a ten-year-old, not the cash assets of a business that employed actual people.
He’d shoved his head so far up his own ass that he’d completely neglected Santiago Investigations’ financial stability. They were out of the black and into the red. The deep red. The next-week’s-paychecks-might-bounce-and-the-electricity-might-get-shut-off red.
This was bad.
They needed a quick influx of cash. Like yesterday. He scrubbed his hands over his face and thought fast. High-stakes poker? Join a car-theft ring? Track down a high-dollar fugitive and collect the bounty? Sell a kidney?
“Maybe the person threatening me is a superfan?” Griffin suggested.
Nick closed his eyes and mentally screamed.
When he opened his eyes, he found Riley staring at him. Of course his psychic girlfriend could hear his inner screams.
He gave her a phony grin, a dumbass’s thumbs-up, and pretended to be engrossed in his dwindling bank balance on the screen. Maybe he could sell his old Lego sets or that Kiss guitar pick Gene Simmons had spit on when they performed at City Island? Fuck.
Unfortunately, it looked like the best, most likely option for a quick payday was the orange-tinged Ken doll in his living room.
Maybe he could sell one of Griffin’s kidneys?
Nick rubbed a hand over the back of his head. He needed to fix this and fast before anyone else found out. Instantaneously, Riley’s gaze was on him. Her nose twitched. Then her eyes widened.
Damn it. Living with a psychic had its downsides. “Thanks a lot, tattletale spirit guides,” he muttered under his breath.
“What was her name?” Josie asked Griffin while Riley continued to shoot Nick an embarrassed I-know-that-thing-you-don’t-want-me-to-know look.
Griffin blinked. “Whose name?”
Brian groaned. “The server you had fired.”
“How should I know? I don’t bother learning the names of people who earn less than six figures a year.”
The last thing Nick wanted to do was be dependent on Griffin Gentry for a payday. Okay, maybe that was the next-to-last thing. The last thing he wanted to do was let Riley down. He’d fucked up by obsessing about a cold case and turning down legitimate business. This was his mess and his responsibility to clean up. Even if it meant doing something so disgusting he could never look at himself in the mirror again.
Nick slammed his laptop shut and got to his feet. “People, let’s cut this idiot…I mean client a break.”
Riley raised an eyebrow and wrote Unnamed Pregnant Server on the board while everyone else glared judgmentally in Griffin’s direction.
“Knew you’d get on board,” Mrs. Penny said as she flopped down in her chair.
“Who else have you gotten shitcanned? Anyone you owe money?” Josie pressed, using the tip of her blade to clean dirt out from under her fingernail.
Griffin took an annoying breath. “Well, there’s a jeweler that keeps harassing me, saying I ‘stole’ something. And then there’s the guy whose pickup truck I nudged on the highway because he was going too slow. Oh, and this contractor keeps insisting that I pay her for the work she did to my backyard…”
“Oh! Then there’s the car dealer president who actually thinks I should be making payments on the Porsche they loaned me. Can you believe that?”
Griffin “Shithead” Gentry had spent the last hour detailing how he’d swindled, blackmailed, and generally fucked over half the population of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
Nick had a blinding headache and a double eye twitch. The whiteboard and three pages of legal pad paper were filled with potential suspects. Mrs. Penny was snoring on the thing Riley called a divan, and the house smelled like charbroiled cookies.
“That’s really all I can think of from the past two or three months…locally.” Griffin looked like he expected a gold star.
Everyone seemed too dazed to break the silence. Well, everyone except for Mrs. Penny, who let out a sinus-rupturing snore.
Riley cleared her throat. “Well, that was…helpful. Thank you, Griffin.”
“You’re welcome. Now, if you’ll just introduce me to my personal security for tonight’s masquerade gala, I can be on my way. I have a massage in an hour.”
“Masquerade gala?” Josie choked. She was the only one in the room who hated playing dress-up and making small talk more than Nick.
“It’s a fundraiser for something about underprivileged children…or plants. I can’t remember. Don’t forget your masks! They won’t let you in without one.”
Josie turned a sly, shit-eating grin on Nick. “Gee, I’m real sorry, boss. We can’t work tonight. Doctor’s appointment.” She pointed to her stomach.
“Looks like it’s up to you or your partner,” Brian said, nodding at the unconscious elderly woman kicking her orthopedic shoe in her sleep.
Nick could only begin to imagine the havoc Mrs. Penny would wreak all over some stuffed-shirt, black-tie shit show.
His birthday officially sucked. But there was no reason he shouldn’t make it suck for Griffin.
“Personal security will run you another grand up front in cash,” Nick announced. “VIP service for a VIP client.”
“VIP?” Riley asked as she helped him wheel the whiteboard back into his office. Griffin was on his way to his massage with Josie as his security. Brian was tackling background checks on the first two dozen potential suspects. And Mrs. Penny was still sound asleep. The rest of their roommates were God knows where doing God knows what.
“Vacuous Ignorant Prick,” Nick explained.
“Nice. Wow. It doesn’t look as horrible in here,” Riley noted, scoping out the room. He’d shoveled out most of the actual trash, reorganized his paperwork piles, and pried open the windows to let the fresh fall air overtake the stench of moldy takeout.
“What can I say? I’m a miracle worker,” he said as he positioned the whiteboard in front of the windows.
“Soooo, what’s with the sudden change of heart on Griffin’s case?” she asked innocently.
He sighed and leaned against the desk. “I know you know, so you can quit pretending like you don’t know.”
“We need money,” she said matter-of-factly.
“We’re not move-into-a-cardboard-box destitute,” he said defensively. “It’s more like maybe-we-shouldn’t-
make-any-medium-size-purchases-or-we’ll-have-to-cancel-our-streaming-services inconvenienced.”
“Hmm,” she said.
“What? No ‘I told you so’? You’re within your rights. I was a stubborn pain in the ass about finding Weber’s sister.”
She shrugged one shoulder. “It’s not as much fun when you already know I was right. Besides, making you feel worse doesn’t help the situation.”
Nick tugged her in to stand between his open legs. “You’re too good for me. I mean, I want you to know that I know that. But I also have no intention of letting you wander off to find someone more deserving.”
Her smile made the knots in his gut loosen.
“How much do we need?” she asked.
“If the check in my pocket doesn’t bounce and the cash isn’t counterfeit, they’ll temporarily stop the hemorrhaging.”
Riley slid her arms around his waist. “I’m sorry we have to get dressed up and try to make sure no one kills my crappy ex-husband on your birthday.”
“Look at it this way. He’s not your problem anymore. Now he’s our problem.”
Her smile was soft. “You’re a pretty sweet guy, Nick Santiago.”
He brushed a kiss over her forehead. “Yeah. Yeah.”
“So what are we going to do about outfits for the masquerade ball if we’re moderately broke?”
“Leave that to me,” he said with confidence.
“I’m not wearing lingerie to a gala,” Riley warned.
“Okay fine. I’ll come up with a plan B.” His hands slid down to cup her ass. He gave her a firm squeeze. “We have some time before we should head out and interview fake suspects for a fake crime. Wanna go upstairs and?—”
“Anyone seen my chainsaw?” Mr. Willicott, the best- looking and least lucid of the Bogdanovich mansion tenants, stood in the doorway, still holding his dusty-ass accordion.
“I will lose my mind living with these people again,” Nick complained.
“It’s only for a little while.” Riley patted his chest and then pushed out of his grasp. “No power tools under my roof, Mr. Willicott.”
Lily elbowed her way past her roommate. Burt trotted after her, eyes glued to the plate in the elderly woman’s hands. Lily shoved the stack of mostly burnt chocolate chip cookies under Nick’s nose. “Does the birthday boy want a cookie?”
Nick sighed and picked up a blackened cookie. “Thanks, Lily.”