Finders Keepers Losers Die (2 page)

I sat in my chair and turned to my computer.
"I'll take down your details and everything you know about the
stolen jewelry."

She smiled. "Yes, of course. Thank you so
much."

"So how did you hear about us?"

Roberta leaned forward. "I found your
agency's card in Lou's things. He must have used you in the past."
She pointed at the computer. "He's probably on file."

I tapped Lou Scarletti into our system and a
weird déjà vu feeling made me look at his name twice. It sounded
familiar. I looked again at Roberta but I'd remember that sad face
anywhere. I clicked the Search button but there were no matches.
"The computer records only go back a few years. Maybe it was
earlier."

She nodded. "He was in jail for most of the
last twelve."

"Jail!"

"Armed robbery."

"Armed robbery! Why didn't you tell me?"

"Oh, is it relevant?"

"It could be." Will might be more inclined
to take up the case if he knew he was after a real criminal. Don't
get me wrong, white-collar crime is a huge problem in America, but
I just didn't get a buzz out of monitoring the number of cigarette
breaks taken by staff. I don't think Carl did either. The jury was
still out on Will.

"Was he a jewel thief?" I asked.

"Bank robber. He held up two banks before
getting caught." She shook her head. "I had no idea at the time
that he was involved with some shady characters."

Again, that creepy feeling. I shook it off,
trying to concentrate on the here and now. "When did he get
out?"

"Three months ago." Her eyes lowered to her
lap. "That's when he took off."

Poor thing. "Don't worry, we'll get some
retribution for you."

"Yes." She smiled. "I believe you will. I
can feel it in my bones."

"You can?"

She nodded. "My bones are never wrong."

Useful. "But Will Knight will be taking your
case," I said. "I'm not an investigator."

"You're not? But you seem so…" She waved her
hand round in little circles. "…competent."

"Really?" Maybe I should get that in
writing. "Thanks." I took her details and Roberta got up to leave.
"Mr. Knight will be in touch."

"Oh, I noticed the name of the agency has
changed from the one on the card," she said. "Sinclair
Investigations? Didn't you say that was your name?"

I nodded. "My dad used to own this agency
with Will Knight but he sold his share to his junior partner five
years ago after a stroke. Will changed the name."

"I see." She nodded, thoughtful. "That's
nice. To have his old partner's daughter work here, I mean."

Yeah, peachy. And probably the reason he
didn't fire me. He sure as hell wasn't keeping me on for my work
ethic.

"But you're not an investigator, like your
father?"

"Not yet." One day maybe, if Will ever let
me tag along to learn.

Roberta left, looking a lot happier than
when she arrived.

"Is it safe?" Carl's blond head popped
around his door. When he saw the coast was clear he stepped
out.

"What are you afraid of?" I asked. "Roberta?
Do you know her?"

"No, she just looked ghostly."

"Poor woman. Her husband cheated on her and
stole her family's jewelry."

"We don't do domestics."

I finished keying in the details of
Roberta's story into our client tracking system, saying
nothing.

Carl sat on the edge of my desk and studied
the screen. "Will's going to love this. Not."

"It's not a domestic case. It's a lost and
found."

"Lost and found? What's that?"

A new category I made up. "She wants to
employ us, Carl, and that means money. Will has to take her
on."

He snorted. "You're insane. But," he sighed
theatrically, "that's part of your girlish charm." He batted his
eyelids at me and I shoved him off my desk.

"Stop being an idiot and go do some
work."

"I will if you will."

"I am working!"

Some time later, the door opened and Will
stalked in looking hot, bothered and in need of a shower. I
pretended to be working. Carl stayed in his office. Coward.

"Hi," I said chirpily.

He took the mail without any comment and
strode past my desk.

"Um, Will?"

"What is it? I'm very busy."

"I got us a new client."

That got his attention. "Really? How?
Who?"

I brought up Roberta's details on the
computer. "It's all on here already."

He stood behind me and leaned over my
shoulder. He smelled sweaty but it wasn't unpleasant, just sort of
manly.

Ugh, I must have been desperate to get laid
if I was thinking of my boss as a man. Usually I thought of him as
a bastard.

I tried to inch the chair forward away from
him but he had a death grip on the back and I couldn't move. He
leaned even further in to use the keyboard and the back of my head
bumped his chest. A really nice solid, broad chest. The sort of
chest a girl would love to curl up to on a warm summer night and
run her fingers down.

Oh boy, I needed to do something with my
hands. In my distraction, I headed for the mouse at the same time
as Will. We both jerked away as if zapped by a thousand volts.

He stepped back. "It says here that
Roberta's husband stole her jewelry. Cat, you know how I feel about
spouse surveillance."

"But it's not a domestic," I said. "It's a
lost and found."

"No such thing." He started to move
away.

"Stolen property?"

"Nice try, but we're sticking to
corporate."

"Why? We need the money. We should branch
out. And domestics are so lucrative." And Dad used to do them when
the business was his.

"We don't have the resources."

"But I can help. I could—"

"Do your goddamn job." He was halfway up the
hallway but he suddenly stopped and turned round. He waggled his
finger at me. "You know, I don't understand you. You're smart,
you're a whiz at computers and you're a people person, not to
mention a talented actress, and yet you can't even file properly.
Make that
won't
file properly. What is it with you, Cat?"
But he didn't give me a chance to say anything before moving on.
"You know, your dad said all you needed was a chance, so when you
waltzed in here, I was more than happy to give you one because he
gave me one, but…" He sighed heavily. "Why waste your skills?"

I stood, speechless, and stared at him. It
was the most Will had ever said to me, and I was taken aback. He'd
made occasional comments about my lack of motivation, but he'd
never attacked me so thoroughly before. I was too stunned to say
anything.

For a whole second.

"Maybe it's the working environment," I
snapped. "You could at least give me some encouragement, maybe
further my opportunities, but no, you're too damn busy. When I try
to bring in more clients, you turn them away. When I ask to join
you in meetings, you shoot me down. For someone in business, you
have
no
idea how to treat your employees."

He opened his mouth then shut it again, spun
on his heel, and strode to his office.

"If you don't want to include me, why do you
keep me on?" I called after him.

"I've got a heart of gold," he shot back
over his shoulder. "And your dad would come back and haunt me if I
threw you out on the street." He slammed his office door behind
him.

Heart of ice more like. I plopped down in my
chair, my whole body sizzling with anger and frustration.

Believe me, I often thought about leaving,
especially after Will told me how hopeless I was. But then
sometimes when he wasn't stressed or trying to do a million things
at once, he could be a nice guy. When he followed that up with a
promise to train me to be a P.I., I knew I was stuck.

I'd always wanted to be a private
investigator, even before Dad became one and opened the agency. It
looked so cool on TV. But I got side-tracked, and at the age of
twenty-eight, starting a new career wasn't easy when your only
experience was playing a bad guy's girlfriend in
Castle
.

If only Will stayed in his good mood long
enough to follow through on his promise, I could get out of my rut
and do something interesting. Something worthwhile. Something other
than filing.

"What's got up his nose today?" I said to
Carl when he emerged from his office like a turtle from its shell.
He was a lovely guy but a bit of a coward around Will. He never
stood up for me.

"He's just overworked. Waterstone's being a
pain in the ass over this missing money. He wants cameras set up in
all his stores to watch his staff. And now that Slim has signed up,
Will's got a load of frauds to investigate."

"Can't you help him out?"

"What do you think I'm doing back
there?"

"Why doesn't he tell Waterstone to take a
hike now we've got an even bigger client who doesn't mistrust his
own people?"

"Because we still need Frank and his money.
Will's also trying to drum up new business, plus service our other
smaller clients, which I mostly do, but you know Will, he likes to
check everything."

I stared at the blinking cursor on the
computer screen. "Are we really that desperate for money that he
has to run himself into the ground?" I sounded like I almost felt
sorry for him. More fool me.

"You should know. You do the books."

"I pay the invoices and file them. I don't
see the bottom line. Maybe we should hire more investigators." I
knew someone willing to learn. Someone cheap and already on the
payroll.

"It's a catch twenty-two. We can't take on
new clients without the staff to handle them, but we can't employ
new staff without the money to pay them."

"Maybe I could help out more."

"With all due respect, Cat, even if you put
one hundred and ten percent into your job, it's not reception that
will bring in the money. It's investigation."

My face grew hot and I barely managed to
stay seated. What was with Carl and Will? I knew I was occasionally
lax but was that any reason to put me down? "I'm not a
receptionist," I said through gritted teeth, "I'm an office
manager." I'd expected Carl at least to understand the difference.
Will was a Neanderthal when it came to manners but I'd always
thought Carl could be counted on for political correctness.

At least he had the decency to look
contrite. "What I meant was—"

"Forget it." I waved a hand in the air.
"What
I
meant was, if Will would let me do something more
productive around here instead of filing and taking messages, we
could take on more clients. Like Roberta."

"We
need
someone to do the filing and
take messages. Although you don't actually do any of that very
well." His sudden grin made him look like a mischievous boy.

I couldn't help smiling back. I never could
stay mad at Carl for long. He was cute, in a boy-band way that
worked well for him, especially where women were concerned. I
didn't know much about his love life, but a leggy blonde had come
to the office about a month ago, had a huge argument with him, then
emerged from his office half an hour later with the back of her
skirt caught in her thong.

Carl was like the kid caught with his hand
in the cookie jar. Guilty, but you let him take one anyway just
because he looked at you with those big blue eyes and told you how
much he loved your home cooking.

"Hey, I'm not
that
bad," I said in my
own defense.

"Have you seen Will's office lately? There
are papers stacked everywhere. His floor looks like New York's
skyline."

I sighed. "I know, I know. I'll get to it
eventually. If Will doesn't fire me first." Sometimes I wondered
why he hadn't already. I wasn't exactly a valuable member of the
team. Anyone could do my job and do it better than me. "Maybe he
really is keeping me on for Dad's sake."

"Maybe he likes having you around."

"Why? Because I create an air of mystery by
filing things in the wrong place?" I snorted. "I doubt it."

Carl shrugged and returned to his office,
closing the door.

I hated to admit it, but Will had a point. I
could do the office manager job standing on my head. So why didn't
I? Maybe a career change at twenty-eight had been a bad idea. I
swear I could hear Dad saying 'I told you so' from his grave.

I'd put myself through several years of
college in L.A. by taking small acting roles in movies, much to my
father's dismay. I'd worked with talented actors and directors and
even picked up a few skills, but I'd never had any roles with
lines. Not even a single word. Nor had I finished any of the
college courses. I'd never worked in the real world until this job
came along. And I hated it. I was so fucking bored.

Maybe I just wasn't cut out for office work.
Maybe I should have stuck to college and playing dead in my spare
time. Maybe being a P.I. was a pipe dream, better left to ex-cops
like Dad and Will, not ex-actors.

I stared at the screen and blinked back
burning tears.

No you don't, Cat. Don't let him get to you.
Don't give up.

Dad had driven me out of town with his
domineering and controlling nature, but I wasn't going to let Will
push me around now that I was older, wiser and stronger.

The cursor blinked beside Roberta's name and
I smiled to myself. What's the best way to get Cat Sinclair to do
something? Tell her
not
to do it. If Will couldn't, or
wouldn't, teach me to be a P.I. then I'd learn by myself.

Suddenly I was sixteen again, sitting on my
bed, saying
Fuck you
to the mirror, imagining it was Dad's
face in the reflection.

Only this time I had a car, a better
wardrobe, and the survival instincts that only a dog-eat-dog place
like Hollywood can teach you.