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"Is anyone else here?" he asked.
"No, dear. I mean, sir."
"Good. I need you to walk up to the grocer and buy some coffee. We're low on cream, too. Take your time."
"But--"
He stepped up to the desk, lowering his voice. "We talked about this when I gave you the job, Mom."
Mom? He was kidding, right? I looked from him to the old woman. Nope. Not kidding.
"There are some things you can't be a part of," he said. "We discussed that."
She shot an anxious glance my way.
"I need you to leave," Bruyn said. "Can you do that?"
She nodded and scooped up her purse. As she passed, she gave me a look that was almost pitying.
A million stories about small-town cops ran through my mind, images of pistol-whippings and broken fingers. Granted, 99.9 percent of those images came from movies and TV, but still, every now and then I'd hear a story that suggested some of that shit happened in real life.
With a binding spell at the ready, I followed him into his office.
He kicked out a chair. "Sit."
I did.
He walked to the window, looked out, and nodded as the tiny figure of his mother headed downtown. Then he filled two mugs from the pot on his desk.
"W
hat do you take?"
"Um, black ..."
"Tough girl, huh?"
I braced myself, but when he turned, he was smiling. He handed me the mug and started adding cream and sugar to his own.
"Little young to be a private eye, aren't you? I've got a grandnephew at Everest about your age."
"I've been with my firm for five years."
"Firm?" He took my card from his pocket. "Cortez-Winterbourne Investigations. Out of Portland."
I nodded. "We have a staff of four investigators with over thirty years' experience among them. On this particular case we're working in conjunction with a Seattle firm. Their lead investigator will be joining me soon. My primary job here is information gathering."
He nodded, then perched on the edge of his desk. "So who hired you?"
"Claire Kennedy's mother."
"I can check that, you know."
"Please do. The lead investigator is Jesse Aanes, from the Seattle firm I mentioned. Here's his card." I passed it over.
He took it. "So Mrs. Kennedy doesn't think small-town cops are up to the job?"
I struggled to remember the line Lucas always used. "No, she just hoped a private investigator might be able to ... cut corners." Not exactly what Lucas would say, but I was improvising. "Go where the law can't."
