“The day after tomorrow.”
“It’s when?” He should have known this.
“Yeah, but I don’t usually do much.”
Valerie not doing much to celebrate seemed suspect, but she pushed herself up to look in his face before he could quiz her further. “Hey, Nico?”
“What?”
“I’ve never had sex outside.”
He heard this with avid interest. “No? I’ve never had sex in a shower. Or the rain.”
“A travesty.” She grinned at him. “Do you have any ideas on how to fix it?”
Did he ever.
Two hours later, they still hadn’t made it to the loft.
Twenty-Five
Valerie and Nico sat in the breezy gazebo watching Fernie film content as the acrid smell of Brayden burning something on the BBQ filled the previously pristine air. Valerie kept an appropriate and professional distance from Nico, although she’d taken advantage of a few private moments to sneak a kiss or run her hand along his thigh. Getting him ruffled had to be one of her favorite things in the world, and she’d been overjoyed to discover he was ticklish.
“What is Ferniedoing?” she asked for the tenth time. Fernie was in a new unitard, this one white, and kept referring to her laptop as she stumbled through a series of movements that had her stepping back and forth while she spun. They looked oddly familiar. Some new kind of yoga?
Nico shrugged as if to say he had no more insight now as when she’d asked a few minutes ago.
“Check your email again,” she said to Nico.
“Einstein said the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting the same result.”
“Einstein didn’t have email, which is constantly refreshing.”
He put his laptop to the side and looked at her. “Valerie. I have asked the investigator for updates twice. There’s nothing to do but wait.”
She sipped her iced coffee so aggressively that the cold made her cough. “I hate waiting.”
“I know.” He sounded like he felt her pain, but then he picked the laptop back up.
“What if she moved to the States?”
“Then Roger’s going to have to spend a lot more money.”
“What if she changed her name? I’m sure Yvette was her English name.”
“Valid point but we talked about this. She went by Yvette, and since we can’t find the family or any documentation from the Lakeview or the town or the place where they rented an apartment, we’re stuck with what we have. Also, remember our job is not to be detectives. Roger has someone for that.”
Just because he was right didn’t mean Valerie was happy about it. She pulled out her phone to check the time and saw a text from Alexis.
She didn’t want to read it.
She wasn’t going to read it.
She read it.
It was a link to a viral roundup about terrible funerals.The second one is yours!Alex had written. Valerie could almost hear her satisfaction and remembered Dalia’s comment about the group only taking pleasure in bad news.Don’t worry about responding. I’m going to tell her that you’d actually tried your best but it’s hard to run an event puking your guts out. She can move it along.
Valerie hastened to assure Alexis that she absolutely did not want her help with this, at all, ever. But phrased in much more acceptable language thanks to the Valerie Politeness Translator, or VPT.
