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“Now?”
“Yes,” he said. “Or at least, in twenty minutes.”
I harrumphed at this sudden change in demeanor, as if he hadn’t spent the last week in a state of grumpy old werewolf-ness. Phasing issues or no, I didn’t appreciate mood swings that left me feeling gaslighted. I flipped through the file, reading the summary. “We’re looking for a stripper named Trixie?”
Caleb cast me another smirk. “I think they prefer ‘exotic dancer.’â??”
“Why are we looking for a stripper named Trixie?”
“See, that’s a question a man would never ask.”
I gave him my best stink-eye, but he only grinned impishly at me. Holding his gator jerky over the garbage can got his attention.
“Hey!” he howled. “Trixie is the errant girlfriend of Lolo Kardakian, medium-sized hood out of Anchorage. They’ve had a disagreement.”
I inadvertently dropped the bag of jerky, more out of surprise than revenge. “We’re chasing down a woman to drag her back to her angry criminal boyfriend?”
“Do you know how hard it is to find that brand of gator jerky?” he asked, peering into the garbage can to see if the bag was salvageable.
“You have a jerky problem. Suds and I are going to have an intervention.”
“I had to order it over the Internet!” he exclaimed.
I dug a fingertip into his side, making him wince. “Caleb!”
“We’re not exactly dragging her back. Look, I know both of them pretty well. He isn’t going to hurt her, he just wants a valuable item she took with her when he and she had their last, um—”
I raised my hand to cut him off. “Let’s go with ‘date.’â??”
“OK, then. On their last date, Lolo informed Trixie that he wasn’t planning on leaving his wife. And while he was in the shower, she took his wedding ring from the nightstand.”
“Why doesn’t he just have the ring replaced?”
“Well, it’s Lolo’s father-in-law’s ring. It’s an antique and apparently pretty distinctive. Plus, Lolo’s sort of superstitious. He wants his wedding ring back. He’s afraid that without it, his marriage will be doomed.”
“Yeah, his carrying on with a stripper named Trixie won’t have any effect on it at all.”
“All we have to do is get the ring back to Lolo in Anchorage. I thought you’d be excited to finally get there.”
“I object to this job on moral grounds . . . on several levels. Quests for evil rings rarely turn out well. Too many potential Gollum issues. Also, I don’t like the idea of working for a guy whose name could belong to a Star Trek villain.”
“Them’s the breaks, sweetheart,” he said, shrugging as I pouted. “We aren’t actually taking custody of anyone, so your argument isn’t valid. And you’ve objected to most of the jobs we’ve done together on some grounds. If it was up to you, we would let everybody go with a sternly worded warning.”
“Fine,” I grumbled. “How do we find this girl?”
“My buddy Abe owns a bar down in Goose Creek—”
“Yet another member of the League of Caleb’s Barkeep Super Friends,” I interjected.
“Please don’t mix Marvel and DC references. You’re better than that,” he said, shaking his head disdainfully. “As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted, Abe’s on Trixie’s circuit. Most of these places can’t keep girls on full-time. You don’t find a lot of pretty girls willing to strip in a small town year-round. So these girls travel a sort of circuit a few months each year. The bar pays a flat fee, the girls keep all the tips. The male patrons see a little boob. Everybody walks away happy.”
“Except for feminists. And health inspectors.”
“Is this going to be your attitude for the entire job? Because that will make it real difficult for me to enjoy working on this with you.”
I frowned, although relief at seeing the old Caleb return was gradually setting in. “Am I supposed to try to help you enjoy a job involving strippers?”
“I honestly don’t know how to answer that without getting poked in the ribs again.”
