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Chapter 2
If I had a dime for every time a man lied to his wife, bet you would stop bitching about needing my receipts. ~ Text from Hailey to Suzie
“I’m back, Suzie!” I shout when I enter the office of our little private investigation business, You Cheat, We Eat. Feel free to giggle at the name. I know I do. Suzie is my best friend and business partner. She’s the one who runs the office while I’m off catching cheaters doing what they do best – cheat.
The offices of You Cheat, We Eat look exactly like you’d expect a gumshoe detective’s office to look. The name of the agency is etched into the glass front door and, when you open the door, you enter a small reception area. This is Suzie’s domain and she reigns supreme here.
Behind Suzie are the offices. The top half of the walls are frosted glass, the bottom half wood paneling which has seen better days, far better days. I’m the only ‘detective’ at the moment, but we have two additional offices. One of the offices is where the files and the copy machine are kept, while the other one is full of boxes of, I don’t know what.
The offices of our PI business may be cliché, but Suzie is anything but. She’s no glasses-wearing, hair in a bun, professionally clothed secretary lookalike. For starters, her red hair is short and spiky. She’s also only two inches over five-foot-tall, although she does have curves I’m seriously jealous of. And last but not least, she likes to wear her food. Yep, you’ll often see remnants of her last meal spilled on her clothes.
“Did you get the money shot?” Suzie asks with a waggle of her eyebrows.
Unlike me, she doesn’t have a problem with pictures of people having sex. Of course, she isn’t the one wading into the dirty world of cheaters to take the pictures. Talk about a disaster waiting to happen. Not only is she the klutziest person I’ve ever met, but the woman can’t keep quiet for longer than thirty seconds. Seriously, thirty seconds. I’ve timed her on multiple occasions.
Suzie is the reason I ended up in the private investigator business. I had no plans to become a PI. Nope. It wasn’t even on my radar. I studied drama at college, although I had no plans to rush off to Hollywood and become a movie star. As if.
I know I’m not completely unfortunate looking. To be honest, I’m kind of pretty in a fresh-faced Midwest kind of way. Brown, wavy hair and dark brown eyes. I’m lucky enough to be skinny as well, although I would kill for some curves. But the competition in Hollywood would do me in. Always having to look your best. Yuck. Most days, I’m happy if I remember to brush my hair. And never knowing who is a real friend and who’s hiding a dagger behind her back? Where do I not sign up?
Instead, I planned to become a high school drama teacher. After all, I loved performing plays in high school. But there was one teensy weensy problem with my plan. Apparently, having a potty mouth is not ‘good for the children’. Insert eye roll here. You grow up with a single father who owns a bar and not end up with a potty mouth. I dare you.
I was working at my dad’s bar when Suzie came to me convinced her fiancé was cheating on her. Turns out, she was right. It also turned out I’m really good at finding out people’s secrets. For some reason, people look at my face and see honesty. Snort. Guess those drama classes paid off after all. Before I knew it, I had an office and Suzie as a sidekick.
Lucky for me, my sidekick did study something useful in college – business management. She takes care of all the admin and finance stuff I can’t begin to understand.
I hand Suzie my camera. “It’s all yours. Enjoy.” I sink into one of the chairs across from her desk.
She squeals before switching on the camera and starting to scroll through the pictures. “Oh my. Someone needs his back waxed. You really should take some business cards from my waxing specialist with you.”
“How would that work? Excuse me, please, can you stop cheating on your wife, so I can hand you this business card? By the way, your wife is going to sue you for all you’re worth when I give her these pictures.”
“There’s no need to get snippy. You could shove the card under the hotel room door or something.” She starts to set the camera down, but she’s not looking at what she’s doing and nearly sets the thing down on thin air.
“Watch it,” I shout and rush to the desk to stop my obnoxiously priced camera from falling to the ground and breaking into a gazillion pieces. Told you the woman is a klutz.
“Oopsie.”
I don’t bother responding to her klutz moment. Instead, I move onto more important matters. “I’m starving. What’s for lunch?”
It’s nearly three o’clock, but I haven’t had time to grab anything to eat yet. I thought being a PI and chasing cheaters would mean a lot of late nights. It turns out a ton of cheaters do the dirty deed on their lunch break.
Suzie opens a drawer and starts throwing things on the desk – a bag of tortilla chips, a candy bar, a bag of popcorn.
“Stop,” I tell her. “I want real food.”
She stares at me as if she has no clue what real food is.
“You know, not processed stuff.”
She gasps and pulls the food to her bosom. “Shush. Don’t you dare insult my lovelies. You’ll hurt their feelings.”
“I need meat. Something I can take a bite out of.”
She abandons her precious cargo to narrow her eyes on me. “What happened?”
Damn it. The woman may be klutzy and loud-mouthed, but stupid she is not. I should have taken the damn tortilla chips and moved on. “Nothing,” I say and stand, intent on hiding in my office. “I have a potential client coming soon. I need to do a background check.”
“You oversold it, chickadee. One, I do the background checks. And two, the client isn’t coming for two hours. What happened? Don’t make me repeat myself for a third time.”
