Hard Eight

“No. They’ll probably evict me.” He looked around the room. “This is my third office in six months. I had an accidental wastebasket fire in my first office that sort of spread throughout the building. And the office after that got condemned when there was a toilet incident above it and the roof caved in.”

“Public restroom?” Lula asked.

“Yes. But I swear it wasn’t me. I’m almost positive.”

Lula looked at her watch. “It’s my lunchtime.”

“Hey, how about if I go to lunch with you guys,” Kloughn said. “I have some ideas on this case. We could talk about it over lunch.”

Lula cut her eyes to him. “Haven’t got anybody to eat lunch with, hunh?”

“Sure, I’ve got lots of people to eat lunch with. Everybody wants to eat lunch with me. I didn’t make any plans for today, though.”

“You’re an accident waiting to happen,” Lula said. “We eat lunch with you we’ll probably get food poisoning.”

“If you were really sick I could get you some money,” he said. “And if you died it would be big money.”

“We’re only getting fast food,” I said.

His eyes lit up. “I love fast food. It’s always the same. You can count on it. No surprises.”

“And it’s cheap,” Lula said.

“Exactly!”

He put a small out to lunch sign in his office window and locked the door behind himself. He climbed into the backseat of the CR-V and leaned forward.

“What are you, part golden retriever?” Lula asked. “You’re breathing on me. Sit back in your seat. Put your seat belt on. And if you start drooling, you’re outta here.”

“Boy, this is fun,” he said. “What are we going to eat? Fried chicken? Fish sandwich?

Cheeseburger?”

Ten minutes later, we pulled out of the McDonald’s drive-thru, loaded with burgers and shakes and fries.

“Okay, here’s what I think,” Kloughn said. “I think Evelyn isn’t far away. She’s nice but she’s a mouse, right? I mean, where’s she gonna go? How do we know she’s not at her grandma’s?”

“Her grandmother is the one who hired me! She’s going to lose her house.”

“Oh yeah. I forgot.”

Lula looked at him in the rearview mirror. “What’d you do, go to one of them offshore law schools?”

“Very funny.” He did another tie-smoothing thing. “It was a correspondence course.”

“Is that legal?”

“Sure, you take tests and everything.”

I pulled into the Laundromat parking lot and stopped. “Here we are, back from lunch,” I said.

“Already? But it’s too short. I didn’t even finish my fries,” he said. “And after that I have a pie to eat.”

“Sorry. We have work to do.”

“Yeah? What kind of work? Are you going out after someone dangerous? I bet I could help.”

“Don’t you have lawyer things to do?”