“Not very well,” he said.
My eyebrow arched.
“Did you see the man from the kitchen?”
“He was gone by the time I made it back there. I’ve got to go too.”
My other eyebrow arched as he walked away, but I wasn’t sure why. All I knew was that my instincts were rarely wrong. Bill and Lindsey’s explanation about hiring me just wasn’t ringing true.
I walked back to my truck with a lot of questions.
Who was blackmailing Greta?
Who had Russ been blackmailing?
And the most important . . .
Had Russ been murdered?
Nine
I resisted temptation to head to the hospital to visit Tam.
Okay, okay, so I didn’t want to hear Brickhouse’s “I told you so” about my disastrous visit with Greta.
It was closing in on two o’ clock, and as I headed to the office to get some paperwork done, I called Kit to make sure the mini was going okay.
He answered his cell on the third ring. “Yo.”
“What kind of greeting is that?”
“My kind.”
I imagined him winking when he said it. He had a playful tone in his voice. “Everything going okay?”
“No dead bodies.”
“Ha. Ha.”
“The brick pavers are laid, the fire pit is done, the flowers are going in now. We should be back at the office in another two hours or so.”
“Did Jean-Claude show up?”
“Ten minutes late. Looks like death warmed up and spit out.”
I didn’t want to think about death. I turned right onto Jay-bird, heading toward TBS.
79
“He say anything?” I ventured. “About what he’s been doing?” I’d kept my gigolo suspicions to myself. Well, I’d shared them with Ana, who said she’d look into it.
I wondered exactly what kind of connections she had in that area, but truly, there were some things about my cousin even I didn’t want to know.
“Nah.”
“Any suspicions?”
“Nah.”
I rolled my eyes. “You’re so helpful.”
“That’s what you pay me for,” he said, and I heard a big
“Is that BeBe?”
“I, um—” Static suddenly filled the line. “You’re breaking up!”
“Kit,” I warned, knowing exactly what he was doing. Another
“Gotta go, Nina.”
I stared at my silent cell phone. He’d hung up on me.
Hmmph.
Part of me wanted to go to the site and find out why BeBe was once again part of my crew. BeBe was sweet and all, but a work site was no place for her. She could possibly cause more damage than we could fix.
If BeBe couldn’t stay at home, then it was time for doggy day care.
I walked into the office and found I kind of missed the chimes.
Coby manned Tam’s desk. He looked up at me, the phone balanced between his ear and shoulder, one hand on the computer keyboard, the other holding a pencil.
“Do you know how to schedule an appointment?” he asked me. Then said into the phone, “No, no, not you.”
He mouthed
