Live and Let Lie

by Carolyn Scott

  "Really?" Maybe I should get that in writing. "Thanks." I took her details and Roberta got up to leave. "Mr. Knight will be in touch."

  "Oh, I noticed the name of the agency has changed from the one on the card," she said. "Sinclair Investigations? Didn't you say that was your name?"

  I nodded. "My dad used to own this agency with Will Knight but he sold his share to his junior partner five years ago after a stroke. Will changed the name."

  "I see." She nodded, thoughtful. "That's nice. To have his old partner's daughter work here, I mean."

  Yeah, peachy. And probably the reason he didn't fire me. He sure as hell wasn't keeping me on for my work ethic.

  "But you're not an investigator, like your father?"

  "Not yet." One day maybe, if Will ever let me tag along to learn.

  Roberta left, looking a lot happier than when she arrived.

  "Is it safe?" Carl's blond head popped around his door. When he saw the coast was clear he stepped out.

  "What are you afraid of?" I asked. "Roberta? Do you know her?"

  "No, she just looked ghostly."

  "Poor woman. Her husband cheated on her and stole her family's jewelry."

  "We don't do domestics."

  I finished keying in the details of Roberta's story into our client tracking system, saying nothing.

  Carl sat on the edge of my desk and studied the screen. "Will's going to love this. Not."

  "It's not a domestic case. It's a lost and found."

  "Lost and found? What's that?"

  A new category I made up. "She wants to employ us, Carl, and that means money. Will has to take her on."

  He snorted. "You're insane. But," he sighed theatrically, "that's part of your girlish charm." He batted his eyelids at me and I shoved him off my desk.

  "Stop being an idiot and go do some work."

  "I will if you will."

  "I am working!"

  Some time later, the door opened and Will stalked in looking hot, bothered and in need of a shower. I pretended to be working. Carl stayed in his office. Coward.

  "Hi," I said chirpily.

  He took the mail without any comment and strode past my desk.

  "Um, Will?"

  "What is it? I'm very busy."

  "I got us a new client."

  That got his attention. "Really? How? Who?"

  I brought up Roberta's details on the computer. "It's all on here already."

  He stood behind me and leaned over my shoulder. He smelled sweaty but it wasn't unpleasant, just sort of manly.

  Ugh, I must have been desperate to get laid if I was thinking of my boss as a man. Usually I thought of him as a bastard.

  I tried to inch the chair forward away from him but he had a death grip on the back and I couldn't move. He leaned even further in to use the keyboard and the back of my head bumped his chest. A really nice solid, broad chest. The sort of chest a girl would love to curl up to on a warm summer night and run her fingers down.

  Oh boy, I needed to do something with my hands. In my distraction, I headed for the mouse at the same time as Will. We both jerked away as if zapped by a thousand volts.

  He stepped back. "It says here that Roberta's husband stole her jewelry. Cat, you know how I feel about spouse surveillance."

  "But it's not a domestic," I said. "It's a lost and found."

  "No such thing." He started to move away.

  "Stolen property?"

  "Nice try, but we're sticking to corporate."

  "Why? We need the money. We should branch out. And domestics are so lucrative." And Dad used to do them when the business was his.

  "We don't have the resources."

  "But I can help. I could—"

  "Do your goddamn job." He was halfway up the hallway but he suddenly stopped and turned round. He waggled his finger at me. "You know, I don't understand you. You're smart, you're a whiz at computers and you're a people person, not to mention a talented actress, and yet you can't even file properly. Make that won't file properly. What is it with you, Cat?" But he didn't give me a chance to say anything before moving on. "You know, your dad said all you needed was a chance, so when you waltzed in here, I was more than happy to give you one because he gave me one, but…" He sighed heavily. "Why waste your skills?"

  I stood, speechless, and stared at him. It was the most Will had ever said to me, and I was taken aback. He'd made occasional comments about my lack of motivation, but he'd never attacked me so thoroughly before. I was too stunned to say anything.

  For a whole second.

  "Maybe it's the working environment," I snapped. "You could at least give me some encouragement, maybe further my opportunities, but no, you're too damn busy. When I try to bring in more clients, you turn them away. When I ask to join you in meetings, you shoot me down. For someone in business, you have no idea how to treat your employees."

  He opened his mouth then shut it again, spun on his heel, and strode to his office.

  "If you don't want to include me, why do you keep me on?" I called after him.

  "I've got a heart of gold," he shot back over his shoulder. "And your dad would come back and haunt me if I threw you out on the street." He slammed his office door behind him.

  Heart of ice more like. I plopped down in my chair, my whole body sizzling with anger and frustration.

  Believe me, I often thought about leaving, especially after Will told me how hopeless I was. But then sometimes when he wasn't stressed or trying to do a million things at once, he could be a nice guy. When he followed that up with a promise to train me to be a P.I., I knew I was stuck.

  I'd always wanted to be a private investigator, even before Dad became one and opened the agency. It looked so cool on TV. But I got side-tracked, and at the age of twenty-eight, starting a new career wasn't easy when your only experience was playing a bad guy's girlfriend in Castle.

  If only Will stayed in his good mood long enough to follow through on his promise, I could get out of my rut and do something interesting. Something worthwhile. Something other than filing.

  "What's got up his nose today?" I said to Carl when he emerged from his office like a turtle from its shell. He was a lovely guy but a bit of a coward around Will. He never stood up for me.

  "He's just overworked. Waterstone's being a pain in the ass over this missing money. He wants cameras set up in all his stores to watch his staff. And now that Slim has signed up, Will's got a load of frauds to investigate."

  "Can't you help him out?"

  "What do you think I'm doing back there?"

  "Why doesn't he tell Waterstone to take a hike now we've got an even bigger client who doesn't mistrust his own people?"

  "Because we still need Frank and his money. Will's also trying to drum up new business, plus service our other smaller clients, which I mostly do, but you know Will, he likes to check everything."

  I stared at the blinking cursor on the computer screen. "Are we really that desperate for money that he has to run himself into the ground?" I sounded like I almost felt sorry for him. More fool me.

  "You should know. You do the books."

  "I pay the invoices and file them. I don't see the bottom line. Maybe we should hire more investigators." I knew someone willing to learn. Someone cheap and already on the payroll.

  "It's a catch twenty-two. We can't take on new clients without the staff to handle them, but we can't employ new staff without the money to pay them."

  "Maybe I could help out more."

  "With all due respect, Cat, even if you put one hundred and ten percent into your job, it's not reception that will bring in the money. It's investigation."

  My face grew hot and I barely managed to stay seated. What was with Carl and Will? I knew I was occasionally lax but was that any reason to put me down? "I'm not a receptionist," I said through gritted teeth, "I'm an office manager." I'd expected Carl at least to understand the difference. Will was a Neanderthal when it came to manners but I'd always thought Ca
rl could be counted on for political correctness.

  At least he had the decency to look contrite. "What I meant was—"

  "Forget it." I waved a hand in the air. "What I meant was, if Will would let me do something more productive around here instead of filing and taking messages, we could take on more clients. Like Roberta."

  "We need someone to do the filing and take messages. Although you don't actually do any of that very well." His sudden grin made him look like a mischievous boy.

  I couldn't help smiling back. I never could stay mad at Carl for long. He was cute, in a boy-band way that worked well for him, especially where women were concerned. I didn't know much about his love life, but a leggy blonde had come to the office about a month ago, had a huge argument with him, then emerged from his office half an hour later with the back of her skirt caught in her thong.

  Carl was like the kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Guilty, but you let him take one anyway just because he looked at you with those big blue eyes and told you how much he loved your home cooking.

  "Hey, I'm not that bad," I said in my own defense.

  "Have you seen Will's office lately? There are papers stacked everywhere. His floor looks like New York's skyline."

  I sighed. "I know, I know. I'll get to it eventually. If Will doesn't fire me first." Sometimes I wondered why he hadn't already. I wasn't exactly a valuable member of the team. Anyone could do my job and do it better than me. "Maybe he really is keeping me on for Dad's sake."

  "Maybe he likes having you around."

  "Why? Because I create an air of mystery by filing things in the wrong place?" I snorted. "I doubt it."

  Carl shrugged and returned to his office, closing the door.

  I hated to admit it, but Will had a point. I could do the office manager job standing on my head. So why didn't I? Maybe a career change at twenty-eight had been a bad idea. I swear I could hear Dad saying 'I told you so' from his grave.

  I'd put myself through several years of college in L.A. by taking small acting roles in movies, much to my father's dismay. I'd worked with talented actors and directors and even picked up a few skills, but I'd never had any roles with lines. Not even a single word. Nor had I finished any of the college courses. I'd never worked in the real world until this job came along. And I hated it. I was so fucking bored.

  Maybe I just wasn't cut out for office work. Maybe I should have stuck to college and playing dead in my spare time. Maybe being a P.I. was a pipe dream, better left to ex-cops like Dad and Will, not ex-actors.

  I stared at the screen and blinked back burning tears.

  No you don't, Cat. Don't let him get to you. Don't give up.

  Dad had driven me out of town with his domineering and controlling nature, but I wasn't going to let Will push me around now that I was older, wiser and stronger.

  The cursor blinked beside Roberta's name and I smiled to myself. What's the best way to get Cat Sinclair to do something? Tell her not to do it. If Will couldn't, or wouldn't, teach me to be a P.I. then I'd learn by myself.

  Suddenly I was sixteen again, sitting on my bed, saying Fuck you to the mirror, imagining it was Dad's face in the reflection.

  Only this time I had a car, a better wardrobe, and the survival instincts that only a dog-eat-dog place like Hollywood can teach you.

  I picked up the phone and dialed Roberta's number.

  Download FINDERS KEEPERS LOSERS DIE now.

  Table of Contents

  ABOUT THIS BOOK

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  A message from the author

  Books by Carolyn Scott

  About The Author