2 Sisters Detective Agency(84)

Baby looked at the people around us. She sighed, but it was unreadable to me. It could have been exhaustion or solace—I didn’t know.

“Look,” I began, “I know I annoy the crap out of you—”

“You don’t annoy me, Rhonda,” she said. “You’re cool.”

“I’m cool?” I laughed. “Me? Of all people?”

“Sometimes.” She smirked. “You’re kind of exciting and weird. That’s cool.”

“Well, how’s this for cool?” I said. “I quit my job this morning.”

“You what?” Baby gasped. People turned to look at us. The priest kept speaking, oblivious.

“We’re staying here,” I said. “I’ll take the bar exam and any other tests to get licensed in California. Try to get some local defense gigs, I guess. I don’t know. I’ll work it out. But the truth is, cleaning up after Dad is going to be hard. I’ve got to shut down his office. Make sure there are no more little criminal surprises hiding under the floorboards. We’ll probably have to fend off legal action against the house. The police will want to know if it was acquired with drug money.”

“Sounds hard,” she said.

“Too hard to do from Colorado.” I nodded.

She sighed again. This time I could hear the relief in it.





Chapter 122



There were indeed more criminal secrets hidden in my father’s office. Beneath the stacks of paperwork, boxes, and takeaway containers, I found what looked very much like a human thigh bone, a half-constructed ransom letter made from cut-out pieces of magazines, and a golf club spattered with blood. It took me three weeks to get the office tidy enough for a person to walk around in it without tripping over a crate of files, a concealed weapon, or the remains of a burrito rotting in aluminum foil. Baby spent most of this time lying on the couch playing with her phone or napping.

I was scrubbing ancient coffee stains and water marks from the surface of the bare desk when a man in a suit knocked on the half-open door. His hair was slicked back neatly, and he wore a leather shoulder bag across his chest. Baby looked up for long enough to calculate the types of things that interested her about men—whether the bag went with the suit, whether his stubble was deliberate, whether his eyes were the right shade of sapphire blue—and then she went back to her phone.

“Is this the office of Earl Bird?” the guy asked.

“It was,” I said. “But he’s no longer here. I haven’t taken the lettering down from the door yet. Sorry about that.”

“I’m actually here to see Rhonda Bird,” he said, checking his phone screen.

I felt a little prickle of pain in my chest, the kind I’d had when I first walked into Ira Abelman’s office. The same bodily warning bells that’d told me that my life was about to change, without any sense of whether it would be good or bad.

“That’s me,” I said.

“A guy named Summerly sent me.” The man glanced around the room. “Said you might be able to help me with a private investigative matter.”

I hadn’t seen Dave Summerly in person since the night at the water park. But we had texted. A lot. I was keeping him in the wings of my life until I sorted out exactly what my new life in California would look like. I’d told Dave I needed time to get into step with Baby, to figure out just how much control and influence I could or should have on my new charge. He’d respected my wishes, and I liked that. But this new development was a bolt out of the blue.

“Dave said what?” I sputtered. “I…I’m not…”

“She’ll meet you downstairs at the crab shack in ten minutes,” Baby said, popping up from the couch. She was at my shoulder before I even saw her move. “Get a booth at the back.”

Once the guy was gone, I shook my head at Baby.

“I’m not a private investigator,” I said.

“Summerly seems to think you are.” She shrugged. “Or at least that you could be. I do too.”

“Well, that’s just too bad,” I said. “Because I don’t know if that’s the kind of job I want to take on.”

“So let’s go and find out.” Baby smiled. I watched her for a moment, saw the excitement brimming in her eyes, and remembered that part of what came next for us would be working out a new life not only for Baby but for myself too. I needed to be open to experiments and mistakes.

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s give it a shot.”

Baby clapped her hands in triumph and bumped my hip with hers, and for a moment I felt like a terrific mother.

Or sister.

Whatever.

Then Baby said, “Maybe we should start a detective agency.”

I laughed. “That’s the worst idea I’ve ever heard.”





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About the Authors




JAMES PATTERSON is the world’s bestselling author and most trusted storyteller. He has created many enduring fictional characters and series, including Alex Cross, the Women’s Murder Club, Michael Bennett, Maximum Ride, Middle School, and I Funny. Among his notable literary collaborations are The President Is Missing, with President Bill Clinton, and the Max Einstein series, produced in partnership with the Albert Einstein Estate. Patterson’s writing career is characterized by a single mission: to prove that there is no such thing as a person who “doesn’t like to read,” only people who haven’t found the right book. He’s given over three million books to schoolkids and the military, donated more than seventy million dollars to support education, and endowed over five thousand college scholarships for teachers. For his prodigious imagination and championship of literacy in America, Patterson was awarded the 2019 National Humanities Medal. The National Book Foundation presented him with the Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the American Literary Community, and he is also the recipient of an Edgar Award and nine Emmy Awards. He lives in Florida with his family.