Save Me from Dangerous Men (Nikki Griffin #1)(27)
I punched his shoulder. Lightly. “Close your damn mouth and let me borrow your phone. See if we can find a place that’ll deliver without freaking out when you tell them the address.”
16
I left my motorcycle parked sideways between a white delivery van and a Volvo with a faded College Prep bumper sticker and headed into the bookstore, where Jess was arranging an empty circle of chairs in the back. “Shit,” I said. “Book club.”
“You forgot.” She smiled.
“Too much going on.” I thought of something. “Hey. Important. When was the last time you were on a double date?”
Jess laughed. “Umm, like last week. Why?”
“What do people do on them?” I felt something brush against my leg and looked down. Bartleby the cat looked up at me with large yellow eyes and meowed sharply. I leaned down and scratched his head. He rolled onto his back and I scratched his belly, then the soft gray fur under his chin. He purred in pleasure.
“You’re hopeless. Double dates are like regular dates. Except with two extra people.”
I shook my head. “I have one tonight. I’m gravely unprepared.”
“Never heard you say that before.”
“Excuse me, do you work here?”
I turned to see a freckled woman in a lilac blouse. She had an open, friendly face and a wide, frank mouth. “What can I help you find?”
“I’m on a mission. My daughter can’t get enough of mysteries. She’s a junior in high school, reads everything, wants to be a writer. I was thinking any female mystery writers would be perfect, but I don’t know much more than Mary Higgins Clark or Gone Girl.”
“Sure. Follow me. She goes to College Prep?”
The woman gave me a surprised look. “How’d you know?”
“And you drive a Volvo.”
She laughed. “The bumper sticker, I see. You keep your eyes open.”
In the Mysteries section I began pulling books from the shelves. “We’re going for variety. Let’s give her a bit of everything. The Hours Before Dawn, Celia Fremlin. Patricia Highsmith, Strangers on a Train; Joyce Maynard, To Die For. Margaret Millar, Beast in View; Ottessa Moshfegh, Eileen; and Beautiful Lies by Lisa Unger.” I thought of something. “Oh—and of course something by Sara Paretsky. I think I have the first in the series … here we go. Indemnity Only.” I handed her the stack. “Try these—if she likes them, send her in and I can recommend some more.”
The woman looked at the titles with curiosity as I rang them up. “Thank you. These look perfect.” She took the stack of books and nodded good-bye.
“Ready?” Jess asked.
“I’ll be down as soon as I can. Start without me.” I headed up the stairs into my office. Thinking about my client. Gregg Gunn. Trying to figure out what felt off. We had instincts for a reason. Ignoring instinct was a waste of a critical resource. Like ignoring sound just because you trusted sight. I thought about Karen Li. The fear on her face. The mysterious Oliver, trying to warn me of something. A CEO of a tech company taking secretive, unexplained trips to dangerous parts of the world. People I hadn’t known even to exist, a week ago. And now I was wrapped up with them.
But wrapped up with what?
I glanced at the monitors. Downstairs the chairs Jess had arranged were filling up with women. I was going to be late. And then I had to go home, change, and race back to Oakland to meet Ethan. Instead I picked up the phone. A voice answered on the third ring. “Yeah?”
“Charles, it’s Nikki. I need you to check something.”
“Animal, vegetable, or mineral?” Charles Miller had a strange sense of humor.
“A man named Gregg Gunn. He runs a company called Care4 down in Sunnyvale. They make some kind of baby monitoring system. Also an employee, Karen Li, L-I.”
“Okay.” There was a pause. I knew he’d be writing things down. “Anything specific?”
“I just want to know a little more about them. Anything you find.”
“Give me a day or two.”
“You working weekends now?”
He laughed a little bitterly. “What, I’m gonna watch the kids play baseball?”
In a previous life, Charles Miller had been an investigative journalist in Houston. Then he’d written the wrong piece, targeting a notoriously press-shy billionaire who had a habit of dumping money into shady, hard-to-trace foundations. The kind of guy who had probably opened every champagne bottle in the cellar the day of the Citizens United decision. The billionaire hadn’t taken kindly to being the subject of a story. Charles had been followed, his phones tapped. Undeterred, he had continued. When finally published, the article had been a success. The billionaire had filed suit that same day. Facing a nine-figure lawsuit, Charles had been fired. Hung out to dry. Because he had been named personally in the lawsuit, it didn’t stop there. Without a newspaper to pay for lawyers, the outcome wasn’t in doubt. After the dust settled on the bankruptcy and divorce, Charles ended up in the Bay Area. Burnt out on journalism and looking to start over. We’d done each other more than a few favors. I liked him. He was a loner. For most people, that was unnatural. In my book, it was fine.
* * *
Downstairs the small circle of chairs was full, the group in mid-conversation. There were murmurs of greeting as I sat and poured myself a cup of coffee from a pot. Besides Jess there were six other women, ranging from early twenties to late sixties. Some I knew better than others. I’d helped each of them at some point. I noticed Zoe, from the coffee shop where I had met Brenda Johnson. So she had come after all. She sat quietly in long sleeves, her chair slightly pushed back from the rest of the circle. The bruise on her face looked better.