“Hold on, hold on,” he said, pressing the air and half falling into his chair. The resounding squeak was like brakes being applied on the conversation.
I stood and waited, still clutching the cinnamon rolls. I would be danged if he would get the still-warm pastries. Over my dead body . . . which no one would probably find in this pigsty for months.
Finally, after he’d sat looking confused for long enough, I said, “Do you have the pictures of my husband?”
Juke reached behind him, snagged the T-shirt on the back of the chair, and shrugged it on. “Sorry about that. Um, your husband is the banker, right?”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” I said, turning toward the door.
“No, no. Wait. I have something.”
I stopped. “What?”
“He’s a busy guy, your husband. Been meeting with all sorts of high-in-the-instep people. Don’t worry—I’ve been watching him for you.”
I turned back toward him. “But do you have pictures of him with Stephanie, the woman he’s screwing?”
“Not yet.”
“Not yet?” I parroted, using the sarcasm I kept for special occasions. “Thing is, I needed those yesterday. I have a meeting with my attorney to go over my financials, which at the present moment is very little. I need proof of his infidelity so I don’t have to wait six months, which means I need leverage, Mr. Jefferson. I came here this morning hoping you’d done your job, but it seems you haven’t. And I had more work for you, work that with your background in law enforcement might have intrigued you. I think my husband isn’t just cheating on me. He’s involved in something bigger.”
Juke was drunk, but he wasn’t stupid. His ears might as well have twitched. “What do you mean bigger?”
“You know, no. I’m not going over this with you. I’m terminating your services. You can keep the deposit. I’m done with waiting on someone to help me. I can see that I will have to help myself. Good day, Mr. Jefferson.”
He tried to stand too quickly. Throwing his hands onto the desk to steady himself, he called out at me as I opened the door, letting blessed fresh air inside. “Wait. Don’t go.”
“Sorry. These are business hours. You should be sober and working. Not sleeping one off. Done, Mr. Jefferson.” I shut the door and angrily stomped down the metal steps toward my van. This time no Griffin Moon stood near my door. No one seemed to be in the area, and normally, I would have felt in some sort of danger in an area like this, but I didn’t. Mostly because I was fuming. If someone had tried to jerk my Louis Vuitton from my arm, I would have ripped his head off and used it for a kickball.
I nearly dropped the bakery box on the last step. “Stupid son of a—”
“Hey!” Juke called down. “Don’t fire me.”
“Too late.” I jammed the box under my arm, stomped to my van, climbed inside, and cranked it. I said a lot of bad words under my breath while I did it, too. I enjoyed saying every single one because they were justified. I jerked the van into reverse and, with my tires squealing, backed out of the parking lot. Shifting into drive, I left an exasperated and barefoot Juke standing in the parking lot. In the rearview mirror, he threw up his arms and then dropped them.
I pulled my eyes away from my fired private investigator and trained them on the road ahead.
What was I going to do now?
“Screw it,” I said, digging a cinnamon roll from the box and biting into it. I had vowed to resist them, but Juke’s idiocy had me stress eating. “Mother of God, these are amazing.”
I chewed and told myself I would only have half of the pastry, knowing I was a liar. I would eat the whole dang thing. But that didn’t fix my current problem.
Hiring a third investigator seemed ridiculous. I mean, jeez, how did a gal get a good dick in this town? And that thought made me laugh. But it wasn’t the good kind of laugh. It was the “I’m so tired of bull crap, but that’s still sorta funny” laugh. Yep, I was at the end of my rope, and it wasn’t even five hours into the workweek. Time to turn this over to my attorney. Should have done that in the first place.
When I got to Printemps, I dropped the remaining cinnamon rolls with Jade and Ruby and retreated to my office. Plunking down into my swivel chair, I kicked my feet up on my desk. I never do that. It was a novelty. But sometimes a woman needs to feel in charge of something even if it’s merely her desk. My action knocked the small stack of books to the floor, and one fell open.