occur to me after the fact, when it doesn’t actually do me much good.) Once I had warmed up and my panic had subsided, I started to have some second thoughts about our hasty departure. The more logical explanation for the arrival of the police was the next-door neighbor who had told me moments earlier,
I’m calling the police.
Not a fiendish plan to frame us, hatched by a cunning murderer who decided to stick around for some reason after killing Matt Peterman instead of getting the hell out of there.
Thanks, once again, to my extensive knowledge of thrillers and action movies, I knew that we might have seen something or might know something that would help the police
crack the case.
(I, myself, in my limited acting career, had either heard or said those words more times than I could count.) As ridiculous as this whole case seemed to be, it was kind of creepy to think that Matt Peterman had been murdered on the very day he hired us. He’d seemed so harmless and nondescript. So why would someone want him dead? And what was the deal about that invisible dog? What I couldn’t get out of my head—despite how fed up I was with Shirley and her crazy idea about being the great-great-granddaughter of Sherlock Holmes—was the fact that I had heard a dog barking, too. Only for a second, but still. I
had
heard it. And that meant that Matt hadn’t been imagining it. Now the question was, did it have something to do with him getting killed?
“Tammy,” Shirley said as I pulled up in front of her office (I hadn’t said a word on the drive, and she’d spent the whole time stretched back in her seat with her eyes closed). “I am pleased. Oh, not about poor Matt Peterman’s death, of course. But after a lackluster start, you came into your own this evening, and handled yourself very well. This case has taken a rather sharp and sudden turn from its original purpose, but that is an occupational hazard when one is a private detective. Yes, I am pleased with what I saw this evening, and I have no doubt you shall blossom into a first-rate assistant as we progress along.”
“Thanks,” I said, too tired at that point to put my doubts about our actions that night into words, let alone into words Shirley would understand.
“I shall see you in the morning. It has been a long night. Get some rest. I would not take it amiss if you were to arrive somewhat later than nine a.m.”
Shirley got out of my car and waved a cheery good night, looking far too chipper for someone who had just discovered a corpse and fled the police in the dead of night. I watched as she went around the back of the building to the outside staircase. She looked nutty as hell in that ridiculous hat. I hated that hat. If I could have gotten my hands on it, I would have taken all my frustrations out on that hat. It had become a symbol of everything that had gone wrong in my life.
I’d find a way to bring that up to Phil McGuire in our next session, the unreasonable hatred I’d developed for my boss’ hat. It would give us something new to talk about. I would have to change facts and omit a lot of details, such as the purpose and outcome of the evening’s outing, but I always did that with Phil. If he ever found out what was really going on in my head, it would have serious implications for our current relationship.
Chapter 7
After everything I’d been through, I thought I’d toss and turn all night and not get any sleep. Driving back to my apartment my mind had been racing as I tried to come up with a solution to the problem of Shirley Homes. Since I couldn’t afford to just quit, I had to come up with some way to start setting some very clear boundaries with Shirley. For example, running around someone’s backyard in the middle of the night would be off-limits. Ditto with breaking and entering. And leaving the scene of a crime.
But I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow, and I slept straight through for six and a half hours. I couldn’t
I’m calling the police.
Not a fiendish plan to frame us, hatched by a cunning murderer who decided to stick around for some reason after killing Matt Peterman instead of getting the hell out of there.
Thanks, once again, to my extensive knowledge of thrillers and action movies, I knew that we might have seen something or might know something that would help the police
crack the case.
(I, myself, in my limited acting career, had either heard or said those words more times than I could count.) As ridiculous as this whole case seemed to be, it was kind of creepy to think that Matt Peterman had been murdered on the very day he hired us. He’d seemed so harmless and nondescript. So why would someone want him dead? And what was the deal about that invisible dog? What I couldn’t get out of my head—despite how fed up I was with Shirley and her crazy idea about being the great-great-granddaughter of Sherlock Holmes—was the fact that I had heard a dog barking, too. Only for a second, but still. I
had
heard it. And that meant that Matt hadn’t been imagining it. Now the question was, did it have something to do with him getting killed?
“Tammy,” Shirley said as I pulled up in front of her office (I hadn’t said a word on the drive, and she’d spent the whole time stretched back in her seat with her eyes closed). “I am pleased. Oh, not about poor Matt Peterman’s death, of course. But after a lackluster start, you came into your own this evening, and handled yourself very well. This case has taken a rather sharp and sudden turn from its original purpose, but that is an occupational hazard when one is a private detective. Yes, I am pleased with what I saw this evening, and I have no doubt you shall blossom into a first-rate assistant as we progress along.”
“Thanks,” I said, too tired at that point to put my doubts about our actions that night into words, let alone into words Shirley would understand.
“I shall see you in the morning. It has been a long night. Get some rest. I would not take it amiss if you were to arrive somewhat later than nine a.m.”
Shirley got out of my car and waved a cheery good night, looking far too chipper for someone who had just discovered a corpse and fled the police in the dead of night. I watched as she went around the back of the building to the outside staircase. She looked nutty as hell in that ridiculous hat. I hated that hat. If I could have gotten my hands on it, I would have taken all my frustrations out on that hat. It had become a symbol of everything that had gone wrong in my life.
I’d find a way to bring that up to Phil McGuire in our next session, the unreasonable hatred I’d developed for my boss’ hat. It would give us something new to talk about. I would have to change facts and omit a lot of details, such as the purpose and outcome of the evening’s outing, but I always did that with Phil. If he ever found out what was really going on in my head, it would have serious implications for our current relationship.
Chapter 7
After everything I’d been through, I thought I’d toss and turn all night and not get any sleep. Driving back to my apartment my mind had been racing as I tried to come up with a solution to the problem of Shirley Homes. Since I couldn’t afford to just quit, I had to come up with some way to start setting some very clear boundaries with Shirley. For example, running around someone’s backyard in the middle of the night would be off-limits. Ditto with breaking and entering. And leaving the scene of a crime.
But I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow, and I slept straight through for six and a half hours. I couldn’t
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