“That’s a bad quality, but nothing illegal.”
“It should be. I live off tips.”
“Do you?” Shoot, I didn’t know that. Should I have been tipping him for my baths?
“No. But they help me afford my third home.”
“Wait, you have three homes?”
“Don’t all houseboys?”
“I don’t know any other houseboys,” I said. But three houses seemed extreme. Hell, I only had one home.
“No? That’s good. I’m all you need. You can say it if you want. That I’m all you need.”
There was no way I was saying that.
He sighed and pushed through another squeaky door and hit a light switch.
I shielded my eyes. It was blinding even with my sunglasses on. I blinked until the white dots left my vision. “Nigel, why are we in an empty room?”
“A secure, empty-ish room.” He pointed to a table in the center of the room with a sheet draped over it.
Okay…
He handed me another paper. “Poppy Cannavaro is a plagiarizer. Her sophomore year in college she almost got expelled because she didn’t cite a quote correctly.”
“That’s great, but…how does it help me?”
“Plagiarism is punishable by guillotine, yes? We have her just where we want her.”
“No, Nigel. It’s not.”
“Oh. It used to be, I think. It’s been a few years, maybe.” He pulled out another sheet of paper from his folder, which still looked very full. “Her daughter’s father has joint custody. He sees her on Wednesdays and every other weekend.”
“Nigel, do you have anything useful in that folder?”
“It’s all useful. Poppy’s ex-husband also believes in spanking. Of children. How naughty, right?”
What was he even talking about? “Can I please just see it?”
“Fine. Here.” He handed me the whole folder.
I thumbed through a few pages. “Why are there so many grocery lists?”
“You asked me to talk to the help. Her chef was very unhelpful.”
I kept scanning through the documents. Searching for money laundering. Racketeering. Any white-collar crimes or something much worse. But…half of the documents were about her food preferences. I looked up at Nigel. “You really didn’t find anything?”
“I told you about the plagiarism. And the new player in town.”
“Nigel…”
“Wait. Do you hear something?” He cupped his hand to his ear.
“I swear if we get murdered in this warehouse…”
“No, not a person. Me thinks me hears a wonderful machine.” He pulled out a remote from his trench coat pocket and hit a button. Something whirred to life.
