Angelina Bonaparte Mysteries Box Set Nanci Rathbun (i love reading books txt) 📖

be safe for you,” I said. “After this mess is cleared up, perhaps you could send an offering to the church for prayers for her soul’s rest. I’m sure that would comfort Josif.” With his attitude toward religion, I doubted my words, but they appeased Adriana and we disconnected. I handed the phone back to Spider.

Then Lily piped up. “Could I go? I’m pretty observant.”

“I’d love to have you there, Lily. I know you’d pick up on anything that was happening. But Zupan is borderline paranoid. Not without reason, but still…I managed to get permission for Bobbie to be there, but I don’t think Josif will agree to another person and I don’t want to spook him.” I leaned over the table toward her. “Not only that, but you’re an unknown resource to the bad guys. I don’t want them to find out about your involvement. It’s too dangerous and we can barely keep the security team afloat as it is.”

“I see.” She was clearly disappointed. “Well, as long as I’m helping in some way.”

“Believe me, you are.”

She escorted us back to the loading dock, where we made our farewells. In the car, I asked Spider about lunch plans.

“Better if you’re not in public, Angie. I’ll take you to the office and call for a delivery. What would you like?”

Culver’s didn’t deliver, but they did have a drive-through. “Let’s get something to go at the Culver’s on east Capitol Drive. I’d love a chicken salad.”

“Mmm. A pumpkin spice shake for me. I’ll work it off later.”

Which reminded me that some gym time was overdue, but what the heck. “A small one for me,” I told him.

After the food run, Spider drove to the office and inspected the premises before leaving me to eat healthy and drink naughty.

Bobbie arrived right on schedule, perky and oh-so-handsome. “Hi, Angie,” he said, kissing my cheek. Then he held me away. “You look a bit peaked. What’s up?”

I recounted Rua’s story, trying for an unemotional tone, but failing.

Bobbie seemed less affected than I imagined he would be. “Let’s be honest, Angie. Human nature is not all that kind or altruistic. We distrust anyone who isn’t like us. Take it from me. I know.” He paused for a moment. “I’m not comparing the subtle and not-so-subtle ways that gays are treated badly in this country to what the Bosniaks experienced. But I am saying that, without the protection of law, who knows? If we were in an armed conflict on our soil, would we band together or break apart, faction by faction? The current political situation doesn’t give me much hope for the former.”

Those were not the observations of a shallow person. Bobbie’s thinking had more depth than I’d given him credit for. I couldn’t disagree with his assessment, but I did have hope that individuals could transcend factionalism. Was one-by-one action enough? I didn’t know. “Still want to go to the funeral with me tomorrow?” I asked.

“Yes. I want to find these…guys. Badly. Bram says he’ll have undercover men there to keep us safe. Actually, he said to “ensure our safety in the event of offensive action,” but same diff. He’ll send me in a car to your condo and we’ll go from there. Work for you?”

I nodded. “Okay, let’s put in some real PI work, shall we?”

It was fun showing Bobbie the ropes. I ran through the background check process. The potential employee was squeaky clean. I created a report for the tutoring center and printed it. Then I had Bobbie take over and run a check on himself. Doing is better than watching.

There was one arrest, a misdemeanor for possession of pot. He was barely twenty-one at the time. Two months earlier and it would have been a juvenile offense. “Still using, Bobbie?”

“Nah. I grew up. I admit to a few beers, a glass of wine, maybe a shot now and then—and caffeine, of course.” He said it with a cheeky smile.

It was a serious matter to me as his potential employer. “Caffeine won’t harm your record, unless you get wired and do something crazy. Alcohol—beer, wine, booze, it doesn’t matter—can get you into serious trouble. I can’t have an associate who is impaired on the job or gets into a situation on his own time. And any kind of drug, even pot, can result in an arrest. One felony conviction and your license is revoked. Period. End of PI career.”

“No problem, Angie. Honest.” His hands went up, palms forward. “I will not drink unless I’m off duty and if I do drink, I will not put myself in a position to be arrested. I am totally drug-free and will stay that way.”

“I’m counting on you to make good on that, Bobbie. I don’t want my business compromised.”

“Absolutely clear. I swear it will not be a problem.”

“Good.” I took the client’s report off the printer and set it on my desk. “Let’s make an invoice for the work. Never forget that this is a business. If we don’t take care of that side of things, tedious as it can be, we’ll fail. Keeping accurate billing records and getting the invoices out is essential.”

“Got it.”

“So, how many minutes did I spend on the client’s background check?”

“Uh, maybe thirty?”

“Fifty-three. We had to check more than one database because of her out-of-state schooling. What about creating the report?”

“Fifteen?”

“Twenty-two.” I ran Susan’s invoice program. “We spent seventy-five minutes so far. I still have to put it in the mail. I don’t use the lobby box—it’s too easy to jimmy open. So that makes it over ninety minutes for time and I always round up to the next quarter hour, which also covers the few minutes to print and read the paper copy. I tend to make mistakes when reading on the computer.” I put an hour and thirty minutes in the space provided on the online document and the program calculated the total cost based on my hourly rate. “Last thing—expenses. First postage; second, eight-tenths of a