Lousiana Hotshot

easy, Ms. Wallis. I’m teasin’ ya.”
    Talba closed her eyes in frustration, sorry she’d taken the bait. “Well. Sorry she wasn’t pleased. Does this mean we don’t get paid?”
    Eddie drummed his fingers as if the question wasn’t worth his time. “Ah, hell. It ain’t no big deal.”
    “Well, what was that we just went through, then? What was, ‘Ms. Wallis, get in here.’”
    “That was me bringing out the rubber hoses. If you were guilty, you woulda confessed.”
    “Oh, come on. Pretty gentle for an interrogation.”
    “If you were guilty, it wouldn’t have been. But you weren’t. I can read people.”
    Oh, right,
she thought.
    “I put a pile of stuff on ya desk. See if ya get through it today. If you’re done by four o’clock, I’ll start showing ya the books— so you can take ‘em over.”
    Her chair scraped on the wood floor as she got up. “I was hoping you forgot.”
    She turned on her computer and checked her email. Tony Tino had written her. Had thanked her and invited her to write him again. She didn’t know if she dared.
    There were various other missives from various friends— mostly fellow nerds— and there was something so unexpected she wondered if it were real:
    Talba— I’m writing on a cokmputer at school. I enjoyed meting you. lm really really relaly worried about paemla. dont tell anyone i wrote you. cassandra
    She printed it out and took it in to Eddie. “What do you make of this?”
    He read it and looked up at her, keeping his chin down, so that his eyes looked like two brown moons over the purple ponds of his eye bags. “The kid’s scared to death.”
    “If I’m the only one she can talk to, she really is in trouble. Before this, I’d have said she hates my guts.”
    “You think this thing’s authentic?”
    “All I know is, it really did come from her school. Xavier Prep, if you recall. I don’t think any of the other players would have access to it. Shaneel goes to Fortier.”
    Eddie drummed his desk. Talba noticed that he did that a lot. “We’re out of it,” he said.
    “What about Pamela?”
    “We’ve got to assume if she was missing, her parents would report her missing.”
    She was disappointed. She realized she’d been expecting more; hoping for more.
    I’m losing it,
she thought.
I’m getting a dad thing for him.
For times like this, she kept a diary file in her computer.
    She went back to her office and started messing around in it:
Repeat after me, please: Eddie Valentino is no knight in shining armor. He’s just a guy in business. If nobody pays for it, it isn’t his job, okay? You got that?
    Yes ma’am, Miz Talba, yes ma’am. You sure are one good mama— darn near as good as Miz Clara herself.
    Good. Now go do your job. Think you can manage that?
    I don’t know. What if I went to Skip Langdon and told her everything?
    You’ve already done that, idiot. She knows about Toes.
    Yes, but Pamela.
    You can’t report a missing person if you don’t know she’s missing. What are you thinking of? Just do your job.
    Okay. Pep talk over.
    It was as good a way as any to warm up for work. For a while, she hacked away at the pile of employee checks Eddie had put on her desk. Fortunately for their potential bosses, they were all upstanding citizens. Unfortunately for her, however— it was turning out to be one of the most boring afternoons she could remember. And to top it off, she was about to have dinner with Corey and Michelle. That didn’t sound a whole lot livelier.
    About four, Eddie popped his head in. “How ya comin’ ?”
    “Drowning in paper.”
    “Now ya know what this job’s all about. Forget about the mean streets. Ninety-nine percent of it’s as routine as filing ya nails. Listen, let’s do the books another day— I’ve got to go see Angie about something.”
    “Sure. I’ve got plenty to do.”
    “By the way, Pamela’s okay. Her parents sent her out of town for a while.”
    A sunburst of relief fanned out in Talba’s chest— and it had nothing to do with Pamela. “How do you know that?”
    “I’m a private dick— you hadn’t heard?”
    But something was funny about it. “Why would they send her away in the middle of the school year?”
    “Distraught about her sister— near nervous breakdown.” He put on his sport coat. “It happens. Have a nice weekend.”
    Talba stared after him, feeling like a dog newly rescued from the pound— falling in love with the hand that feeds it. Love was about right. The