PI On A Hot Tin Roof

away, they gon’ be impressed.”
    “Oh, good. Alberta doesn’t do windows.”
    Miz Clara nodded, satisfied. “Ya gotcha work cut out for ya. And here’s a little insider tip—ya want to impress men, clean they windows. Ya want to impress women, make those mirrors shine. Spend extra time on the glass stuff—quickest way to impressin’ a new client.
    “Now here’s somethin’ real important. Never touch they guns.”
    “Funny you should mention that—I found a gun today. In the drawer with the sex toys.”
    Again, Miz Clara nodded. “Sometimes they be in there. Drugs, too. Lot of folks keeps they drugs in there. Here’s somethin’ I notice. Folks rich enough to have an everyday maid—specially ya judges, ya city officials, folks like that—they got drugs all over.
    “They don’t have the least little fear about the po-lice or the law. What they paranoid about’s people turnin’ on ’em.”
    Which I fully intend to do,
Talba thought, and was momentarily disappointed that she hadn’t found drugs. But the moment passed—a private stash wasn’t a news story and the cops were probably already bought, anyhow. She needed something a lot better than a little pot.
    “Ya don’t never find no loose change in those kinda people’s houses,” Miz Clara continued. “Guns, though. I find ’em everywhere—under the mattresses, under the chair pillows. Once I come across one in a kitchen drawer, all tangled up with a corkscrew. Like to scared me to death. Dangerous? Whooee! But don’t touch, whatever ya do. Folks is funny about they guns.”
    Unfortunately, you could have an arsenal in your closet and it still wouldn’t be illegal. But Talba was glad for the advice. A gun was the last thing she wanted to touch.
    “And they get dusty, too,” Miz Clara said. “People forget they have ’em. Best ya can do, just tickle ’em a little with a feather duster kinda thing—only they ain’t made out o’ feathers no more. Another thing—don’t go in no cabinets—tha’s where people keep they good stuff. They weddin’ china, Aunt Bertha’s antique tureen, stuff like that. They keep it put away ’cause it might get broken if they didn’t. And you don’t want to be the one to break it. Don’t touch nothin’ in a cabinet.”
    That applied, Talba thought, to the maid without benefit of P.I. license. In her job, it was cabinets or quit.
    “Anything else?” she asked.
    “Under the bed. Whole lots o’ dust collects under the bed. Gotta get under there and chase it. Be surprised what else ya find there. Ya got rubber gloves?”
    “Why?”
    “You find out.” Miz Clara laughed like she’d had a lot more to drink than one puny Chardonnay. “Oh, yeah. You find out.”
    Talba didn’t want to find out. “I’m going to bed—I’ve gotta cook ’em some boudin in the morning, but I’m too tired to ask you how to do it. Can you remind me in the morning?”
    “Boudin? That ain’ nothin’. Ya just put it in the pan, tha’s all.”
    “That’s it? Do you turn on the gas or anything?”
    “Lord, child, I gotta draw ya a picture? Add a little water, cook it low—takes ’bout twenty minutes. Oh, and throw the casin’ out.”
    “Before or after I cook it?”
    “After. Heat’ll break it.”
    That was what she was after—Talba’d never understood how boudin began as a sausage and ended up on your plate all soft and mushy.
    She slept a solid ten hours and needed every minute of it. She’d promised Eddie she wasn’t going to plant anything on Buddy, but she only half meant it. She wasn’t going to plant drugs, of course. But to her mind, there was no substitute for the occasional tiny receiver/transmitter, available at certain Internet spy shops she knew about. Of course, she could get thrown in jail if she were caught, and Eddie could get sued and fined, but where Angie was concerned, he might be lenient about that part. However, she wasn’t about to get caught. She slipped a couple of bugs into her jeans’ pocket and set out for the salt mines.
    Buddy himself met her at the door, still tying his tie and smelling of shaving soap.
    “Young lady, you just don’t know how close ya got to bein’ fired ya first day on the job. Hadn’t been for Adele, your ass’d be outta here.”
    Talba’s heart thumped. Maybe he’d Googled her or something—she was famous as the Baroness de Pontalba, even had a website with her picture all over it and newspaper stories prominently mentioning her day