Page 2 of Charmed Forces
“Right?”
Lily nodded thoughtfully. “I’d make a great spy.”
“Oh?”
“Who would suspect me? I manage a bar. I’m a mom. I have so many wigs too. I have a Mrs. Smith wig, not that anyone would believe Angelina Jolie was a spy. Maybe inSaltbut not as Mrs. Smith.”
“Agreed on all counts. No one would suspect you. Wait. Do you still have all those wigs?” Lily used to wear wigs in her many short-lived jobs, changing her style from one day to the next. Now I rarely saw her with any style other than her curly blonde hair that tumbled around her shoulders in a riotous way.
“Sure. They were good value. Why? Do you want to borrow one? Although you never seem to need a disguise. People just never suspect you of anything. You should have joined the CIA.”
“Maybe another time.”
“The CIA?”
“The wigs,” I clarified.
“You should tell Solomon to branch out and open a spy agency. It’s pretty much what you do anyway.”
“I’m a private investigator.”
“Exactly.” Lily shifted in her seat and looked around, then peered ahead. “Whom are we stalking?”
“The couple sitting in the window of that coffee shop,” I said, pointing before I raised my camera again and snapped a couple of shots.
“The pair with the coffees?”
I looked at Lily and she looked back blankly until a dawning realization hit her eyes. “Right. Everyone has coffee. It’s a coffee shop.”
“Guy in the black ballcap and denim shirt, and woman with the red jacket and short hair.”
“What did they do?”
“So far, nothing.”
“I see why you called me. Do you want me to start something? A fight? I can get a coffee and spill it on one of them.”
“No! Why would you do that?”
“Maybe you need to steal their phones, or investigate her purse, or see what he keeps in his wallet? Is that a satchel next to him? He could be carrying anything in that.”
“That sounds like more fun but I just need to watch what they do.”
“What if they split up?”
“My client says they might be in on it together.”
“Okay.” Lily leaned back and waited. The couple sipped their coffees. She got foam on her nose and he brushed it off with his thumb. It was too cute for words. I hoped my client appreciated the photo recording the moment. A minute passed by and Lily turned to me. “What are they in on together?”
“Corporate espionage.”
“Oh. Exciting! What made your client suspect them? Does one of them have foreign ties? Is one a sleeper agent?”
“Well, the woman, Louise Milton, is an administrator and the man, Callum, is a lawyer and they don’t work in the same department. My client saw them together a day after another firm won the bid for a new housing development on some land the city sold, which undercut their bid by a significant margin. My client thinks they sold the details of his firm’s bid to their competitor.”
“Who knew real estate could be so sexy?”
“No one, except the people selling those million-dollar homes on TV,” I agreed, “yet here we are. So this is my third day investigating them and the first day I’ve seen them together. I followed her to the mall where she bought a dress and then she drove to this cute lunch spot over on Bow Street that we should definitely check out, and he met her there. They had lunch, then they went to the bookshop on Hamilton, then they went to the movies, so I got a ticket too and watched the same film from three rows behind, and now they’re here, getting coffee.”