From the back cover:
Thanks to finding a $35-million lottery ticket on the ground, former Dallas Police Detective Sammy Kidman now runs his own private detective agency—or so he thinks. In reality, the agency is headed by his wife, Marni Kidman, who also discovered that the lottery ticket was worth something after Sammy had forgotten all about it.

So Marni the Boss assigns Sammy the Laborer some tedious and time-consuming paperwork in order to help out her mother. But when Sammy and his partner Dave Pruett can’t seem to get it done, Marni hires temporary office help whom Sammy must supervise. And the first day on the job, his new secretary demonstrates some nerve-wracking office skills that go along with her avocation as a witch.


CHAPTER ONE

King Sammy looked out from the tinted tenth-floor window across his kingdom, the land of LBJ Freeway, home of fierce Porsches and Jaguars that eternally roared across the concrete countryside.

And he reigned; yea, he was king, ensconced in his own private detective agency created from lottery winnings that he had won off a ticket plucked from the ground (which he then forgot about until his sainted wife Marni found it and realized what they had). And he worked when he felt like it, answerable to no man—

A sharp thwack in the back of the head answered him, and a USB flash drive clattered off the nearest desk down to the tasteful gray carpet. Affronted, the king turned as his coworker Pruett barked, “You really don’t want me to tell your wife the boss that you’re slacking off on the paperwork she assigned us, do you, good buddy of mine who dragged me into this hellhole?” Sadly, some of the king’s subjects lacked appropriate gratitude.

Sammy groaned. “She’s reasonable. She can be bought off.” He dropped into the rolling chair at one of the two desks in the small room. Dave Pruett, who had once tasted power as a Dallas police sergeant, was seated at the other desk, both of which were buried under haphazard stacks of papers.

“Well, you bought yourself this.” Pruett tossed a handful of stapled papers at him. They floated around Sammy’s chair to land on his lap and the floor. In immediate retaliation, Sammy launched a whole stack onto Pruett’s head and shoulders, mussing his carefully arranged blond hair. Pruett, manly jaw jutting, was escalating hostilities when the manager of the elegant Galleria building walked by in the corridor outside.

The flurry of white beyond the open door of the inner office caught her eye and she paused ominously. In the scant two months since opening for business, the agency had earned the manager’s ire with numerous juvenile pranks directed at another private detective agency in the building.

Spotting her, Sammy jumped up with a cheery, “Ms. Harper! Lookin’ good.” He winked before closing the door to the inner office. Then he turned to fling stapled sheets at Pruett in a fusillade, which, if aimed properly, administered nasty paper cuts upon contact. Dave, in turn, climbed on top of his desk to gain the height advantage.

At that moment the small office door opened to reveal their boss, Mrs. Marni Kidman, at the doorway. The slackers froze in guilt (after Dave had clambered down), eyes downcast as the sheets came to rest at random around them. Then Dave, too proud to endure much more, shot a look from his bowed blond head to his partner.

Sammy threaded his way around papers to stand a few inches from his wife, pausing to appreciate the interplay of her honey-blond hair with her red suit. “Can we talk?” he whispered.

“I guess we’d better. You know that Ms. Harper is about to evict us?” she murmured, a smile lurking under her general look of disapproval.

Greatly heartened at her willingness to hear him and not overly concerned about the threat of eviction, Sammy walked her into the outer office just beyond Dave’s hearing. It was a nice suite, decorated in gray and hunter green with accents of red. But to the former police officers who were used to dealing with an assortment of ridiculous criminal activity, it had lately become a prison.

“Marni,” Sammy began on a humble note, “we’ve been trying real hard to do everything you ask, but, all this paperwork ain’t working out. You’re expecting a couple of ex-cops to go back to the one part of their job they hated most.”

“I know. I guess I was a little too hasty promising Mom we’d help, but she was just drowning. I can’t believe the arts guild dumped all these applications on her. They’re statewide. Why they couldn’t set up registration online, I don’t know,” she vented. And Texas is a big state.

Playing off her displeasure, Sammy proposed, “If we could get a few of those artistic types up here to help, then we can send Pruett on out to interview the kid that the attorney general’s office called about.”

“The one who wanted them to find her father,” Marni mused.

“Yeah,” Sammy said encouragingly.

In the two weeks since clearing up the Taggart-Greer affair, MK & Associates had discovered a gold mine of opportunity in the child support division of the attorney general’s office. There was an enormous backlog of support payments due from deadbeat dads that neither the AG’s office nor numerous private firms could touch. Therefore, Marni’s detectives always had work waiting in tracking down the offending parties and encouraging them to pay up.

The detectives particularly enjoyed the legal means, excru-ciating when applied, that were available to accomplish this. They could garnish wages, suspend licenses, or attach liens on property—in essence, seize whatever assets they found. It was a treasure hunt. Unlike other firms, however, MK & Associates took no cut from what they collected; it all went to the families to whom it was owed.

In this latest instance, the child wrote to say that she’d forego the money if she could just have her daddy home again. Dave wanted to find the father and show him the letter. Just show it to him.

“Okay,” Marni said. “Tell Dave that he can—”

But Dave, eavesdropping, had already grabbed his coat and was running for the beveled glass door with a hoarse cry of liberation.

“Good heavens!” Marni exclaimed when he blew past them with gale force.

“I’m telling you, baby, all that paperwork was making him crazy,” Sammy said as the door settled shut like a ghost laid to rest. “His brain can process only so much tedious detail before he starts getting violent. After extended periods of—”

“Sammy,” Marni interrupted, exasperated. “You only got the paperwork an hour and a half ago!”

“That’s pushing it,” he solemnly warned.

“Just out of curiosity, what did he think he’d be doing as long-range planner for the chief’s office? Wouldn’t that involve mountains of paper?” she asked. “You bet. But as sergeant, he’d be entitled to originate two forms for every one he got and then send them all right down the pike. It works beautifully, like a well-engineered sewer system,” Sammy explained. “This is just too. . . .” Gesturing at the papers surrounding them, he was momentarily lost for a comparative description.

“Cut and dried?” Marni asked.

“Yeah. Uninspired. Amateurs,” he scoffed.

She shook her head with a resigned sigh. “How did I know that you and Dave would never get it done? So I called a temp agency. A girl named Suzanne Hanover should be out here within the hour. You’ll need to show her what to do when she gets here.” Marni hung her purse strap over her shoulder in a clear departing signal.

“And where are you going?” he asked, teasingly dislodging the strap.

She eyed him levelly, replacing the strap. With his neon blue eyes and glossy black hair, Sammy not only knew he was attractive, but used the knowledge in frequent tests to see how far it would take him.

Marni wasn’t going along with him today. “I told you. Mike and I are going to meet with Chief Howell about getting disability for Les. He won’t take a dime from us.” Mike, Sammy’s former sergeant, was also employed by the agency. Les, a former homicide detective, was a crusty, abrasive, opinionated old windbag whom they all irrationally loved.

“Be sure the chief is watching when you cross your legs,” Sammy advised, placing his hands on her waist.

“Sammy! You’re awful,” she said, grinning.

“You don’t have to leave right away. We can go in the back office and shut the door,” he murmured in her hair.

While he nuzzled her neck, she looked over his shoulder. “You’ll have to get all the papers cleared away first. There’s no room anywhere in there.”

He scanned the inner office in some dismay, then pointed. “No, look! There’s a clear six square inches!”

“See you tonight.” She kissed him lightly, then turned to the door. With one hand on the brass handle, she looked back to add, “Besides, for what I’ve got in mind, that little office wouldn’t be big enough empty.”

“You bad girl!” he gasped in admiration. She winked, but her mischievous smile was unconvincing as she glanced over the small room. He did not know how much she was beginning to hate their cramped, expensive quarters. But they were locked into a lease and . . . maybe there was a reason she didn’t discourage their stupid pranks.

On her way out, she glimpsed a form letter from the building manager on the receptionist’s desk (at which a receptionist had never sat) and almost groaned. She took it out without looking at it.

All alone, Sammy turned back to the papered office, puffing his cheeks in mild resignation. Then he began to halfheartedly restack applications in random piles.

About thirty minutes later the front glass door opened. Crawling on the floor with a fistful of applications, he heard a tentative, “Hello?”

“Yo,” he responded, tapping the papers on edge. Rising to his knees, he looked up over the desk as a young woman came to stand in the doorway.

“Um, I’m from OneCall Temporaries. I’m supposed to report to a Mr. Kidman.” She was in her early twenties, maybe two years younger than Marni, and might have been attractive, but it was hard to tell for the bushy brown hair and bright red lips. She wore a light blue suit that was very wrinkled and slightly too big paired with clunky black shoes. But since Sammy had run afoul of the Fashion Police once or twice in his own career, he withheld comment.

“I’m Sammy Kidman,” he said, standing to extend his hand. “You must be—”

“Suzanne Hanover,” she said as she placed her time sheet from the temp agency in his outstretched hand. “But you can call me Coely.”

“Coely? Okay,” he said carefully, wondering if he had heard right, as there was no apparent connection between her name and her nickname. “Okay, then. Did you speak to my wife? Marni Kidman?”

Before answering, Coely glanced around as if to confirm that Marni Kidman was not here—only Mr. Kidman. “Yes. Data entry, basically, right?” Coely’s eye took in the obvious stacks littering the office.

“Yeah, basically,” he agreed. “You’re on a mission of mercy here. We’ve got several hundred applications to the arts guild to enter—”

A phone nearby warbled. Coely reached for it but Sammy said, “Don’t worry about the phones.” He dropped the time sheet to pick up the receiver. “MK and associates. On call, up front and on time,” he answered.

“Hey, guy. Wanted to let you know I got a street address for our Model Dad in Denton. I’m heading out there now,” Pruett said.

What Sammy heard him really say was, “Am I in trouble for leaving you in the lurch with all that paperwork?”

“Fine. Marni hired a temp to help process the applications,” Sammy relayed. “I was just showing her the ropes.”

“‘Her’? I’ll be in this afternoon to check her out,” Pruett, married with children, replied.

“She wouldn’t be the slightest bit interested in you,” Sammy replied, fully in Coely’s hearing.

“How do you—? Oh, a dog, right? Well, if I come in to-morrow morning and find out she’s to die for, I’ll just make sure Marni knows you two were up there alone all afternoon,” Pruett promised.

“Yeah, just us two and several hundred arts-guild wannabes,” Sammy said without concern, then hung up and gestured Coely to a computer. His only thought was to dispense with this obligation post haste.

As Coely sat at the keyboard, he said, “Okay. You just click on the little people to open the database. Then you fill in the fields with the information from the applications, click on ‘OK’ when you’re done, and click on ‘Add’ for the next one. See?”

“Yeah. How come I wouldn’t be interested in your friend?” she asked astutely.

“He’s not your type,” Sammy said, bending to retrieve the last of the errant applications from under the desk. “Make yourself comfortable and dig right in.” He laid a stack of applications near her elbow.

“What’s my type?” she asked, intrigued.

“Single,” Sammy replied.

Coely eyed him from under bouffant bangs while she leisurely took up an application. “So what’s your type?”

Sitting in front of the other computer, Sammy glanced at her. He noted that she was not quite as shy and retiring as her appearance implied. So he leaned toward her to hint, “Hard working, industrious types. Serious working women.”

“Oh, really? Let me see what I can do about that,” she said with a curled smile.

She set the first application before her and began inputting like lightning. Sammy watched in rising hope and astonishment as she entered the entire application in about ninety seconds. Then she took out a pen from the desk and wrote in the upper right-hand corner. Sammy got up to see that she had noted the date of input on it.

He watched her enter a second application, her rapid fingers never missing a stroke, and then a third. Studying the monitor, he saw no mistakes or omissions, even in numbers or names. Unreadable handwriting did not appear to stump her, either—she typed it all in as if she knew the information by heart. “Uh, yeah. Like that,” he said, reseating himself.

Heartened by the magic she was working, he made as if to help and began inputting an application himself, though light-years slower. His helpfulness lasted about ten minutes, at which time the first client call of the day came in.

After that, he was fully occupied fielding calls and e-mails, mostly from single moms. When one called with the news that her ex, who owed approximately $15,000 in child support, had his own pornographic web site, Sammy dropped everything to track down the contact information for the site owner. Internet porn was a gold mine; the dad could pay everything he owed from one day’s receipts.

So it was not until some three hours later that Sammy even thought about Coely again. He looked up to discover that she had cleared the desk of applications and was working off the piles on the filing cabinet and floor. The forms that had been entered into the database were neatly stacked in a far corner, ready to be boxed.

“You’re incredible,” he murmured. She glanced up, pursing her lips in self-satisfaction.

To accommodate her output, Sammy left the office and returned twenty minutes later with an armload of flat cardboard boxes. He maneuvered them through the narrow doorway, muttering, “So what happens is, my genius partner throws out the boxes they came in because—” He broke off upon seeing what she had completed just while he was gone. “Coely, do you need a break?”

“No,” she said.

He glanced at her in wonder as he assembled the first box. “Forget the temp agency. Why don’t you come live with us?”

She raised her face with a shrewd look, as if this is what she had been waiting to hear. But before she could say anything, the telephone rang again. Sammy plucked it up. “MK and associates. Busting a gut for you.”

“When are you boys going to come up with a straight slogan?” Marni asked in faint exasperation.

“When we hit on the right one,” Sammy answered.

“What if somebody important calls?” she wondered.

“You’re not important?” he wondered back.

“Never mind. Did the temp show?” Marni asked.

“Yeah. Yeah, she did, and you wouldn’t believe how fast she’s working,” Sammy said, looking at her.

“Okay, good. That’s one problem down,” Marni said. There was a slight edge to her voice that damped the tone of relief. “Sammy, we—we need to talk tonight. You’re closing up right at five, aren’t you?”

“Yeah. Is there a problem with Les’ disability?” he asked.

“Well, not really. Chief Howell was very reasonable. They’ll pay him whatever we donate to the city for that purpose,” she said dryly. “I left Mike to set up channels in the department for handling the money, and then went by the bank. . . .”

“So how much of that million did they lose?” Sammy quipped, referring to the rough amount of their first annual deposit of lottery winnings. Next July, and for the next eighteen years after that, there would be deposited $1,172,500 into the Kidmans’ trust fund account.

“They, uh, didn’t lose any of it,” she replied vaguely. “We just need to talk when you get home today.”

“Okay. Want me to stop for takeout on the way home? Sam really got into that barbecue.” Sammy meant this literally, as their 22-month-old son enjoyed it so much as to coat his hands, face, hair, and all exposed flesh with barbecue sauce and potato salad.

“No, I’ll cook tonight,” Marni said.

“Wow! What’s the occasion?” he marveled.

“Cut it out! I’ll see you in a few hours,” she said testily.

“Shee, okay. ’Bye,” he muttered to the dial tone.

When he set the receiver down, Coely, who had not stopped keyboarding throughout his conversation, said, “You’re spending too much money.”

“Excuse me?” Sammy’s black brows arched.

“Your wife’s mad at you for spending too much money,” Coely explained.

Sammy laughed heartily in disbelief. “You couldn’t be more wrong. You’re looking at the original Scottish miser,” he de-clared.

Coely merely cut her eyes at him. After finishing another application, she reached for the pen, which sat about sixteen inches away. She extended her hand and the pen obediently rolled to her fingers. Watching, Sammy blinked.

As if to confirm that he saw what he thought he saw, she dropped the pen to the carpet, then lowered her hand. There seemed to be a faint blue aura emanating from her fingertips as she extended them toward the pen, which jumped up from the floor. He frankly stared at her while she twirled the pen, barely touching it.

“Cute trick,” Sammy said, peeved at being startled by parlor magic. “Your output’s earned you ten more minutes of goofing off, then it’s back to work.” “I would, but it’s getting so hot in here,” she exhaled.

Sammy suddenly felt a ripple of heat. He looked up in concern to the air conditioning vents. “You don’t mind if I get comfortable, do you?” Coely asked, whereupon she removed her brown hair—a wig—and dropped it into the trash can. She rubbed her short, unnaturally black hair until it stood up in random peaks. Then she shucked off the blue jacket to reveal a lacy black camisole.

“Uh, I don’t think so,” Sammy said coolly. “All clothes stay on. I’ll check with management about the air conditioning. If it gets unbearable, we’ll close shop early.”

He picked up the phone, watching pointedly as Coely redonned the jacket without buttoning it. “There’s nothing wrong with the air conditioning,” she said. To ascertain the truth of that, Sammy put down the phone and walked over to the doorway, where he raised his hand in front of the vent. The rush of air from the vent was comfortably cool. But as soon as he turned back around to Coely, he felt the heat.

He paused, then went over to the thermal windows and placed a hand on the pane. In late October, the sun was not strong enough to affect the temperature in the office, especially through tinted glass. But when he turned back around to Coely, he felt the heat again.

Sammy sat slowly at the second desk as the sweat began to trickle down his neck. Coely got up to drop yet another application into one of the boxes he had just brought up.

Then she stretched seductively and turned to him with a plaintive sigh. “It sure is hot in here. Are you sure I can’t take off my jacket?” The thought crossed his mind how unreasonable he was being not to let her work in comfort, since she was doing such a great job and all.

He stood, the back of his shirt clinging damply to the skin between his shoulder blades. Walking toward her, he felt the heat intensify until he stood six inches from her.

She smirked at him as the butt of a joke. Her face was pale almost to the point of translucence. He touched her cheek with the back of his hand, finding it cool and dry.

“How are you doing that?” he asked.

“It’s a spell,” she replied.

Gazing at her, he said, “Well, turn it off.”

She shrugged, and the heat dissipated. She sat again and he walked over to stand in front of the vent a moment to cool down, then sat at the spare desk. He watched as Coely made short work of another application.

“Why the wig?” he asked, nodding to the trash can.

“Your wife would never have hired me like I usually am. So I dressed up for her,” Coely replied.

“Is your name really ‘Suzanne Hanover’?” he asked.

She snorted, “Made that up. She wouldn’t have cared for ‘Coely Burper,’ either.”

Leaning back lazily in his chair, he observed with just the hint of a drawl, “You sure are judgmental of people you don’t know.”

That struck her precisely as he intended, so that she spat back, “There’s nobody more judgmental than church people. I ought to know; my father’s a minister and I’m a witch.”

Here, Sammy’s natural skepticism asserted itself. He would not be at all surprised to find some kind of magnetic/electric device on or about her person, but in no way was he going to search her for it. Nor did the reasons for her little charade interest him, as long as she continued clearing away those despicable forms.

But since she was obviously trying to shock him, he responded with a condescending smile, “Oh, I don’t know about that. Maybe you’re just having a bad day.”

Remembering then to glance at the computer clock, he added, “Which ended ten minutes ago. Okay, we’ll start again tomorrow at eight-thirty. And why don’t you come as Suzanne? I like her better.” He made a quick pass through the office, turning off the coffee and computers while Coely made a backup file of the day’s work.

When he began to leave the inner office, the door slammed shut in his face. Sammy jumped back, staring. He cautiously reached forward to try the knob, and found it locked. He turned to eye Coely, who smiled back at him. “Actually, I’m having a very good day.”

“Which will be your last, if any of this is your doing,” he promised. She shrugged; he heard a click, and the door opened of its own.

Sammy stood by it while Coely got up from the desk and shuffled to the door. She paused beside him to say, “G’night, Boss,” and he felt his hair stand on end, as if he had received a mild shock.

“Go home and drain your battery or you’ll wipe out the hard drive,” he advised with the underlying message, You’re not rattling me. She grinned and winked in a manner disturbingly similar to his own before she sauntered out.

After pondering these inexplicable events for a moment, Sammy went down to his car, a classic ’66 Mustang convertible, lime green. He climbed in and held his keys thoughtfully, then started the engine and pulled out.

Waiting at a red light with the top down, he reconsidered the wisdom of working with a temp who used such bizarre means of getting attention. Firing her was always an option, but his heart sank at the thought of trying to get somebody else to input all that paperwork. Maybe he could put up with her circus act long enough for her to finish this one small job. After all, he worked with Pruett; he could work with anybody.

Arriving home, he pulled into the rear-entry garage and sighed upon seeing Marni’s Miata parked right where it should be. Entering the kitchen through the laundry room, he sighed again, smelling chicken tacos in the oven. His son Sam stood at the kitchen window, holding onto the low windowsill as he chattered excitedly to a stray cat across the street. Sunlight haloed his form like a protective aura.

“Hey, Sam!” Sammy clapped his hands, and the baby turned from the window to toddle on over. But as soon as Sammy picked him up, Sam threw himself backward, almost pitching out of his dad’s arms.

“Whoa! Stop that, Sam! Marni, where’s that toddler leash you had?” Sammy demanded when she entered the kitchen.

She leaned forward for a light kiss. “Hello to you, too. We’re getting it adjusted to fit you, remember?”

Humorlessly, he replied, “Ha, ha. He’s trying to bungee jump again. Why does he do that?”

She blinked at him. “You want me to explain why a toddler, a boy, your son does the things he does?”

The picture of maligned innocence, Sammy inquired, “Are you trying to make this personal?” He set the baby down on the floor, from where Sam attempted to climb his dad’s leg.

“If the shoe fits.” She rolled her eyes, turning to the oven.

“Do I need to set the table?” he asked.

Marni glanced at him. Sammy the Sensitive Man emerged whenever he had a premonition of trouble. “That would be helpful, thank you,” she replied.
While he pulled out plates and silverware, he broached, “So what is it we need to talk about?”

Marni inhaled. “Sammy, do you realize how much you’ve been spending lately?”

A cold wave washed over him. “On what? What have I bought?”

“It’s not what you’ve bought, it’s what you’ve given away,” she began, bending to check the tacos so that she would not have to look him in the eye. “Seven thousand here to the Pierces, ten thousand there to the homeless shelter, another ten grand to the international Bible project, all in one day—” “Marni, those were serious needs. And if we have it to give, why shouldn’t we?” he asked, pained.

She looked at him then. “Sammy, we don’t have it anymore. I had not been keeping track of your generosity until I saw all the withdrawals at the bank today. But as it stands now, we do not have enough to pay office expenses and salaries through next July.” Strict honesty would have forced her to add, if you continue to spend half of what you’re spending now. But telling him that would have given him too easy an out in making promises he could not keep. Sammy sank to a chair with the plates in his lap. “You’re kidding.”

“Wish I were,” she said sincerely.

“Oh, man,” he moaned, holding his head. “How do we—we don’t want to tap into our long-term investments . . . do we?”

“Oh, sure. Pay a lot of penalties and infuriate my dad. Why not?” she asked rhetorically.

He sat slumped at the table, so mortified that she didn’t have the heart to let him stew in his own juices for very long. Pulling the pan of chicken tacos from the oven, she offered, “I have a suggestion, if you’re willing to consider it.”

He lifted his head. “Throw a rope to a drowning man, will you?”

“Those swank offices are costing us a fortune. It’s a long commute on LBJ, and I have to dress up just to go down there. It’s really inconvenient for Mike, and Dave—well, I don’t know what Dave does when he’s there. He’s much more profitable when we don’t make him come in at all,” she explained. Some color returned to his face. “If we vacated those offices and ran the business from here, would that free up enough to meet salaries?” She winced. “Yes, but—let’s think this through. This is not a very big house, and Sam roams every square inch of it. To have phones, and computers—” “Okay, how about cheaper office space?” he asked quickly.

“If we could cut just two grand a month off what we’re paying now to lease, we’d be fine,” she said.

“Let’s do it. When’s our lease up?” he asked.

“Well, there’s an interesting coincidence. We just got notifi-cation from the Galleria management that rates are going up another thousand dollars in November. Because they were late notifying us, and because they have a waiting list for space, we can vacate at the end of the month without penalty. In five days.” She removed the plates from his lap and put them on placemats instead.

“Great. That’ll work out great. Coely will be finished with the applications by then—”

She blinked at him. “Coely?”

“Uh, Suzanne Hanover. That’s her nickname,” he explained, feeling suddenly uneasy.

“Oh. Yeah, everything seems divinely ordained,” she said. As she went to collect Sam from wherever he had wandered to, Sammy sat there wondering how divine Coely was.
Buy Sammy: Grave Agreement


© 2010 Robin Hardy

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