The door to Worthy Investigations was smoked glass. I could see lights on behind it. The detective was in.
I put my nicest smile on, the one I saved for juries. I showed it to Birdwine and blinked, sweet as a fawn. I’d bypassed my suits for a casual short skirt and a raw silk T. I’d softened my makeup, too, pale glossy lips and no hard lines around my eyes. I hadn’t blown my hair out, and it swung in shaggy black loops down my back. People, white people especially, mistook me for a girl still in my twenties when I dressed down this way.
“So I’m Bad Cop?” he asked, sotto voce.
“I think so, yeah, but let’s read the room,” I said. Birdwine was good enough to adjust on the fly. He reached for the door, but I made a quiet tutting noise. “Ladies and Good Cops first.”
Worth was sitting at a desk at the far end of a long and narrow room. He looked up as I came in, instantly making a big smile back at me. He was around fifty and in decent shape. His face was square-jawed, topped by a thatch of luxurious, prematurely white hair and a fat mustache. He looked like a dad from a 1980s sitcom, and his maroon tie and button-collar shirt leaned hard into the image.
“Are you Tim Worth?” I asked, a little hesitant.
Worth was already rising, saying, “I sure am! Please, come right on back. My girl isn’t in yet, sorry, but I made coffee. Can I get you a cup?”
I was passing through his small reception area, and I didn’t think there was a “my girl.” The desk by the coffee station had a landline and a lamp on it. No computer, no plant, no family pictures. It looked like set dressing to me. Interesting that he’d made his imaginary assistant young and female and then used the possessive pronoun. My girl. I was nine steps into the room, and I was already getting a good bead on this guy. If I steamed him right, he would pop open, simple as a mollusk.
I kept my tone uncertain and said, “No, thank you.”
“What can I do you for?” Worth asked, mucking up the grammar with good-old-boy charm. He was attractive enough, if you liked the type or had daddy issues. I was innocent on both counts. Then his gaze shifted past me, and his smooth smile dialed down a notch. “Oh, hello, Zachary.”
“Worth,” Birdwine said.
The client chairs in front of Worth’s desk were low slung with sunken cushions. Worth must have read some How to Be an Asshole business book that had taught him about power seating. I stayed on my feet, stopping to the right of his desk, angling myself so I could see the room.
Birdwine flung himself down onto the floral loveseat in reception. It creaked audibly under him. He spread his long arms over the back and relaxed into it, at ease. His presence made Worth wary, and he looked at me fresh, reassessing.
His brow furrowed. “Wait a second. Do I know you from somewhere?”
“I’m Paula Vauss?” I said, tilting it up into a question. “You gave my name and information to a client. Julian Bouchard?”
“Oh, the bio sister, right.” He stayed standing, keeping his head higher than Birdwine’s and level with mine. “Half sister, I mean. Obviously.”
I felt my smile trying to widen, getting just a little sharky. “Obviously.”
Worth started talking, slowly, watching me the whole time, hoping to take my pulse. “I had you on my list to call this week, actually.” Sure he did. I kept my hands by my sides, my eyebrows up, letting my body language tell him I was open to him, or at least to his story. “I’m sorry the kid went ahead and contacted you.” Not as sorry as he was about to be. I wrinkled my nose, cutesy-wry. I could feel Worth’s gaze like a finger running all over my surface, hoping I had braille.
I let a silence happen then, to play him. I’d been off my game for months, but here my game was, waiting for me. Old muscles I’d forgotten I owned were flexing, reawakening. It was a good, stretchy feeling. I let the silence grow.
He was a manipulator, this one, and not bad. Good enough for the young or desperate or not-too-bright. But not great. If he were great, he’d have a better office space and “my girl” wouldn’t be a fiction. Good not great meant I could let the silence yawp open like a baby bird’s mouth, waiting for Worth to fill it.
Birdwine knew this tactic—all cops did. He picked up an old People magazine and started thumbing through it, pages rustling in the silence. Worth fidgeted, looked away. He cleared his throat, and then he decided to go fishing.
“That must have been quite a shock, meeting your brother. I hope that he at least was circumspect about it?” It was a solid approach, very safe. If Julian’s appearance had upset me, Worth’s tone of mild disapproval put us on the same team, but it wasn’t harsh enough to make me defend the kid. It was almost avuncular, like a kindly tutting.