“No, not that. A shame you never watched Booker. You might have some insight if you had.”
“Dude, you just gave me a visual I didn’t want.”
I couldn’t help a laugh. “Sorry.”
That got a chuckle out of him.
“Can you ask Melanie? About whether a switch has any psychological issues?”
“I already have. She says like any other kink, it can be perfectly normal behavior. It’s not the preference that’s ever the issue. It’s the person.”
“And doing it with both men and women?”
“Also normal.”
“Maybe his sexual behavior is normal, but Booker is anything but.”
“Knowing what I know now,” Joe said, “I agree with you.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
Marjorie
Bertram Valente was dead.
I’d scoured the obits and found several Bertram Valentes, but only one in Colorado. The ages matched up. He could easily have been Justin Valente’s father.
So where was Justin’s mother?
I had no idea, and nowhere to turn…other than to my best friend, who was also the City Attorney.
I walked to the main house and found her relaxing in a recliner in the family room with a glass of juice.
“Hey,” she said when she saw me.
“Hey. I hate to ask you this, but are you still up to checking the city’s databases for Justin Valente?”
“Yeah. Of course. I want to help. But Talon—”
I stopped her with a gesture. “We’re all in this together. You have a resource, and we should be using it.”
She nodded. “I wholeheartedly agree. Problem is, I can’t access the server from here. Only from the office. That’s part of the security stuff I had installed. We’ll have to go into town.”
“What about Mary?”
“I’m still the boss.”
“I know, but if she sees us snooping around…”
“She won’t. We’ll use my office.”
“She’s not using it?”
“No, she’s using the other office. The one I used when Larry was City Attorney.”
An hour later, we were in Jade’s office. Mary had taken off for her lunch break, so we wouldn’t have any interruptions.
“I just had a thought,” I said. “What if someone got into the databases and made changes again, like before?”