“Duh, you ready to go?”
Yeah, he’d remembered her favorite flavor, but he still found a way to annoy her. That was just so typical. She got into the car, sipping her milkshake as she moved.
“You know,” Klarov said as he started the car and pulled onto the street, “If you call me by my last name, then it’s only fair that you call Crystal by her last name too. Treat everyone in the agency equally, yeah?”
Gracie smirked. Crystal’s last name was Plessinki.
“Yeah...but I like Crystal.”
“Aww, c’mon, Gracie!”
She snorted, looking over at his ridiculous puppy dog eyes. “Fine. Peter.”
“Pete.”
“Don’t push it.”
They drove in silence for a few minutes, with Klarov smiling broadly. Gracie took the taser out of her purse and went to put it back in Klarov’s glove compartment.
“Hey, don’t do that. Hang onto it until the case wraps up.”
“I’m not going to be able to take it into the office,” Gracie said and then went on to explain about the sudden changes in security in the office building.
“Ok, that’s weird. I’ll talk to Huang about it, see if he knows anything. Still, hold on to the taser. Better to be safe.”
Gracie shrugged and put it back in her handbag.
“Sure, but I’m just going to be leaving it at home. You need to have an ID card to get into the Attitude Offices, which means they probably have an electronic log of who arrives and when. They’d know if I snuck in after hours. Perhaps I should have kept hold of Chesney’s ID card after all.”
The car swerved, pulling up in front of Gracie’s apartment building with a squeal of the tires.
“What do you mean?” Klarov asked softly, with deceptive calmness.
Gracie clamped her mouth shut. She hadn’t exactly been keeping it a secret, but she wasn’t relishing explaining to her boss why she’d done what she had. “When I first bumped into Chesney in a bar, he dropped his wallet. That’s how I knew who he was. His Attitude ID card was in there.”
“And you didn’t take it?” Klarov’s voice was cold, verging on chilly.
“Well, no. I couldn’t just take one thing out and I had to return it…”
Klarov’s eyes were wide. She didn’t think she’d ever said anything that had shocked him like this before.
“Why? Why would you do that?”
“Because it was the right thing to do!”
“Right?! You probably could have solved the whole case that first evening if you’d kept his wallet.”
Gracie didn't answer, instead taking one last massive sip of her milkshake, draining it until the straw made a rude noise. She gently put the empty container in the cupholder between the two front seats and turned to leave, her hand on the door handle. This was typical Klarov: he could act like he cared and that he was a decent guy and then the next second he'd do something absolutely infuriating.
Returning Chesney’s wallet had been the right thing to do and she wasn’t going to let Klarov make her feel guilty about it.
“Oh, there was one more thing,” Gracie said, not letting her annoyance distract her from the important stuff. “You said the owner was called Huang right, a friend of your Dad’s?”
“Right.”
“Huang is a woman?”
“No, he’s an older guy.”