Peter got back to his office and checked his mail. He had two bills and some junk mail. He brought everything into his office and dropped it on his desk. When he sat down, he started his dinosaur computer and then leaned back in his chair to wait for it to boot up. It was going to take a while.
After a few seconds, his door swung open and she stormed in.
“What have you found out?”
“Nothing yet. I’m still working on it. I told you I would call you when I found something.”
“It looks like you’re hard at work.”
“Well, if you hadn’t come in here asking me what information I have, I would be looking for it right now. However, you did, so now I have to talk to you and explain what I’m doing. Spending time on you that is completely unproductive.”
“Don’t be a smart ass to me. I could buy and sell you.”
“That may be true, but it is also irrelevant. You still need me to do my job and I can’t do it if you’re constantly stopping me.”
She sat down across from him. “You really haven’t found anything yet?”
He shook his head. “She’s only twenty four. What do you expect her to have done? It takes years for people to get good skeletons in their closets. And besides that, before this, she was broke. Poor people don’t get skeletons the way rich people do. You may have to wait a few years to have something blackmail worthy.”
“I don’t want to wait a few years. I didn’t want to wait a few months. That estate should have been mine.”
Peter rolled his eyes and sat forward. Self-centred bitch. “I don’t really care. All I care about is getting paid. I’m charging you for this meeting. And now, if you’d kindly leave, I’ll get back to work.”
She glared at him for a moment and then stood up. “Fine. Get back to work. But I want results and I want them within the next two weeks. Or else you’re fired.”
He watched her as she stalked from the room. When she slammed the door behind her, he sighed and turned to his computer that had now booted up. He had to find something and find it soon. If he lost this job…
He glanced at the two bills that he had brought in from the mail.
He didn’t want to think about what would happen.
He was early for lunch. Sylvia had told him not to be late, so he was standing outside the Granville Island Market at 12:45. She, however, was even earlier.
She smiled when she saw him. “Early. I’m impressed. I thought guys had no sense of time.”
He shrugged. “I set an alarm.”
She laughed. It was a great laugh and he realized that he wanted to hear more of it.
“Shall we get something to eat?” she asked.
They went into the food court and ordered food, then sat at the one available table.
“It’s always so busy in here,” Sylvia remarked. “In the summer, I prefer to eat outside on the benches.”
“You come here a lot?”
She shrugged. “I don’t think I come here a lot. But I do like it here. Granville Island is always very interesting. And beautiful. I also like to walk to Vanier Park along the pathway.”
“It’s certainly a very pretty area.”
“Do you live around here?”
“I live in a small apartment on 7th. Not too far from here. What about you?”
“I was in lived in Langley before but I moved to Vancouver when I started at UBC. I’ve lived here for three years now.”
“So are you almost done at UBC then?”
Sylvia shook her head. “I’m part time. I can’t afford to go full time.”
“What are you taking?”
“Business studies. Well, I was. I’m taking some time off. Reevaluating my options.”
“I see. What have you come up with?”
She laughed again, but it was more self-deprecating than humourous this time. “Nothing. I have no idea what I’m going to do. I know what I said I would do, but it doesn’t seem like the right thing anymore.”
“I’m not sure I understand.”
She smiled. “It doesn’t matter. It’s just something I have to work out. I’ll figure it out.”
“If I can help in anyway, just let me know. I’ll be happy to do it.”
“Let’s talk about something else. What do you do?”
“I’m a private investigator. I mostly take pictures of cheating husbands. It’s a pretty boring job most of the time actually.”
“So why do you do it then?”
“It pays the bills. Most of the time, anyway. And occasionally, I get a really interesting case that makes everything worthwhile.”
“When was the last job like that?”
Peter leaned his head back and thought about it. “Probably would have to be the one a couple months ago. A little girl came to my office. She was maybe ten years old. She’d lost her dog and her parents couldn’t find him. They’d called up the SPCA but no one had brought the dog in. So she came to me on her way home from school. She had brought her life savings. Fifty-three dollars and twenty-nine cents. A lot of it was in pennies. She had brought her money in a zip lock bag and set it on my desk. She said, ‘Mr. Hartley? I would like to hire you to find my dog, Rudy.’
“So I said, ‘Of course. Ms?’ and she said, ‘Miss Parker.’ ‘I’m pleased to meet you, Miss Parker,’ I told her. ‘Would you have a seat and tell me about your missing dog.’ She said he’d been missing for four days and she was quite worried about him. Her mom and dad had done everything they could think of but hadn’t found him. She had asked them to go to the police, but they said that the police didn’t look for lost dogs. She had read a book about a private investigator and so looked them up online to see where the closest one was to her school. She found me and there she was.
“I said to her, ‘Miss Parker, have you ever heard the term pro bono?’ She said she hadn’t. I told her it meant that the private investigator had decided that the case was so important that he was willing to do it for free. I said I would see if I could help her find her dog and she didn’t have to pay me a single cent. I called around to the SPCA and the veterinary clinics in the area. It turned out that Rudy had been hit by a car and that the person who had done it brought him to a veterinarian and paid the bill to have him fixed up. The only problem was that Rudy had managed to get out of his collar and so they didn’t know who he belonged to. I called up the Parkers and told them my news. Little Miss Parker showed up to the animal hospital with tears in her eyes and a bone with a big blue bow wrapped around it. The Parkers said they hadn’t thought to call a veterinarian. I said that if the dog, or even cat, gets a tattoo in their ear, most people will simply bring the animal to a veterinarian instead of to the SPCA. A vet can look up the serial number in their database and call the owner. And they don’t charge you to get your pet back. My dog had been a serial escape artist, you see. Well, the Parkers got Rudy back. He’s got a broken leg, but it’s well on its way to healing now. And little Miss Parker got her best friend back.”
“And you didn’t get paid anything?”
Peter shook his head. “I remembered all the times when my dog used to run away and how scared I was that he might never come home. Dalia Parker got Rudy back. That was enough payment for me.”
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