Mad, Bad and Blonde by Cathie Linz Page B

Plaza. “I’m taking you up on your standing offer to come work here.” She was pleased with how confident and forceful that came out.
    Her father jumped up and came around his desk to hug her. “Hey, that’s great! You know I’ve always wanted you to join the family business.” He beamed at her. “You’re the best researcher we’ve ever had. No one does background checks as thoroughly and efficiently as you.” He headed back to the Aeron ergonomically designed chair behind his desk, the one she’d picked out for him his last birthday, and turned his attention to a file on his desk. “Go see my assistant, Gloria, and she’ll set you up.”
    “Thanks, but I don’t want to just sit in front of a computer all day. I want to work real cases. In the field.”
    “Sure. Eventually you can work up to that.” He transferred his attention from the file to her. “Hey, have you done something to your hair?”
    “Yes.” Her boring hair of the past was a distant memory now. She still loved the new look, the way her hair moved when she did, swinging against her neck. The multilayered, sophisticated style continued to be a huge confidence boost. “I used to be a mousy brunette, and now I’m a tough blonde. But don’t change the subject. Are we agreed?”
    “On what? That you’re a tough blonde?”
    “No, that I get assigned to a real case by the end of next week.” She made a note of the date on her BlackBerry. “I’ve got my PI license, and it’s still valid.”
    “I know.”
    It was just now occurring to Faith that the last time her BlackBerry and her father were in the same room together had been on her wedding day.
    “Have you heard from Alan?”
    She blinked. “No. Why? What have you heard?”
    “About Alan, nothing. But I’ve heard plenty about Caine. What happened over there in Italy? You still haven’t told me.”
    “Caine tried to tail me, but I successfully evaded him. Why does he think that his father is innocent? Does he have any grounds for such an assumption?”
    “Of course not.”
    “That’s what I told him.”
    “You talked to him about the case?”
    “Only briefly. He was making accusations, and I was defending you.”
    “That’s my girl.” He flashed her a smile.
    “He seems very determined about clearing his dad’s name.”
    “He doesn’t have a leg to stand on.”
    “Did you review the case?”
    “I didn’t have to.”
    Her father sounded a bit defensive, which was unusual for him. The confidence was still there, as it always was. But there was a new underlying tension she hadn’t picked up on before.
    “Don’t bother your pretty head about this,” he continued. “You stay focused on your new job here in the family business.”
    “This is what the library was paying me.” She wrote an amount on a piece of paper. “I’d need to make at least that much here.”
    Her father just smiled. “Honey, you’d make nearly twice that much here.”
    “Really?” she squeaked.
    “Really.”
    She eyed him suspiciously. “Because I’m your daughter?”
    “Because that’s what we pay our top talented investigators. I told you that you should have left that job a long time ago.”
    The door opened, and her Uncle Dave entered the office. He was taller than her father by two inches and younger by two years. He was in charge of the accounting side of the business, a role that suited his mathematician self-proclaimed nerdy side. A fan of Thurber’s short stories, he readily admitted that he was often in his own world. His love for mathematics explained his quirky tie filled with rows of gold and silver pi symbols on a red background. He had another tie with the same design on a blue background. They were the only two ties he owned.
    “Oh, sorry to interrupt,” he said.
    Faith jumped up and gave her uncle a hug. She hadn’t seen him at the wedding, although she knew he’d been there. She also knew he liked to keep a low profile and avoided drama whenever