Read Online Snoops in the City (A Romantic Comedy) by Darlene Gardner - Free Book Online

ticket. My friends and I bought them way in advance. Oh, my gosh. What time is it?"
    He checked his watch. "A quarter past ten."
    "I was supposed to pick up my friends fifteen minutes ago." She remotely unlocked the driver's-side door of her Volkswagen and scooted around the vehicle. "Sorry, but I've got to go."
    "Okay," he said mildly. "Maybe we can have that cup of coffee another time."
    "Coffee?" She peered at him over the roof of her car. "What coffee?"
    "The coffee I was about to suggest we get at this place I know that's open until midnight."
    "You were talking about coffee?"
    "Yep," he said.
    She cast her mind back over the evening, realizing he hadn't done anything to indicate he was in the market for sex. He'd suggested he wanted to talk, specifically about how a woman like her found herself following a man like him.
    But why was he so suspicious of her motives? Unless men had something to hide, most of them wouldn't object to being trailed by an attractive woman. But maybe Grady didn't consider her attractive. Maybe he'd asked her to coffee to make sure she wasn't looney tunes.
    Accepting his invitation would be the smart move, both to assure him of her sanity and to discover more about him. But if she reversed her position, he might really think she was nuts.
    "My friends are waiting," she said. "I've got to go."
    "Who'll feed your cat?" he asked before she could escape.
    "My what?"
    "Your fat cat," he supplied, and she remembered the lame story she'd invented. "You've been away from home for a while. Won't she get hungry?"
    "I left plenty of food out this time.” Tori ducked into her car, intent on escaping from his questions.
    She drove off thinking it hadn't been a bad debut. If you didn't count her lusting after him and his skepticism about her non-existent cat, that is.
    On the positive side, she'd invented a plausible reason for following him and come up with a believable excuse not to have sex with him. Never mind that he hadn't wanted sex in the first place.
    If she had the foggiest idea how to proceed with the investigation, the PI thing might work out after all.
    She did know one thing. After she finished her shift at Frasier's makeup counter tomorrow, she needed to visit the pound.
    She hadn't read very deeply into So, You Want to be a PI , but she knew enough to cover her tracks.

CHA P TER NINE
     
    Grady consciously slowed his momentum so he didn't burst through the back entrance of Frasier's department store like an Old-West sheriff on the lookout for an outlaw. Technically, Tori qualified as more of a liar than a criminal.
    Hadn't she realized he'd check out her story? He'd booted up his computer the moment he'd gotten home the night before and typed "Grim Tales from the Reaper" into a search engine.
    He'd gotten a hit on the current events page of the Eleanor J. Reaper High School web site.
    It seemed the drama department at Reaper High, which was up the road from Seahaven, was putting on a series of vignettes for children based on Grimm's fairy tales.
    Hence the clever title Grimm Tales from the Reaper .
    If Grady weren't mistaken, one of the City Councilmen who had been at the party last night had a teenage daughter who attended Reaper High.
    His inclination was to hunt Tori down and demand to know why she'd lied. The confrontational approach, however, hadn't worked very well last night.
    Better to bide his time and go along with her you're-so-hot fiction while he figured out what she was up to.
    He had doubts that he'd find her at Frasier's. She'd mentioned she worked weekends at the store, but that could have been another lie. Tori Whitley might not even be her real name. Directory Assistance listed a number of Whitleys, but none with T as a first initial.
    He looked around for a salesperson who wasn't helping another customer and found one in the petite, pimply-faced teenager manning the cash register in the juniors' department.
    "Can you tell me if a Tori Whitley works here?" he