“What NR class is it hauling? I assume about one point five tons?”
“I’ve got to be honest, Andy, I haven’t understood a single thing you’ve said. I think you might have confessed to being a feral entomologist.”
“Fer-ro—” He started to sound out the word, but then there was some chatter in the background, some measure of get to the point, and he cleared his throat.
“Hi, Katherine!” I yelled, so she’d hear me off screen.
“I’m calling in a professional capacity,” Andy said. This concerned me immediately; Andy and I have no professional association whatsoever. “I’ve got this client, and I’m hoping you might provide a consult.”
“I don’t know much about football fields.”
“No, it’s a different kind of client. It’s a mystery. You’re good at those.”
Client. Mystery. Those words were more baffling than ferroequinologist. What he was trying to tell me slowly dawned.
“Andy,” I said. “Please tell me you haven’t . . .”
“I quit! I was sick of all the—”
Grass, I mouthed at Juliette, who snorted.
“—bureaucracy. The point is, I’ve got other options now, seeing as I solved all those murders up at the snow.”
“Andy, I solved those murders.”
“Well, we solved them together. Despite what you said in your book. Right?” He grimaced in an appeal for my agreement.
I remained stoic.
“And people were interested in what was next for me, you know. If I might be able to help them.”
“Please don’t tell me you started up a—”
“My own agency! It’s called Andy Solves It!” He beamed. “I’ve always wanted to be a detective.”
“It doesn’t work like that.”
“Well, private investigator.”
“Don’t you need a license or something?”
“Do I?”
I didn’t know. I’d never looked into it. Juliette, who’d been eavesdropping, held out her phone. She’d found the web page for Andy Solves It!, the words splayed in a gigantic bubble font like it was a toy store. Beneath them was a photo of Andy wearing a fedora, an unlit cigar between his lips. I scrolled, scanning over the description, which read, World renowned for solving the Cunningham family murders, let Andy help you with your problems today! We solve the unsolvable!
“So I’ve got this client, and I’m a bit stuck. And Katherine said—”
“Andy.” I shook my head. “This is a bad idea.”
“I knew you’d say that.” Turning away from the screen, he said, “I knew he’d say that!” He tsked, then faced me again. “I don’t even know why she thinks I need your help. I’ve already solved a kidnapping.”
“Really?” I did a terrible job masking my surprise.
“Well, it was a dog. But I tracked it down. Jilted lover.”
“It’s always the jilted lover,” Juliette and I said in unison.
“Who wrote this biography on your site?” I scrolled past it again. “It’s terrible.”
“Robots, man. They can do anything.”
“I’m not trying to tear you down, but have you really thought this through?” I asked.
Andy bristled. “I suppose you’re the only one allowed to make money out of all those deaths? I was there too, you know. But I’m supposed to go to therapy and deal with my trauma quietly, and you’re allowed to write these big books, and cash checks and be on TV and go on trains—”
His final complaint felt small compared to the others, and I wasn’t so much “cashing checks” as counting coins, but I had to admit he was right. I had processed my grief and trauma publicly, and even though the real reason I wrote it all down was to remember it, and them, in a way that ink and paper only can, I had indeed made a small amount of money from it. If Andy wanted to cash in on some infamy, deluded or not, I’d be a hypocrite to disagree.
“Okay,” I acquiesced. “This client . . .”
“I knew you wouldn’t let me down!” The video jolted like an earthquake had hit it, and I realized Andy was doing a fist pump. “So there’s this old lady, right, and she’s like a florist or whatever and someone broke into her shop. I need to know who did it.”
“Okay.”
“Great.” Andy grinned expectantly. “Soooooo . . .”
“That was a digestive okay, not an I-know-who-did-it okay.”
“Okay,” Andy said.
I want to note here, as I write this out, that Andy is making it very difficult to paint him in a better light than in the first book.
“Look, Andy, I can’t just tell you who committed a crime without anything to go on. First of all, you need a list of suspects.”
Andy looked down, off-camera, and I could tell he was writing something. “That’s a good idea,” he mumbled.
“You don’t have any suspects?”
“I mean, there are a lot of potential—”
“The population of metropolitan Sydney is not a list of potential suspects, Andrew.”
“It’s interstate,” Andy said proudly. “I’ve always wanted to go to Tasmania. Plus, I get expenses!”
“You are ripping off this woman,” I said. I heard him suck his teeth, decided I’d rubbed it in enough, and hastily added, “What about clues?”
I heard the scratch as he wrote something down again. I imagined a big yellow legal pad with the words Crime Solving: To Do scrawled across the top and, underneath, the words Suspects and Evidence. I hoped the old lady hadn’t paid a deposit.
“I mean, I interviewed her,” Andy said at last. “She was a bit shaken up and all, but her husband was much more helpful.” He paused. “Hang on. Maybe it was her brother.”
“There’s a big difference between husband and brother, Andy. You need to be specific. Words are important.”
Any mystery writer will tell you that word choice is crucial. A story changes drastically if you replace the word husband with the word brother, and while it might have made the scene of his domestic burglary more salacious, he was better off getting it right. Given we’re on the topic of word choice: Andy’s client was a botanist, not a florist. While it might be picky of me to point this out, there’s a big difference between an incestuous florist and an elderly botanist, and I did promise you accuracy.
“Let’s start with something easier,” I said. “What’s her name?”
“Uh . . .” Andy clicked his teeth as he searched for a note somewhere. “Poppy,” he said eventually, which is, in fact, not her name. Details.
“Okay, so Poppy—”
“Now, was her name Poppy or did she sell poppies?”
“Andy—”
“Or maybe it’s—”
“Maybe her name’s Poppy and she sells poppies.”
“Yes, that’s what I was saying . . .” Having a conversation with Andy is sometimes like watching a hurdler barge through all the hurdles without jumping and drag the wooden planks along: no matter the obstacle, he trudges on. “But the weird thing is, you should see the security on this place. Security cameras, keypads—man, it’s a fortress. For a florist!” Reminder: botanist. “Weird, right?”
“You think the security is there for something else? That the burglar was after whatever that was?”
“That’s my working theory.” He looked pretty proud of himself, or, at least, the inside of his nostrils did. I had to agree, it wasn’t a bad piece of reasoning, or evidence gathering. He’d successfully jumped over one hurdle. “That . . . or it’s like a flower fetish. Like a sex thing.”