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fat. Real bacon fat.
    Nothing tasted this good. The king really
knew what to eat.
    I took a huge bite out of the first one.
    "How was your day?" she asked.
    I shrugged. "I got work yesterday."
    She nodded. "That's great."
    I had this idea in the back of my head. It
was there, and I knew it was a bad idea, but that wasn't going to
stop me.
    "It's not a normal bit of work for me," I
said. "I'm looking into a suicide."
    Her face took on a look of concern.
    "And I'm looking into it to see if it's more
than it seems. If it was murder."
    "Is it safe?"
    "Nothing I do is safe." She had no idea how
true that statement was.
    "How is it going?"
    "I've got more questions than when I started.
The last several jobs I had were straight surveillance. Honestly a
patient monkey could do that."
    She smiled.
    "This really requires thinking and getting
inside people's heads. I don't know."
    "You don't know what?" she asked.
    "The last person to see the deceased alive is
a woman."
    She stared at me blankly.
    This was a bad idea. I knew it. "I want you
to help me. Maybe you can get her to open up to you."
    She stood up and looked at me strangely.
    "I don't think so," she said.
    "She's hiding something. I want to know what
it is, and I don't know how to get it out of her," I said.
    "I think you'll figure something out. You
always do," she said.
    I shrugged. My way usually involved someone's
blood getting loose, but I had a thing about doing that to women.
Usually.
    "Another thing," I said. "My client is the
daughter of the dead woman."
    "Okay," she said.
    "And she's lying to me too."
    "About what?"
    I took the button out of my pocket and
scooted it across the granite countertop to her. Yes, the
countertop was granite. I had more money when we built the place. I
spent it building this house. Dumb move, I know.
    "That's a big button," she said and picked it
up.
    "I know," I said. "It's handmade by an old
man right here in town."
    "Really?"
    "Not only that, but there's like a serial
number real tiny on the back of it. He knew exactly who he'd sold
it to."
    She squinted at the back of the button trying
to see the tiny numbers.
    "He sold it, and six like it, to my client. I
found that button at the motel where the deceased died."
    "So?"
    "She claims she was never there," I said.
    "You said they were mother and daughter,
right?"
    "Right," I said.
    "Girls share clothes, you know."
    I didn't know. "You think the mother may have
been wearing whatever this came off of?"
    "It would make sense to me," she said. "By
the way, you never mentioned who the deceased was."
    "Kelly Brandt," I said. I picked up another
sandwich with greasy fingertips. "She was a pricy prostitute that
only did women, but was engaged to a local businessman."
    The look on her face was priceless, and she
really had nothing else to say to that. As she planned to get up
early, she headed to bed.
    She slept fine as usual, but I wasn't able to
sleep when I finally went to bed. I tried to sleep, but all the
questions about my current work wouldn't leave me alone.
    I was especially bugged by the fiancé. He
seemed to be hiding something, well all my suspects did, but he
especially.
    Finally, I decided I was going to take this
into my own hands. If he wasn't going to show me what that poster
or flyer was, I'd look for myself. Right now.
    I got up and dressed silently. Of course, I
had to turn the perimeter alarm off before I could leave the
house.
    And I did check the extreme wide angle
peephole lens before I stepped out. All was clear. Outside I had to
walk to my car. This time it was parked up on the main road and in
a sandwich shop's parking lot. I had left it there because I
noticed that there were always cars in it overnight for some
reason. I figured mine would blend in there. I figured right.
    At my car, I set to driving all the way
across town to the Brass Works Wholesale business.
    When I arrived, my watch read 12:57am. No one
was there. I didn't even see a security guard anywhere. Not