Free The Stranger You Seek by Amanda Kyle Williams

and it must have been ten degrees cooler than the last time I was here. “How ’bout some coffee or bottled water, Keye?”
    “I’m okay, thanks. You all right?” Larry was generally a happy guy, joked a lot, a mischievous little glint in his brown eyes. Today he seemed drawn.
    He opened a bottle of water and sat down, smoothed his purple tie. “It’s showing, huh? Market tanked. I took a hit. Don’t get me wrong. I’ll be fine. But I don’t own a damn thing that’s not worth about half what it was. Know what I mean?”
    “Everyone knows what you mean.”
    Danny handed Larry the file and quietly closed the door on his way out. Larry looked it over. “So the claimant’s position is this. She goes to one of the Laser Treatment Centers of the Southeast to get the hair on her top lip removed. The technician in charge of this procedure improperly uses the equipment, has the setting way too high, something normally used for less sensitive areas like legs. The result is second- and third-degree burns above her upper lip.”
    I shuddered. “So now she has a burned-on mustache?”
    Larry’s trademark smile stretched out across his face for the first time today. “I swear to Jesus, Keye, she looks like my uncle Earl now.”
    We took a moment to enjoy his client’s misfortune. It was wrong, of course, but funny doesn’t know any better. “You want the history on this treatment center and the technician, right?”
    Larry nodded. “Complaints and in what form and if this guy appeared in any of them, statements from individuals harmed, court records and any settlements you can dig up. Danny copied the file for you.”
    Quinn was staring at his cell phone when I walked out of his office. I felt good about the file under my arm. It was something mildly interesting for a change, and with plenty of billable hours.
    Neil was in his usual position at the computer when I walked in. I saw an extremely large fruit basket on the conference table where we sometimes worked and sat with clients, but generally it was where we ate and socialized and sometimes spread out pieces of jigsaws. Neil was a whiz at jigsaw puzzles. He could spot the right shape in a mountain of pieces. I think his brain must be shaped something like the state of Texas.
    “What’s this?” I asked stupidly. Neil didn’t bother answering. I pushed aside a satsuma orange to find a card. It was heavy stock, embossed, expensive, a thank-you for a job that had ended to their satisfaction, and signed by Margaret Haze, my first big client and now my most prestigious reference. There were law firms and corporate headhunting agencies that used my services now thanks solely to the weight of a hard-to-get recommendation from Guzman, Smith, Aldridge & Haze.
    I would have to hire help soon. I needed another pair of eyes and ears for those long surveillance hours, cramming sugar and caffeine to stay awake and listening to crappy books on tape, someone to take over the errands, research and schedule gigs, someone to actually be nice to new clients when they call, which doesn’t always happen now. I dreaded bringing a new person into my business and into my life. Change is, at the very least, inconvenient.
    I dug through the fruit basket looking for something I wanted. “People really eat this stuff?” I would have preferred a bag of Krispy Kremes. “Freaks,” I muttered, and reported to Neil that the basket was a gift from Margaret Haze’s office.
    “That’s why you’re the detective,” he said grumpily.
    It was going to be one of those days with him, I thought. Neil could be, well, a bit of a moody little bastard at times. But then I’d always been drawn to little bastards.
    I sat down at my desk, picked up the phone, and heard the pulsating dial tone. My voice mail was full when I checked for messages. Neil doesn’t take messages. He simply transfers the ones that hold no interest for him to my mailbox.
    I listened to a batch of messages, client stuff, most