Free Kill Smartie Breedlove (a mystery) by Joni Rodgers Page B

world.”
    “Excuse me?”
    “It’s a poem. ‘Pippa’s Song’ by Robert Browning.”
    “Ah.” Shep nodded. “Okay. Well. I’ll tell Suri you’re all set.”
    “Thank you.”
    “Let me leave my cell number in case—”
    “I have it.”
    “Okay. So. Good. Good to go.” After a beat or two, he nodded and turned his key in the ignition. “Goodnight.”
    “I thought maybe you were here to return my files,” said Smartie.
    Shep took the manila folders from him briefcase and handed them to her.
    “Anything there pique your curiosity?”
    “Nope.”
    The crickets had their say for a long moment. Shep let the engine hum idly. Smartie stood under the street lamp, a host of moths and June bugs high overhead.
    “I suppose you have all sorts of interesting little bingetty-bongs in there,” she said abruptly. “Snazzy gadgetry? Spy toys?”
    “I prefer to think of them as tools of a dignified trade.”
    Craning to look inside the driver’s window, leaning close enough for Shep to see the pepper of freckles on the side of her neck, Smartie said, “May I see? Or would you have to kill me?”
    He indicated the passenger door. “Hop in.”
    She went around the vehicle, pausing to run her hand across the tire iron welts on the hood before she climbed into the passenger seat. Even vented by the broken windows, the air in the Range Rover was immediately filled with the magnolia sweat of a woman’s body well spent. Smartie smelled like mowed lawn, mosquito spray and fake vanilla cigarette, not a combination Shep would have expected to find sexy, but the autonomic demons down below thought otherwise.
    He pulled across the street to her driveway where there was better light before he opened a steel strongbox in which he kept his most expensive bells and whistles. Hands clasped like Christmas morning, Smartie sucked in a deep, delighted breath.
    “Oh, knobs,” she said reverently. “These are wonderful.”
    She made a slow exploration of the neatly ordered toolkit, touching each item for texture and weight, questioning Shep about form and function, the words already working in her head.
    I ran my hands over the spider-sexy tools of Nash Babcock’s haut tech trade. The under-dash storage unit sported more implements of invasion than a Pigalle kink boutique.
    “…so then I upload the video,” Shep was saying, “digital photos, transcripts of my notes on the surveillance, et cetera, to a secure online storage facility where it’s accessed by the paralegals who do most of the legwork for trial prep.”
    “What’s this little skittlebob?”
    “That’s an infrared illuminator. Clarifies nighttime video.”
    “Nifty.” Smartie held up a little bullet-shaped device, held it to her nose, touched it with the tip of her tongue. “This?”
    “IP network cam. But this one’s better.” Shep handed her something that looked like a miniature planetarium. “Multiple compression formats.”
    “Multiple compression formats,” she echoed, committing it to memory like a Rubaiyat.
    “What kind of trouble could a girl make with these?” I wondered, slipping a whisper-thin listening device into my bra.
    “Any kind she wants,” said Nash. “I’m into multiple compression formats.”
    “What about the old school rough stuff?” asked Smartie.
    “Such as?”
    “Handcuffs? Brass knuckles?”
    “I’m there to observe, not engage.”
    “But what if it’s like Hey, he’s getting away! and you’re Down on the floor, dirtbag! and he’s You won’t take me alive, copper! and so forth?”
    “It’s not like that.”
    “Nunchucks?”
    “I’m a licensed investigator, not a Ninja Turtle.”
    “Bulletproof vest?”
    “Yeah,” Shep said, “but I never wear it.”
    “Why not?”
    “It makes people shoot at my head.”
    Smartie’s eyes lit up. “ Yes . That’s great. I’ll use that.”
    “Knock your lights out.”
    She held up an electric razor and studied it intently.
    I clicked the switch with my thumb, and