Free Snoops in the City (A Romantic Comedy) by Darlene Gardner

of her palm, she opened the drawstring top and peered inside.
    "Shhh," she told the scrawny white cat that stared back at her. "I was already fired once. I don't want to get kicked out a second time."
    The cat — she hadn't named it yet — gave her the same plaintive look that had wormed its way into Tori's heart at the pound.
    She'd been all set to take home a plump feline named Big Bertha when the white cat, which she'd been trying to ignore, let loose with a pitiful meow that seemed to say, "Pick me."
    She'd met those sad, blue eyes and reluctantly given up on her quest for a fat cat. Adopting her hadn't been easy, either, not when the county pound required apartment dwellers to provide a copy of a lease showing their place of residence had no pet restrictions.
    Since Tori was relatively sure Seahaven Shores had a no-pets clause, she'd given her cousin Eddie's address as her own. He deserved nothing less for convincing her that investigating Grady would be a cinch. Ha!
    "You better not cry. You need to remember I wasn't heartless enough to leave you home alone on your first night with me," she told the cat in the bag before she pulled the drawstring loosely closed.
    The bartending job she'd lost at the Roseate Spoonbill hadn't been her first as a Seahaven resident. After striking out as a bank teller and a waitress, she'd taken a six-week course in mixing drinks.
    She'd applied at the Spoonbill, an establishment a few miles south of Seahaven, because the logo on the front of the building amused her. A rose-colored cartoon bird lilted drunkenly to one side, a whiskey bottle dangling from its spoon-shaped beak.
    Now she saw the bird as an adequate metaphor for her professional life. Tori drank only moderately. But if she didn't get help soon, she was in danger of falling flat on her face. Again.
    "Here goes," she said under her breath and walked into the bar. Joey Girdano, the bar manager, noticed her immediately.
    “Hey, Whitley. Didn't I fire you?” He chewed energetically on a wad of gum. A small man with coarse, wavy hair and a thick untrimmed mustache, Joey was a recovering alcoholic whose jaws never stopped moving. He claimed the gum helped him keep from reaching for whiskey.
    "Don’t worry," Tori said, "I’m not here to ask for my job back."
    “You wouldn't get it back," Joey said.
    The cat in her bag made a loud noise, causing the assortment of men and women bellying up to the bar to stare at her. Tori duplicated the noise the best she could, which hurt her throat.
    "You don't have to get hissy about it," Joey said. "You were a lousy bartender, not to mention gullible as hell. Those people you let run up tabs still haven’t paid.”
    “You’re joking."
    “I never joke about money." He blew a bubble, popped it. "As long as you spend yours, you’re welcome here any time.”
    “Crystal's working tonight, right?"
    “Station three,” Joey said. “If you buy a drink, I won’t even hassle her about talking to you."
    “She's your best waitress. You won't hassle her even if I don't buy a drink."
    Joey laughed, showing off crooked teeth. “You might be right, but I will hassle you .”
    Five minutes later, Tori sipped a glass of Chablis at a back table while she waited for her red-haired, freckled friend to finish serving a nearby table.
    "No more noises out of you," she whispered to the cat, soothingly stroking the outside of the bag.
    She used the down time to pat herself on the back for finishing another chapter of So, You Want to be a PI . The book had given her the idea for an internet search of local newspaper archives that had paid off handsomely.
    Palmer Construction had been mentioned repeatedly, mostly in conjunction with city construction projects. In the past nine months, the city had awarded Grady's company contracts to build an addition to the city police station and to renovate the main library branch.
    Those black-and-white facts on a page still told her little about the man himself. For that,