Laugh or Death (Lexi Graves Mysteries Book 6) by Camilla Chafer Read Free Book Online

door if that were the case. Maybe she was too busy throwing up, I decided.
    "I guess." Joelle shrugged, and returned to her keyboard, squinting slightly before tapping a few more keys and returning her attention to me.
    "I just tried her door and she's not answering. Is she due in today?"
    "Sure, in an hour, though... if she's ill... maybe not. She's supposed to call soon one way or the other. Do you want me to tell her you're looking for her?"
    "No, that's okay. I'd rather explain things when I see her."
    "If you want to wait, we have magazines." Joelle pointed to the neat stack of animal-friendly magazines and gossip titles on the side table in the small waiting area.
    "Thanks," I said, flashing a sm ile as I made the snap decision to wait awhile. If I were lucky, Nancy would walk right in and I'd get a chance to talk to her, and explain what was going on. If weren’t lucky and she didn’t, at least the phone call Joelle said she expected, would confirm if Nancy was upstairs in the apartment. Then I could start my relentless buzzer-pressing again until I annoyed the heck out of the woman. While I waited, I picked up a magazine, and thumbed through it, reading all kinds of trivia about pets.
    I considered getting a pet, but eventually decided I didn't really have the lifestyle for it. Also, if I wanted to stroke something furry and relaxing, I had a really cute mohair sweater that didn't poop anywhere or claw anything. Plus, as a PI and a woman, I was afraid of falling into a huge cliché. The first step was acquiring a pet, the second was losing my sense of fashion before battling bad hair. There was no way the latter two would happen to me. I worked too hard on my image and respected my reflection far too much to jeopardize it.
    As I waited, a couple of clients came in and dropped their dogs off with the grooming technicians . Joelle took several bookings over the phone, but a half hour later, there was still no call from Nancy when I walked over to the desk to check.
    "I just tried calling her," said Joelle, with a puzzled look, "and she didn't answer her phone."
    "Can you try her again? Maybe she didn't hear it?"
    "Sure." Joelle picked up the handset, dialing from memory. We both waited as the phone rang out until finally, Joelle shrugged and hung up.
    "I have to go," I said, checking my watch and trying not to sigh at my wasted trip, "but I'll come back in a couple of hours. Can you call me if you hear from Nancy? You still have my card?" Joelle nodded, holding my card up. I was surprised; they often ended up in the trash.
    "Sure thing. She's probably in bed if she's ill."
    "Probably," I agreed a s I left.
    Solomon had already convened the meeting by the time I arrived , but waited for me before starting. Despite the expansion, our daily meeting was restricted to the boss, four detectives, and Lucas. Occasionally, one or more of us couldn’t make it, but Solomon liked to keep us all as close as possible and discuss our current cases as well as potential cases that we got approached for. His idea, he once explained to me, was to remain closely knit, while enabling us to share resources and theories. In my first few months with the agency, I was often the butt of jokes during the meetings, and my colleagues didn't take my relatively untested PI skills particularly seriously. Since then, however, I worked my butt off, and with a raft of solved cases under my belt, I finally earned their respect. Plus, Delgado was dating my sister so he had another reason to be nice to me.
    "Where are you on your hair-brained case?" asked Delgado. "Did you lose yet?"
    Maybe not all that nice. Since I couldn't lift one perfectly arched eyebrow, I lifted both and fixed him with my best no-nonsense look.
    "What's with the crazy face?" he asked.
    "I'm giving you The Look," I told him.
    Delgado glanced to Fletcher. "What's that?"
    Fletcher shrugged. "It's that female thing where they look at each other, make a few small facial movements, and