Page 144 of Without a Clue
Like an act.
A few people laugh, thinking it’s all a bit.
“For the record,” I say, “I’m livid.”
“But?”
“You had no right.”
“But?”
“This was entirely over the line and you will be paying me back handsomely.”
Hugh tilts his head. Waits. “But?”
“But . . .” I wait for ten long seconds, then at last I hold out my computer, open, to chapter 1. “I’ll give you this.”
Hugh’s eyes float over the document for a brief, confirming moment. “Is this a . . . full chapter?”
“Yes.”
“About this?” he says, pointing around us.
“Yes.”
“And has our Pip . . . found her voice?”
And this time I can’t help it. I let slip a tiny smile. “Yes.”
“Aw, Pip. I knew you would.”
The room swells. People begin clapping.
Neena, perfectly as expected, begins to cry.
Gordon puts a comforting arm around her.
Jackie looks stiff and uncomfortable as she puts forward a couple of tight claps.
Crystal. Where is Crystal?
I freeze, then point to two men-—one older, one much younger—sitting at a round table. “Is that . . . Pogache and Carragan?”
One of them, the burly Carragan, raises a frothy glass of beer at me. “I’m Bob, actually. And you’ve met my son, Trent. Not too bad for a seventeen-year-old, was he?” he says, proudly grinning as he elbows his son at the table.
Hugh jumps in. “Pip, I don’t think you’ve met Bob Moore, one of my old buddies down at the station. Good sport, wasn’t he, for helping us out?”
“Thank you for the free trip,” Bob says, raising his ale again.
“Fake security?” I say, dazed.
That certainly helps things make sense.
“Well, it would have been exceedingly challenging to pull it off without him, wouldn’t it?” Hugh says, like of course. “I certainly couldn’t have taken my own body away on a stretcher. I certainly couldn’t have interrogated you poorly enough to make you do it yourselves.”
The world truly does make sense again.
“I knew he was an awful detective,” I say, pointing. “I mean, innocent until guilty, yes, but letting murderers just roam free in secret? And two people dead?”
