Page 18 of For the Birds

“You them girls I heard about?” he grunted, keeping his gaze on theTV.

“Yeah,” she said, not sounding as confident. “That’sus.”

“I hear you wanna be P.I.s.”

“That’s right,” she said. “Jed Carlisle said you’d trainus.”

Jed?I gaped at her in shock. Jed had set thisup?

“Yep, I said I would.” He put his hand on the arm of his chair and pushed himself up out of it. Once he was standing, he turned to get a look at us. I wasn’t sure what to expect from a P.I., but Kermit Cooper wasn’t it. He looked to be anywhere from his mid-forties to mid-fifties, and if he was agile enough to run from the criminal element, his physique didn’t indicate it. His button-down white shirt was covered with multiple stains—enough to suggest he’d worked on collecting them. He had a couple days’ growth of beard, and his partially balding head could have used some of the hair from his chin. His eyes narrowed as he took us in, and he pointed a finger at me. “You plannin’ to wear fancy clothes like that all thetime?”

“Actually, no,” I said. “I’m usually dressedin—”

“Save it for someone who wants to hear it, sweetheart. I don’t care if you show up wrapped in tin foil, not my business.”

My mouth droppedopen.

Neely Kate winced and gave me an apologeticlook.

“Now, I don’t get a ton of cases,” he said. “But I just got one this afternoon. Right before Carlisle calledme.”

Well, that wasn’t a coincidence . . . What was Jed upto?

“The info’s still on the copy machine from when it was faxedin.”

“Faxed in?” I asked. What decade wasthis?

Neely Kate shrugged her shoulders as she turned around and tried to find the copy machine. I spotted it on the floor, partially covered in empty takeout bags, and pointed it out toher.

She squatted in front of it and grabbed a single sheet of paper from the tray while I tried to hide my disgust at the pigsty where Kermit Cooper apparently lived and worked. The only thing of interest in the whole place was a circular map of the world on his wall by the kitchen table. The North Pole was in the middle, the continents were spread out around it in a circle, and a thick white circle bordered the entire thing.

“This is an interestin’ map,” I said, deciding that I might as well try to break the ice if we were going to be working together. “I’ve never seen one likeit.”

He released a loud grunt. “That ain’t for you, Miss Fancy Pants.”

So much for smalltalk.

Neely Kate looked up from the paper. “It’s about a lost parrot.”

How many lost parrots could there be in Henryetta? I started to tell her about the flyer in Levi’s office, but another grunt from Kermit convinced me to wait until weleft.

“So what happens next?” Neely Kate asked him as she lowered the paper to herside.

“Here’s how it’s gonna work,” Kermit said, moving closer. I resisted the urge to pinch my nose to block the wave of BO coming my way. “You two are gonna go look for the damned parrot.”

“Jed said you were gonna teach us,” Neely Kate countered. “We’re supposed to be apprenticing withyou.”

“Ever heard of the phrase do one, get paid fornone?”

“Um,” I said, pursing my lips. “I’m pretty sure it’s see one, do one, teach one.” I’d learned that phrase during my Grey’s Anatomymarathons.

“That be them doctors’ motto when they train younger folk . . . This one’s mine. You two will go out and find that bird, and then I’ll collect the money.”

Neely Kate’s eyes widened. “You’ll get the money?”

“You said you wanted to apprentice, and apprentices don’t getpaid.”

This was sounding like the worst arrangement ever. “So let me get this straight,” I said. “If we do all the work and you get paid, what do we get out ofit?”

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