Page 14 of Daddy P.I. 3.0

I didn’t anticipate I’d be going up against a master thief.

Whoever has been getting into the club at night—something I’ve been able to document at last—is substantially wilier thanI anticipated. They’ve evaded all my cameras like they know exactly where I’ve installed each one. They have a bloody Ph.D. in lock-picking and it’s taken the fob access, which issubstantiallyout of the spec for this job, to finally keep them out of the office. No such luck with the kitchen. According to a text I got as I set off from Manhattan, a tray of sandwiches intended for today’s social committee meeting disappeared overnight, along with a new jar of instant coffee. The thief never steals much; nothing worth involving the police over. But the thefts have freaked out the club’s owners and rumors are spreading among the members.

I’d probably be freaked, too, if the thief hadn’t started leaving me notes.

Today’s reads:

Sorry, Master Logan. I couldn’t keep my bratty paws off the “sarnies.” That’s what British people call sandwiches, right? I think you need to punish me. Love, The Joker’s B

I fold it and tuck it into my back pocket to add to my collection.

The other notes have all been in the same vein. I’ve noodled them around with Mac and Max. We agree the thief isn’t malicious. We also agree this is an inside job, although I’m certain it’s not the club’s founders or the members of the management committee. Pinning the blame on one of the club’s subs doesn’t feel like a perfect fit, either. I have pretty good instincts and something about labeling “The Joker’s B” as an experienced submissive feels off.

Brenna and Emily have spent a lot of time whispering over the notes, too. Other than telling me she thinks “The Joker’s B” is a girl, my little font of theories has dried up. I’m willing to wait, though. While I never want to exclude my baby doll from my investigations, I don’t want to involve her more than shewants to be, either. When she’s ready, she’ll tell me what she thinks.

And she’ll probably be close to the mark. Her natural empathy has been honed—and possibly twisted—by her novel-writing. She knows what makes characters tick, and when she applies that to the people around her, she’s terrifyingly astute.

I reach into what Emily laughingly calls my Batman utility belt, pull out my small caulk gun, and caulk around the plate I’ve screwed in. While the caulk dries, I pop into the kitchen, grab the hand vac, and tidy up. I got read the riot act about “Doms who can’t clean up after themselves” by Miss Vizzi, who runs the club’s cleaning committee, the first day I was here. I’ve made sure she doesn’t have anything to blister my ears about again.

The lady herself arrives as I’m returning the hand vac to its place on the wall. She gives me the side-eye. “You emptied it, right?”

I open the vac to show her the empty canister before sliding it into its holder. She loves having something to be irritated about, and I take a sadist’s glee in thwarting her. Smiling to myself, I move around her to the counter and make myself a cup of tea.

“Tea or coffee?” I offer.

She tosses her glossy, black hair back over her shoulders. “Tea, thanks. I hear a tray of sandwiches went missing.”

I nod.

“And there was another note.”

It’s a statement, not a question but I nod again.

“Are you actually trying to catch this Joker person, or just flirting with them?” she demands.

I’ll admit I’ve been more amused by the Joker’s B’s notes than anything else but I am taking the job seriously.

“I’m trying to catch them,” I say. “The lack of routine in the club isn’t helping. There were eleven people in and out of here after the club closed last night.”

“Clean up. Coffee and tea for stragglers. Getting things ready for today’s meeting and tonight’s event. I’m honestly surprised it wasn’t more,” Vizzi responds tartly.

I sigh and push a teacup toward her. To be fair, there are probably more people in and out of the staff spaces in Blunts after closing on any given night. But Blunts has a rigorous security system. There are two layers of security at every entrance. We change the entry codes weekly. After hours, anyone passing through a doorway needs a key card. With the new chips in them, the key cards are hard to duplicate. Members and house submissives know that loss of a key card means suspension from the club, and most of them are conscientious about club security anyway. We haven’t had a key card lost or stolen yet.

Until I got here last month, Sacrum barely had a lock on any door other than the office and bathrooms. More than upgrading the physical security, getting the staff to adopt a security-first mindset has been a challenge. They all understand the need for it but I think they’ve liked being the more relaxed, casual, and friendly sister club. Me coming from Blunts and telling them they need to trim their jib has been greeted with resentment.

Which makes the animosity Ten expressed over me working here a particularly bitter pill to swallow.

“I’m wiring in the last of the cameras today,” I tell her. “Hopefully that will solve the problem.”

“And if it doesn’t?” she asks.

I don’t have an answer to that. I don’t have a Plan B. The club doesn’t have enough money for a physical security guard. I know Jaimie and Olaf are trying to keep membership dues low, particularly in the face of rising living costs but it leaves the club with very little float. They’ve blown their budget, and then some, with the CCTV system. And I gave them a hefty discount. If it doesn’t work, it might be me and Mac camping out in the clubfor a few nightsgratis, because I don’t really know how else to catch their thief.

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” I say.

She gives me a glower that would absolutely have me shaking in my boots if I had an ounce of submission in my blood. Instead, I just raise an eyebrow at her and pass the milk when she waves a hand at it.

“You’ve never offered me any theory about who you think it is,” I note.

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