Page 442 of Sticks and Stones
The guard looked up.
“Back again?” he asked.
Gene nodded.
“Yeah, but now we have a question. How long has the commissioner been gone?” he asked. “When did he head out?”
As he asked that, the man looked confused.
“Uh, he’s upstairs in his office. He hasn’t left yet. He just ordered dinner, and he came down to get it from the delivery guy five minutes ago.”
They were confused.
How was he here but his car was gone?
“But his car is gone,” Ethan said. “The silver Benz with the disco ball on the mirror. Is there another way out?”
He laughed.
And they had no clue why.
“What’s so funny?” Gene asked.
The security guy explained.
“That’s not the commissioner’s car. That’s his putz aid’s car. He left an hour ago. That lackey has to drive around and pick up the commissioner in the bad weather. The commissioner has a sports car, and it’s shitty in the snow.”
They looked at each other.
Holy shit.
That worked too.
“Thanks,” Gene said, as they raced for the door to get back into their ride.
They’d almost missed this. That one little detail about the car’s color would have cost them this case had they gone to the commissioner’s house.
Silver did look white in the dark.
Had they not been observant earlier, this would have screwed them royally.
Hastily, Gene pulled out, and Ethan began researching the commissioner’s aid on his laptop.
As he did, he called Greyson.
The second he answered, he was full of questions.
“Did you get him?” he asked.
Oh, they wished.
Gene clued him in.
“It’s not the commissioner. It wasn’t his car. It’s his aid’s car. Ethan is researching him right now,” he said.
He put it on speaker.
“What can I do?” Greyson asked.
