Page 7 of Detective Daddy Next Door

"What do you think about getting someone who'd take you to school every morning?" I ask her.

"Like Dorty?" she asks as I pass the bowl of cereal to her.

Dorty was the nanny we’d had in Denver. "Yes, like Dorty."

"I'd like it. If…only if she's nice."

"Okay, I'll find someone nice," I assure her.

Ellie takes a while to adjust to places. Sometimes I feel guilty for uprooting her and moving her on a whim, but she couldn't stay with my soon-to-be ex-wife since she trots the globe doing God knows what. She says she travels for work, but I wonder what she does. As much as I feel guilty for moving Ellie away from her friends in Denver, she's taken well to Long Beach. She's not been crying like she did when we moved to Denver from Portland. She's been eager to go to school and has made friends already. It hurts that we might be leaving when the case my partner and I are investigating is solved. I don't have too long before I retire. I should just have a case or two left after this one, but I don't know where those will take us to yet. After that we can settle back down at home in Denver.

We're working on a fraud case. It's the same case that took me to Las Vegas a week ago, but we've been tipped off that the person we want is in Long Beach. A company that's being used for money laundering.

I look at Ellie again and make a mental note to call a nanny agency today. I'm determined to make her stay in Long Beach as pleasant and memorable as possible.

After dropping Ellie off at school, I drive to the three-story building on Aquarium Way. It’s tucked in the corner of a discreet street. The place was picked as our office because it is not in the busy part of town. Since we're working undercover, we'll have to protect our identity. We can meet at a restaurant and hide in plain sight whenever my partner and I need to meet, but we need a place to store and go through our files. It's a building you can access through the back ally. A perfect place for us.

I park the car in the alley and go up the long flight of stairs to the second floor. It's kind of a derelict building that's been out of use for a while now. Both the first and third floors are unoccupied. We chose the second floor because it's not easy to get to if anyone is looking for you, and we can observe comings and goings from windows on all sides. The third floor is too far up, and wouldn’t be easy to escape from if needed. So, second floor it is.

"Milley!" Jon, my partner, says as I walk in.

That's what he calls me. A bastardization of my name. Jon and I have worked together on multiple cases—he's like a brother now. The office is like a real one. It's painted bright white with chairs and tables and files and cabinets. It looks nothing like the exterior of the building.

"You're late," he says, clicking the end of the green ballpoint pen in his hand.

"School runs."

"Thank God I don't have kids. I'd be running around trying to get them to school, too."

I pull my pistol out of my trousers and put it on the table, making sure it’s not pointed at Jon, and pull out my chair. "You don't know what you're missing," I joke.

He laughs out loud.

Life may be stressful now, but I wouldn't have it any other way. Ellie is my everything and has changed my life for the better. I feel like the divorce would have been harder on me if I didn't have her.

He throws a file over to me and I jump up to catch it before it falls on the floor.

"That’s what we're working with," he says.

I put the file on the table and flip it open. It contains tree charts connecting cases from different states. When I flip to the next page, the picture of a woman with short dark hair comes into view. She’s a bit chubby and has round cheeks, red with excess blush. She has a wide smile on her face. She looks harmless. But I've learned in my twenty-eight years of working as a detective that sometimes the most amiable people are capable of the most dangerous things.

I flip quickly through the pictures of the other people close to the case and shut the file. "So how do we swoop in?"

Jon furrows his wrinkled forehead. "I’m thinking we go in as an artist and manager. They mostly work with those types of people."

"If we go in as clients, it'd be hard to penetrate the company," I say, and rub my fingers on my upper lip, thinking. "There are countless ways to penetrate an organization. I'm sure we'll come up with a good one, and we have to be quick about it. We need to report to headquarters in two weeks.”

"Yes," Jon says, nodding, then leans against his chair. "We'll find a way.”

The next day, I've just gotten back from work and am resting at home, waiting for it to near 4 p.m. so I can go pick Ellie up from school, when the doorbell rings. When I open it, a middle-aged woman with a polite smile on her face is standing there, staring at me. I'm confused. I think she's a neighbor who's come to welcome me to the neighborhood, but she's not holding anything that looks like a tray of pie or macaroni and cheese. Instead, in her hand is a folder, and at her side is a black handbag.

"May I help you?" I question.

She's still smiling. "Yes, I'm from the au pair agency."

I slap my hand against my head. "Oh yes. Come in. You were supposed to come in the morning."

She steps in and looks around. "Yes, I’m sorry about that."

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