Making the Rent the Hard Way - 12

 

As I walked down the hallway to my office Friday morning, I wondered if whoever had broken in yesterday had tried again to find whatever they'd been looking for. The file on Luca was well secured in my office safe, so if that was what they were after, they'd have been shit out of luck—again

The hallway door was locked and the security box was armed, so at least if someone had paid me another visit they'd covered their tracks this time. As far as I could tell—and I do know my office space like the back of my hand—nothing had been tampered with, not even the safe. I'd spent a lot of money on it when I'd first set up in business, so it would have taken an expert to get into it, if they could find it.

I got out the Luca file, turned on the computer, then set to work to find out everything I could about Richard Farnham. The information he'd given me when he'd hired me was all true, not that I doubted it would be. He did own Waterfront After Dark. He did live where he'd said. The house was in a very upscale neighborhood, no surprise there. I did a map-view and figured the property had to encompass at least a half acre, well landscaped with tall bushes around the perimeter to keep anyone from being able to see the house and grounds except through the front and back gates.

Farnham was listed as a member of several charitable foundations and two neighborhood planning organizations, one where he lived, the other where his club was located.  

"You're an upstanding citizen or seem to be," I muttered as I began to dig deeper and came up with nothing until his appearance in Westerden twenty years ago. Yes, it was well known he was a shifter. He made no bones about that, and with all his charity and community work, I'm sure no one cared—at least not enough to make an issue of it.

There was also no indication that what Rocky had told me was true, which didn't mean it wasn't. If Farnham was trying to set himself up as the shifter alpha in the city, he'd hardly publicize it. People, humans, would not be happy if they found out that shifters were organized to the extent that there was a ruling hierarchy with Farnham as its head. They preferred to see shifters as a small segment of the overall society who kept to themselves and bothered no one. In most cases, that was exactly what happened, since as I've said before, people really don't know if their next-door neighbor or the person they work with is human or otherwise—and shifters preferred it that way. At least the ones I knew did. It was safer for everyone concerned.

All this thinking made me question why Farnham wanted to rule the shifters. Did he have plans to take over the city, with the shifters reigning over the human population, using their obvious strength and other shifter abilities to keep humans under their thumbs? That was a frightening thought.

I glanced at Luca's photo, sitting on top of his file. "Damn it, Luca. What did you find out and how can it be used to stop Farnham? As far as that goes, why haven't you done so already?"

Not a question that would be answered if I didn't find Luca before Farnham did. I had no illusions at this point that I was the only one looking for him. I was just another arrow in Farnham's quiver, to use a rather hokey illustration. I suspected what I'd told Rocky was the truth. Farnham had hired me because I was human. Thus, if I did locate Luca, he wouldn't instantly vanish the way he might if he sensed a shifter anywhere close to him. After all, Luca wouldn't know that I knew he was a shifter.

The phone rang. I answered, then spent the next few minutes talking to one of my regular clients about background checks he wanted me to do on several potential new-hires for his company. He said he'd email the names and their resumes as soon as we hung up—and he did. Ergo, the rest of my morning and part of the afternoon was spent doing that. It was decent money, and, right now, I needed every dollar I could get my hands on. The joys of being small-time.

When I was finished and had emailed my report and a bill, I leaned back in my chair, considering how to proceed on the Luca case. I could wait it out, hoping Luca got in touch with Rocky again and would get my message. I figured that was iffy, at best. If Luca was hiding from Farnham—and that was very likely—he would undoubtedly play keep-away from any and all shifters now, other than possibly Rocky, not knowing who he could trust. If he were honorable, Luca wouldn't want to embroil the ones he did trust in what I was fairly certain was the reason why he'd had vanished to begin with—at least, from what Rocky had said.

I wondered if paying a visit to Waterfront After Dark would be a good idea. If nothing else, I could find out which employees on Farnham's payroll were shifters and get a feel for what they were like. The research I'd done on the place earlier today had only listed names, not what they were.