North didn’t like it, didn’t want to admit it, but the words sent a frisson up his spine. Hire. Hire meant a client. A client meant a job. And North McKinney lived for this kind of work. He was good at it, too. Had been good at it. Had been very good at it until he was six blocks deep in Clayton and been forced to make a tough decision. He had shot a man; he had done it to protect Shaw. After that, it had been a long, hard road to this: North McKinney, the private dick with a suspended license. Only suspended, though. And with an appeal in the works. But for now, North McKinney, the private dick who had to let his partner run the show.

“Yeah, of course. Come here. Step into our office.” Shaw bumped the inner door with his hip, beckoning Fennmore to follow. North followed Fennmore a step.

Fennmore shot him a glance and then, to Shaw, said, “Maybe your—your secretary, or whatever, maybe he could get us some coffee.”

A cat yowled outside, followed by the clatter of trash cans toppling. North managed to keep his arms across his chest, but he couldn’t keep his fingers from curling into fists.

“Oh no,” Shaw said.

“Coffee,” North said. And he almost said, Cream and sugar?

Fennmore nodded. “Two creams, please.”

North felt the smile growing on his face. This time, he said out loud, “Sugar?”

“No.”

“Mr. Fennmore,” Shaw said, “he’s not—”

“Thanks, though,” Fennmore said.

Shaw groaned.

“Two creams. No sugar. Anything else?”

“I’d just like to talk to Mr. Aldrich, please.”

Shaw was practically melting down the door.

“Sure,” North said. The smile stretched his lips to splitting. “Talk to the detective.”

With another groan, Shaw slunk into the office, and Fennmore trailed after him. North made his way back to the galley kitchen, and he found the coffee pot, and he poured a cup and found a container of hazelnut Coffee-Mate, and he eyeballed two creams worth of it. Then he took the back stairs to the second floor.

The old house had originally been a duplex, and Shaw’s remodeling had been half-hearted at best. The stairs from the kitchen led directly to Shaw’s bedroom. A second entrance on the front of the building, with a separate staircase, led to a living room on the second floor at the front of the house, connected to Shaw’s bedroom by a hallway. North couldn’t remember anyone using the front door or stairs; Shaw always used the kitchen stairs, and North followed his example.

North passed through Shaw’s bedroom, with the comforter and sheets balled at the foot of the bed and a sock hanging off the standing mirror and two translations of Goethe’s Faust propped up on the dresser, where for all North knew Shaw had been comparing them or composing a prose poem about them or brainstorming an article that he wanted to mail off to Newsweek about the contemporary influence of Goethe on theories of elemental genesis. For all North knew, Shaw had read some motherfucking article on the motherfucking Huffpost about the nutritional value of books and he was deciding which one to cut into strips and boil into tea. North took in the chaos in one glance and dismissed it just as readily; this was standard Shaw chaos; Shaw’s desk downstairs made the bedroom look like the pinnacle of order and organization. North had even caught Shaw tossing the leftover silly string from his birthday into the same drawer as his pepper spray, and that thought made North smile.