Page 15 of The Princess and the P.I.

Maurice didn’t like this situation, not one bit.

Sure, he could put her up at the Gaylord Convention Center / scene of the crime.

What could go wrong? They’d comp him a room, no questions asked.

But the idea of it didn’t sit right. Too many moving parts.

Too many loose threads. Rich men like Robert Thorpe had enemies lined up like mourners at a wake. Everyone wanted him gone.

The cops, already circling like sharks, were running their own investigation, eager to close it fast and sloppy.

That meant no resources shared, no favors done.

He didn’t have the bandwidth to stay one step ahead of the police department, let alone whatever shadowy church players were lurking on the edges of this case.

Not to mention that Fiona herself was hard to…

know. She had this maddening little mouth, the kind that popped open into a perfectly round O for literally everything—a gruesome murder case, a bad joke, an overpriced sushi roll.

It was the kind of bright, shiny optimism that was supposed to feel open.

For Maurice, it had the opposite effect.

Her constant everything-is-awesome brightness made her unreadable in a way that set his teeth on edge.

People who were secretly dumb—Maurice loved .

Millionaires who were given more credit than they deserved for an innovation—right up his alley.

But Fiona…no, people like her made Maurice twitchy.

The secretly sharp, the ones who played dumb to lull you into complacency—they were the dangerous ones.

And Fiona was playing dumb like her life depended on it.

Which, he supposed, it did.

But why?

The door rattled, and Maurice pushed the plate of stale IHOP waffles into the trash.

Fiona’s father dropped two suitcases at Maurice’s feet, his posture slumped in defeat. He had lost a silent game of chicken with his daughter.

He had probably been so sure that Maurice would turn Fiona away. He was probably already practicing his tough love speech for her in the car. But Fiona had said the word. And now, standing here with nothing left to argue, Fiona’s father could do nothing but surrender.

Behind him, Fiona hovered in the doorway, quiet and watchful.

Her father turned back for another suitcase, inspecting the office as if he expected to find needles in the couch cushions.

He opened a drawer, then closed it. Tapped the edge of the desk like even inanimate objects might lie to him.

When he was satisfied—or at least pretending to be—he clapped Maurice on the shoulder, rubbing like he was feeling for loose bones.

For the second time, something unguarded passed between them.

A man knowing he’s already lost something he can’t bear to lose, and begging for what’s left.

It made Maurice think, absurdly, of Dolly Parton and Jolene.

Please don’t take her just because you can .

Kofi had kept himself a mystery for years—Maurice had half a dozen half-finished case files trying to pin him down. It felt a little wild to see him like this. So openly afraid. Not of being replaced. No, it was simpler than that.

Papa Kofi had been wrong about his daughter.

He’d built his entire identity around protecting her—probably wrapped his ego in scripture and no one ever questioned it—and now he stood here, suitcase in hand, realizing Fiona didn’t need his protection anymore. She didn’t even want it.

It might’ve been tragic, really—if he hadn’t orchestrated the death of a vulnerable young woman and swept it neatly under the rug.

When her father’s car finally pulled away, she whipped around. “Okay, where do we start? This is all a little confusing, right? I have so many clues and so much evidence on—”

“Fiona, let’s level set for a moment, shall we?

” He could see the visible buttons of her white shirt strain and twist as she adjusted herself.

Maurice looked down into his cup. “You won’t be handling too many clues or evidence from the other cases.

We’re doing research on case thirty-four, Thorpe homicide.

I’ll ask for documents, files, and emails. Basic assistant stuff.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it. I’ll give you an itinerary every day that you follow to the letter. I work alone on the other cases. We’ll have this wrapped up in a few weeks, and you can go back to no confusion.”

“But I like being confused. I mean, I like figuring things out—people out. Not just online, like IRL, I could always tell what the sermon was going to be on Sunday and what scriptures my dad would use based on his mood.”

“That’s just you knowing your dad.”

“I know you .”

“Anyone with Google knows me.”

“I don’t need Google to know that you have a thing for ‘useful women.’?” She tapped her phone.

“Boom.” LeDeya pointed her nail file at Maurice.

He shrugged. “That could mean anything.”

“I researched the forums about you. Who you associate with is data.” She showed him a small gallery of women on her phone. “Most of these women are administrators or office workers. They push a lot of paper, tend to be methodical, and have a lot of access to bureaucratic info.”

“Dating administrators is an occupational hazard. You’ll see if you really dig into this line of work is that you’ve got to find a way to get past gatekeepers,” Maurice said.

“If I was thinking the best of you, I would think that you have a thing for capable, efficient women. At your worst, you use women in influential positions to get what you need.”

Maurice snatched a look at his sister, who was open-mouth staring at Fiona.

He didn’t give her the benefit of agreement, though, just snatched the nail file from Deya.

“You wear vintage shirts and torn pants to hide the fact that you’re quite financially comfortable.”

He sat up. Okay. You got me on the hook, girl , he thought, but he hoped his face didn’t say it. “Nobody trusts a flashy detective” was all he said.

“He does all right but he’s just a baby baller. My brother-in-law? Now—”

“Deya—” Maurice warned. Deya popped her mouth closed and lunged for her nail file, which Maurice kept just out of her reach.

Fiona picked up the fabric pieces stacked on the windowsill. The tiny scraps looked like bits of trash, but Fiona seemed to know better. “I know that your grandmother used to make dresses for Shirley Chisholm in the eighties—”

“Googleable.”

Their grandmother Evelyn Bennett had been the best seamstress inside of the DC Beltway.

As her hands became arthritic, some of her more intricate work was passed on to her grandchildren.

Maurice, being a boy, often got passed heavier items like quilts and drapes.

After begrudging the chore as a young man, he grew to see it as a kind of moving meditation.

“Maybe.” She interrupted his thoughts. “But what is not googleable is that you sewed that muslin quilt tableau of the Tuskegee airman on display at the Anacostia Community Museum under a fake name.”

His eyebrow rose. How had she collected all this data so quickly? So she made a good guess, stab in the dark. “You’re reaching.”

“I don’t think so, Mr.Tilney,” she said quickly.

“And boom, boom.” LeDeya clicked her nails. Big, nosy eyes on Fiona.

“Muslin,” Maurice said, pointing to the fabric in her hand. He liked the way she smoothed it between her thumb and forefinger. “I like a nice plain muslin for the backing.”

It was as close to a you’re right as she was going to get from him.

“Honey, what is your ring size?” LeDeya asked pointedly.

Maurice knew this was going in the family group chat.

“My sister was just going. Didn’t you say you wanted to get to that Wegmans in Woodmore before noon for the men?”

“And the playlist!” LeDeya clapped “See? He thinks he knows everything.” But she did hurry, reapplying her lip gloss in the reflective window.

—

Maurice closed and locked the office door and remotely started his matte black Mercedes. It purred to life, waiting for him like a soft woman under the covers. It was sleek, stealthy, and utterly incongruous with the man who wore a frayed D.A.R.E. shirt and a black beanie.

“I thought people didn’t trust flashy detectives,” she said, raising an eyebrow.

“Flashy? No. This is precision,” Maurice replied, running a hand over the hood like it was a lover’s thigh. “Soft and quiet. Nonreflective. Forty tint. Black rims. Quiet as librarian pus—” He cleared his throat. “It’s quiet. It’s the perfect stakeout car.”

She laughed a little. “You’ve made your point. Maybe I’ll get one of these when I open a practice.” Her smile was so genuine Maurice found himself smiling back, but quickly straightened his face.

“You want a practice too?”

“Oh yes. I used to want to call it Sister Sleuths but—”

“Oh, because you look like a nun?”

“Uh, no. I have a sister?” She squinted up at him and shook her head. “And we used to share the same interest.”

“She grew up, huh?” Maurice guessed.

She looked at him again like he was an idiot, but didn’t say anything. Her mouth twisted up, and the motion, the set of her mouth, sent tiny little pops up the base of his skull.

Red, wet lipstick.

He resisted the pull. That little fishhook in his navel that made him bore into people sometimes. She wasn’t interesting. She was useful . He didn’t care what she would look like in lipstick. She would help him get Tameka out of his head, and then she would be gone.

“Hop in.” He tapped the top of his car.

She slid in and awkwardly pulled at her long jacket.

Maurice heard the almost comical sound of buttons popping, and he snatched a look at her chest involuntarily.

She wore a blue jean dress on top of her blouse, so she wasn’t indecent.

But she looked painfully embarrassed. So much so that he pressed on the radio to change the focus.

“I think you’ll need new clothes—”

“No…all of my clothes fit, this shirt was kind of a last resort.”