Ghost Mortem (Ghost Detective #1) - Jane Hinchey Page 0,49

cereal bowl and returned the kibble to the pantry, all without incident. And then we had the coffee maker. The machine from hell. One coffee at the hotel had got me started. I'd need more if I was going to function further.

"Can you show me how to use this?" I jerked my head at the machine with all it's gleaming dials and buttons and longed wistfully for my ever so simple Keurig.

"Sure."

Ben's machine was the type where you add beans, press a button and the machine grinds the beans and makes your coffee. There was a steamer and frother and over a dozen variations of coffee I could make. I stuck with my very simple, very easy, long black. It was either master this machine or buy instant and I refused to buy instant. I wasn't a heathen.

Coffee made, I carried it into Ben's office and seated myself at the desk.

"Right, Sophie Drake. Who are you?" Shaking the mouse to wake up the computer, I opened the browser and then paused. "Do I need to erase your browsing history?" I said cautiously, a terrible thought occurring to me.

Ben snorted. "No. Why?"

"Oh, no reason." I gave a little hair toss and typed in Facebook. Best place to stalk a young woman? Social media. "Just want to make sure I'm not going to stumble across anything you wouldn't want me to see."

"Errr. Nope. I'm good." Then two seconds later. "Ooooh! You mean porn!"

Shaking my head, I blew out a breath. "Yes. Porn. Hence my question. Do I need to clear your browsing history because I don't want anything accidentally popping up."

"Popping up!" Ben hooted with laughter.

"You are so juvenile." Ignoring him, I began my search for Sophie. There were half a dozen Sophie Drakes with profiles on Facebook, but only one lived in Firefly Bay. I clicked it.

Ben got himself under control and muttered, "There's no porn. You're safe."

"Thank the Lord for small mercies." I was reading Sophie's profile. She was twenty, not the young teenager I'd thought, but a whisker off from being a fully-fledged adult. She was also a university student but didn't live at home, she lived on campus. Interesting. I wondered if that was to get away from a controlling father? Having your daughter’s boyfriend investigated is pretty out there. Most of Sophie's posts were public and I made a mental note to talk to her about cyberstalking and protecting herself online. Then I fell into the rabbit hole of flicking through all of her photos. Over an hour had passed when a knock at the front door jolted me out of my voyeuristic activities. Sophie was a very attractive blonde and led a very active social life.

Having kicked my flip flops off, I padded barefoot to the door and flung it open, heard Ben mutter behind me about safety and checking to see who it is first.

"Oh hey." I greeted Detective Galloway. "I wasn't expecting to see you again so soon."

He flashed a smile. "Thought I'd drop by and sign those papers."

"Papers?" Oh shoot. The PI school stuff. With my family arriving last night—and subsequent bottle of red wine—it had totally slipped my mind. I chewed my lip, guilt written all over my face.

"You forgot, huh?" He rested a forearm against the door jam in a pose that was straight out of a romance novel.

"Sorry." I ducked my head a little and shot him a look from beneath my lashes. "Come in though. We can do it now? If you've got time to hang around?"

I stood back a little and indicated he could come in if he wanted to. He did. He shot me another smile as he passed and my nose lifted to sniff the air in his wake, the scent of his cologne doing funny things to my insides. My eyes practically rolled into the back of my head. Mmmm. So nice.

"Fitzgerald. Head out of your pants," Ben whispered in my ear and I snapped to attention. Busted.

I followed Galloway, eyes glued to his denim-clad rear and berated myself the entire time for objectifying him this way. But man, he was put together just right and I couldn't help myself. He was a mixture of cowboy and cop—and while the cop part was a mood killer, the cowboy part more than made up for it.

"You got it all done then." Galloway stood in the living area with hands on hips while he surveyed the now tidy room around him.

"Yeah, sorry. It was a bit of