"And how much money do you suspect him of taking?"

My potential new client shook her head sadly, obviously embarrassed by what she was about to say.

"We're talking about an amount easily in the thousands."

"Yes…" I said with my eyes narrowing.

Allowing the word hang for as long as possible. Just one of those little things you can do which will draw a person into talking about something they don't feel comfortable with.

One of the tricks of the trade they teach you in detective school.

"I suppose that is the major part of the problem. We don't know for sure how much he's taken. Not that the money is all the most important issue. The embezzling doesn't bother me nearly as much as the possibility that he may have been selling off company secrets."

It was hard for me to stifle letting out a little gasp. There weren't very many times in my career as a private investigator that I heard someone say money wasn't important.

Money, and how to keep hold of it was usually about all that most of my clients could think about.

Particularly when it came time to pay my bill.

That's when they really got to be tight fisted.

I hoped I'd recovered quickly enough to not have given too much of my surprise away to my new client. Even if I didn't, Carol Addams didn't show a sign of having noticed anything.

She just sat there.

Looking too cool, calm and refined to be real.

The woman gave you the impression there wasn't much that could crack her cold shell.

Cold, but a damn lovely shell.

Sitting there in her expensive light blue business outfit, she looked every bit the high level executive. One that could afford to be more worried about the worth of company secrets versus any amount of cash.