Crazy For Her

She looked at him with her smoky eyes, set in a round, striking face framed by fiery red hair. "I need your help, Mr. DeWald," she said in a voice husky from either cigarettes or crying. He guessed it was both.

DeWald glanced at his reflection in the glass fish tank in the corner, making sure his hair looked okay. He regretted his five o'clock shadow, and couldn't do anything about his hawkish nose, but he still cut a pretty impressive figure. "For a dame like you, anything," he replied. "Spill. What's your story?"

The woman opened her white clutch purse, and pulled out a photograph. DeWald took it from her perfectly manicured but shortly trimmed fingers. It was a young woman, with bright eyes, dark silky hair, and a slightly upturned nose.

"Cute," he said. "Who is she?"

The woman hesitated, but only for a moment. A lesser dick might not have even noticed, and DeWald acted as if he was a lesser dick. "She's my sister," she said. "Her name is Susan Bell."

"Susan Bell, eh? Didn't I see her in the papers? Went missing a while back." DeWald specifically remembered that Bell had been the only child of her widower father, and this girl looked nothing like her, but he kept that to himself.

The redhead bit her plump lower lip nervously and nodded. "I need you to find her."