Steve ran a hand over his eyes for what seemed like the twentieth time in the past five minutes, unable to stop the relentless burning and itching caused by his day turning thirty-six hours old. Halfway through his research, the overzealously friendly DMV secretary had brought him a fresh cup of coffee, smiling affectionately as she subtly slipped a note with her phone number, address and a suggested time for a date this evening beneath his stack of files.

Yawning, Steve was too tired to be flattered by the impressive gesture of female courting behavior.

78.

The daunting number was the amount of potential matches to his reasonably large search criteria when it came to Skylarks of every bright green color imaginable.

He'd made it into the mid-twenties, when he came across a stolen one that raised his interest.

According to the records, the car had been parked in front of the owner's residence and disappeared four weeks ago, in the middle of the night. It hadn't been seen since and no other thefts had been reported.

Pulling the notebook out of the breast pocket of his light gray suit, Steve wrote down the case number, and address of the original owner over in Oakland, before setting the file aside onto a special stack, reserved for his future consideration, before grabbing the next one.

He'd barely started to read again, sitting with his back toward the entrance of the small corner office of the DMV, when a warm hand appeared on his left shoulder.

Temporarily startled and knowing instantly that it didn't belong to Mike, he turned to look around, only to meet the cheery features of the young DMV secretary again, her dark brown eyes scanning him curiously.

"Inspector Keller?", she asked with a sultry tone in her voice, as she brushed a rogue curl from her shoulder-length brunette hair out of her face, "Lieutenant Stone just called and asked that you come and see him as soon as possible. He said it's urgent."

"Sounds good, thank you. Is it eh…is it okay if I grab a couple of those files when I get done with the Lieutenant and bring them back later on? Maybe tonight, or early tomorrow morning?"

Adding a cheeky smile to his request seemed to do the trick, when the lady nodded eagerly and ran her hand along the length of his back before crouching down beside him, effectively getting way too close for comfort, even for Steve's liking.

"Absolutely, Inspector. Tell you what, I will bring all those up to your office to save you the trip, how does that sound? This way you can get back to…you know…solving your murder case and all."

Envisioning the look on Mike's face upon seeing the delicately-built secretary haul several heavy stacks of files around for him to read, Steve thought better of the attractive offer and shook his head, much to her dismay- and his own.

"That's alright. I will ehm…I am going to send one of our guys down here to grab them in a bit. Thank you very much. You have been very helpful."

"No trouble at all, you handsome devil.", the woman countered and boldly reached forward to kiss his cheek, the move so sudden and unexpected that Steve froze in his tracks, a blank expression on his face, "And remember, if you are free tonight, let's have drinks at Tony's. Looks to me like you and I could have a lot of fun together, once you get out of those…those stuffy clothes. I'd suggest you bring the handcuffs though."