Stalking Steven

by Jenna Bennett

  Stalking Steven

  Fidelity Investigations #2

  Jenna Bennett

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  I was minding my own business, sitting in my incognito black SUV, innocently parked on a quiet street in what’s called ‘an established neighborhood,’ when a sudden rap on the window made me jump in my seat. My heart leapt up onto my tongue and kept banging there, and it took some effort to get it back down where it belonged.

  When I turned in the direction of the rapper, I was faced with a badge and an ID-card, held against the window.

  The badge was shiny, and had Metropolitan Nashville Police Department stamped on it.

  The ID card next to it was almost equally shiny. The picture showed a man in his early thirties, with black hair and the frozen expression people have in official photos. Although he looked considerably less handsome in the picture than I knew him to be in life, I didn’t need to check the name on the card to recognize him.

  I powered down my window, as the badge and ID disappeared into the pocket of a very nice suit. Armani. “Detective,” I said politely. “Long time, no see.”

  “Three weeks,” Jaime Mendoza answered, putting an arm on the top of my car and leaning down to peer inside. “What are you doing, Mrs. Kelly?”

  Eyes the color of melting chocolate took in the interior of my car. Empty back seat—cream colored leather—and a passenger seat with a manila folder, a notebook and pen, a digital camera, and a textbook. The name on the book was Private Investigating for Dummies.

  “You’re kidding me,” Mendoza said.

  I had known this was coming. Diana Morton—my divorce attorney and current client, and the reason I was sitting here on this quiet street in the middle of the afternoon—had warned me that Mendoza didn’t approve of PIs. Something about his ex-wife hiring one, and then marrying him.

  The PI, not Mendoza.

  I didn’t know all the details, and had resisted the temptation to use my newly-acquired skills to figure them out. But I’d been waiting for this. Diana had told me that Mendoza would be unhappy when he heard about my new career.

  “No, Detective,” I told him. “I’m not kidding. I qualified for my license last week. I’m turning David’s office on Music Row into a PI firm. Fidelity Investigations.”

  His mouth curved at that. “That’ll serve him right.”

  I smiled back. “I think of it as poetic justice.”

  David, who became my late husband just in time to avoid becoming my ex, had left me for a twenty-five-year-old Salma Hayek lookalike a few months ago, and had managed to get himself killed shortly afterwards. Mendoza had been the homicide detective in charge of the case, which was how we met. I’d been the obvious suspect, and I’ll always be grateful to him for digging deeper instead of just slapping handcuffs on me.

  “Rachel is helping me run the office,” I added. “David’s administrative assistant, remember? And Zachary is doing the computer searching and online marketing and such.”

  “I thought he was waiting to apply to the police academy when he turns twenty-one,” Mendoza said.

  I nodded. “He still wants to do that. But he figures working for a private investigator will look better on his resume than being the doorman at the Apex.”

  Mendoza looked doubtful, and considering that the PI in question—me—had had her license for all of six days, maybe he had cause.

  “We have our first case,” I added. “Diana hired me to stalk... I mean, follow her husband around.”

  Mendoza arched his brows. “She thinks Steven’s cheating?”

  “She isn’t sure. That’s why she wants me to follow him. To find out.”

  Mendoza nodded.

  “So what are you doing here?” I added. “Not that it isn’t nice to see you, of course.”

  That got me a smile, complete with dimples and a corresponding surge of appreciation in my stomach. Mendoza is way too handsome for his own good—or at least too handsome for mine. He’s close to a decade younger than me, and even just lusting after him in the privacy of my own mind is questionable. Lusting at all, at forty, might be a no-no.

  “A call came in to the 911 hotline,” he told me, “about a suspicious vehicle on this street.”

  “Really?” I looked around. “I’ve been sitting here for more than an hour, and I haven’t seen anyone suspicious.”

  Unless he was talking about Steven’s car, a nondescript brown sedan that was parked in a driveway a couple houses up from where I was sitting. But it was doing absolutely nothing suspicious that I could see. What Steven was doing inside the house might be another matter, of course, but I hadn’t yet dared to leave my own car to investigate. Not in broad daylight.

  “Your vehicle,” Mendoza said.

  My eyes widened. “Someone reported me?”

  He nodded, his mouth twitching. I deduced he was working hard to suppress a grin. “Mrs. Grimshaw, up there.”

  He nodded at the house I was parked outside, a low-slung brick ranch with a big picture window in the front. If I squinted, I could just make out a human figure through the glass.

  “She reported me?”

  Mendoza nodded. “She called 911 and said a suspicious vehicle had been parked outside her house for more than an hour. Big and black, she said. And I think she may have mentioned the X-files.”

  “Not really?”

  “Probably not,” Mendoza admitted. “But she did call 911 and report suspicious activity.”

  He took a step back to run his gaze along the side of my new-to-me Lexus. “New car?”

  “The convertible was too conspicuous.”

  “That’s too bad,” Mendoza said.

  I shrugged. The SUV was all right. I couldn’t drive around with the wind blowing through my hair—not unless I rolled down all the windows and created a sort of whirlwind effect inside the car, which wouldn’t do my hair any good—but it was a small price to pay for being inconspicuous. “So what are you doing here? The neighbor called, yes. But you’re a homicide detective. Or did they demote you after you got yourself knocked out and stuck in the vault?”

  “No,” Mendoza said, sounding annoyed, “they didn’t demote me. I solved my case, and arrested a murderer and an embezzler. My lieutenant, and the lieutenant in the white collar crime division, are both very happy with me.”

  “Good for you. So what are you doing here? No one’s dead.”

  “Mrs. Grimshaw used her binoculars to get your license plate number,” Mendoza said. “When they put your name into the database, they saw you were flagged as a person of interest in one of my cases. So they tagged me.”

  “And you volunteered to come out and check on what I was doing?”

  He nodded.

  “No dead bodies taking up your time today?”

  “Not so far.” Although his tone intimated that I was in danger of changing that. I deduced I was annoying the detective.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “There’s nothing going on here. Certainly nothing Mrs. Grimshaw has to worry about. Steven Morton is in that house up there, where the brown sedan is parked. That’s his car. As soon as he leaves, I’ll be leaving, too.”

  “It would b
e better if you left now,” Mendoza told me, “but you’re in a public place, and not threatening anyone with your presence, so there isn’t much I can do about it if you won’t.”

  No, there wasn’t. Although if he really insisted, I’d do as he said. It’s always a good idea to stay on friendly terms with the police.

  Of course, I’d just park around the corner and wait for Steven to drive by. And then I’d follow Steven home. Or back to the university. Or wherever he was going next.

  “Let me give you a piece of advice, though,” Mendoza added.

  “Sure.”

  “Next time you’re planning to stake out a house for any length of time, give the police a call first. Not 911, just the regular number. Introduce yourself, tell them who you are, give them your license number, and explain what you’re doing. That way, if someone like Mrs. Grimshaw calls, they won’t have to send anyone out to check.”

  Good advice. However...

  “You didn’t have to come out here,” I felt compelled to point out. “You knew it was me. And you must have known I wasn’t doing anything illegal.”

  “You had a restraining order filed against you last month,” Mendoza reminded me.

  “She was my husband’s mistress! I had the right to know what she looked like!”

  “You didn’t have the right to park outside her apartment for hours at a time and stare at her through your binoculars.”

  “I didn’t!” And he knew that, because I’d told him so before. I inhaled a deep breath through my nose. “You have my phone number. Why didn’t you just call?”

  Was it possible—be still, my heart!—that he had taken the opportunity to drive out to see me?

  “I have to go tell Mrs. Grimshaw that she’s safe,” Mendoza said. And added, as I deflated, “Plus, I wanted to make sure you weren’t stalking someone else.”

  He was joking. At least I think he was. Told myself he was.

  “I’m stalking Steven,” I said. “Legally. His wife hired me. And I have a license to stalk.”

  “Good for you,” Mendoza said. “I hope you and your license will be very happy together.”

  He straightened, and glanced up at the house. “I should go see Mrs. Grimshaw now.”

  “Tell her I’m nice. And harmless.”

  Mendoza snorted.

  I thought about getting huffy, but then I smiled sweetly instead. “Be careful, Detective. Don’t let any desperate criminals get the drop on you.”

  “It was an old lady with a golf trophy!” Mendoza said, referring to the woman who had knocked him cold a few weeks ago. The same woman who had locked him in the vault I mentioned earlier. And she hadn’t been all that old. Older than Mendoza, certainly, by a lot of years. Older than me, too, but not by as many.

  “Mrs. Grimshaw is probably an old lady, too.” Unless she wasn’t. Maybe she was a hot divorcée in her thirties with an interest in Hispanic cops.

  “Probably.” Mendoza gave me a nod. “Stay out of trouble, Mrs. Kelly.”

  “You too, Detective,” I told him, and watched as he headed up the driveway. He passed the picture window on the way, and the outline moved away and headed in the direction of the front door.

  Mendoza stepped up on the stoop and knocked. A second later—someone had definitely been waiting—the door opened. A small black-and-white-and-brown shape darted out of the crack, yapping hysterically, and threw itself at Mendoza’s knees.

  He staggered. I giggled. And although there was no way he could have heard me—I was a football field’s width away, on the other side of the lawn, with my windows up—he scowled in my direction.

  The small shape—dog, obviously—kept dancing around his feet. It was moving so fast I couldn’t get a good look at it, but eventually it collapsed on the toes of Mendoza’s shoes and stuck four stubby legs in the air. He leaned down to scratch its belly.

  Must be a girl dog. He has that effect on me, too. All I want to do when I see him, is roll over and beg.

  But I digress.

  After scratching for a second, Mendoza straightened. The dog stayed where it was, obviously hoping for more, and when no more was forthcoming, it rolled to its feet and trotted inside, bat ears flapping. Mendoza talked to the open door for another minute before walking away. The door closed. Moments later, the figure reappeared in the picture window.

  I waited for Mendoza to come back down the driveway and over to my car window before I told him, “You made a new friend!”

  He glanced back at the house. “It wasn’t me she had the problem with. I’m the good guy. You’re the one sitting out here in your big, black car, looking suspicious.”

  “I wasn’t talking about Mrs. Grimshaw,” I said. “I couldn’t see Mrs. Grimshaw. I meant the rat.”

  “Dog.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I know it’s a dog, Detective. What happened to your sense of humor?”

  “I left it at the office,” Mendoza told me. “When they called to tell me you were out here, acting suspicious.”

  He looked up at the sound of a car engine starting up the street. “Here comes Steven.”

  I looked up, too, away from Mendoza. It was harder than it should have been. He’s just so nice to look at. But yes, the brown sedan was backing out of the driveway and onto the street.

  I reached for my key. “That’s my cue to get out of here.”

  “Give him a minute,” Mendoza said, leaning down to rest his arms in my open window. “You don’t want him to make you.”

  I glanced at the sedan. “I don’t want to lose him, either.”

  “He’s either going home or back to work,” Mendoza said. “Is this your first time tailing him?”

  I nodded.

  “Next time, find somewhere else to park. Nobody else is parked on the side of the road here.”

  No, they weren’t. It was the kind of neighborhood where the properties were large and had long driveways. Mrs. Grimshaw, for instance, could easily accommodate ten cars nose to back.

  “I can’t park on someone else’s property!”

  “You can if you want to look like you belong,” Mendoza said, as Steven rolled by. “Just pick a driveway where everyone’s at work, and nobody’ll ever know you were there.”

  I turned my head to watch Steven’s progress, and Mendoza added, “Look at me.”

  “Why?”

  “So he can’t see your face,” Mendoza said, watching the sedan move past on the other side of the car. “With any luck, he’ll think we’re just two neighbors who happened to meet on the street, and stopped to have a conversation.”

  Sure. “You’re driving a cop car. Government plates and extra antennas.”

  “Antennae,” Mendoza said. “The kind bugs have.”

  “The kind cop cars have.”

  He shrugged. “I can’t help that. And anyway, why would it matter to him? Infidelity isn’t a crime.”

  Very true. Although it ought to be.

  I watched in the rearview mirror as the brown sedan slowed, signaled, and then took a left onto the side street, bound for the nearest interstate. Or so I assumed.

  “Is it OK if I leave now?” I asked. “Before he gets away?”

  “Sure.” Mendoza removed his arms from my window and straightened as I cranked the key over in the ignition. The Lexus purred to life. “Don’t drive too fast trying to catch up. I don’t wanna have to pull you over for speeding.”

  “I’m sure you don’t.” I reached for the window control. “Have a nice day, Detective.”

  “You too, Mrs. Kelly,” Mendoza told me, and took a step back. I made a highly illegal U-turn and sped off down the street, hoping to catch Steven before he got to the highway. When I glanced in the rearview mirror on my way around the corner, Mendoza was still standing in the same spot with his hands on his hips, and I didn’t have to see his face to know he was scowling after me.

  Chapter 2

  My late husband, David Kelly, before he left me for Jackie-with-a-q and then got himself murdered
, was one of two partners in a financial firm that had its offices on Music Row in midtown Nashville. David and his business partner Farley started the company a few years before David and I got married, while David was still married to his previous wife Sandra, although when you walk into the lobby, you’d swear that the place has been in business for more than half a century. It was an impression David had gone to great lengths to cultivate, mainly by lining the walls with framed, signed photographs of some of country music’s greats, many of whom had died while he and Farley were in diapers. Patsy Cline, Jim Reeves, Hank Williams Senior, Johnny Cash, all smiled—or in Johnny’s case, glowered—down from the walls of the lobby. All of them—save Johnny—dead before David had started grade school.

  Not one of them had ever been a client of either David’s or Farley’s.

  Rachel looked up from arranging an array of magazines on the table in the corner. “Gina. How did it go?”

  I dropped my purse on the nearest chair and walked over to inspect the magazines. “Tailing someone is harder than I thought. Why do we suddenly subscribe to Guns & Ammo and Shooting Times?”

  “We don’t,” Rachel said, aligning the corners with razor sharp precision. “Zachary brought them in. They’re from his personal collection. He said they’d set the tone for any walk-in clients.”

  “I guess they would. If any clients happened to walk in.”

  And I wasn’t holding my breath.

  Our current case was a favor for a friend. Diana Morton had handled my divorce from David, the one he had died in the middle of, and it was thanks to her that I still owned the house in Hillwood (that I would sell, as soon as the damage from a recent fire was repaired), the luxury penthouse in the Gulch (David’s love nest, that I lived in now), the Lexus I had gotten when I traded in my convertible, and the building we were standing in. She’d offered to pay me for stalking Steven, but I was more than happy to do it gratis. It seemed the least I could do, and anyway, once I proved myself, I hoped she’d refer clients my way. A lot of wives, when they first suspect their husbands of straying, are willing to pay to have that suspicion confirmed.