Cornered

by Turner, Linda; Weaver, Ingrid; Miller, Julie

  He was serious. Fighting a smile, she lifted a delicately arched brow at him. “You really believe in ghosts?”

  “I believe in Boonie,” he retorted. “Trust me, that woman could do anything she set her mind to. Why do you think I jumped at the chance to be her partner? If she decided she wanted to take me to task from the other side of the pearly gates, she’d find a way.”

  She sounded wonderful. “I wish I’d had the chance to know her,” Josephine said wistfully.

  “She was a trip,” he told her. “Her one regret was that she wouldn’t be here to see your reaction to everything she left you.” He nodded to where the parrot sat on her perch at the table. “There’s your first new possession. Her name’s Ethel Merman. I should warn you she’s got a smart mouth. She won’t let you get away with anything.”

  “You got that right, buster,” Ethel piped up. “Don’t forget your manners. Stand up straight. Give us a kiss.”

  Torn between horror and amusement, Josephine looked at him in disbelief. “You’re kidding…right?”

  “Oh, no,” he chuckled. “She’s all yours.”

  “Oh, but I couldn’t! She doesn’t even know me.”

  Far from sympathetic, he only grinned. “She’s part of a package deal. It’s all or nothing. If you refuse any part of the bequest within the first year of possession—Ethel, the house, or the agency—everything goes to a pig farm south of town.”

  Josephine couldn’t believe he was serious. Surely her aunt wouldn’t have made such provisions in the will. But there had been a codicil to Boonie’s will that had stated that if she refused her inheritance, a second codicil would then kick in. She hadn’t paid any attention to it because she hadn’t planned to refuse her inheritance. Of course, she hadn’t known at the time that Boonie’s worldly possessions included a parrot with an attitude.

  Studying the redheaded parrot with a worried frown, she told Wiley, “I know nothing about parrots.”

  “Don’t worry,” he chuckled, “she’ll tell you everything you need to know. And if you’re not careful, she’ll be running your life for you within the week.”

  “Sit and have a cup of coffee,” Ethel said in a singsong voice. “Take a load off.”

  Josephine laughed, she couldn’t help herself. “Thank you. I don’t mind if I do.”

  Wiley grabbed a clean coffee cup from a shelf on the wall, filled it with the steaming brew, and joined her at the table, taking a seat opposite her. “You know, just because the will says you have to keep everything a year doesn’t mean that you have to stick around here,” he said casually. “You can go back to your life in Seattle and I’ll take care of things here. Then, at the end of the year, I’ll buy everything from you at fair market value. Hell, I’ll even take Ethel. She’s like family, anyway.”

  Studying him, Josephine had to admit that when she’d first heard of her inheritance, she had considered making him that very offer. But Boonie’s letter had touched her in a way she’d never expected. When she examined her life, she was forced to admit that her aunt was right—she was sitting on the sidelines, letting life pass her by. How could she refuse Ethel—or sell the agency—when Boonie had not only left her everything, but opened up a whole new world for her?

  “I appreciate the offer,” she said huskily, “but I can’t. That would be a slap in the face to Boonie. So it looks like we’re partners, partner,” she added with a grin, holding out her hand. “I can’t wait to get started.”

  Whatever reaction she’d been expecting, it wasn’t the sudden scowl on Wiley’s face. “This is a joke, right? You’re just yanking my chain?”

  “Why would I do that? Boonie left her share of the business to me. She obviously thought I could handle it.”

  “But you’re a librarian! You don’t know anything about being a private investigator.”

  “So I’ll learn,” she said with a shrug. “Like you said—I’m a librarian. I’ll read up on the subject.”

  Chapter 2

  Wiley liked to think he was one of those easygoing souls who could roll with whatever life threw at him, but he was not amused. When Boonie had told him she was leaving her share of the agency to her niece, he hadn’t been concerned about a librarian who lived a thousand miles away causing him any problems. That’s why he’d made the bet with Boonie—there was nothing he liked more than a sure thing.

  Yeah, right, he thought grimly. Here she was in the flesh and now he had to deal with her. “Some of the jobs we get are dangerous,” he warned. “You could get hurt.”

  “Did Boonie ever get hurt?”

  “No, but she could take care of herself.”

  “So can I,” she replied indignantly. “And I don’t believe she would have left me ownership in the agency if she truly believed working here would put me in danger.” When he continued to frown, a half smile curled one corner of her mouth. “You just don’t want to work with me, do you? Is it something I said?”

  “She’s a babe!” Ethel warned suddenly. “Run for your life!”

  “That’s enough, Red,” Wiley growled.

  Struggling to hold back a smile when Ethel sniffed, Josephine said teasingly, “Oh, I get it. It’s because you think I’m too young. You like working with older women.”

  “I never said that.”

  “That’s okay. You didn’t have to. I can read between the lines—I’m a librarian, remember? So I’m too young. Are you saying I’m too immature to do the job?”

  “Of course not!”

  He only had to look at her to know she didn’t lack for maturity. And maybe that was the problem. He knew from the background check that Boonie had done on her that she was twenty-eight, but there was something about her prim and proper demeanor, her quiet confidence, that he didn’t know how to deal with. She was different from the women he knew.

  “I like her,” Ethel said brightly. “Let’s keep her.”

  In the silence that followed the parrot’s announcement, Wiley’s eyes met Josephine’s, and they both started to laugh. “I warned you she’d be running your life if you weren’t careful. She said the same thing about me when Boonie and I became partners. And I have to admit, she’s a damn good judge of character. There’s been a number of clients she warned me and Boonie not to take, and she was right every time.”

  “So you don’t have any objections to us working together?”

  He had objections, but he kept them to himself. “You have as much right to be here as I do,” he said simply, and reached for a ring of keys on a peg by his desk. “Boonie’s house is just around the corner. C’mon. I’ll walk you over.”

  She started to follow him to the door, only to hesitate. “What about Ethel?”

  “Oh, she’ll come, too. Watch.” Holding the door open, he turned and grinned at the parrot. “C’mon, Miss Merman. Let’s go home.”

  “Quitting time!” she sang gaily, and flew through the door.

  “Oh, my God!” Josephine cried in alarm. “Will she come back?”

  “She’ll be at Boonie’s before we will,” he retorted, chuckling. “When Boonie first got her, she’d take her back and forth to work in her cage, but then Ethel accidentally got out one day. Boonie was worried sick. I thought she’d lost her for good, but Ethel was waiting for her at home, sitting on the porch swing, singing ‘Margaritaville.’ I never laughed so hard in my life.”

  Josephine grinned. “How did she develop such a huge vocabulary? Boonie must have spent a lot of time working with her.”

  “Boonie loved that parrot like she was her own kid,” he replied with a chuckle. “They’d listen to the stereo together and sing all their favorite songs. They even played Scrabble together.”

  “Who won?”

  “After Ethel’s vocabulary improved, it was usually a draw.”

  Amused, Josephine could just see Ethel and her aunt playing Scrabble. “The more I hear about Boonie, the more I hate I never knew her.”

  “She was special,” Wiley agreed. “I never knew ano
ther living soul like her.”

  Leading her across one of the arched foot bridges that spanned the San Antonio River, he nodded at the small yellow house that sat on a corner lot a block from the river. An old faded red Volvo coupe sat in the driveway. “That’s her place,” he told her. “It’s all yours now, including the car.”

  Whatever Josephine had been expecting, it wasn’t the little Victorian house surrounded by a jungle of tropical plants. As Wiley had promised, Ethel was perched on the back of a wicker porch swing, singing “Cheeseburger in Paradise.”

  Walking up the front walk, Josephine laughed. “Obviously, she likes Jimmy Buffett. I guess Boonie did, too.”

  “She had all his CDs,” Wiley replied with a grin. “The first time I heard her and Ethel harmonize, I laughed until I cried.”

  He unlocked the front door for her, but he didn’t give her a guided tour. Instead, he handed the keys back to her and stepped back. “I won’t go in. You must be tired, and you need to explore the place on your own. I’ll warn you up front that it’s pretty dusty. I cleaned out the refrigerator after Boonie died, but I’m sure you’ll want to give the place a good cleaning before you unpack your things. Why don’t you take the rest of the week to settle in?”

  “Oh, no, I couldn’t leave you in the lurch that long,” Josie replied quickly. “I’ll come in in the morning. I can unpack in the evenings, after work.”

  “But I’ve got a surveillance job in the morning,” he argued with a quick scowl. “You need to wait until I can be there to show you the ropes.”

  “Don’t be silly,” she assured him. “It’s not like I’m going to run out and investigate a messy divorce on my own. I’m just going to read some of the files on your back cases and learn how you and Boonie operated the business. I’ll be fine.”

  She could see the doubt in his eyes and half expected him to object again, but something in her expression must have convinced him she wasn’t going to change her mind. With a sigh of defeat, he gave in. “I won’t be coming in in the morning at all, but my cell phone number is in Boonie’s address book. If you run into any problems at all, call me immediately. I can make it back to the office in fifteen minutes.”

  “I’ll be fine,” she repeated, smiling. “I promise I won’t burn the place down.”

  He looked far from satisfied, but there was little more he could do. “Call if you need anything,” he said, then left her alone with Ethel.

  In the silence that followed his leavetaking, she should have felt like she was snooping in someone else’s house, but she’d never felt more at home. There were faded photographs of what Josephine could only assume were family members everywhere, including dozens of her father she’d never seen before. Wandering around the small house, she could almost feel her aunt’s love for her family. The pictures were obviously for her own enjoyment—many of them weren’t even framed, but were tacked up in the kitchen and her small office where she could see them as she worked.

  On the nightstand next to Boonie’s bed, Josephine found her favorite. It was a picture of her father with two women taken on the day he graduated from high school. Young and smiling, looking barely old enough to shave, he smiled into Josephine’s eyes and made her heart ache. Why had she never realized before that she had his smile?

  Smiling through sudden, unexpected tears, she shifted her gaze to her father’s companions and knew without a doubt that the woman on his right who was beaming proudly was his mother. The other woman had to be Boonie. With a twinkle in her eye and her floral hat set at a cocky angle, she looked like the kind of woman who would own a parrot and be a private investigator.

  “What’s for supper?” Ethel demanded, interrupting her thoughts. “Polly wants a cracker.”

  “Your name’s not Polly,” Josephine said, chuckling as she went in search of some food for her in the kitchen. “And I don’t have a clue what I’m supposed to feed you—”

  “Steak and potatoes. It’ll put hair on your chest.”

  “Really?” she laughed. “Well, that may be fine for you, but that’s not my goal in life. I’ll bet you eat some kind of bird seed.”

  “Yuck! Let’s have a beer!”

  “I don’t think so,” she said dryly. “How about some birdseed instead? Here it is, right here by your perch. Now if I can just find something for me to eat, we’ll both be set. Wiley cleaned out the refrigerator—maybe there’s something in the pantry…”

  But a search of the pantry turned up nothing but several cans of sardines and a box of cereal. “Well,” she said with a grimace, “I’m not really big on sardines. Maybe I’ll order a pizza—”

  “With extra cheese!”

  “We’ll see,” she said with a grin, and went in search of the phone book.

  Heading back to the office the next morning with Ethel flying ahead of her, leading the way, Josephine couldn’t remember the last time she’d been so excited. With Wiley gone for the morning, she had the place to herself. She couldn’t wait to explore the case files. She’d found Boonie’s diary on her nightstand last night and spent hours reading her aunt’s private thoughts. At first, she’d felt like a voyeur, but then she’d gotten caught up in the story of who Boonie Jones really was, and she’d read until two in the morning.

  How she envied Boonie the life she’d led! She’d been a free spirit with the most amazing sense of adventure. She’d married a man she’d only known for a week and loved him for fifty years. Together, they’d traveled the world, working for the government as diplomatic spies. When they’d decided to settle down, they’d tossed the name of dozens of cities in a hat and pulled out San Antonio.

  Amazed, fascinated, green with envy, Josephine was forced to face the emptiness of her own existence. Unlike Boonie, she’d played it safe her entire life, never taking a chance on anything. She’d worked hard, done what was expected of her, and even though she’d been lonely, she’d convinced herself that it wouldn’t be forever. One day, she promised herself, she would meet a good man, fall in love, and live happily every after. All she had to do was be a good girl and follow the rules.

  It should have been easy. But she was twenty-eight years old and had never been in love. There wasn’t even a man in her life! And as she’d read Boonie’s diary, she’d realized that all these years when she’d thought she was on the road to living the American dream, she was just treading water. Her life was one big bore.

  Thanks to Boonie, that was about to change, she thought, and felt her heart skip a beat in excitement as she unlocked the front door of the office. Ethel swooped in the second she opened the door, leaving Josephine to follow more slowly. This was really part hers, she thought as she set about getting the office ready for the day. Quickly flipping on the computer and turning on lights, she found her eyes going again and again to the old-fashioned wooden file cabinets that lined one wall of the office. She couldn’t even imagine the stories they could tell. She couldn’t wait to get at them.

  “Tea time,” Ethel sang from her perch. “Let’s have a cookie.”

  “We just got here,” Josephine reminded her, only to grin when the parrot gave her a look that she was coming to know all too well. It was her “feed me” look, though how she managed to convey her thoughts without blinking an eye, Josephine didn’t have a clue. She just knew she had to feed her quickly or she’d never hear the end of it. Last night, when Josephine hadn’t fed her the second she claimed she was hungry, Ethel had claimed she was a victim of parrot abuse. Josephine couldn’t remember the last time she’d laughed so hard.

  “All right, all right, I’ll feed you,” she promised.

  “Hurry, please. I’m fading away.”

  Delighted with her response, Josephine sent up a silent prayer of thanks to Boonie. Without even knowing her, she’d made sure her life would never be boring again.

  Hurrying into the kitchen, she found the tea and a stash of vanilla wafers, which were Ethel’s favorite, along with the tray Wiley had used for her tea yesterday. A few sho
rt minutes later, she returned to the front office with enough tea and cookies for her and Ethel, made sure the parrot was happy, then settled at Boonie’s desk to read.

  She’d barely opened a file, however, when the bell over the front door rang merrily and a tall, middle-aged Hispanic woman walked in. In the process of sipping her tea, Ethel glanced up sharply and seemed to stiffen. Josephine expected her to say something sassy, but instead, she growled, “Watch it.”

  “Sshhh,” Josephine said under her breath, then turned to the woman with a smile. “Good morning. Can I help you?”

  It was a simple question, but apparently the wrong one. To Josephine’s horror, the woman’s eyes filled with tears. “I’m sorry,” she choked when Josephine rushed forward in alarm. “I swore I wasn’t going to do this, but I’m just so afraid my husband is having an affair.”

  Understanding, Josephine murmured, “That explains why you’re here. Please, sit down. Let me make you some tea while you tell me all about it. Oh, I’m Josephine London. And you’re…”

  “Olivia Sanchez,” she sniffed.

  “And your husband’s name?”

  “Roberto Sanchez.”

  Handing her a cup of tea, Josephine sank into her chair and reached for paper and pen. “How long have you been married?”

  “Nineteen years,” Olivia said with a painful sigh. “I loved him from the moment I first met him. I always thought he felt the same. But lately, I’m not so sure.”

  “He’s changed?”

  She nodded grimly. “He’s never home anymore, and when he is, he’s different. I can’t tell you how, but a wife knows when her husband is looking elsewhere. He’s seeing someone else—I’m sure of it.”

  Her heart pounding with excitement—this was her first case!—Josephine asked her all the pertinent questions she could think of: home address, where her husband worked and spent his free time, friends who might cover for him, the make and license number of his car and so on. “We’ll do everything we can for you, Mrs. Sanchez. Is there a private number where I can reach you?”