Hotshot P.I.

by B. J Daniels

  “What exactly did you say you were making us for breakfast?” he asked as he followed her down the stairs. He told himself sleeping with her would be a means to an end. Nothing more. And that the only reason he found himself looking forward to it, was because it would mean getting this case over with and returning to Texas.

  * * *

  CLANCY BUSIED HERSELF in the kitchen while Jake made a small fire in the woodstove to take the chill off the room. The sun hadn’t reached that side of the lodge yet, and even though it was summer, it was still cool in the morning. As she listened to him whistling to himself as he stacked kindling in the stove, her heart cried out for the old Jake. Was there any of him left in this hard-nosed cynical private investigator?

  “Buttermilk pancakes, my favorite,” Jake said, taking a sniff over her shoulder. “Not with huckleberry syrup?”

  She smiled at the pleading in his voice. “Of course.”

  He rolled his eyes toward heaven. “I may never leave here.”

  Clancy knew that wasn’t true. She’d felt an urgency in him to get what he wanted from her and get out quickly. She wondered what would happen when he didn’t succeed?

  They ate in silence, Clancy watching in amusement as Jake scraped up the last of the syrup and pancake from his plate before pushing it away with a satisfied sigh. He’d always loved her pancakes.

  “Fantastic,” he said, giving her a smile that warmed her more than the sun now beginning to shine in through the kitchen window. The smile faded as his gaze met hers.

  She knew what was coming. “Can I get you more pancakes?” she asked as she stood. She didn’t want to think about Dex Westfall or the upcoming trial or who she thought she’d seen on the deck last night. In the light of day, she wanted to believe she’d been mistaken about the face looking anything like the man she’d known. She feared she was losing her mind; she didn’t want Jake to tell her those fears were well founded. “It won’t take but a moment to fry up a couple more.”

  “Clancy.” He took her hand and pulled her back to the table. “We have to talk about it.”

  Resigned, she sat.

  He filled her in quickly about the phony name and social security number. “Whoever he was, he was carrying a fake ID that said he was Dex Westfall.”

  “But no Dex Westfall ever existed.” She wasn’t surprised after finding out that he’d lied about the condo, lied about everything as far as she knew. “Then, who was the man—”

  “The sheriff should know in a few days, and maybe then we’ll know what he wanted with you. I asked Tadd to send us the flier they’re distributing. That way—”

  “I’ll know if the dead man is at least who I thought was Dex Westfall,” she finished for him.

  “Exactly. Meanwhile, we have work to do.”

  Work sounded good. She needed to do something. And the thought of doing it with Jake definitely had appeal. Especially since, as he’d said, she was running a little scared.

  “I need to interview the two witnesses who overheard your conversation with Dex that night at the cafe,” Jake said. “I was hoping you could tell me what you remember.”

  She leaned over her coffee cup and stared down into the black liquid.

  “Tell me everything, no matter how trivial it seems,” Jake instructed.

  She nodded, remembering the summer night air, still remembering the sickening fried smells coming from the café. “Someone had been in the café working, cleaning the grill, I think. The air smelled of old grease. But the café was closed. There weren’t any customers around. Dex was sitting at one of the tables on the deck. It was fairly dark.”

  “You’re doing great,” Jake encouraged her.

  She drew a breath, letting it all come back. She told Jake again about the necklace, the legacy from Dex’s mother, and how he had said Clancy was part of that legacy.

  “What kind of necklace was this?” Jake asked.

  Clancy looked up to find him watching her closely. “It was a string of beads like the hippies used to make and wear.” She blinked. “Jake, how could there have been two witnesses who overheard the conversation? There wasn’t anyone around.”

  “What about the person cleaning the grill?”

  “Whoever was in the café couldn’t have overheard us. We were sitting too far away.”

  “Did Dex give you any indication as to why he wanted to meet you?” Jake asked.

  “No. I got the impression he had something he wanted to talk about, but whatever he’d seen in the darkness changed his mind.” Clancy took a sip of the now-cool coffee. It tasted as bitter as the memory of Dex.

  “What color was this string of beads?” Jake asked.

  She looked up, surprised by his question. “Pale blue, with a tiny dark blue ceramic heart hanging from the center. Why?”

  He shrugged. “Just wondering.” He got up to take the dishes to the sink.

  “The strange thing about the necklace was that I thought I’d seen it before,”.Clancy said, joining him. She shrugged and looked over to see Jake watching her. “I’m sure it doesn’t matter. I just remembered something else. The clasp was broken.”

  “You think the beads are important in some way?” he asked.

  “Maybe. The other night—” she picked up the dishrag, avoiding Jake’s gaze “—I walked in my sleep again. When I woke up, I had one of the beads in my hand. I don’t know where I found it. I just have a feeling that finding the rest of the beads might be a clue as to where Dex went that night.”

  Jake took the dishrag from her. He still didn’t believe she walked in her sleep, she realized. She felt a hefty jolt of irritation. Why had she bothered to tell him?

  “I’d like you to come with me to the resort,” Jake said after a moment. “You’ll have to wait in the boat while I talk to the witnesses.”

  Clancy told herself she shouldn’t be hurt and angry at his lack of trust in her. “Let me see if I understand this: you’d like me to tag along so you can keep an eye on me, but stay out of the way so I don’t hurt my case,” she said, summing it up quite nicely, if she said so herself.

  “I just don’t want you staying alone. Or I could call your aunt Kiki to come over from her condo in Bigfork—”

  “Don’t even joke, Hawkins,” she said. “Of course I want to tag along with you.”

  She didn’t tell him that she had no intention of sitting by casually while he did all the investigating. Her life was at stake, and she had a couple of things she wanted to check out on her own.

  He shoved back his Astros cap and grinned, probably thinking he’d won. That it was his favorite hat was no secret to her. It looked as if it was the first thing he put on in the morning and the last to be discarded at night, and had been for years. The bill was stained and faded from the elements. The once-white H had bled into the oncebright red star. Even the cloth-covered button on top was missing.

  When she came back from brushing her teeth, she found him outside by the lilac bushes, hunkered down at the edge of the window. “Did you find anything?” she asked.

  He shook his head as he straightened. She tried to hide her disappointment as she turned and headed toward the dock.

  “How did you get into the private investigating business?” Clancy asked when they reached the boat.

  “You want to drive?” Jake asked, holding up the key.

  She gritted her teeth, reminded that every time they stopped anywhere he’d taken the key for safekeeping. “Why don’t you drive,” she said as sweetly as she could muster. “You have the key.”

  He either ignored her sarcasm or missed it. But something told her he hadn’t missed it.

  “When I first moved to Galveston I met this old private eye who fished off the same pier I did,” Jake said as he pulled the boat away from the dock. “We became good friends. He taught me everything he knew about people and secrets.” Jake pointed the boat out of the bay. “‘Everyone has a secret,’“ he used to say. ‘All that separates murderers from ordinary people is
that they have secrets they’d kill to keep.’“ They rounded the end of the island, the sky as clear blue as the water was green. “He used to say I was a natural private eye. Cynical and determined. If someone has a secret, I’ll find out what it is. Or die trying.”

  She felt his gaze on her and wished she hadn’t asked.

  Chapter Ten

  To Jake’s surprise, Hawk Island Resort looked much as it had when he and Clancy were kids. The store and café had been rebuilt on the same spot overlooking the marina. A row of six original cabins that hadn’t burned still stood in the pines off to the right. Jake felt a rush of nostalgia, followed by nausea. There were too many memories here. Just as at his family’s lodge.

  Although it was early in the season, a few boats had already been moored in the bay when Jake eased into a slip at the docks. The air smelled of motor oil, gas and fish. “You want to wait here or at the café?” Jake asked.

  “I’ll stay here and catch some rays.”

  Clancy leaned back into the seat and closed her eyes. He studied her for a moment, wondering if it was safe to leave her alone. “I want to be able to see you at all times, Clancy. So I know you’re all right.” Then, feeling like the louse he was, he pulled and pocketed the boat key. Her eyes flickered open; he didn’t like the look she gave him.

  “I won’t be long,” he said, unable to think of anything to say in his defense. She mumbled something he figured he didn’t want to hear, anyway, and headed up the pier.

  At the outdoor sinks, a man cleaned fish from the full stringer of lake trout he’d caught. Jake was surprised when he saw who it was.

  “Nice catch,” Jake said, extending his hand to the man. “How have you been, Johnny?”

  Johnny Branson looked up from his work. A smile crinkled his leathery face as he wiped his hand on his pants and took Jake’s hand in his. “Jake Hawkins. I’d heard you were back.”

  Johnny was a large man with a full head of graying hair. He’d always reminded Jake of a Newfoundland puppy. Friendly. Loyal. And a little gangly. The former sheriff looked as though he’d lost some weight since Jake had last seen him. Johnny had been best friends with Jake’s and Clancy’s fathers since grade school. It had been Johnny who’d had to make the arrest and take Warren to jail. The strain of the trial had shown on Johnny, but the years since hadn’t seemed to have been kind to him, either.

  “I heard you retired right after the trial,” Jake said.

  Johnny nodded as he went back to cleaning his fish. “I’m a fishing guide now,” he said, holding up a twenty-pound trout. “It suits me.”

  “Looks like business must be good,” Jake said, not sure how to broach the subject on his mind. “I was hoping to talk to you while I’m back on the island. About my father’s case.”

  Johnny didn’t look up. “After ten years, can’t be that much to say anymore, can there?”

  He figured Johnny didn’t want to drag up any of that old misery any more than he did. Johnny had taken his friend’s conviction particularly hard.

  “I was hoping you might be able to answer some questions I still have.”

  “That what brings you back?” Johnny asked, squinting past Jake to where Clancy waited in the boat. Idly, he rubbed the blade of his fish-gutting knife across one thumb pad.

  “That and this mess with Clancy,” Jake answered honestly. “I need to know if you thought my father was guilty.”

  “The jury thought Warren was, that’s what mattered,” Johnny said, cutting a clean slit up the fish’s belly.

  “I need to know what you thought. What you still think,” Jake said. “Was justice served?”

  “Life dispenses its own form of justice,” he said as he ripped the guts from the large lake trout.

  Jake shook his head. “I became a private investigator to ensure that justice gets done once in a while on earth. I’m too impatient to wait and let God set the record straight at the pearly gates.” He met the man’s gaze. “Just tell me if you think my father was an embezzler, murderer and arsonist.”

  Johnny chewed at his cheek for a moment as he looked out at the lake. “Sometimes people do things out of desperation, out of a feeling of helplessness and unhappiness.”

  He wanted to shake the big man and demand he answer his question, not dance around it. “Are you saying that’s what happened to my father?” Jake asked, shocked by what sounded like an indictment against his father.

  Johnny tossed the cleaned fish into the pile with the others. “I’m saying, leave it alone, son. No good comes from digging up the past.”

  The same thing Warren Hawkins had said to him. Jake walked away, heartsick and shaken. Not by Johnny’s words as much as by the bitterness he’d heard in the man’s voice. Was he really ready to find out the truth about his father? About Clancy? No matter how it came down?

  As he walked up the steps to the resort store, he glanced to the right, to the west end of the island. The Branson home sat at the edge of the cliffs. A wide deck ran across the front with an elevator platform next to a long flight of wooden stairs that dropped to a dock at the water. Jake could make out a figure sitting near the edge of the deck. Johnny’s wife Helen, her wheelchair glistening in the morning sunlight.

  * * *

  CLANCY WAITED UNTIL JAKE was out of sight before she made her move. She headed for the row of cabins against the hillside, having spotted a cleaning cart parked in front of number three.

  Johnny Branson waved to her as he left in his boat. She was shocked by the change in him. He looked so much older and slighter than he’d been. She wondered if Warren Hawkins’s trial hadn’t made him age more rapidly. She was thinking about the trial and the effect it had had on them all as she took the trail to cabin three.

  “Hello?” Clancy called, sticking her head into the cabin’s open doorway. Like the other five cabins, number three was small, with twin beds against the knotty-pine wall and a marred night table and lamp between them. A girl of about fifteen looked up from her bed-making, the tail of a sheet in her hand.

  “This cabin isn’t ready yet,” she said quickly. “Checkin isn’t until noon.”

  Clancy smiled and stepped inside. “I don’t need a cabin. Actually, I need to find out if one of your guests left anything behind.”

  The girl let go of the sheet and straightened, but she didn’t look all that happy for the interruption. “If they did, it would be in lost’n found. I can show you.”

  “It would have been cabin six,” Clancy said. “On Friday.”

  The girl stopped in her tracks and looked up, her eyes narrowing. “That was the guy who got murdered.”

  “So what was he like?” Clancy asked casually.

  The girl rolled her eyes. “A major hunk. But kind of a real pain.”

  “Yeah?”

  “He was always bossing me around, asking me to run here and there for him.”

  It was obvious she hadn’t really minded. “What did he want you to do?”

  “Get him things and take messages—Why are you asking about him, anyway?”

  “It isn’t every day there’s a murder on the island.”

  “He didn’t die here, you know,” she said.

  “That’s what I heard. But he stayed here a day and a night, right?”

  “Two nights,” the girl said.

  Two nights? Dex hadn’t called her until the second day? “So he had you running errands for him,” she said, knowing she had to tread softly. “I hope he tipped you well.”

  The girl shook her head. “That part stunk, too.”

  “Really? If he had you taking messages to people…”

  The girl looked wary. “You with one of those weird newspapers?”

  This time it was Clancy’s turn to shake her head. “No, the truth is, I dated the guy for a while,” she said truthfully.

  “No kidding?” The girl looked at her with misguided respect.

  “That’s why I wondered if he left anything behind, a message or letter, maybe…for me.”r />
  The girl gave her a sympathetic look. “Sorry, when the police finally let me clean the cabin, I didn’t find anything.” She went back to her bed-making.

  “What about the messages he had you take for him?” Clancy asked.

  “It was just one. I took it to the marina and left it under a bait can beside the repair shop.”

  Interesting place to leave a message. “What night was this?”

  “The first night. Thursday.”

  “Didn’t you wonder who it was for?”

  “It didn’t have any writing on the envelope.”

  Clancy took a long shot. “Was the envelope sealed?”

  The girl looked up and grinned. “Yeah. I couldn’t make out anything, even holding it up to a light. I didn’t dare open it.”

  Clancy laughed. “Thanks for your help.” She had more questions, but the girl was heading for her cart and another cabin and Clancy didn’t want to press her luck. “Do you mind if I take a look around cabin six, just in case?”

  * * *

  JAKE FOUND FRANK AMES in the pumphouse behind the café, bent over, banging on a pipe, swearing.

  “Frank?” Jake called over the racket.

  He looked up, the wrench in his hand falling silent. Not much had changed about the tall, pimply-faced kid Jake had known. He was still thin, his narrow face pockmarked, his expression one of open hostility. “What do you want?”

  “Just to ask you a few questions.” He held out his business card. When Frank didn’t bother to reach for it, Jake stuffed the card into Frank’s shirt pocket.

  Frank glared at him from dark, deep-set eyes that were just a little too close together. “Do I look like I have time to answer questions?” he demanded.

  Jake had always wanted to knock that chip off Frank’s shoulder. Only now, Jake’s father wasn’t here to keep him from doing it.

  Frank must have realized that. “Hell,” he said, pushing himself to his feet. “Make it snappy.”

  “You told the sheriff you overheard Clancy Jones talking to a man in the café Friday night,” Jake said, disappointed Frank had given in so easily. He really wanted to thump that mean, nasty look off Frank’s face.