Hotshot P.I.

by B. J Daniels

  “Dammit, Clancy, you can’t do this to me.”

  “Do what?” she asked innocently.

  He threw himself back into the water. She reached down and grabbed his hair, gently pulling him to the surface. She handed him the watch. “It’s inscribed.”

  It seemed to take him a moment to drag his gaze from her to the watch. He flipped it over. “To Frank, love Lola,” he read. His gaze flew up to Clancy’s. “You have to be kidding.”

  * * *

  JAKE CALLED TADD with the news about the watch.

  “Even with the watch and the motorbike, I’m not sure the sheriff has enough to hold Frank,” Tadd said. “It would help if we had something more tangible.”

  Jake agreed. “Clancy and I will go over the evidence. Maybe there’s something we’ve missed.”

  After he hung up, Jake dumped everything he’d collected on the Dex Strickland murder case in the middle of the kitchen table. But his attention was on Clancy. He felt a pull toward her stronger than the gravity on Jupiter.

  “Where do we begin?” She leaned toward him.

  He could smell her scent. It brought a rush of memory—the feel of her skin, the sound of her voice as she pressed her body to his, the look in her eyes as they made love. Damned if he couldn’t still see her on the dock, wet and in that skimpy underwear. Why had he made such a foolish promise?

  “Here’s Dex’s autopsy report,” he said, trying to concentrate on the report. “This is interesting. Dex was struck from the right. That would indicate he was hit by a righthanded person.”

  “I’m left-handed, and the sculpture was in my left hand

  when I woke up. But that really doesn’t prove anything, does it?”

  “It helps,” Jake said, flipping through the report. “If we have to go to trial, everything that puts doubt into the jurors’ minds will help.”

  Clancy picked up a stack of photocopies of all the newspaper clippings, photos and other materials Dex had tacked to his closet wall. He saw her shudder as she sorted through them, quickly passing over an old play program from the summer Lola died. Jake recognized it. It was the play he’d taken her to the night he told her how much he loved her and that he wanted to marry her.

  “You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to,” he said. But she didn’t seem to be listening.

  “Look at this,” she said, stepping over so he could see. It was a newspaper article. The headline read Local Woman Injured in Wreck Near Angel Point. Jake saw that it was an article about Helen Branson. The subhead read Sheriff’s Wife Critical After High-Speed Rollover.

  Jake read over Clancy’s shoulder. Johnny Branson was driving at a high rate of speed when he lost control and rolled down an embankment. Helen was thrown from the car. She was listed in critical condition at the local hospital. Johnny was uninjured.

  “It’s dated the night of the resort fire,” Clancy said in surprise.

  The night Lola was murdered. Jake scanned the story again for the time of the accident. “It would have been just hours after the fire and Lola’s murder.”

  Clancy looked up at him. “Dex had this tacked on his closet wall, too?”

  “Johnny was the sheriff, and it was the same night as Dex’s mother’s death.”

  Clancy moved away from the table to look out into the night. “Johnny was driving the car,” she said. “I didn’t know that. How awful for him to know that he was responsible for Helen being in a wheelchair for the rest of her life. Why was he going so fast on that road, I wonder?”

  “And what were they doing on Angel Point that time of the morning?” Jake said.

  Clancy shook her head. “He was probably upset after what had happened at the resort, having to arrest one of his best friends. I guess I never realized how many lives were affected by what happened that night.”

  “Neither did I.” Jake got up to take his empty cup to the sink. He’d been so filled with anger for so many years. He hadn’t even thought about the other people who’d lost something that night. He leaned over the sink for a moment. Like Clancy. She’d lost her family first to Alaska, then to a plane crash. Her pain had been amplified by him walking out on her. And he’d spent the last ten years in his own kind of sleepwalking. Pretending he could forget about her.

  He glanced over at her, remembering the way she’d looked last night on the beach. Her eyes open. Her expression glazed. Picking up that piece of driftwood in her path and not even realizing what it was.

  He felt goose bumps on his arms as a chilling thought whipped past. Had she picked up that driftwood the same way she’d picked up the murder weapon the night Dex was killed? He remembered what he’d read about the total amnesia sleepwalkers experienced from the time of falling asleep until waking. The confusion on waking.

  “Clancy,” he said, excited by how right this felt. “Last night on the beach when you were sleepwalking, you picked up a piece of driftwood in your path. What if that’s exactly what you did the night Dex died? If that’s how you ended up with the murder weapon in your hand?”

  Clancy stared at him.

  “Don’t you see? You must have heard someone upstairs. Still asleep, you walked up there. The murder weapon was in the middle of the floor. You picked it up and went to the balcony.” Jake shuddered. “The killer must still have been in the room. Clancy, that’s it. You must have seen him. That’s why he’s after you now.”

  “But I can never remember anything about my sleepwalking episodes.”

  “The killer wouldn’t know that,” he pointed out. “He may be afraid that you’ll remember.” The thought came out of left field, fast and hard. “Oh, my God. Clancy, if I’m right and the same person killed Lola and Dex, you might have seen him both times.” Jake slapped a hand to his forehead. “You could have seen him the night of Lola’s murder when you were sleepwalking. God, Clancy, that could be what woke you up.”

  “And he waited ten years to come after me?” Clancy asked in disbelief.

  “No, he felt safe. Then Dex turns up, asking questions, maybe even actually knowing who the killer is. Dex could have tried to extort money from him. Or maybe just threatened to go to the cops. Remember what Kiki said about Dex being in a good mood and saying his business on the island was completed and he was leaving?” Jake stood, pacing the floor, excited by the way the pieces seemed to fit. “He thought he was getting money. And somehow the killer got him to go to your garret, then killed him and set you up.”

  Jake pulled off his cap and raked his fingers through his hair. “And you played right into the killer’s hands, picking up the murder weapon.”

  “Oh, Jake, is it possible?” Clancy cried. She got up to get them more coffee, excitement in her movements.

  More than possible, he thought as he watched her, his heart so full of love for her that it felt as if it would explode. And she loved him. He believed that with all his heart. Then, how could he not believe everything else she’d told him?

  “I know you didn’t kill Dex Strickland,” Jake said, feeling a rush of emotion as he knew something else in the only place it mattered. In his heart. “And I know you didn’t perjure yourself at my father’s trial.”

  She didn’t turn. Her hand clamped down on the handle of the coffeepot as if she needed support.

  “I believe you, Clancy,” he said.

  “But?” she asked, her back still to him.

  “But I believe my father, too. There’s an explanation for what you saw that night, because I know in my heart that you didn’t lie.”

  She turned slowly, her eyes welling with tears as she looked at him.

  In two strides, he came around the table and pulled her into his arms. “Oh, Clancy,” he breathed against her hair. “I love you,” he said, thumbing the tears from her cheeks. “God, I would give anything to have never hurt you.” He drew her closer. “I’m so sorry I didn’t believe you. Can you ever forgive me?”

  She drew back to look up into his face. “I love you, Jake. I’ve always loved you.
”

  “I know.” He held her to him tightly, promising himself he’d never let her go again.

  “Kiss me, Jake. Please. Then make love to me.”

  He laughed softly. “I thought you’d never ask.”

  * * *

  THEY MADE LOVE in front of the fireplace. Slowly. Gently. Touching each other as if for the first time. Lovers at long last.

  Later Jake cooked steaks on the barbecue and they sat on the front deck watching the sunset. Jake felt a contentment he hadn’t known in years. Not since he’d left Flathead and Clancy.

  He sat holding her hand, watching the last of daylight disappear behind the mountains, when he heard a sound behind them.

  “Did you hear that?” Clancy asked, turning to look back into the lodge. Jake’s gaze leaped to the window behind them as Clancy let out a startled cry. A figure moved through the shadows of the unlit living room, headed for the back door.

  “Stay here,” Jake commanded without thinking. Had he had time to think, he would have asked her, pleaded with her, begged. Because commanding Clancy had always proved a mistake. But there wasn’t time to beg. Jake wasn’t about to let the intruder get away. Not again.

  He circled around the side of the lodge just as the figure broke into a run down the beach. Jake tore after him, stretching his legs and lungs with everything he had in him, closing the distance.

  The figure headed for a rental boat pulled up on the beach on the other side of Jake’s lodge. Jake knew he had to reach him first.

  The moon had just started up the backside of the Mission Mountains. Dusk lay deep in the pines. Jake concentrated on only two things: the dark figure running up the beach and the shoe box tucked under the man’s arm. The man raced for his life. It was a race Jake wasn’t about to let him win.

  Just before the thief reached the boat, Jake made a flying tackle. He caught the man by the lower legs and brought him down hard. Not hard enough, Jake thought, scrambling to his feet.

  The man tried to get up. Jake put a boot toe into the man’s ribs and flipped him over onto his back, noticing that he wore a dark hooded sweatshirt, the hood up, hiding his face. Next to him was a crushed shoe box. Some of Lola’s keepsakes had tumbled out when he’d fallen.

  Grabbing the scruff of the man’s coat collar, Jake jerked him to his feet and, pulling down the hood of the sweatshirt, finally got a good look at his face. The man held no resemblance to Dex Strickland.

  “Frank Ames.” Jake swore and tightened his grip on the man’s throat. “I ought to kill you right now with my bare hands.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Fear shone in Frank’s eyes. “You wouldn’t do that.” He didn’t look in the least bit convinced.

  “Wanna bet?” Jake demanded. “You’re the one who’s been trying to kill Clancy.”

  Frank shook his head violently. “That’s not true.”

  Jake shoved Frank down into the sand again. “Don’t lie to me, Ames. I swear—”

  “I’m telling you the truth,” Frank cried, gasping for breath. “It wasn’t me. Why would I want to kill Clancy?”

  “That’s what I want to know. We found your watch near the dock where you tried to drown her,” Jake said, getting angrier by the minute.

  “What watch?” Frank asked, almost sounding surprised.

  “The one Lola gave you.”

  “Lola never gave me a watch.”

  Jake towered over him. “It was engraved. ‘To Frank, love Lola.’ Ring any bells?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Are you also going to deny you were in the lodge tonight?” Jake demanded.

  Frank swallowed and took a shaky breath. “Helen told me you had some of Lola’s things in an old shoe box.”

  Jake wondered why Helen had told him that.

  “I wanted to get my letters back.”

  “Your letters?” Jake asked. Frank couldn’t be Teddy Bear.

  “Personal letters.”

  “Love letters?” Jake demanded. “You sent Lola love letters? How did you sign them?”

  Frank looked confused. It wasn’t a new look for him. “I signed my name.”

  Not Teddy Bear.

  “I want them back. They’re mine.”

  Frank thought Lola had saved his letters? What would make him think that? Unless—“You’re not trying to tell me that Lola responded to your sick fantasies.”

  That mean look Jake had seen many times before showed up on Frank’s ugly face. He flushed with anger. “It wasn’t like that. She cared about me. She talked to me when other people wouldn’t. We were friends.”

  “Were you friends with Liz Knowles, too?” Jake demanded.

  Frank frowned. “She was my waitress, that’s all.”

  “How did she end up on your motorbike, then, Frank?”

  “Maybe Liz was the one who stole it and chased your girlfriend. Did you ever think of that?”

  “No.” Jake figured Frank would finger anyone to save his own neck. “What possible motive would Liz have had?”

  Frank shook his head. “I’m supposed to know that?”

  “Look, Frank, I saw Liz on the back of your motorbike not long before her body was found in Paradise Cove,” Jake told him. “Someone was driving that bike. I think it was you.”

  “Well, you’re wrong.”

  Jake tried another tack. “I found a note you wrote Lola to meet you at the ‘usual place.’ Where was that?”

  “It was just this little stand of pines,” Frank mumbled. “She liked it there. Not that it’s any of your business.”

  Jake had had about all he could stand. He moved toward Frank, determined to get the truth out of him. “Not that it’s any of my business, but where did you get the money for the resort?”

  Fear crossed Frank’s face as he groped in the sand behind him. “I don’t have to tell you nothing,” he said, coming up with a hefty chunk of driftwood. He scrambled to his feet, brandishing the weapon, then turned and made a run for it.

  Jake would have gone after him but Clancy grabbed his arm.

  “The sheriff’s on his way,” she said. “Let him handle it.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Jake hung up the phone and pulled Clancy into his arms. “Tadd just called to say the sheriff picked up Frank Ames at the airport this morning. He was trying to make a run for it.”

  Clancy buried her face in his shoulder. “Then it was Frank?”

  “He hasn’t confessed, but the deputies found a mask at his cabin, and last night he was wearing a dark hooded sweatshirt.”

  “Mask?” Clancy asked.

  “It’s the kind of thing they use in the movies,” he told her. “It’s eerie how much it looks like Dex Strickland,” Tadd said.

  She stared up at him. “Frank went to the trouble of having a mask made that looked like Dex Strickland just to scare me?”

  Jake tightened his grip on her. “I don’t think he did it to scare you. More than likely it was to trigger your sleepwalking. Tadd agrees with me that Frank had to have been in the garret that night and saw you sleepwalking. He couldn’t chance that you’d remember seeing him, not again. Nor did he need another murder on his hands. So, by triggering your sleepwalking, he could make your death look like an accident.”

  “They’re sure it was Frank?”

  Jake had been a little surprised himself. Frank didn’t seem smart—or patient enough—to use Clancy’s sleepwalking to his benefit. “With the mask, the hooded sweatshirt and his watch that we found off the dock, Tadd thinks the county can make a pretty good case against him for attempted murder,” Jake said. “Tadd’s convinced they’ll be able to tie him to Lola’s murder and the others.” He brushed a kiss into her hair. “Do you realize what this means? You’re finally safe.”

  She hugged him tightly. “I was thinking more about what it will mean for your father, Jake.”

  “Yeah.” Jake pulled back to look at her. “I’d like to tell him about this in person.”


  She nodded. “I really need to get back to work. I might still be able to make my art show in August.”

  Jake knew Clancy wanted to give him time alone with his father and he loved her for that. But it was hard to leave her, even with Frank locked up in jail. He thumbed her hair back from her forehead and planted a kiss between her eyes. “I’ll be back before you know it.” Jake didn’t tell her he had one stop to make on his way to the prison.

  * * *

  AFTER JAKE LEFT, Clancy poured herself a cup of coffee and went out on the deck. The sun felt warm as she leaned against the railing to stare out across the lake. The water shimmered, gold. No breeze stirred the surface. Only an occasional boat made waves that lapped softly at the shoreline. Why did she feel so antsy? The killer was behind bars. Jake loved her.

  She went back into the kitchen to pour herself another cup of coffee and wandered the lodge, trying to put a finger on what was bothering her. According to Jake’s theory, Lola had embezzled the money with Frank’s help, Frank had found out about Teddy Bear, taken the money, killed her and burned down the resort.

  But how did Clancy explain what she’d seen that night, ten years ago, when she woke up on the docks? She saw Warren Hawkins and Lola fighting and Warren push her. Jake had tried to blame it on the confusion she normally felt when she suddenly awakened in a strange place. That she hadn’t really understood what she’d seen. Or had she?

  She took a sip of the hot coffee and stared at the lilac bushes framing the window. Something didn’t feel right. The other time Frank had come to the house, he wore a mask to make him resemble Dex Strickland. Why hadn’t he last night?

  Don’t buy trouble, she told herself. All the evidence pointed at Frank Ames. Just as all the evidence in Dex’s death had pointed to her, she reminded herself.

  Not even the coffee could take away the sudden chill in the room. Clancy put down her cup. What was it that tugged at the back of her brain? The necklace. Why hadn’t the rest of those tiny blue beads turned up? Did it really matter, she asked herself. Yes.

  * * *

  FRANK AMES LOOKED like a man who belonged behind bars, Jake thought as he watched the deputy bring the prisoner into the room.