Hotshot P.I.

by B. J Daniels

  “What the hell do you want?” Frank demanded when he was ushered into the small interrogation room. “You aren’t going to leave me alone with this guy?” Frank asked the jailer who brought him in.

  “You can always call a cop if you need one,” Jake told Frank as the jailer went to stand just outside the door. “Okay, Frank, we’re alone. Whatever you tell me will just be my word against yours. But I need to hear the whole story. Start with Lola and why you killed her.”

  Frank eyed Jake warily. “I’ve already told you. I loved Lola. I wouldn’t have touched a hair on her head.”

  Jake took a seat at the far end of the table.

  Frank seemed to relax a little. But he sat as far away from Jake as he could get.

  “Come on, Frank,” Jake cajoled. “Lola hurt you. She fell for someone else—and planned to leave the island and you to run off with him. I’ll bet you wanted to kill him, too.”

  “There wasn’t any man,” Frank said adamantly. “She flirted with guys sometimes. But it didn’t mean anything. I was the only one who really cared about her and she knew that.”

  It was all Jake could do to keep from going for Frank’s throat. “We’re not going to get anywhere if you keep lying to me, Frank.”

  “You’re lying to yourself,” Frank said nastily. “You want to wrap up this case, get your old man out of prison, clear your girlfriend. You want it to be me so badly that you’re blind to what’s right in front of your face.” Frank shook his head at Jake in disgust. “What kind of killer would use his own motorbike, leave his engraved watch at the scene of the crime, hide the mask he used in his top dresser drawer? How stupid do you think I am?”

  Jake decided he’d better not answer that one. Nor would he listen to that little voice at the back of his head arguing that Frank was making sense. No one was that dumb, not even Frank Ames. Maybe especially Frank Ames.

  No, Jake thought, Frank was smart. He’d played it this way on purpose. Making it look too obvious.

  “Who would want to frame you, Frank?”

  He stared down the table at Jake. “I can think of only one person. Your father.”

  “My father?” What kind of bull was this?

  “But since he’s still in prison, someone on the outside would have to be setting me up for him,” Frank said. “Maybe that explains why you’ve been dogging me. You’re working with your old man.”

  Jake slammed a fist on the table, making it rattle and Frank jump. “That’s a crock, Frank, and you know it. Why would my father want to frame you?”

  “Where have you been, Hawkins?” Frank said, coming back like a mean, cornered snake. “You’re supposed to be this amazing private eye.”

  He leaned toward the man, reminding himself that Tadd had gone out on a limb for him, pulling a lot of strings so he could be alone with Frank.

  “Why don’t you spell it out for me?” Jake said, also reminding himself he’d promised not to lay a hand on Frank, let alone give in to the urge to kick Frank’s scrawny behind.

  “Where do you think I got the money to buy the resort?” Frank asked in that cocky, “about to get his butt kicked” tone. “Why don’t you ask your father.”

  “What?”

  Frank shook his head, sympathetically. “I got the money from your father.”

  “My father didn’t have any money after the fire. Especially to loan you. He fired your sorry butt.”

  “A loan?” Frank’s laugh almost changed Jake’s mind about thumping him, cops or no cops, promise or no promise.

  “He didn’t fire me,” Frank said. “I quit after I found out what was going on. Your old man paid me to keep my mouth shut.”

  Jake felt like he’d been kicked in the gut. He gripped the edges of the table and bit off each word. “What did you have to keep your mouth shut about?”

  Frank got up and shuffled around the table to put the most distance between them, all the time eyeing the door. “I caught him skimming the money from the businesses. He paid me to keep quiet. I invested every dime of it and waited. I told you your old man was an embezzler.”

  “You’re lying,” Jake growled.

  “I’ve got the proof. I stole the doctored books.” A smile curved Frank’s thin lips. “You were right, Hawkins, Lola did play me for a fool. I thought she was in love with me and I made the mistake of telling her about your father and how he’d been skimming money from the businesses. Then I found out that she was leaving the island with some man and had told Clancy’s old man about your father, his partner and friend, so Clarence Jones wouldn’t think she’d been taking the money.” Frank let out a bitter laugh. “So I went to the resort that night and I took the books before your father could destroy them.”

  Jake leaned into the table, sick at heart. His internal arguments that Frank was lying fell on deaf ears.

  “So you see, Warren didn’t destroy the doctored books in the fire because he couldn’t find them. That’s probably what he was fighting with Lola about when Clancy saw him. He must have thought she’d taken them. That’s probably why he killed her. In the end, they both got what they deserved. And I got the resort. So who’s the fool now, Hawkins?”

  * * *

  CLANCY HADN’T BEEN into the storage room in years. She waded through musty old weathered orange life jackets, past rods and reels and water skis, to the dusty boxes at the back. The one she wanted, of course, was on the top shelf.

  She pulled out another box to stand on and reached up for her mother’s old hatbox, remembering Lola’s box of mementos. Clancy’s was much the same. A box that most people would think was nothing more than junk. Little things that would remind her of summers spent on the island. With Jake.

  As she stepped down she noticed that the large box she’d used for a stool held her father’s yearbooks. Clancy pulled his senior yearbook from the box and carried it and the hatbox upstairs to the kitchen where there was more light.

  Not ready to delve into the box and all those memories just yet, she opened her father’s yearbook.

  When she. found her father’s senior picture, her eyes filled with tears. He looked so young, she thought as she ran her fingers over his face. Oh, how she missed him. He hadn’t been handsome by most standards, but he had been to her. He’d been voted class clown, she noted with a smile.

  She found another photograph of her father with his two best friends, Warren Hawkins and Johnny Branson.

  She looked up their senior photographs. Johnny appeared uncomfortable in an outdated brown suit and garish tie. She studied his face, remembering what her father had told her about Johnny. He’d had to go to work, at a young age to help support his family and was always ready to help anyone in need. He’d been voted nicest guy in the class.

  She turned a page and found Warren Hawkins. His smiling photograph was in stark contrast to Johnny’s. Captain of the football team. Star quarterback. Senior class president. Voted by his classmates as most likely to succeed.

  As she thumbed through the yearbook, she looked for Helen. What had her maiden name been? Clancy thought she was a couple of years younger than Johnny. She found Helen in the sophomore section. Helen Collins. Her hair, a pale blond, was long and straight. A pretty girl. No wonder Johnny had fallen for her. Talk about contrast. Johnny had come from one of the poorer families around Kalispell; Helen from one of the richest.

  Clancy started to close the book when she noticed a group photograph. The drama club. Johnny Branson would have stood out in the back row for his size alone, but no one could miss the smile on his face.

  Helen Collins stood in front of Johnny in a simple shift, her hair hanging past her shoulders. She smiled into the camera. It tugged at Clancy’s heart just looking at the two of them. Childhood sweethearts. They had married right out of high school.

  Clancy pushed aside the yearbook and opened her treasured hatbox. Like Lola’s box of keepsakes, it was filled with memories from summers of love. An odd-shaped smooth rock that Jake had picked up off the beach and
handed to her. The lure she’d caught her largest fish on; Jake had netted it for her. The photo he’d taken of her holding it. Ticket stubs from movies, concerts and plays.

  Clancy spotted a play program, the same one she’d seen in Dex’s stuff on the back wall of his closet, she realized. Clancy remembered that play. For two reasons. It had been a special date. Jake had surprised her with dinner on the mainland and then a play at the community theater in Bigfork. It was over dinner that he’d told her he loved her and wanted to marry her.

  But the play was also where she’d remembered seeing Lola wearing the bead necklace. As she’d sat next to Jake, with him holding her hand, everything about the play had been magnified. Not that she could remember the name of the play or even what it was about. But she remembered the necklace. Probably because of the tiny handmade ceramic heart. It had caught the light at the end when the cast and crew took their bows. It had stuck in her memory because she and Jake had promised their hearts to each other that night.

  She opened the play program. The photographer had taken a large wide-angle shot of the cast and crew. Clancy found Lola in the front row. Her heart sank. Lola’s neck was bare. Why had Clancy been so sure that’s where she’d seen the necklace before?

  Clancy’s gaze fell on another woman in the photo. Around her neck was the tiny string of beads, the stage lights catching on the ceramic heart. Helen Branson had been wearing the necklace the night of the play. Not Lola.

  * * *

  JAKE DROVE INTO the state prison yard under the heat of a summer sun. His head ached. He kept telling himself he couldn’t believe anything Frank said. Frank would do anything to cover his own behind. The problem was, he believed him. Hadn’t Jake always prided himself on being able to tell when someone was lying? Well, he’d been wrong about Clancy. Could he be wrong about Frank, as well?

  “Jake,” Warren said, sounding surprised and nervous as he was ushered into the visiting room. He started toward his son but stopped as if suddenly scared. “What’s wrong? Nothing’s happened to Clancy—”

  Jake shook his head. “The sheriff just arrested the man he believes killed Lola and Dex Strickland.”

  Warren slumped into the nearest chair. “Thank God they finally found the killer. Who is he?”

  “Frank Ames.”

  Warren looked surprised. “Frank Ames?”

  Maybe it was his father’s look. Maybe it was realizing earlier that Clancy would never lie to him. Or maybe it was that bad feeling, thumping at the back of his brain. But he knew. “You lied to me.”

  Warren sat perfectly still, his gaze locked with his son’s.

  “It was you all along. You stole the money. And you let a slimeball like Frank Ames blackmail you.”

  Warren’s eyes swam behind tears. “I tried to warn you. I asked you to stay out of this.”

  Jake felt his stomach turn to stone. “Frank thinks you’re orchestrating all the evidence against him from here. He actually thought I might be a part of it.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Warren said.

  “Why, Dad? Why did you do it?”

  He suddenly looked years older. “I was losing your mother, Jake. I knew she was unhappy and I thought more money would keep her. I planned to pay it all back. But then Frank found out and I found myself getting in deeper and deeper. I didn’t know how to stop.”

  Jake swore.

  “It just got so crazy after Lola was murdered. I wanted to tell the truth, but I was afraid it would make me look more guilty. Then it was too late.”

  “Mother knew.” Her attitude toward his father suddenly made sense.

  “I told her. She couldn’t forgive me. It didn’t matter that I did it for her. What about you, son? Can you forgive me?”

  The pain was too raw right now. Jake just kept thinking about Clancy. “Clancy saw you arguing with Lola that night, just like she swore she had.”

  Warren nodded. “But I didn’t kill Lola. I swear to you. When the fire started, I got out. I thought she was behind me. I realize now, whoever was in that adjoining room started the fire and killed Lola.”

  Jake stared at his father, unable to believe anything he said. A mystery person in the adjoining room. For years he’d wanted to believe that. But he hadn’t believed Clancy, who’d told the truth. Now he wanted desperately to blame his father, to blame someone other than himself, something other than himself for all those years of lack of trust in the woman he loved.

  “The killer is after Clancy,” Jake said. He moved to the door, needing desperately to get back to Clancy. What had started as a notion, jitterbugging at the back of his mind, was now a death march. The killer was still out there.

  Jake stopped at the door, all his fears pounding him like hail the size of walnuts. He thought of Clancy alone at the lodge. If Frank hadn’t killed Lola- If Warren hadn’t”Who was Lola in love with?”

  Warren slumped into a chair. “He wouldn’t hurt Clancy.”

  “Are you willing to gamble Clancy’s life on that? Because if you are—” Jake opened the door to leave.

  “Wait.”

  Jake looked back at his father. He could feel time slipping away. He had to get to Clancy.

  “He loved Lola,” Warren said more to himself than Jake. And Jake realized his father had sat in his cell for ten years having this same argument with himself. “He couldn’t have killed her.”

  “Who?” Jake demanded, losing his patience with this tangled web of misplaced loyalties.

  “Johnny Branson.”

  “Johnny?” Jake cried.

  “He fell head over heels for Lola. He’d never loved anyone like he loved her, but in the end he made the right decision. He was going to tell Lola that night that he couldn’t leave Helen.”

  “Johnny was meeting Lola at the resort office?”

  “He’d already been there when I found Lola,” Warren said. “She was very upset, so I figured Johnny had told her. But I swear to you, she was alive when I left that room.”

  “How do you know Johnny wasn’t still there?” Jake asked.

  Warren blinked. “Johnny loved her. He’s the kind of guy who wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

  * * *

  THE PHONE RANG, making Clancy jump. She glanced at the clock on the wall, surprised how long she’d been working. The rest of the morning had passed in a blur of creative expression.

  Clancy stretched, content with the work she’d accomplished. It hadn’t taken her long to get back into it. She’d always worked best when something was bothering her. While her fingers shaped the clay, her subconscious worked on any problem on her mind. Like the string of beads. Clancy could see where Helen might not remember a cheap bead necklace after ten years. But how had Helen’s necklace ended up in Lola’s keepsake box? Not that it probably mattered, she told herself as she wiped her hands and went to answer the phone. The killer had been caught. With any luck, Frank would confess and this nightmare would be behind her.

  “Clancy?” Tadd asked. “Is Jake there?”

  “No, he’s gone to Deer Lodge to see his father. Why? Is there a problem?”

  “No, I just wanted to talk to him. When do you expect him back?”

  Clancy glanced at the clock on the wall. “Any time, actually. What’s going on, Tadd?”

  “It’s Frank Ames. The sheriff had to release him for lack of evidence.”

  She sat down hard on the stool at her worktable. “Lack of evidence? What about the watch, the hooded sweatshirt, the mask?”

  “Frank had an alibi for the night you said someone tried to drown you, Clancy. He also had an alibi during the time Lola was murdered. Everything against him is circumstantial. The sheriff couldn’t hold him. Also, that watch you found off the end of the dock. It might have been ten years old, but the engraving on it wasn’t, the lab says.”

  Someone had planted the watch off the end of the dock? Who had even known about the scrape on her ankle? Jake. Tadd. Helen. Helen had probably told Johnny. Clancy glanced through the window at
the lake shimmering under the summer sun. “When was Frank released?”

  “Not long after Jake’s visit this morning. I just heard about it and wanted to let you know.”

  Jake had gone to the jail to see Frank? “I thought you were so sure Frank was the one.”

  Silence. “There’s been some new evidence. An eyewitness got the license plate number from a car that was seen near Glenda Grimes’s just before the fire. We’re waiting to get a name from the Department of Motor Vehicles. Their computer’s down. I’ll call you as soon as it comes in. Do you want me to send someone out there to stay with you until Jake gets back?”

  Another call beeped on Clancy’s line.

  “No, I’m fine,” Clancy said. “My aunt’s coming over. That’s probably her calling now.”

  Absently she pulled the play program out from under her sculpting tools and opened it again to the photograph, thinking about the necklace.

  She clicked to the other call. “Hello?” As she answered, she pulled the photograph closer, noticing that Helen wasn’t looking at the camera but off to her right. She looked upset and seemed to be glaring at”Clancy?” It wasn’t Kiki’s voice. “It’s Helen, dear.”

  “I was just thinking about you,” Clancy said, wondering if it had been ESP or just a coincidence. She looked more closely at the photograph. Helen was definitely looking at someone else. Clancy followed her gaze over to. Lola? Or—Clancy blinked. Or was Helen glaring at the man standing next to Lola? A big teddy bear of a man, Clancy thought with a jolt. That man was Johnny Branson.

  “I hate to bother you.” Helen sounded upset.

  “Is something wrong?” Clancy asked, her heart pounding as she stared at the photograph. Johnny Branson. Teddy Bear?

  “I was digging around and I found something I think you should see. Can you come over?”

  What had she found? Something to do with Lola’s death? Or had Helen found a receipt for the engraving of a silver watch?

  “Helen, does this have something to do with Johnny?” she asked, voicing her worst fear.

  “Yes.” Helen sounded close to tears.