Hotshot P.I.

by B. J Daniels

  Clancy looked down at the play program photo. “I’ll be right over.”

  “Please hurry.” Helen hung up.

  * * *

  JAKE LEFT THE PRISON and headed for the airport, his chest aching with worry. As he drove, he dialed Clancy’s number on the cell phone. No answer. Then he tried Helen Branson. The phone rang and rang. Jake hung up and dialed Tadd Farnsworth’s office.

  “Can you get the sheriff to send a deputy to Clancy’s right away?” Jake asked.

  “Clancy’s?” Tadd said. “I just tried to call you to tell you about Johnny.”

  “What about Johnny?” Jake asked, dread settling in his chest.

  “There’s an eyewitness who saw a car parked near Glenda Grimes’s house right before the fire. When the Motor Vehicle Department ran the plates—”

  “The car’s registered to Johnny Branson,” Jake said.

  “How did you know that?”

  “Johnny is Teddy Bear.”

  “No kidding?” Tadd sounded genuinely surprised.

  And Warren had been so sure that Johnny couldn’t hurt a fly. Right. “You said you tried to call me earlier.”

  “I talked to Clancy and warned her that Frank’s been released. He had alibis for the nights in question. The sheriff couldn’t hold him any longer.”

  Jake swore. As hard as he tried, he couldn’t convince himself that Frank Ames wasn’t a danger to Clancy. “Did you tell her about Johnny?”

  “I hadn’t received the information yet from DMV the first time I talked to her. I tried a few minutes ago, but there was no answer.”

  “Tadd, I’m worried about her. Something’s wrong. She said she was going to spend the day in her studio.”

  “When I talked to her she told me her aunt was coming over,” Tadd said reasonably. “In fact, she got a call from Kiki while I was on the line. Maybe the two of them are outside and can’t hear the phone.”

  Jake wanted to believe it was that simple.

  “If you’re worried about Johnny Branson, the sheriff sent a deputy out to bring him in for questioning. The deputy should be there by now.”

  Jake tried to relax but knew he wouldn’t be able to until he had Clancy safe in his arms. “I’m in Deer Lodge. I’m flying out on the first plane I can charter.” Or steal. “Call me when Johnny’s in custody.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  “Helen?” Clancy called after her knock at the kitchen door went unanswered. A warm wind blew off the lake, whispering through the tops of the pines at the edge of the deck. Large white cumulus clouds scudded across a backdrop of clear blue. Clancy knocked again and tried the door. Locked. She headed up the ramp to the second level, wondering if Helen was in the pool, swimming laps. That seemed odd, considering how urgent the woman had sounded on the phone.

  “Helen?” Clancy called again. The pool glistened a pretty turquoise blue, but Helen was nowhere around. A knot of worry settled in Clancy’s stomach. She’d told herself all the way over that she was just jumping to conclusions. Just because it had looked like Helen was glaring at Johnny and Lola in an old photo. Just because Johnny had changed so much since Lola’s death. Just because he was indeed a big teddy bear of a man. That didn’t mean that he was Lola’s lover. Helen could have found out something else about JohnnyClancy had started toward the ramp to the top deck, but stumbled to a stop as something in the crack between the boards caught her eye. She knelt. More than a dozen tiny blue beads were wedged between the wood of the deck. Using her thumbnail, she dug one out. Her hand shook as she held it up to the light. This was a bead from the necklace. Helen’s necklace. The one Dex had had the night he died.

  She held the single bead in her palm, all the ramifications of finding it here battering her brain. This is where the string of beads had been broken. Dex Strickland had been here.

  To see Johnny? To talk to him about Lola’s murder because he was the former sheriff? Or because Dex thought that Johnny Branson had been in love with his mother and had killed her?

  Clancy straightened, suddenly even more worried about Helen. What had she found out about Johnny? That he really was Teddy Bear? That he was the one who’d killed Lola? That he’d killed three more people to keep his secret?

  Her steps quickened. Where was Johnny now? Had he returned from fishing? Clancy had ridden her mountain bike instead of coming by boat to avoid the climb up the cliffs by either the elevator or stairs. She hurried up the ramp, anxious to get to the top deck so she could see if Johnny’s boat was tied at the dock.

  Helen sat at the far edge of the deck, her back to Clancy, her wheelchair facing the lake. She wore her white terrycloth robe, the hood up. The wind whipped at one corner of the robe tucked around her legs.

  Something about the way the woman sat made Clancy hesitate. Her shoulders were slumped forward, her head bent as if she were crying. If Clancy was right about Johnny and Lola—She tried to imagine what Helen must be feeling. Betrayed. Johnny had been her life. She must be devastated. How could a woman accept that the man she’d been married to all these years was a murderer?

  “I came as quickly as I could,” Clancy said as she approached Helen from behind. The woman had probably been sitting here, waiting, expecting her to arrive by boat. “Are you all right?”

  When Helen didn’t respond, Clancy laid a hand on her shoulder.

  “Helen? It’s Clancy.”

  Helen suddenly slumped forward in the wheelchair. Clancy rushed around to help her. “Helen,” she cried as she knelt in front of her and gently pushed her back into the chair.

  “Oh, my God!” Clancy threw herself backward, slamming into the deck railing. Her feet slipped out from under her and she sat hard on the deck floor at the foot of the wheelchair as a high-pitched scream shrieked from her lips.

  * * *

  JAKE DIALED CLANCY’S number again as he turned into the mainland marina. It was answered on the first ring.

  “Kiki?” he asked. “Where’s Clancy?”

  “I was going to ask you the same thing,” she said. “I just got here—Just a moment. Clancy left you a note. It says, ‘Sorry. Helen called upset. I’m going over there. I think I know who Teddy Bear is and that Helen’s figured it out, too.’“

  Jake swore and hung up as he swung into a parking space beside the deputy’s car. But it was the boat tied at the dock that stopped him dead.

  He climbed out of the Mustang and walked down to the dock. Johnny Branson looked up from his boat and smiled.

  “You must be that special fare I’m supposed to pick up,” Johnny said.

  Jake shook his head.

  Johnny looked around and frowned. The marina parking lot was empty except for Jake’s and the deputy’s cars. Johnny seemed to study the cop car for a moment, then turned his attention to Jake. “That’s funny,” he said, still frowning. “I was supposed to meet a client here more than half an hour ago.”

  “Have you seen Clancy?” Jake demanded.

  The older man looked surprised. “No, why? What’s wrong?”

  “I just got back from Deer Lodge.”

  Johnny’s gaze dropped to his feet. “How is Warren?”

  “How do you think he is?”

  When Johnny raised his head, worry etched the man’s thin face. Worry and a deep sadness that Jake knew only too well at this moment.

  “He’s the one who embezzled the money, but you knew that, didn’t you?” Jake said, trying hard to hold down his anger. What had happened between two best friends that one would let the other go to prison for a murder he didn’t commit?

  Johnny slumped back against the side of the boat.

  “You were Lola’s lover. You were Teddy Bear.” Jake had spent the last few hours trying to put it all together, but it still didn’t fit. He told himself he was just too close to it. “You went to the resort that night to meet Lola. The two of you were taking off.”

  Johnny shook his head. “I went to tell her I couldn’t go with her. I couldn’t hurt Helen.”

 
; Jake stared at the former sheriff. At one time he’d been a big bear of a man. Now he looked frail and broken, a man worn down by secrets and sorrows. With a shock, Jake realized that Johnny Branson looked like a man who was dying. Jake knew that look; he’d just recently watched his mother die. “Cancer?”

  Johnny raised his head slowly and nodded.

  “How long?” Jake asked.

  “I won’t see fall.”

  Jake looked out over the lake, then back at Johnny. Jake’s father was right; Johnny didn’t seem like much of a killer. Nor could Jake understand why a man with only three months to live would keep trying to cover up a ten-year-old murder.

  “The cops have an eyewitness who saw your car at Lola’s sister’s house just before Glenda Grimes was murdered and her house set on fire,” Jake said. “A deputy is at your house now with a warrant for your arrest.”

  Johnny’s gaze flicked up. He glanced toward the island, worry in his eyes. Jake followed his gaze, a thought hitting him between the eyes like a brick. A dying man wouldn’t keep killing to protect himself. Jake felt his heart lunge in his chest. He swore and looked again at Johnny’s gentle face.

  “You didn’t kill Lola,” Jake said, the first thing he’d been truly sure of. “My God. Who told you to pick up a fishing client here?”

  “I probably just got it wrong.”

  “Who, dammit?” Jake demanded.

  “Helen said Frank Ames set it up—”

  “Call her.” Jake vaulted into the boat and handed Johnny the two-way radio. “Dammit, call Helen now. Clancy’s on her way there. Helen phoned her and asked her to come over.”

  Johnny stumbled to the radio. Just as Jake had feared, Helen didn’t answer.

  Jake shoved Johnny aside to start up the dual engines on the large, powerful fishing boat. It would be faster than his rental boat. He only prayed they could reach the island in time.

  “You don’t understand,” Johnny said as they sped across the water. “Helen loves me. She’s always loved me. She was so pretty and popular. I was poor and a…nobody. She made me somebody, don’t you see? She gave me everything. And look what I did to her.”

  Jake’s fears multiplied with each beat of his heart. He could see. That’s what frightened him so. “You fell in love with someone else. That’s not the same as murder.”

  Johnny’s eyes clouded over. “Helen didn’t know I’d changed my mind about leaving her. She didn’t know.”

  The island grew closer, but Jake’s fear grew with it.

  “I was going to tell the truth,” Johnny said. “Then after the accident—We were arguing. I was driving too fast. It was all my fault.”

  Jake could see only too clearly why Johnny had covered for Helen all these years. “She’s killed three more people, Johnny. How long were you going to sit back and let her keep killing?”

  He frowned. “She couldn’t have killed them. How could she? A woman in a wheelchair?”

  Jake had asked himself that same question. He picked up Johnny’s binoculars. The home Johnny had built Helen high on the cliffs shone in the afternoon sunlight as Jake glassed it with the binoculars. The deputy’s boat was at the dock. So was a bright red jet boat. “Whose jet boat is that?” Jake asked.

  Johnny took the binoculars. “Frank Ames’s.”

  Jake’s heart dropped. “Maybe Helen had help.” Someone like Frank Ames. Had Helen been Frank’s alibi? That would explain how he’d gotten out of jail and why he was at Helen’s now. To collect whatever amount she’d agreed to pay him. With a fresh rush of fear, Jake reminded himself that Helen had called Clancy to come to the house.

  “Try the radio again,” Jake commanded, praying that Johnny would be able to stop Helen. But who would be able to stop Frank Ames? Jake assured himself that a deputy was there—everything was fine. Except the hunch stomping at the back of his neck said everything was not fine. Not fine at all.

  * * *

  IN HORROR, Clancy stared at the face beneath the hooded robe in the wheelchair. Not Helen’s face. But a man’s. A man Clancy didn’t recognize. Couldn’t have recognized. The face purple, tongue protruding, eyes bulging. Around his neck was a white cord. The same white cord Clancy had seen Helen tie around her slim waist the day before. The cord was now taut around the strangled man’s throat.

  Unable to pull her gaze from his face, Clancy stumbled to her feet. The wind caught the edge of the robe and whipped it open. Clancy’s heart thudded against her rib cage as she backed her way along the railing toward the house. The man wore a uniform from the local sheriffs department. Clancy’s heart rate rocketed upward. His holster was empty.

  “Helen!” she screamed, frantic to put distance between her and the death in the wheelchair, her brain tangled and confused. Where was Johnny? She looked over the side of the railing, down the cliff to the dock floating in the dark green of the lake below her. Two boats. Neither was Johnny’s fishing boat. Two boats? Her thoughts came like bullets. A Sheriff’s Department boat. But who did the other one belong to?

  Clancy inched her way along the railing toward the house without consciously realizing what she was doing. Who had killed the deputy and put him in Helen’s wheelchair? Where was Helen? “Helen!”

  Clancy’s shoulder slammed into the glass door to the living room. Run! The deputy was dead. Helen wasn’t answering; she’d answer if she were still alive. The killer was still here. His boat was still at the dock. Just get out of here. Get help. Don’t go in the house. She glanced toward her bike, leaning against the deck railing, but her feet seemed incapable of moving another step. She slumped against the glass door. Panic made thinking almost impossible. Where was Helen? Who else was up here?

  The door began to open. Clancy felt her breath catch in her throat as she found the strength to push away from the glass. She turned, in slow motion, hoping to see Helen in her wheelchair, praying to see Helen. The sun ricocheted off the glass. Behind it nothing but darkness. The door slid open slowly. Clancy felt a scream rise in her throat.

  Frank Ames stood in the doorway, smiling, his shirt soaked with blood. Clancy screamed.

  Frank stumbled toward her, his face contorted in not a smile but a grimace. He tried to speak but the words came out slurred. All Clancy caught was one word, “Helen,” before Frank lurched forward and fell at her feet.

  Clancy would have turned and run, but she heard a faint cry for help from within the house. Helen. She slipped past Frank’s lifeless body into the living room. Empty. “Helen?”

  “In here,” Helen called from the front part of the house.

  Heart hammering, Clancy rushed into the master bedroom.

  Helen lay on the floor near the bed.

  “Where’s Frank?” she cried as she pulled herself up to a sitting position to lean back against the foot of the unmade bed. A bloody baseball bat lay on the floor beside her.

  “I think he’s dead,” Clancy said, rushing to her. “Are you all right?”

  “He tried to strangle me,” Helen said, her hands going to her throat. She jerked off the scarf that had been wrapped around her neck and cast it away from her in disgust as she reached for a smaller wheelchair near the bed.

  Clancy didn’t mention the deputy, strangled outside in her other wheelchair. “Here, let me help you.”

  “Don’t worry about me,” Helen snapped, shooing her away. “Call Johnny. I need Johnny.”

  Clancy rushed back into the living room but went to the phone instead of the radio. She punched out 911 before she realized the line was dead. As she hung up, she noticed the drawer in the desk, partially closed on a stack of papers. Unconsciously, she opened the drawer to push the papers in. Her gaze fell on the word Sleepwalking.

  She pulled the drawer open a little farther. There were dozens of photocopies of articles about sleepwalking. One sentence, underlined in red, leaped out at her. “Sleepwalking episodes are often triggered by severe stress or trauma.”

  Clancy’s heart thundered in her ears as something else in the
drawer caught her eye. A tiny ceramic heart. The heart from the necklace.

  Clancy staggered and grabbed the desk to keep from falling. Helen’s necklace. It had been the clue all along. Dex had had the necklace. And the old play program. He knew it was Helen’s. That’s why he’d come here.

  The two-way radio squawked. Clancy jumped.

  “Helen?” Johnny’s voice came over the radio. “Helen?” Desperation laced his voice. She could hear the boat’s motors in the background and the sound of his boat’s hull slapping the water as it crossed the lake.

  “Clancy?”

  A chill streaked across her skin at the sound of Jake’s voice. She lunged for the radio. “Jake? Where are you?”

  “We’re almost there. Clancy, thank God, you’re all right. Where’s Helen?”

  “In the bedroom. But there’s a deputy here—He’s dead, Jake. And Frank—” The elevator. It groaned and clanked as it climbed the cliffs. Clancy could feel the hysteria rising like lava in her throat. “Someone’s coming up the elevator.”

  “Clancy, listen to me—” The radio crackled.

  The elevator clanged to a stop. Clancy turned slowly, afraid of who she’d see in the contraption. The sun caught on the dull metal, then passed through the bars. The elevator stood empty.

  “Clancy, do you hear me?” Jake yelled over the radio. “Get out of there! Helen killed Lola. Get out of there! Now!”

  Clancy turned to look toward the bedroom as she set down the radio receiver. “Helen?” She moved cautiously toward the open bedroom doorway. “Helen?” A deathly quiet fell over the house. Her pulse thrummed in her ears. She fought for each breath. At the edge of the doorway, she peered around the corner into the bedroom.

  Helen was gone. So was the wheelchair and the baseball bat.

  Chapter Twenty

  Clancy stumbled to the door and stepped gingerly over Frank. The top deck was empty except for the deputy. He sat slumped over in the wheelchair, the wind snapping the tail end of the robe. Helen was nowhere in sight, but Clancy knew she couldn’t have gone far.