Bubblegum Blonde

by anna snow

  All right, so I had a few other options, but I wanted to get the case over and done with as quickly as possible, and the only way that was going to happen was if I put on my big-girl boots and took some outrageous chances.

  It was my job as a PI to do the insane things no one else wanted to do in order to get the proof needed to clear my client.

  I shoved the small trickle of fear of being caught back into its little box in the back of my mind, slipped inside the room, and locked the door behind me.

  I glanced around the room and discovered that I was in the master bedroom. The room where Lydia had been murdered.

  I stood still for a moment and took in my surroundings. The freaking room was as big as my tiny house.

  The spacious area held a massive television, large four-poster bed, two nightstands, several bookcases holding everything ranging from books to DVDs, family pictures, and Fabergé eggs.

  I'd always hated those ghastly eggs.

  I spotted a door further along the room, most likely to a bathroom, and to my right I found another door that I assumed led to a closet. I hurried across the room and twisted the knob closest to me. Sure enough, it was a walk-in.

  Boy was it a closet.

  There wasn't an inch of free space. The racks were bursting with both men's and women's clothing, shoes, bags, accessories, hats, and much more.

  This closet made mine look like the storage room in a Goodwill store. I was perfectly happy with broken-in jeans, vintage T-shirts, Converse tennis shoes, and a few dressy outfits for those occasions and undercover jobs that I couldn't get out of.

  I stepped inside and did a slow spin in the center of the room. Strangely enough, I noticed that there were no boxes to rummage through. The drawer fronts were glass, and even I cringed at their tackiness. What kind of idiot would hide evidence of a murder in a glass-front anything? I felt around in the drawers anyway, just in case I was wrong. When I felt nothing but silky clothing and socks, I closed the drawers and stepped back out into the bedroom.

  The room was so clean and orderly that one would never suspect a murder had taken place. No bloodstains on the carpet and no bullet holes riddled the walls. Not that I expected to walk in and see a chalk outline on the floor and crime-scene tape everywhere. It had been weeks since Lydia Hatchett was murdered, but I had to admit that I was a little let down. This being my first murder investigation, I suppose I was hoping for a little more, I don't know, excitement maybe?

  The sound of my footsteps was absorbed by the plush wall-to-wall carpet as I found my way to the nightstand closest to the entrance.

  I knew the chances of finding anything in the nightstands that would aid in my investigation would be slim to none, but I had to try. Sometimes the police missed things or passed them over thinking they were unimportant and had nothing to do with the case. I'm not saying cops are completely incompetent baboons. I mean, some are, but sometimes the smallest of items are overlooked and end up having the biggest impact on a case.

  I pulled open the nightstand drawer and frowned. From the contents of the nightstand I was obviously on Robert's side of the bed. There was an old pair of reading glasses, one of his business cards, a roll of Tums, two expired condoms, lotion, a travel pack of tissues, and a DVD copy of Busty MILF's IV

  I slid the drawer closed and quelled a shudder as an image of what Hatchett did with the drawer's contents crawled unwelcome through my mind. I shook away the gag-inducing image and made my way to the other side of the bed.

  I knelt down in front of the second nightstand and pulled out the drawer. I was surprised to see little to nothing in this one as well. There was a tube of hand cream, a sleep mask, and a copy of Reader's Digest. I'd already decided that if there was a copy of Burly DILF's IV in this drawer, I was going to die.

  I removed the items and shook out the magazine to make sure there weren't any notes tucked away inside, but nothing fell out.

  I tossed the tube of hand cream back into the drawer and then paused when a hollow bong sounded. I picked up the tube again, dropped it into the drawer, and was once again met with the same hollow sound.

  I snatched the cream from the drawer, tossed it onto the floor, and knocked against the bottom of the drawer in a straight line with the knuckle of my middle finger. Sure enough, when I reached the center of the drawer, the thumping became hollow. I slid my hand along the bottom until I reached the middle. I felt a faint line beneath my fingertips. With a little pressure, I pushed down. The panel popped out to reveal a shallow hidden cubby.

  I tried to contain my excitement as I pulled the panel back. In the bottom of the hidden cubby were some small papers. As I pulled them out I realized they were slips from an ATM machine and a few receipts from a motel in Trinity Grove. Trinity Grove was a small summer town less than an hour outside the city. The amounts of the ATM receipts and the motel receipts were always the same.

  I scrunched my brow. It looked like Lydia was fooling around, but with whom? Was Jason lying? I knew from experience that Jason lying wasn't a big leap, and I already suspected him of sleeping with her from the fingerprints in her bedroom. But I could only wonder, if his prints were in her bedroom, why would they be sneaking out to Trinity Grove to rent a motel room?

  The receipts were a gold mine of evidence if I could figure out whom exactly Lydia was seeing at the motel. She was obviously doing something she wasn't supposed to be doing, and I was going to get to the bottom of what that something was. If she was seeing another man, it was entirely possible that he could be the killer.

  I was busy shoving the receipts into the front pocket of my jeans to go over later when a black business card slid out from between two of the slips of paper and landed on the floor against my knee.

  When I picked it up, my chin dropped.

  It was Jason's business card, but what really held me in a stranglehold was the writing on the back.

  In his bold script the message read:

  I can't wait.

  8:00 p.m.

  Be ready.

  Breath caught in my lungs. Jason was sleeping with her. The son of a beyotch had lied to me again. It was one thing for me to suspect him of lying, but it always burned me when I discovered that he actually was.

  Would I never learn? I shoved the card and the receipts into my pocket, snapped the panel back into place, tossed the drawer's contents back inside, and slid the drawer back into the nightstand.

  I stood and went in search of the gun safe. I looked under the bed and behind every painting but didn't have any luck locating the safe I assumed Hatchett had. Once I'd searched every inch of the bedroom and gotten all of the evidence out of the room that I was going to get, I decided that it was time to take a look around downstairs.

  I'd just grabbed the doorknob when the faint sound of a door closing downstairs caught my attention.

  I sent up a silent prayer that the door wouldn't squeak and twisted the knob. The door opened silently, and I tiptoed out into the hallway. Once outside the room, I pressed my back against the wall and slinked down the hallway until I could see over the railing to the lower floor.

  As I leaned out to take a look at the entryway, I spotted a portly Hispanic woman waddling her way across the main entry with her arms full of brown paper grocery bags. She was headed straight for the kitchen, which just so happened to be my only exit.

  If I made a break for the front door, I risked the chance of the maid catching me as I ran through the house, and there was no way I could make it out the way I came in, through the sliding glass door, without passing her in the kitchen and, again, being caught.

  My investigation of the house was done for the day. I hadn't been able to check the downstairs for a gun safe, or hidden gun, and it was only a matter of minutes before I was found. This mission was over.

  I doubled back to the master bedroom as quietly as I could and slipped back inside. I closed the door behind me and twisted the lock back into place. I scanned the room. How in the hell was I going t
o get out of this house?

  Then I saw it.

  Two long curtains covered what I originally thought to be another set of bay windows but was in fact a set of French doors. I rushed over and looked out. The doors led out to a balcony that overlooked the back yard.

  I pushed through the curtains, opened the doors, and stepped out onto the balcony. Fortunately for me, the yard remained empty. Unfortunately, the balcony didn't have stairs leading down to the patio. It was a long drop, but if I could somehow distract the maid long enough, I could jump down to the patio and make a break for the fence. It would be quite a little drop to reach the ground below, but I had no other choice.

  The only thing I needed to figure out now was how to distract the maid so I could make my big break. My mind raced. I pictured the layout of what I'd seen of the house in my mind, and an idea began to take shape. It was thin, and I doubted it would work, but I was out of choices.

  I grabbed my cell phone from my back pocket and hit the speed dial for the office. Kelly answered on the third ring.

  "How'd it go?" she asked.

  "I'm trapped in the house," I said quickly. "One of the maids came in while I was in the bedroom, and now she's in the kitchen. I only have one way out of here. I need you to get the house number from Mandy and call. The maid will leave the kitchen to answer the phone, and then I can get the hell out of here."

  "Got it," she said. "Give me one minute then haul tail."

  The phone went dead. Moments later I heard the house phone ring. Three rings later it stopped. I assumed the maid had answered and took that as my cue to move it.

  I slung one leg over the balcony rail, said a silent prayer to anyone who night be listening that I didn't break a leg on the landing, and leaped down to the patio.

  Once my feet hit solid ground I took off at a dead run. I didn't spare a look behind me. I didn't have to know that I'd been spotted. The woman shrieking in angry Spanish was all the proof I needed. I reached the fence and started hoisting myself up between the iron spikes when someone grabbed my ankle.

  I looked down and spotted the maid.

  Who knew she could run that fast? I sure as hell didn't. She was barely five feet tall and shaped like a beach ball. I turned my head toward the street in an attempt to keep her from being able to identify my face should she be asked what I looked like by the cops she would undoubtedly call and at the same time tried to pull my foot free of her amazingly firm grasp without hurting her.

  It wasn't until she started wailing on me with a frozen chicken that I let the whole don't-hurt-your-elders-or-innocents crap fly out of the window.

  She'd nailed me again, this time in the shoulder, and pain radiated through my entire arm.

  I pulled my knee as close to my chest as I possibly could with the plump woman dangling from my ankle and then kicked it back out. The force surprised my would-be captor, and she released my foot, tumbled to the ground, and rolled a few times. I would've celebrated shaking off Robo-Maid, but I didn't count on the force of the kick throwing me off balance as well.

  I fell from the fence and cringed as the sidewalk rushed up to meet my face but was surprised when I was jerked to a sudden stop. The belt loop of my pants had caught onto one of the iron spikes I'd been sitting between. Before I could panic, a loud rip sounded, and a waft of fresh air blasted against my bare skin. I landed on the sidewalk with an audible thump.

  Chancing a quick glance back, I spotted the entire back of my jeans and a scrap of my panties hanging from the top of the fence. Uncaring that I was now bare-assed, I grabbed my gun that had fallen to the ground, bolted to my feet, and sprinted toward my car. I yanked the door open, slid inside, and hightailed it out of the neighborhood before the cops came or, worse yet, someone saw my recently gym-deprived bottom flapping in the breeze.

  CHAPTER THREE

  I made the drive back to the office in less than fifteen minutes, which had to be a world record, but I was too freaked-out by my narrow escape to appreciate it.

  My heart rate was almost back to normal as I came to a screeching halt beside the curb outside the office.

  I killed the ignition, hopped out of the car, and ran through the glass door. Mandy and Kelly stared at me, both with wide-eyed expressions. I dove straight into my office and slammed the door behind me.

  I pressed my back against the cool wood. Then and only then did I release the breath I'd been holding. The reality of how close I'd actually come to getting caught filled my mind.

  Less than a minute later, it felt like the Incredible Hulk flung my door open. I slammed onto the floor, might've rolled a couple of times (thanks a lot Chips Ahoy!), and then came to a stop at the edge of my desk. I looked up at Kelly's stunned expression and flopped back onto the floor with a weary sigh.

  "Crap! I'm sorry!" Kelly giggled then covered her grin with one hand.

  "Are you all right?" Mandy asked with genuine concern from where she peeked over Kelly's shoulder.

  "Do I look all right?"

  "Considering the fact that you just ran through the office with your butt hanging out of what's left of your jeans? No." Kelly smirked.

  Mandy hurried from the room.

  It didn't escape my notice that she left out the part where I was lying in a heap on the floor because she'd just beat me down with my office door.

  "Do you want to tell us what happened?"

  As much as I wanted to forget what had just happened, I knew they would never let it go, and I needed to share the maybe-evidence I'd found with them.

  Seeing no way around hiding the humiliating ordeal, I sat up slowly and hugged my knees into my chest. Mandy reappeared and held out a pair of black yoga pants and a cup of coffee.

  "I had a spare pair in my bag. I was going to take a class after work." She smiled.

  There were times when I didn't know how I'd survive without Mandy.

  "Thanks," I said and took the offered items. Despite the fact that she was younger than Kelly and I, Mandy was like the mother hen of the office, always looking out for us, and for that I was eternally grateful. I just wasn't the maternal, take-care-of-others type. I loved my friends and was able to keep my cat alive, but let's face it—I could barely make instant coffee.

  "Change pants, and then you can tell us what happened," Mandy said.

  I didn't bother running to the restroom to change. Over the years we'd seen each other in the most compromising situations. Seeing my bum wasn't going to embarrass me any further or surprise them in the least. I shimmied out of what was left of my jeans and underwear, slipped on the yoga pants, and stood.

  I made my way around my desk and flopped down into my comfy desk chair while Mandy and Kelly made themselves at home in the chairs across from my desk.

  I took a deep breath and proceeded to spill the entire story, frozen chicken, rotund maid, and all. Needless to say, by the time I reached the end of the tale, they were both in uncontrollable fits of laughter.

  "Only you, Barb," Kelly said between giggles. "I can see you hanging from that fence by the seat of your pants."

  "I'm glad you think it's funny," I grumbled. "I almost got caught."

  "But you didn't." She grinned.

  "This time," I said.

  "Did you find anything at all that could be of use?" Mandy asked.

  I nodded. "Maybe. I was only in the house long enough to search the master bedroom, but I found something that might lead us in the direction of the real killer or at least in the direction of an affair." I reached beside me, pulled the receipts out of my discarded jeans pockets, and laid them out on the desk.

  Both ladies leaned forward and picked up two slips of paper each.

  "I thought Jason said he wasn't screwing the boss's wife." Kelly frowned.

  "That's what he said," I answered, "but this certainly makes it look like he was lying, and if he's lying about this, I can't help but wonder what else he's lying about. I'm going to call him in. This case may be more trouble than it's worth if he's hiding
more information from us. Or," I said as an afterthought, "she was having an affair with more than one man. Jason's fingerprints were found in her bedroom. If they were meeting up at her home, then why would they be sneaking out to Trinity Grove?"

  "That's a good question," Mandy agreed. "It doesn't make sense."

  Detective Black's warning to be careful flitted through my mind.

  "Do you think he would go through the trouble of hiring you if he was really guilty?" Mandy asked. "I mean, what would the point be?"

  "Detective Black seems to think that Jason hired us in an attempt to throw them off of his trail. He thinks that Jason is guilty but trying to make it look like he's innocent by hiring us. A why-hire-a-private-investigator-if-he's-guilty type of thing." I bit my bottom lip and shook my head. "Assuming Jason and Lydia were in fact having an affair, why would he lie to us about their relationship? He knew we'd figure it out when we started digging into the case." I tapped my desk. "I can see his reason for lying to the cops. I mean, they already have evidence against him, and adding the confirmation of an affair with the victim into the mix just adds fuel to the fire. But why lie to us when we're being paid to find the truth? I just don't get it."

  "Me either," Kelly said quietly as she looked through the receipts. "Are you going to call him back in and ask him about all of this?"

  "Not yet." I shook my head. "It's pretty much a lock that he and Lydia were sleeping together. I want to poke around some more and see what else I can find before I call Jason back in. If he's lying about the affair, then there's no telling what else he might be lying about." I tapped the pen against the desk. "Have you found anything interesting, Mandy?"

  Mandy wiggled the green straw around in her cup. "No," she shook her head, "and digging into someone as popular and as powerful as Robert Hatchett, I fully expected to find something illegal, but he's as clean as a whistle." She shrugged. "If he's doing anything he isn't supposed to be, it's completely in cash and off the books."

  "What about Lydia?" I asked, popping a piece of gum into my mouth. "Did you happen to find out anything on her?"