Licensed for Trouble

by Susan May Warren

  Oh, this couldn’t be good. Not from the pungent swamp smell or the texture of goo under her. Please don’t let me have fallen into an old sewer drain.

  “Help!” She patted the . . . mud? . . . around her, searching for her phone, but came up empty. “Help!” Not that anyone would hear her. Or if her phone was still on, somewhere—“Help! Boone!”

  Oh, she hated to admit that, again, she needed him. Come and rescue me, Boone. The child’s voice rang in her head, and she shook it away. Maybe Connie had figured her right—she didn’t know how to live a life without Boone in it.

  She got up and searched the walls for steps or perhaps a ladder, but nothing remained from the past to rescue her.

  She trekked to the end of the fading light, peering into blackness.

  Uh, no.

  Finding a dry place, she sat down, staring at the ragged square of twilight. Perfect. No, she wouldn’t spend her first night in her new home. She’d bed down thirty feet outside it. Maybe never to be found again. She drew her knees tight to herself and wrapped her arms around them.

  Breathing slowly through her mouth, she mentally made a list of the things she wouldn’t think about. Her stomach growled. Like pad thai from the cute little restaurant To Thai For in Dinkytown. Or an Italian sub sandwich from the sub shop. Or a pizza—oh, a pizza—with lots of pepperoni, delivered by one broad-shouldered former Navy SEAL.

  And speaking of, she certainly wouldn’t think about Jeremy and the way he had pulled her into his arms this morning, the taste of him lingering on her lips. And especially not the fact that after the lawyer left, Jeremy had grabbed his stack of manila files and glued himself in front of the computer, tracking down suspects.

  She’d strike off her list the desire for a warm shower, even a dip in the lake. Which meant she also wouldn’t think about the many late-night dips in the bay just outside the house, nor the memory of Boone, his hair glistening wet in the moonlight.

  Clearly, she couldn’t think about Boone’s face when he’d walked away from her Sunday. Right after the words, “People don’t change, PJ. You should know that by now.”

  They left a burn there, his words. Because she could change, would change.

  “No one is calling you Nothing but Trouble anymore but you.”

  PJ sank her head onto her knees. Definitely, she wouldn’t think about Connie’s words and the fear that she might be right. Because if she wasn’t trouble . . . who was she?

  * * *

  “PJ?”

  She lifted her head. Darkness had swept over the mouth of her prison, engulfing her in soupy shadow. She pushed her hands against the sides of the cellar. “Here! I’m down here!”

  “PJ?” A light whisked across the opening.

  “I’m down here in the cellar!” Yes! Someone had gotten her call, tracked her down, hadn’t left her to rot in a hole outside her new mansion. “Over here!”

  The light poured into the hole, and she wanted to chortle with glee when she spotted her phone in the muck.

  “Are you okay?”

  She peered around the light, smiling at the hero on the other end. He moved the light off her face and it reflected just enough for her to recognize Boone, staring down at her, wearing an expression of horror, as if he’d just found her buried alive.

  “I’m not even sure where to start with the questions.” Boone lay on the ground, his arm extended, and PJ took a jump for it, finally grabbing his hand.

  “Get me out and I’ll come clean; I promise.” She clamped her other hand onto his as he growled, pulling her from the hole. She kicked at the dirt, trying to assist him.

  “Just let me pull you out—stop trying to help,” he grunted. He pulled her up to head level. “Now grab my neck; climb out over me.”

  PJ wrapped her hands around his neck.

  “Try not to knee me in the face—ow!”

  “Sorry.” She scrabbled over him, Boone pulling her up by her waistband as she kneed him again—“Sorry!”—and then finally rolled onto the grass beside the opening.

  “You smell like you slept under a bridge. So much for coming clean.” He wanted to smile, she saw it, but fought the urge with a grimace that had any warmth locked tight.

  “Thanks for that. I’m not sure what I fell into.”

  “You okay?”

  “I think so. Just a few bruises.”

  “Good. I’d help you up, but you’re covered in muck.”

  “Oh, you’re a real hero.” She climbed to her feet and got her first good look at her rescuer. In a pair of jeans and a leather jacket, he looked a little like he might be going out. On a date? “How’d you know I was in trouble?”

  She waited for him to say it, hearing her own voice provoking him. You’re always in trouble, PJ.

  “I used all my detective techniques . . . and the little scream on the end of your voice mail was a slight hint. Thanks for that. Now, what were you saying about inheriting something?”

  “Aggie Kellogg left me this place. Her entire estate.” PJ faced her house, eerie in the wan light of his flashlight. “It’s mine. The Grimms’ fairy-tale house is mine.”

  Boone stood speechless for what seemed too long a time, so long that PJ turned to him. “Did you hear me?”

  “I’m not sure what to say.”

  “How about congratulations. Or even, wow. Do you not remember the way I fawned over this place every time we drove by it?”

  “Oh, believe me, that kind of adoration is hard to forget. But my thoughts run more to . . . escape while you can.”

  What? “Escape? What on earth are you talking about?”

  Boone had picked up his flashlight, was now scanning it into the hole. “Rumor says there was a tunnel leading from the house down to the caretaker’s cottage.”

  “What rumor?”

  The light panned her face, and she put a hand up, flinching. He seemed not to hear her as he walked toward the house and then along the front. “Boone? What rumor?”

  “The one surrounding Joy Kellogg’s murder.”

  “Murder?”

  Boone kept walking, now peering into windows, finally rounding to the back. PJ scrambled behind him, grabbing a few wide leaves from a monstrous hydrangea to wipe the muck from her hands. “Murder?”

  Boone ran his light across the patio. Then he flashed it toward the lake, now dark and restless. “You didn’t hear about the murder? It happened before we were born, but it’s an unsolved case over at the station.”

  “No one found her killer?”

  “There’re a few leads, but nothing panned out. And some people said it might have been a suicide. The police didn’t have enough evidence to hold the chief suspect, Joy’s husband, so they let him go. He left town shortly after that.”

  He kept walking across the yard, his legs swishing through the long grass. “As the story goes, Joy was a troublemaker, ran away from home when she was sixteen or something. She eventually returned and married a local guy—although I think there was a scandal involved there because years later, they found her floating in this lagoon.” He shone his light across a murky cutout of the lake, an inlet with shaggy willows and a covering of algae. “She left behind a teenage daughter.”

  “That’s terrible. What happened?”

  “No one knows. She had a terrible fight with her husband apparently. And some say she’d been drinking.”

  “What happened to the daughter?”

  “I don’t know. Not much was heard of the Kelloggs after that. Agatha, the matriarch, was still around—I remember seeing her at your play practices occasionally, in those crazy hats.”

  “I liked them.”

  “Of course you did.” He walked to the door of the screened-in room. Tried the lock. “I guess we need a key.”

  “Like this one?” She pulled the key from her sodden pocket. He took it, meeting her eyes with a question.

  “I told you, I inherited the place. It’s mine.”

  He inserted the key. “You baffle me more e
very day. Who are you?”

  PJ pushed past him. “I guess, a princess.” She gave a twirl like she might be at a ball. “I’ve inherited a castle.”

  He strode by her, trying the lights by the door. Nothing.

  “How do you know all this about the murder?” She bumped up to him as he passed his light into the kitchen.

  “When I joined the police force, I looked into some of the cold cases down in the basement. I remembered your fascination with this house . . . that sort of drew me to it, I guess.”

  He walked over to the sink and tried the faucet. Something rattled deep inside the house, but nothing emerged. “I think the plumbing might be gummed up, too.”

  “That can be fixed.”

  He shot her a dubious look. “The place smells as if it’s sitting on a swamp. I’ll bet the plumbing burst over the winter, and the basement is flooded with sump water.”

  “So it needs some work. It’s old. Built in the early 1900s. It’s bound to have a few glitches.”

  “How about ghosts?”

  “If you think Joy Kellogg is roaming the grounds, hunting for her killer—”

  “No, I was thinking of Agatha,” Boone said.

  PJ followed him as he shone his light up the back stairs, but he put an arm out to block her before she could climb them. “What?”

  “She died here. Upstairs. In her bedroom.”

  PJ peered up into the darkness. “Not the one at the end of the hall,” she said softly.

  “Yep. And quite a while went by before anyone found her. Maybe even a week.”

  “Okay, that I didn’t need to know.” PJ backed away from the stairs. No wonder the door to the bedroom was locked. “How’d she die?”

  “She got Meals On Wheels delivered once a week. The delivery guy found her. They think it might have been a stroke, but she was so old, she could have died in her sleep. No one ordered an autopsy, if I recall.”

  PJ said nothing, even when Boone flicked his light on her.

  “See, I told you. Run. Put it on the market as is, and get out before you get sucked in. The Kellogg history is rife with trouble and heartache. And that’s the last thing you need.”

  There it was again—the perfect opportunity for him to add since you already have enough of it. But no. He just moved toward her, then pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped her cheek. “A little remnant there from your fall.”

  His touch was too gentle, too familiar. And he smelled good, like a summer night, all husky and sweet. For a terrible second, with everything inside her, she wanted to lean into him, to wrap her arms around him. It hadn’t escaped her that he’d come to her rescue.

  Again.

  “Who knows why she left you this place, PJ. But it’s a mess. The electricity is out, the plumbing is probably shot, and the roof could cave in on you at any moment. It should be condemned, not resurrected.”

  Her thoughts went to the hole in the stairs. “But it’s mine.”

  “Just because you think you want something doesn’t mean it’s the best thing for you.” He put the handkerchief away. Caught her hand. “I just don’t want to see you get hurt.”

  “By the ghosts of Kellogg Manor.” She finger quoted her words. “Sounds like a Nancy Drew mystery.”

  His expression suggested he wasn’t amused. “You so want to buy into the fairy tale, don’t you?”

  “What’s wrong with that? Every girl, at some point, dreams that she’s a lost princess, forgotten in a faraway land. Can’t I want it to be true?”

  His blue eyes had turned so soft, sweet, she had to look away.

  “PJ?” The voice echoed through the long hallway, bearing an edge of worry. “Are you here?”

  Another light, this time wiping across the paned windows, across the dust and cobwebs of the main room. And then footsteps. “PJ?”

  Boone’s touch dropped away as Jeremy appeared and spotlighted the couple in the kitchen. PJ slipped away from what probably looked like Boone’s embrace and saw that scenario flash in Jeremy’s eyes.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, his gaze going to Boone. “I called Connie, and she told me you . . . were here.” A muscle pulled in his jaw. “Am I interrupting something?”

  Next to her, Boone stiffened.

  “Of course not, Jeremy.” She paused there, hoping Boone might fill in the gap, but he brushed past her and began checking the gas fittings over the stove. So much for another rescue. “I fell down a hole outside, and Boone found me.”

  Alarm crossed Jeremy’s face and ignited a curl of sweet emotion inside. “Are you okay?”

  “Yes.” She rubbed her arms and glanced at Boone. He shot her a quick look, then moved out into the main room, toward the fireplace.

  It seemed that Jeremy had the PI instincts not to ask questions, at least not with the way Boone was stalking the room as though he were in the middle of a crime scene. PJ wasn’t sure who he considered the criminal here.

  Or rather, the dead body?

  Jeremy scanned his light over the beams crossing the ceiling, the huddled forms of clothed furniture in the massive room. “So this is it? your new digs?”

  “Apparently. Only it has a few glitches—electricity is out; plumbing could be burst.” She went to stand in front of the window, staring through it to the lake. “Boone thinks it’s too big of a project. Maybe I should just put it on the market.”

  “Oh, PJ, are you serious? Look at the architecture. And the view. It’s incredible.” Jeremy came up behind her, not unlike he had this morning, and put a hand on her shoulder, turning her. “Imagine this place cleaned up. The tile scrubbed, the windows washed, the grounds landscaped or even just mowed.” In his eyes, alive with something she’d never seen before, yes, she could see the house scrubbed up, free of grime, Vera frying something in the new kitchen, Sergei and Davy playing in the backyard.

  Jeremy and PJ sitting on the veranda, drinking lemonade.

  Her gaze shot to Boone, now watching them with a stony expression on his face.

  Especially when Jeremy hooked her chin with his finger, made her meet his eyes, apparently not caring that Boone hovered a few feet away. “Can’t you see the potential in this place?”

  “Maybe,” she said, her voice a whisper.

  “Princess,” he said, his voice dipping, “you can’t sell this place. You belong here.”

  “Of course you’d say that,” Boone snapped. Then he turned and stalked out of the house.

  Chapter Five

  “You smell like a dog left out in the rain.”

  “I know you mean that in the nicest way.” PJ held up a flashlight as Jeremy stood in the darkness of the utility closet under the stairs. She tilted her light up for a second and located the spot where her foot had punched through. At least she wouldn’t have ended up in the basement.

  Or perhaps she should refer to it as the swamp, since Boone had been correct in his call about the pipes bursting. The odor that engulfed the house came from a layer of sump water, putrid and containing the fetid remains of a family of rodents, muddying the dirt basement floor. Thankfully only half the house hiccuped brown sludge. The back room, the one that seemed like a maid’s quarters, had a small, working bathroom in which the water ran clear.

  Even if the electricity didn’t seem to work.

  “Over here, Princess. Let’s get some light on the subject.” Jeremy chuckled at his own joke, even flashing her a smile over his shoulder. He’d been in an oddly jovial mood since Boone marched off the premises, despite the fact that, under the scrutiny of the flashlight, Jeremy sported the makings of a shiner under his eye.

  “Are you going to tell me how you got punched?”

  His smile faded. “I haven’t seen this kind of fuse since my grandmother’s house in South Minneapolis.” He grabbed PJ’s wrist, angling the light over what looked like porcelain drawer tabs, one after another in a giant panel of knobs. Each one contained a glass center, many of them black. After Jeremy unscrewed one, he peered at the me
tal knob. “I don’t even know where we can get a new supply, unless . . .” He reached up, above the metal box attached to the wall, and dragged down a small cardboard box. “I like practical people,” he said, sifting through the box to find a fresh—or perhaps fresh from the previous century—fuse.

  “Jeremy, really. How did you get hurt?”

  “Let’s see if we can get any power here.” He screwed in the fuse, then scooted past her out into the hall. Looked around. “We should see a light on somewhere. Maybe it’s on upstairs.”

  “I have a feeling it’s more than just a fuse,” PJ said. “Otherwise, the ones that aren’t black would be working.”

  “See? Natural detective skills.” Jeremy brushed by her again.

  “But not-so-great interrogation techniques. What do I have to do to get you to come clean?”

  “Just a little altercation at work.” The smile had vanished from his voice.

  “Work? What am I, the answering service? Your work is my work, partner. Should I be worried here?”

  Jeremy was reaching above the fuse box again. “Nope. And we’re not partners.”

  PJ flicked off the light.

  “What?” He rounded on her, and even in the darkness, she could feel the heat of his expression. “I can’t see what I’m doing.”

  “Neither can I, bub. I’m totally in the dark here. We’re not partners?” She hated how her voice hitched on the last word. Because this morning, as he’d wrapped his arms around her, tugged her close, it had felt very partnerish. She let her voice find its footing. “When I left you today, you were glued to your computer. How did you go from tracking down the last known addresses on our list of fugitives to getting a shiner?”

  He said nothing for a moment. She resisted the urge to reach out to him, touch his chest, maybe just for balance. Or to assure herself that she wasn’t dreaming. That something palpable had happened between them.

  Still, sometimes being around Jeremy gave her the sense that she might be perched in the open doorway of an airplane, staring down, daring to fling herself into space.

  Sure, she’d jumped from heights during her brief career as a stunt girl, but skydiving seemed like a whole different brand of crazy.