Licensed for Trouble

by Susan May Warren

  PJ stepped back, moving the Bible in front of her again. “I’m not sure I understand what you mean, Mr. Smith.”

  He closed his eyes, and it was the way he rubbed his hands down his face, his shoulders rising and falling with a deep sigh, that made her decide to listen.

  “Are you lost?”

  He breathed again heavily, then took his hands from his face. “I think so. Because after four years of wandering Kellogg, trying to piece my life together, I haven’t the faintest idea who I am.”

  Join the club. Only, she had ten years at that game. But as a beat pulsed between them, PJ measured his face, and every impulse inside her told her he meant his words.

  She set the Bible on the counter. “You don’t know who you are?”

  “I made up Max Smith. I don’t know my real name, where I’m from, or who I am.” He said it without flinching, his dark eyes holding hers, not a hint of a teasing smile.

  Okay. “How’d this happen?”

  “Dunno, exactly. Apparently I appeared one day on the Kellogg beach, naked and nameless. First thing I remember is the smell of the hospital and the cops standing at the end of my bed.”

  PJ narrowed her eyes. “And how, exactly, am I supposed to help you find . . . you?”

  “You’re a PI, right?”

  Yes. Yes! “I am.” She didn’t elaborate.

  “Well . . . see, I got a call from someone at the church who said you needed some help with your house.” At these words he did a small look-see around the place. “I did a little sniffing and found out you were a PI . . . and I thought we could trade.”

  “Trade what?”

  “Services. It seems I can handle a hammer, and more. And apparently you need someone with . . . uh, various handyman skills to bring life back into this place.”

  “I . . . Who sent you?” Her thoughts tracked to Jeremy and warmed her. So the Bix failure hadn’t derailed him. He still believed in her and her ability to—

  “A Connie Sukh—I can’t read my own writing.” He stared at a crumpled piece of paper. “She left a message on my cell phone, told me something about a mushroom house and how you needed help. Once I figured out what the mushroom house was, I thought I’d swing by. Sorry if I startled you.”

  PJ tried to imagine Connie leaving a rambling message on this man’s phone—probably right after PJ had left her house yesterday. “How do you know my sister?”

  “Connie is your sister?”

  PJ raised one eyebrow.

  “I think she must go to my church—I have a little ad up in the foyer for my handyman services.”

  Handyman. Yes.

  “Please? I’ve exhausted all my resources.”

  There was something about a grown man, his voice gentle, his eyes desperate, saying please that did strange things to her brain. Like make her nod. And suggest that they get a cup of coffee and talk about his case. And even offer to pay for the coffee.

  As if she might be rich or something.

  “Listen, how about I get the power running so you don’t have to stock up on candles? Then we’ll see about coffee. Or maybe food.”

  Food. Now there was a thought. She could use a pizza about now.

  She followed him out to the car—a red Olds Cutlass that looked surprisingly comfortable next to her Crown Vic. He opened the trunk—in which she noticed a rolled sleeping bag and canvas tote—and reached for a large toolbox the size of a suitcase.

  He hauled it out and closed the trunk.

  A large furry head rammed itself against a backseat window. Then a fuzzy yellow-brown jaw tried to push through the three-inch opening. A tongue darted out.

  PJ jumped away. “What’s that?”

  Max opened the back door of the car and out bounded what could probably pass for a small pony. A brown and white pony with floppy ears, a short snout, and brown eyes that gave her a split-second warning before the beast launched in her direction.

  She caught his front paws. “Oh, oh.”

  “Dog, get down.” Max pushed on the animal’s head, grabbed his collar, and pulled him off PJ. “Sorry.”

  “This is your dog? Or should I say your lap pony?”

  Max smiled, keeping his hand curled around the dog’s collar. “Closest I can figure, he’s part Saint Bernard, part Labrador. Friendly, protective, playful. Obsessively afraid of storms. He climbed in with me one night during a summer thunderstorm, and we’ve been pals ever since.”

  Climbed in with him . . . in his car? PJ shot a look at the backseat. It looked clean despite the dog hair. Still, her heart gave a small twist.

  PJ crouched before the animal and cupped him around the ears, looking him in his golden brown eyes. “What’s your name?”

  “Dog.”

  PJ looked at Max. “Dog? You named your dog Dog?”

  “I can’t settle on anything. I tried Hank. And Rip. Pete, even Ace. Doesn’t seem to like any of them. So it’s Dog until he can decide what he likes.”

  PJ rubbed behind Dog’s ears. “Dog, you’re getting a real name.”

  Max regarded her with a strange look. “Be my guest. If you can figure out his name, you can name him.”

  PJ considered him for a moment. “Jack?”

  Dog gave her a lick, then bounded away.

  “Not Jack.”

  “Keep trying.” Max’s toolbox rattled and thumped against his leg as he followed her inside to the electrical closet.

  “So how did you come up with Max?”

  “I don’t know. Felt right. They fished me out of Maximilian Bay. So, Max?”

  Again, she found herself beaming a flashlight on the fried electrical panel. Dog explored the house, his paws thundering upstairs, toenails clipping against the tile floor in the great hall.

  “Are you an electrician?”

  “Sometimes.” Max opened the panel, then angled her flashlight at the porcelain knobs. She couldn’t help but notice the scars that webbed his hands, his fingers, as if his skin had been taken off, crumpled, and ironed on wrong. Her eyes pinned to them too long.

  “I think I was in a fire.” Max opened his toolbox and took out what looked like a small meter.

  “You think?”

  “It happened before I woke up in the hospital. Before I washed up onshore at the Kellogg beach.”

  “You washed up onshore? Like a message in a bottle?”

  “Something like that.” He shot her a grin. Oh my, he had dimples. Reaching up, he touched one end of the thick wire extending from the inside of the box. “You have power.”

  “Then why is the house dark?”

  “One of the three main fuses is out.” He touched the meter to one of the penny-roll shaped fuses at the top of the box.

  “Tell me more about the washing-up-onshore part.”

  “I don’t remember it. Someone found me and called the cops. I woke up in the hospital, my memory gone, these scars on my hands.” He held out his hand to PJ. “My fingerprints are gone.”

  “You don’t have any fingerprints?”

  He tested the next fuse. “That would have helped figure out who I am.”

  “So you have no memory at all?”

  “Snatches—mostly sounds or smells that I know connect to something. But it’s like . . . well, like a fuse is out. Something should be working, but there’s no connection. I can’t help but think if I can recognize something from my past, it might jump-start the entire system. Hey, I found the blown fuse.” He crouched and began to search through his toolbox. PJ flashed the light into his box as he moved a tray, picked up first one package, then another.

  “You keep a supply of old fuses?”

  “You’d be surprised what it pays to hang on to.” He unearthed a package and opened it. “I wanted to hire a PI, but since I had no home, no money, no identity, it’s been slow going. I wound up at the soup kitchen at Kellogg Presbyterian and the homeless beds at the Lutheran home. Thankfully, people were kind—I helped roof the community center, and my name got around. For a long tim
e, I did whatever job people gave me, lived where I could find a bed.”

  “Or in your car?”

  “It was warm and dry. Makes a person appreciate the important things.”

  She had to admit, whoever Max Smith was—handyman, fireman, vagabond—he possessed an easy charm that made her want to trust him.

  “Didn’t the police try and track you down?”

  “They gave it some effort—did a missing person’s trace, but nothing came up. Try finding the right fish in an ocean. I moved back to Kellogg hoping . . . well, it all started here. But after a while, I sort of gave up. Flash the light up here, please.”

  PJ guided the light as he replaced the burned fuse.

  “So why now? It seems you’re making a life for yourself. Why not just start over?”

  He paused as if considering her question. “You ever felt like you don’t know yourself? like when you look in the mirror, you wonder how you got here, how you became the person you are?”

  PJ kept the light on him, caught in his words. Could he see inside her head? She might have nodded.

  “Now imagine that happening every day. Like, the other day I was fixing some plumbing—”

  “You fix plumbing?”

  “I told you, I’m a handyman. I loosen sticky doors, rewire kitchens, unclog plumbing . . .”

  “Go on; sorry.”

  “Well, I was at this house, and this guy comes walking in, and he’s talking Arabic to his wife and kids. And I understood him.” He fiddled again with the fuse. “Now why would I understand Arabic?”

  PJ glanced again at his hands. “Were you a soldier?” That would certainly explain the not-easily-spooked, put-that-down-now expression he wore when she wielded her Bible at him.

  “I don’t know. But I lay awake every night wondering, Who am I? Is there anyone out there looking for me?” He looked at her then, his words in his eyes. “I need you to find me.”

  She swallowed, the emotion thrumming off him in a way that felt too close, too raw. Her throat tightened. What if she did find him? What if she tracked down his past, solved a real mystery?

  Max turned back to the fuse box. “Let there be light.” He connected the fuse, and behind her, in the hallway, the daylight seemed brighter. PJ backed out of the closet, and sure enough, the fluted globe of the iron fixture on the wall glowed.

  Max climbed out behind her. “Now we just have to replace the burned fuses in the panel, and I think you’re in business.”

  PJ clicked off her light and smiled. She held out her hand. “Max Smith, you have a deal. Help me make this place livable and . . . I will find you.”

  * * *

  “Who is this guy and what is he doing in your bathroom?”

  PJ pressed her hands against Jeremy’s chest, pushing him from her bedroom. “Keep your voice down; I don’t want to spook him. He’s fixing my sink, and I might actually be able to bathe tonight. So pipe down, Mr. Overprotective.”

  He caught PJ’s wrists and held them, clearly debating her request. “What, is he the ghost of Kellogg Manor? or some drifter you tricked into helping you?”

  “No, of course not. He’s my new handyman.”

  Jeremy dropped his hold. “I look the other way for a few hours and you’ve moved out of my office and hired a handyman?”

  Looking back over her shoulder, PJ caught Max’s glance at Jeremy, and she held up a hand to assure him that yes, this overbearing, loud, rather rude person was actually a friend of hers. Or more, depending on the day. “I didn’t exactly hire him.”

  Max raised a dark eyebrow, then went back to work tightening the pipe under the sink.

  After illumination had been restored to her house, Max had done a long walk-through, room by room—excluding the still-locked master bedroom upstairs. Unfortunately, it did include a slimy expedition into her basement—again. Max ran a cursory check on the foundation, inspecting a few cracks, shucking his light into alcoves and recesses PJ preferred not to explore. Especially the one she’d decided to call the crypt—the one with the boat-size metal door. Probably the bodies of the first Kelloggs lay decomposing inside. Or, “Maybe we found a mafia treasure. Al Capone’s secret vault.”

  “Funny,” Max said, leaving her in the gloom as he swished his light to another creepy corner.

  Max managed to whip up what he called a habitation list. “Two weeks, I can get this place cleaned up. However, I probably need to do more sleuthing for the plumbing leak in the ‘dungeon of despair.’” He shot her a smile.

  “What would you call it?”

  “A basement. But I’m hoping the leak shouldn’t be too hard to patch.”

  So was she.

  While Max went to work on her clogged sink, PJ had made a quick trek to the store and purchased a couple boxes of rubber gloves, along with a bag of cleansers. It might take a blowtorch to clean the grime off the fridge, but for now, it could hold the remains of the late-lunch pizza they’d picked up at Hal’s.

  Dog had found a spot in a pool of sunlight to call home and curled into a ball, lost in blissful slumber, until Jeremy had charged in and seen Max sprawled on the floor of her bathroom.

  “What is he doing here, then? Did you pick him up off the street? Did he have a sign—‘will work for food’?” Jeremy had apparently forgotten how to whisper. Good grief, he acted like she’d gone out and hired a crew of thirty behind his back. Last time she looked, he wanted her to get off his sofa. PJ took him by the hand, pulling him through the kitchen, out to the terrace, and into the yard.

  Dog trotted after them.

  Jeremy followed the animal with his eyes as if he’d never seen a creature on four legs.

  He drew a breath, prepping for another blast, but PJ held up a hand. “Listen, he came to me.”

  “He came to you? How on earth did he find you here?” He gestured to her enormous, recently acquired mansion. “It’s not like you put out a ‘PJ Sugar is in the building’ banner. . . . Wait. Boone didn’t send him, did he?” He shook his head. “That would be rich, coming from a guy who’s afraid you might get taken out by an oversize raccoon. I can’t believe he sent a stranger knocking at your door.”

  “Calm down, Jeremy. My sister called Max. He goes to her church. And he came to me because . . . in exchange for helping me fix up this place, I’m going to find him.”

  That took him back a beat. He narrowed his eyes. “What exactly do you mean by ‘find him’?” She detected a definite growl in his voice. Jeremy had an uncanny, special ops way of unraveling her courage with a look when he wanted to, and she had to pull in a long breath, settle herself back into her resolve.

  “He has amnesia.”

  Jeremy raised an eyebrow. “Amnesia. Really.” He said it in a way that sounded like she might have let the cleaning fumes go to her head. “Seriously, do you know how rare that is?”

  “Yes. But he does. Really. He washed up on the Kellogg beach four years ago, and no one knows anything about him—what his name is, where he’s from. He’s lost. And I’m going to find him.”

  “Stop saying that.” He shot a glance at the house like he might want to go in and apply his own method of interrogation.

  “It’s true. He’s a missing person.”

  Oh, those weren’t the right words. Jeremy looked as if he might combust on the spot. Dog bounded up, holding a stick, and PJ threw it across the yard.

  Jeremy watched it fly. “Oh, look, and he has a dog, too.”

  PJ looked back at him, not understanding the expression on his face. “Yes.”

  “I should have guessed.”

  “And what, exactly, does that mean?”

  He ran his hand around the back of his neck. “Sheesh, PJ, maybe you should give a guy a chance to help.”

  “I am!”

  Jeremy narrowed his eyes at her for a moment, then shook his head.

  PJ touched his arm, held on. “The guy has no fingerprints.”

  “No fingerprints?”

  Ah, see, inside that slig
htly overprotective demeanor, she’d stirred the private eye. “Nope. They were burned off.”

  “Burned off.” Jeremy folded his arms over his chest. “Burned off.”

  PJ nodded and lowered her voice even more in case Max could hear her above the swish of the waves on shore, the rush of the breeze in the trees, and all the way inside the house. “That sounds like a mystery, right? The kind that needs solving?”

  “No, Princess—”

  “It’s perfect! I’ll solve his past—help him figure out who he is and how he got here—and he’ll fix up my house, and you’ll be able to give me a legitimate recommendation to the PI board. I’ll get my license.”

  He winced, running a thumb and finger against his clenched eyes. “You have this all figured out, don’t you.”

  “Isn’t that what you want?”

  His mouth tightened. He sighed and turned away, walking slowly toward the lake.

  Wasn’t it?

  “Jer—?” She started after him, and he rounded on her. She nearly slammed into his chest. He curled his hands around her arms to catch her, left them there. She didn’t miss the way her heart hitched, then revved, at the sense of standing so close to him. She couldn’t deny that, despite the ease she felt with Max, she’d breathed something akin to relief when Jeremy walked into the house.

  And apparently Jeremy could read her mind. “There’s something about him that’s not right, even dangerous.”

  “You took one look at him, Jeremy. What are you talking about? He’s a handyman. Although, he says he knows Arabic.” She made a little face, chasing her words.

  “He knows . . . Oh, perfect. See, he’s more than a handyman. He’s . . . too alert. You didn’t notice, but the minute I walked into the room, he knew I was there, was listening to everything I said.”

  “You were practically shouting. I’d say you were hard to ignore.”

  “Okay, maybe I overreacted slightly. I mean, yes, I think you should move off my sofa . . .”

  PJ raised an eyebrow.

  “. . . but I guess I thought I was going to help you fix the place up. I spent the afternoon tracking down fuses. And then I show up and the electricity is already fixed.” He glanced at Dog, now barking at the waves. “And now you have a dog.”