D.B. Hayes, Detective

by Darlene Scalera; Dani Sinclair

  Fuming, I ate two of the doughnuts while I tried to decide what to do next. Probably I should get back on my computer and do the sort of research I was good at. We needed more information on all of the players. But whatever gossip Trudy had picked up would probably help more than any computer search.

  I wasn’t angry with my aunt, though her comment still stung, but I knew things would never be the same between us again, so I dialed her number with some trepidation.

  I’d never intended working out of the flower shop to be anything but a temporary situation. I’d accepted Aunt Lacy’s offer so I could save money to open my own office, figuring it would take me a year or two, max. Now I wondered if that had just been a dream. I hadn’t liked working for the big New York outfit, but maybe I should consider applying to work for one of the smaller local P.I. firms.

  Like Brandon’s?

  I pushed that thought aside as her phone began to ring. When the answering machine picked up, I frowned and looked at the clock over the kitchen sink. They should have been back from church by now. Where was everyone?

  Sometimes they went over to the shop on Sundays to clean and redo the window display. Seeing no help for it, I took another doughnut and a can of soda from the refrigerator and headed over to Flower World.

  I parked out back as usual. Trudy’s car was there. I steeled myself, scooped up the rack of keys and strode inside the air-conditioned back room of the flower shop. It was another sultry day and the early afternoon sun had turned Binky into a sauna hot enough that I fervently wished I’d skipped the doughnuts.

  “Trudy?” I called out. There was no answer, so I went into the office, dumped the rack of keys on the desk and eyed the telephone. I was miffed that Brandon hadn’t called me yet, but I resisted the temptation to pick up the receiver and try his office. I was bound to hear from him soon. Better to wait and let him call me. I didn’t want to look too anxious after that kiss last night.

  I went out front, calling Trudy and my aunt. There was no one there. Frowning, I went back to the workroom. Trudy’s purse wasn’t sitting in its usual place. They’d probably walked down the street to have brunch at one of the small restaurants nearby. That was fine with me.

  I went back to the office and started sorting through the rack of keys. It was easy enough to put aside the keys that were car keys or too small or oddly shaped to be house keys. When I was finished I had five possibilities. Those I tucked into the pocket of my white slacks.

  I looked at the clock, feeling antsy. Then I stared at the phone, willing it to ring. Finally, feeling foolish, I picked it up and dialed Brandon’s cell phone. It rang straight to his voice mail, of course. He couldn’t charge it since he couldn’t get into his apartment to get his charger.

  I had to look up his office number. His voice answered after two rings, sounding deep and professional. I started speaking before I realized I was talking to a machine. Feeling stupid, I waited for the beep and left him a quick message asking him to give me a call when he got the chance.

  Where the heck was he? In case he and my dad had gone out for something to eat, I tried my Dad’s cell phone number, as well. When my dad’s voice mail came on, I hung up without leaving a message.

  Since I had nothing else to do, I got online and decided to check out the airlines again. I was going through the lists when there was a tentative knock on the office door. I glanced up to see Aunt Lacy standing there. I’d never heard her come in.

  “You have visitors,” she said without inflection.

  “On Sunday? Tell them to come back.”

  “I did. They have.”

  With that cryptic remark, she disappeared. The next face I saw was Mickey’s. He looked smaller and younger than ever before.

  “Mickey.”

  I didn’t have time for Mickey and his missing cat this afternoon. I really didn’t. I was about to tell him so as diplomatically as possible when I caught sight of a blond woman at his back. The protest lodged in my throat. The last time I’d seen the blonde, she’d been behind the wheel of the blue minivan Brandon had driven on our date.

  “It’s okay, Mom. This is D.B. Hayes,” Mickey said.

  The blonde came all the way into view. Cool, stunningly attractive, she was dressed in a perfectly fitting sundress of white and mint green. She looked suave and sophisticated and about seven years older than me.

  “Dee, this is my mom.”

  She came forward with one slim hand outstretched. Her perfect nails were tinted a light peach. I decided then and there to hate her, wishing I could hide my short, unpolished nails and the healing scratches on my hand.

  “Ms. Hayes, I’m Julie Kirkpatrick.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Air rushed from my lungs. I gaped at her, trying to get my brain to stop tripping over her last two words.

  “You—you’re…”

  “Brandon’s sister-in-law,” she said in a soft voice.

  Sister-in-law. She was his sister-in-law. Of course she was. Mickey had told me his father had been killed. Why hadn’t I put it together much sooner?

  “May we come in?”

  “I thought you were his girlfriend,” I blurted out.

  She smiled briefly without humor. Mickey, on the other hand, thought that was a hoot and giggled merrily. He walked in and plunked down on one of the visitor’s chairs. Instantly George the cat appeared out of nowhere and made a beeline for the boy.

  “Hey there, George. How ya’ doin’, boy?”

  It was eerie. I could almost hear Brandon saying that. Mickey produced a bit of string from a pocket and began to dangle it in front of the cat.

  I looked at Julie. There were dark circles under her eyes. She was watching her son with a sad, almost wistful look that tugged at me. I forced myself to gather my scattered wits and stood, gesturing her inside.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t always act like an idiot. Please, have a seat.”

  “Wow. That’s a lot of keys,” Mickey said, eyeing the rack on the desk.

  “Yes, it is.” I closed the door behind Julie, then hesitated. “May I get you something to drink or—”

  This time her smile was genuine. She had a lovely smile.

  “We’re fine. We just had a soda down the street. We came by earlier but the store was closed and your aunt said you hadn’t come by yet, but she thought you might.”

  “Then the police showed up,” Mickey put in, looking up with troubled eyes, “so we scrammed.”

  “The police showed up?”

  He nodded, wide eyed. “They arrested Uncle Brandon!”

  “What!”

  Julie Kirkpatrick shook her head. “We don’t know that they arrested him yet, Mickey. They’re asking him questions,” she soothed, but the hand she used to push back a strand of natural blond hair was trembling ever so slightly.

  “Grandpa said they’re going to arrest him.”

  “Whoa. Wait a minute. Let’s slow down here,” I demanded. “Brandon was here and the police came and took him away for more questioning?”

  “Yes,” she agreed, not quite wringing her hands but clenching them together until it looked like those beautifully polished nails were drawing blood. “It looks like they’re going to charge him with murder.”

  I glanced pointedly at Mickey.

  “It’s okay, Ms. Hayes, I don’t keep secrets from my son.”

  “Dee,” I said, sounding as weak as I felt. I moved back around the desk to sit down.

  “Dee,” she agreed. “For one thing, keeping a secret from Mickey is impossible. For another, we only have each other so we don’t keep secrets.”

  “Except I tried to about Mr. Sam,” Mickey said, looking down at his shoes, clearly unhappy over that memory. “I should’a told you when he got out.”

  “Yes, you should have, but everyone’s allowed to make a mistake, Mickey. I tell you when I make one,” his mother said.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “The other night, when he thought Brandon was coming for d
inner, Mickey confessed that he hired you to find Mr. Sam. I’ve been so preoccupied lately, I didn’t even realize the cat was missing. Mickey takes good care of him and I’ve been pulling a lot of overtime lately…. Well, the bottom line is I never realized the old boy had gotten out and I should have. Mickey had worked himself into quite a state by the time I got home.”

  “We tried to find the cat,” I started to explain.

  “I know, but there’s no way on earth you could have. By chance I learned that one of my neighbors had discovered him locked in her potting shed days ago. She thought he was a stray and took him inside. She’s been caring for him ever since.”

  “You never asked your neighbors if they’d seen him?” I asked Mickey.

  He shrugged his thin shoulders.

  Silently I berated myself for being an idiot. I hadn’t thought to ask him such a simple, logical question. What sort of investigator did that make me? And then it hit me.

  “Wait a minute! Are you telling me Mr. Sam is Brandon’s cat?” I’d spent days searching for my arch nemesis’s cat when I don’t even like cats?

  Julie looked from her son to me. “Well, technically it belonged to his fiancée but she dumped the cat when she dumped him.”

  Brandon had had a fiancée?

  “Brandon was okay with it. He likes Mr. Sam, but he thought because he was gone so much of the day that Mickey would be better company for the cat. In a way you could say Brandon dumped him on me. Ironically my neighbor planned to keep him because her cat died recently and Mr. Sam’s such a lovable old guy. So of course there was no way you could have found him.”

  “Lovable. Right.” I shook my head and opened the desk drawer. The crumpled wad of bills was still there. I shoved them across the desk at Mickey.

  “That’s the money I paid you to find Mr. Sam.”

  “And I failed.”

  “But you tried,” Julie protested.

  “Trying isn’t good enough. Go buy your Glimmer Man game.” To Julie I said, “Let’s get back to the reason you came here today.”

  She hesitated. Finally she nodded at Mickey, who scooped up the money. “Thank you. I don’t know what’s going on between you and Brandon…”

  I was pretty sure the collar of my sleeveless blouse covered the hickey, so I worked at trying not to blush.

  “…but I want to hire you to help him.”

  “Forget it. You don’t have to hire me to help Brandon. My neck and my reputation, not to mention my investigator’s license, are on the line every bit as much as his right now. We were together the other night. Working on a case,” I added hastily. “I can and will swear to that in a court of law. Neither one of us killed anyone. And fortunately for us, I’m pretty sure we have an independent witness who can also attest to the fact that we were someplace else at the time Delvecchi was killed.”

  Julie drew in a hiss of air at the name.

  “Blast. I keep forgetting they haven’t released that yet. I’d like to tell you to go home and not to worry, but frankly you should worry all you like. I’m certainly going to. What I can promise you is that I’m going to be doing all I can to unravel this mess.”

  “But what about the gun?”

  I stared at her blankly. “What gun?”

  “The gun they took from Brandon’s apartment when they searched it. The one they said was used to kill Delvecchi.”

  My hands gripped the edge of the desk while my stomach did a quick somersault.

  Her eyes widened. “You didn’t know. They found the murder weapon hidden inside the air-conditioning vent in the floor in his dining room.”

  Mickey looked up as I swore.

  “You aren’t supposed to say that.”

  “No. I’m not,” I agreed faintly.

  Julie looked as scared as I felt.

  “You said there’s an independent witness.”

  I dropped my hands below the edge of the desk, out of sight. They were shaking and I didn’t want to scare either one of them any more than they already were.

  “There is, depending on what time Delvecchi was shot.”

  “I don’t think they have the coroner’s report back yet.”

  “No, I don’t imagine they do.”

  I tried to slow my breathing and think. We had an awful lot of time we couldn’t account for that night even with our visit to Nicole’s apartment. We basically only had each other. As alibis went, that wasn’t good.

  Julie shuddered. “This is all connected to what happened to Seth, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know,” I told her honestly. “Maybe.”

  “I knew he should have left it alone. I told Brandon to drop the investigation.”

  “How could he? Seth was his brother.”

  “Even if it gets him killed, too?”

  “Julie, Brandon’s an investigator. It’s what he does.”

  She stared hard at me. “You sound just like him.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment. If someone had killed one of my brothers, I’d do whatever it took to get justice. And I’m not even all that close to my brothers.”

  “I want justice, too! I just don’t want to see anyone else killed.”

  “I understand.” And I did. She was scared. So was I. Lots more now than I had been half an hour ago. “Look, Brandon said your father-in-law is retired police. Maybe he can help.”

  “I called Harry this morning. He was going to talk to some people.”

  “Good. That’s good. In the meantime, so will I.” I reached for a business card. “This is my cell phone number. You can reach me at any time, providing I’m not in jail.”

  “Let me give you my number, as well,” she offered, writing it on the pad of paper I passed over to her.

  Our eyes locked as our hands met. Hers were fraught with worry and fear as they assessed me.

  “Thank you, Dee.”

  “Thank me after I do something. I’ll be in touch.”

  I liked this woman, I realized. Despite her perfect hair and nails, she was someone I could relate to. She was scared, but she was tough. She’d handle whatever she had to handle.

  I knew as soon as Julie and Mickey left, my aunt and Trudy would descend demanding details. I was right. They came in as I was packing up my computer.

  “What are you doing?” Aunt Lacy demanded.

  “I’m going incommunicado for a couple of days,” I told her. “Someone is trying to frame us for murder.”

  “Nonsense.”

  “Tell it to the person who killed Delvecchi and hid the murder weapon in Brandon’s apartment. I told you we were together and we were. This could get sticky. One of us needs to remain free to prove it.”

  “This is not a movie, Diana Barbara.”

  “Believe it or not, I had noticed that, Aunt Lacy. Trudy, were you able to get me any information?”

  “I’m sorry, Dee. I didn’t realize there was a rush.”

  I looked hard at her. Her skin reddened and I realized Aunt Lacy had told her not to help. I felt a surge of temper and squashed it flat. Anger would serve no purpose. I picked up the rack of keys, my computer and my purse.

  “I am not going to stand here and watch you ruin your life,” Aunt Lacy said angrily.

  “Then have a seat. It will probably play better from that view anyhow. It would be real nice if one of you would call the pound about Mama and her kittens. I won’t be able to care for them for a while.”

  “Dee, you come back here!”

  I brushed past a stunned Trudy and headed for the back entrance. As I steered Binky onto Bell Avenue, I saw the police cruiser pull in front of the shop. It had been that close.

  I was scared. Deep-down, want-my-mommy scared. I was also in as close to a blind rage as I have ever been. Albert Russo and his girlfriend could not be allowed to manipulate people’s lives and get away with it. There had to be a scale of justice somewhere, and I was going to jump up and down until that scale started tipping in the right direction.

  Binky had
a tendency to stand out in a crowd, so the first order of business was driving over to see Ted Osher. Even though it was Sunday, I knew I’d find him at the closed garage. He and the owner have a deal. He can work on his own projects there whenever he wants in his spare time.

  I parked out back and let myself in through the side door. As usual Ted was buried under a car hood, up to his armpits in engine parts. A radio at his back was blasting away. I tapped him on the shoulder and he looked up reluctantly, not even startled. His eyes lit in pleased surprise when he saw it was me, but his expression instantly changed to one of speculation as he came out from the bowels of the car.

  “What did you do to it this time?”

  I gave him my usual response to this question—a glare. “Can we talk outside?”

  He knew I hated the noise and the fumes of the garage. At the moment the heat was making me sick to my stomach despite the fans he had running. I didn’t wait to see if he followed. I strode to where Binky sat looking oddly forlorn amid the mostly larger, shinier, newer cars parked there and patted his engine fondly.

  “What’s wrong with the car?” Ted demanded.

  “Other than drinking a quart of oil every five minutes, not a thing. I need a favor.”

  Ted’s a muscular guy with brown hair and sweet puppy-dog brown eyes. He cleans up nicely after a gallon or two of soap and water. He’s a terrific mechanic and a nice guy, but looking at him, I realized why I was still a virgin. He didn’t produce that tingle I got low in my belly whenever Brandon gave me that same sort of look. Ted was just a nice guy I was fond of.

  “I need to leave Binky here and borrow a car.”

  “Why?”

  I sighed. He deserved to know the truth. “Because the police want to talk to me about a murder and I don’t feel like getting arrested right now.”

  He rubbed at his jaw, leaving another smear of grease behind.

  “If you don’t want to tell me the reason, just say so.”

  I deepened the sigh.

  “How long do you need the car?”

  “A day or so should be enough. By then it will either all be over or—”