“I will.” She smiled and wandered off, a little bounce in her step.
“All right,” Holly said, plopping the drink on the counter before me so hard a blob of whipped cream escaped the mouth of the plastic lid. She met my eyes and squared her shoulders. “Tell me what’s really going on.”
“Holls, I’m telling the truth,” I protested. “I’m running out of cash. When I first moved up here, I figured the PI jobs might be a little hard to come by, since it’s a small community and all that. I’d originally planned on starting a side business leading paranormal tours, but I’ve soured on that idea, you know, now that”—another glance over my shoulder—“I’m a freakin’ werewolf.”
She crossed her arms. “You could still lead ghost tours. I’ll bet Scarlet would help. She could probably get volunteers or something.”
I arched an eyebrow.
“You know … to do the actual scaring.”
I blinked and she folded. “Okay. Okay. Stupid idea.”
“No.” I shook my head. “It’s not. But it wouldn’t feel right. Not anymore.”
She nodded slowly, her eyes drifting away before darting back to mine. “What happened to the reward money from that whole Banks mess?”
“I spent most of it. After taxes, and then giving you your cut, I had enough to pre-pay a year’s lease on my condo and office. So, that’s what I did. But, like I said, both of those will be up at the end of the year.”
Thought it felt like a lifetime ago, in reality it had only been less than a year since Holly has assisted me on a case that ended with us both landing in a pile of reward money from a wealthy woman named Georgia Banks for providing information that led to tracking down her husband’s murderer.
Holly gave a pensive hum and tapped her squared nails on the counter. “There’s got to be something you can do to get through until business picks up again,” she said after a long pause. Her lips quirked to one side as she thought, staring into space, before she popped up, her eyes bright again. “I know! Adam could hire you! You’re good at computer stuff, right?”
I laughed. “I am not asking Adam for a job.”
“I’ll do it for you!”
“No,” I said, a little too forcefully. Realizing my tone, I paused and held up a hand. “Sorry, but no, Holls. I don’t need a pity job. On top of that, I have no interest in sitting at a computer all day. I’ve been doing far too much of that lately.”
I left out the part about arguing with the dang thing.
“All right. But if you—” She stopped, seeing the look on my face.
“It’ll be fine. I’m not buying moving boxes or anything. I just might need to cut down costs. The largest being that office.” I gestured out the window in the general direction of the building.
When my hand circled back, I scooped the mocha up and took a drink. It was perfect. As always. After learning about Holly’s magic, I’d asked her if she’d been lacing my coffee with some kind of spell to make it taste so good. She laughed and assured me she was just a really good barista.
Smiling, I surveyed the seating area. A few patrons were scattered throughout, occupying three of the ten small tables. “Hey, maybe I’ll just move my office over here. You have WiFi, right?”
Taking it as a serious inquiry, Holly frowned. “I think so. I’d have to ask Cassie.”
I laughed. “I was kidding, Holls. Everywhere has WiFi these days.”
“Oh. Right.”
“You think you’ll ever get with the 21st century?” I teased before taking another sip.
She scoffed and playfully narrowed her eyes at me. “And to think, I gave you extra sprinkles.”
I snorted. “And I appreciate it.”
“Yeah, yeah.” She flapped a hand. “Get outta here, before I turn you into a toad or something.”
“Ooo, very scary.” I wiggled the fingers of my free hand and turned away from the counter, grinning at her.
The rain was coming down harder and I paused at the coffee bar by the front door. Large picture windows lined three sides of the shop, and while the natural light was glorious in the summer time, tonight the view was downright depressing.
One thing I’d learned since moving from California to Washington State was that while the rain was a near constant nine months out of the year, it could only dump down by the bucket for so long. Deciding to wait it out, I grabbed an abandoned newspaper from the bar and took it to a pair of high-backed upholstered chairs tucked away in a corner.
Taking one of the seats, I set my drink on the circular coffee table made from a varnished slice of hundred-year-old pine and leaned forward to pick up The Harbor Hubbub. It was the local circulation, put out by a group of retirees who worked out of the local library. Normally, it was a dry laundry list of town happenings: the weekly schedule for the local two-screen theater, info about the farmers market, reviews from the local book club on their read of the week, poems and comics submitted by residents.
As a former journalist, the mundane nature of the thing rarely led me to picking up the copy that appeared like clockwork on my welcome mat every Tuesday. I’d worked for a large paper in Los Angeles for years before moving away from the City of Angels. In LA, the idea of reporting on the local Little League game as if it were the World Series was laughable.
But, short of using my phone to check my email inbox for the dozenth time that day, there wasn’t much else to do while waiting out the rain, so I flapped the paper open with a snap and dove in.
Rampant Crime in Beechwood Harbor
“A string of break-ins has the police puzzled and neighbors fear no end in sight.”
Well, if that wasn’t just the Batman signal I needed.
Chapter 2
For the first time in a long time, I jumped out of bed and hurried to get ready with a spring of purpose in my step the following morning. I didn’t even bother with breakfast before leaving the condo and hustling across town to the Beechwood Harbor Police Department.
As part of my job, I kept in regular contact with the police chief, Jeffery Lincoln. He was a good man—and Cassie Frank’s fiancé. We’d had a rough start, but after working several cases together, he’d come around to seeing me as an asset instead of a liability and often gave me a heads up when something might be coming my way. Often times, I wound up with the runoff cases that local police stations couldn’t take—most commonly missing persons over the age of eighteen where foul play wasn’t suspected. I’d worked a few theft cases and in one particularly busy summer, worked surveillance of an ice cream truck that the police suspected was dealing in more than slushies and popsicles.
The last case I’d contracted on turned into a little bit of a local fiasco and Chief Lincoln hadn’t called me in on anything since then. A local man claimed his lawnmower was stolen from his front yard while he’d gone inside for some lemonade. The police filed a report, but beyond that, there wasn’t much they could do. The man refused to accept that and went to the station daily to remind anyone who would listen that he was still lawnmower-less and the weeds were creeping up.
When he showed up with a bullhorn, Chief Lincoln called me and asked me to take the guy off his hands. I spent a few Saturdays cruising various neighborhoods, watching people mowing their yards. It ranked somewhere in the top five most boring cases of all time, but eventually, I found the MIA mower and the man who’d taken the thing.
What I hadn’t counted on was that while I’d been scoping out the local lawn equipment, the disgruntled client had been following me. I was midway through calling Chief Lincoln when a fist fight broke out in the thief’s front yard.
A simple enough case turned into a major standoff. Guns, dogs, the whole nine yards.
Complete and utter mess.
A month and a half had passed since then, so all I could do was hope some of the chief’s irritation had faded.
Roberta, the woman who occupied the front desk at the station most days, greeted me with her usual smile. “Well, well. And here I
thought they’d gone and scared you off!”
I returned her smile. “It’s been a minute, hasn’t it? How are you, Roberta?”
She shrugged. “TGIF, right?”
“Right.” I offered a polite laugh. “Hey, uh, is Chief around today? There was something I wanted to ask him about.”
“I’ll check for you, sugar,” she replied, giving me a sweet smile as she turned in her seat and grabbed the phone. She fussed with her short-cropped salt-and-pepper locks as she waited for the sheriff to pick the call up. When he did, she straightened in her seat as though the chief had walked up behind her. “Morning, Chief. Nick Rivers is here. Do you have a minute?”
“Thank you, Chief.” She nodded up at me and pointed at the door to her left. “I’ll send him back.”
Roberta hung up the phone and I placed my hands together, inclining my head. “You’re the best.”
“Well, I know that,” she teased, waving me off.
Still grinning, I went through the heavy security door and hurried to the bull pen, where Chief could usually be found hovering over the shoulders of his deputies—much to their chagrin.
Chief Lincoln is a no-nonsense kind of guy. He expects results, but never at the expense of shoddy police work or by using unconventional methods. That preference that often pitted him at odds with Holly, who had a tendency for getting in way over her head and was equally good at scrapping her way back out again. She could handle herself, but when it came to explaining herself to the persnickety chief, well…it didn’t usually go all that well.
As Holly and I worked several cases together, I had to be careful to separate my reputation and standing with the BHPD from hers. Since several months had passed since her last tango with the law, I figured I was in a good position.
At least, I did right up until I rounded the corner and found Chief Lincoln standing just outside his office, his arms folded, a stony look on his face.
So much for that theory…
“Morning, Rivers,” Chief Lincoln said, dropping his chin in an ever-so-slight nod. “What brings you by? A tri-county stand-off over a stolen weed whacker?”
“You doing stand-up on the weekends now?” I teased lightly, still unsure of my footing. Outside the four walls of the station, we were on good terms. Heck, I’d had a twenty-minute conversation with him about the housing market just a few weeks ago in the frozen-food section at Thistle. Regardless, it was clear that inside the station things were different.
“No,” he replied, a hint of a smile starting to creep up. “I’m still too busy trying to figure out how a professional private investigator manages to have the same tail two weekends in a row and not notice.”
I winced. “Touché.”
So, it was about the lawn mower mess.
Spectacular.
I met his eyes. “I’m here about a case.”
“That so?”
I held up the paper, carefully folded to display the headline about the burglaries. “I stumbled across this in the paper yesterday and wanted to stop in and see if there was anything I could do to help the investigation.”
Chief Lincoln frowned. “Nice headline.”
“It’s not the most flattering,” I agreed, folding it back up. “What’s going on?”
“Not a lot.” He dropped his arms. “As the article says, there’ve been three break-ins over the last four months. We’ve noted all the evidence, dusted for prints and fibers, took pictures of some muddy shoe prints, and questioned the neighbors. With no leads to work with, we’ve hit a wall. The only reason it’s in the paper is because Candy Shepherd is one of the so-called editors and her home was the last one to get hit.”
“I see,” I replied slowly. The article hadn’t mentioned the personal connection to the staff of The Harbor Hubbub. Not that it really mattered. A string of robberies was news, personal or not. “You want me to see if I can dig anything up?”
Chief Lincoln considered the offer, running a hand over his clean-shaven jaw.
“I need the work. You need a win on this before another break in happens,” I hurried to add, trying—and probably failing—to keep the desperation out of my voice.
He sighed. “I’ll shoot straight with you, Nick. We don’t have a lot in the consulting budget this quarter. If we did, I probably would have called you in on it sooner. Why don’t you go and talk to Candy? She can give you her side of the story and for all I know, the paper has some kind of reserve fund for research. Maybe you can write something up. You used to be a journalist, right?”
“Well, uh, yes, but that’s not really what I do anymore.”
He clapped me on the shoulder. “It’s the best offer I can make you.”
I nodded through a grimace. “All right. Before I go, is there anything you can tell me?”
“There’ve been three break-ins. First one was at the end of May. A family got back from vacation and reported that while they were away, someone came in and stole about five-thousand dollars’ worth of items. TV, PlayStation, some jewelry. Oddly, there was a car in the garage, keys in a kitchen drawer, but the culprit didn’t think to take it.”
“Hmm. Maybe they ran out of time? Or they didn’t want to go through the trouble of offloading a hot car?”
“It’s possible. My guess is we’re dealing with someone young, an amateur. The things they’re drawn to are TVs, game systems, a signed football at the second home.” Chief smoothed over the other side of his jaw and then dropped his hand. “We dusted for prints and found a couple of partials, but nothing popped in the system. We bumped up patrols and suggested they organize a neighborhood watch. Nothing happened for a couple months. Then, two more happened back to back. Same story. The second family had just come back from a family reunion. Then Candy’s house got hit while she was away visiting a friend in Oregon.”
“So, all three break-ins were homes that were unoccupied.”
“Right. You know how it goes,” Chief Lincoln said, “People blast their vacation plans all over social media without a second thought and somehow that info gets into the wrong hands. For these types of opportune criminals, it’s like shooting fish in a barrel.”
“Any prints at the second or third homes?”
“Same as the first. But still, no match in any of the systems.”
“Right. What about the neighbors? You said you’d questioned them. No one saw anything?”
Chief Lincoln shook his head. “All three of them were homes with a little space around them. They weren’t in these cookie-cutter developments they’re putting together. You know, the ones where the houses are so close you can lean out your kitchen window to borrow a cup of sugar from the neighbor?”
Chief wasn’t a fan of new anything, which made him the perfect resident of the sleepy town. He wasn’t that much older than I was, but our lives and backgrounds were vastly different. While I’d left my small-town life behind for the glamour and excitement of Los Angeles as soon as I turned eighteen, Chief had stayed in the same town since birth and had rarely left. He’d recently become engaged to Cassie, and if I had to bet, I’d guess they’d settle down, buy a house, have some kids, and stay forever.
Not that it was a bad plan. I could see the appeal of living in a coastal Mayberry indefinitely, but it had taken me a while to see that.
“How did the burglars get in? Broken window? Door?”
“Window, all three. No security alarms.”
“And then, is there any connection between the victims?”
“Not that we’ve seen.”
I logged away the information he’d given me and mentally ran through the list of important questions, seeing if I’d forgotten any of my standard line-up. Deciding I was off to a good start, I turned. “All right. Well, I’ll check in with Candy and let you know if I find anything worth pursuing.”
“Good luck with it. I’ll be more than happy to put this guy away if you can run him down.”
I gave a half-hearted salute. “Sure thing, Chief.”
I turned to leave when he called after me, “And this time, Nick, no lawnmowers, okay?”
Chapter 3
In a rare stroke of luck, I arrived at the library just as The Harbor Hubbub team was assembling for their weekly meeting. The woman at the front counter told me about the meeting, then pointed me downstairs. I thanked her and set off for the basement.
The large space was set up as something of a study space, with six long tables all side by side across the floor. Acoustic tiles hung on the walls and ceiling, buffering the sounds of the voices coming from the table where the six contributors sat. A carafe of coffee and a box of donuts formed a tantalizing centerpiece and my stomach quickly reminded me that in my rush to get to the police station, I’d skipped breakfast.
Six pairs of eyebrows lifted at my approach. All of the faces were familiar, people I’d seen at the coffee house or grocery store, but I didn’t confidently know any of their names. Candy Shepherd was easy to spot, as her black and white headshot had accompanied the article in the local paper. She sat at the head of the table, flanked by the other members. She was a petite woman with silver, shoulder-length hair. A pair of wire-framed glasses clung to the tip of her nose as she stared up at me, her expression quizzical. “Can we help you?”
“I think so,” I told her, offering a brief smile to each of the participants before continuing. “My name is Nick Rivers. I run a private investigation business here in town.”
“We know who you are,” Candy told me, her tone sharp.
“Right.” My smile faltered. “Well, I—uh, saw your article about the string of burglaries and wanted to stop by and offer my assistance.”
She leaned back in her seat and pushed her glasses back up to the bridge of her pug nose. “Is that so?”
“Um, yes?”
She harrumphed. “I think we’ll pass, Mr. Rivers.”
I bristled at her cold tone. “I’m sorry, but have I done something to offend you?”
Candy glanced to her left and then back up at me. “Not to me personally. But Louella here was one of your so-called clients before and wasn’t too thrilled with your work.”
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