“Nope.” I tried to sound casual. “We did work well together on that case, but it was strictly professional. And since I haven’t come across any dead bodies lately, there’s no reason for us to see each other.”
“You know there’s more to it than that.” Jackie knew me too well.
“Not so much. Besides, I have a lunch date. A real date, mind you.” I grinned. I thought about lunch with Sebastian. I would be a cougar.
Jackie stood. “Who?”
“Sebastian.” She knew who he was, though she’d never met him.
“The creeper from the vampire murder?” She grabbed my cup. “Come on. Let’s eat something while we’re waiting for Charles.”
“He’s not a creeper,” I said, as I followed her to the kitchen. I wasn’t sure why I felt the need to defend him.
Jackie rummaged through the kitchen cabinets and pulled out some crackers, peanut butter, and honey. I refilled my coffee cup and poured a cup for her.
She smeared peanut butter on the crackers and licked the excess off the knife. “Well, Charles likes him, but that doesn’t mean anything. I thought his involvement with those two girls was a bit gross. I mean having sex with two girls who lived together? Yuck.”
“He’s young,” I said, by way of defense.
“Oh, that’s a good reason to bang best friends.” Jackie sat the plate of crackers on the table.
I looked at them longingly, wanting to eat every cracker, but then I looked down at my hips. I’m pretty sure I gained at least ten pounds in the last couple of months. Hoping and waiting for a phone call will make a girl eat more than she should. What I should have done was spend those anxious minutes (okay, hours) running. One cracker, I told myself, I could have one.
As my luck would have it, Charles walked back into the room just as I stuffed the peanut butter goodness into my mouth. He didn’t say anything, but his gaze lingered on my hips. I wanted to flip him off.
“There’d better be one on that plate for me.” Charles reached out with his manicured hand and snatched up a cracker.
“Don’t you dare put that in your mouth until you give me some information,” Jackie snapped. She was serious, but there was a playful edge.
Charles’s hand stopped midway to his mouth. He held the cracker there. “As a matter of fact…” He stuffed the cracker in his mouth, and I swear he purred.
“Bitch,” Jackie said, and laughed.
Charles may be a fop, in his white Jeans and denim colored V-neck sweater that fit like a glove, but his manners didn’t always keep up with his style. “You wish,” he said around the peanut butter in his mouth. “But I do have a little something.”
29
I wasn’t sure if I was relieved or more frustrated after Charles offered up his information. I understood it was the best he could do for the moment, but the waiting was killing me, so I could only imagine what it was doing to Jackie.
“I promise I’ll have more by the end of the day.” Charles grabbed another cracker. At this point, he was the only person eating.
Jackie said, “Please explain it to me one more time.”
Charles actually swallowed before speaking. “Hacking the passwords was easy. I mean it’s just the basic interface that came with the laptop. After I had that password, it was easy to hack into her email and social networking accounts. Once I was in, I found a series of emails and social posts from a guy named Dylan Frederick. I’m pretty sure it’s not his real name. And by the way, your daughter needs to update her email provider to something more secure.”
Impatient now, Jackie said, “I got that part. Thanks for writing down the passwords. I think I’ll just give Catey back her laptop and phone, and tell her I changed my mind. She doesn’t need to know you hacked in. But now what? I mean, I don’t get the whole IP address thing.”
Charles jumped up and sat on the kitchen counter. “The IP address is kind of like a P.O. box. It’s a locator. Most people can only get the service provider information and maybe a city, if they’re lucky.” He put his fingers close to his mouth, breathed a fog on them, and polished them on his shirt. “But I can get you the exact location.”
Jackie jumped up. “An exact location? So I can see where this boy lives? Oh, God, I hope it’s a nice house in rural Wisconsin.”
“What’s with you and Wisconsin?” I asked.
“It’s half way across the country, and only good boys come from farms in the Midwest, right?” Jackie sounded hopeful.
“Well, it’s not Wisconsin. It’s here in Salinas,” Charles said.
Jackie slumped back down into her chair. “Damn.” Then she sat up straight. “Well, maybe not so shitty. At least I can see who lives there. I mean, actually go to the address and see the boy.”
“Not so fast, young lady.” I had to interject. “You’re a bit too close to this. Charles and I will go see who lives at the house. We can pretend we are census takers or something, ask who lives there.”
“The census was taken a couple of years ago.”
“Well, Charles, not everyone is as up on census taking as you are. We can fake it.”
“Yes, we can,” he agreed. “Jackie, you have work to do, so Mimi and I can take care of this. As soon as I have the address, we’ll go check it out. Then you can do whatever you want with the information.”
“I really think I should be doing this. It’s my daughter, and you two already have plenty on your plates.” Jackie stood again, this time clearing the dishes from the table.
“I don’t think so.” I stood too, and put my coffee cup in the sink. “You’re too close to this, and if it turns out not to be a teenage boy Catey is flirting with, you may not be responsible for your actions.”
“I’m level-headed.” Jackie defended herself.
“Not according to the little tiff you had with your daughter this morning.” Charles jumped down from the counter.
Just as he landed on his feet, Gemma came into the kitchen. “Did I miss anything?”
I’d forgotten all about the staff meeting. “No, but we aren’t having our staff meeting this morning. Charles and I have to be someplace. Can you just give me a quick rundown of the cases you are working on?”
“Not fair. This is the first time I’m here for the new morning staff meetings and we aren’t even having one?” Gemma had pouting down to a science. Damn, if she didn’t make pouting look sexy. Oh, to be that young again.
“I promise, tomorrow we’ll have a meeting just for you. Now, what’s on your agenda?”
Gemma smiled. “I’m process serving pretty much all day. That’s about it. I do have a decoy job tomorrow night, though. I haven’t done one of those in a while. I’m really looking forward to it. I never get to flirt anymore.”
Jackie said, “So, what do you call what you do with Charles every day?”
“Oh, that,” Gemma laughed. “Torture.”
Gemma feigned poking Charles in the belly, and he flinched away. It’s not that he has an aversion to women, just Gemma. She loved to irritate Charles at every opportunity.
“Jackie, I need to have this week’s records up to date before Friday, so why don’t you get cracking on those while Charles and I are out? Then we’ll see what to do from there.”
Charles pulled his car keys from his pocket. “Be back in a bit.”
I followed him out the back door. As much as I love my Land Rover, I loved being the passenger for a change. I climbed into the passenger seat of Charles’s black Audi Spyder. This little sports car screamed sex, and Charles looked quite sexy behind the wheel.
“When will you have the information from the ISP?” I was feeling pretty cool for knowing that an Internet service provider was called ISP for short.
“I already have it. I don’t need the ISP’s permission to get the address. I just hacked in and got it myself.” Charles outdid my smugness by leaps and bounds.
“Okay, but isn’t that illegal?”
“And you have started caring now?” Charles too
k his eyes off the road a bit too long for my taste as he glared at me.
“Fine. Jeez, watch where you’re driving.” I slouched down in my seat.
“I had the address, but I didn’t want Jackie to know. I wanted to check out the house and see who lives there first. I’d rather go into this knowing what’s in store. And I do know the owner of the house isn’t Dylan Frederick.”
“This isn’t good.” My heart felt sick.
“His name is William Garrison. My buddy at the academy was looking up his vitals. I have his cell phone number from Catey’s phone.”
“You wrote down all the passwords for Jackie, right?”
“Yes.” Charles drew the word out.
“So she’s going to be able to get into Catey’s phone and read all the messages.”
Charles reached into his front pocket. This was a feat, as he struggled around the seat belt. It was only a moment before he handed me a cell phone.
“Catey’s,” Charles said.
“The password?”
Charles told me the password and within seconds, I was navigating through a very personal stream of text messages.
Dylan: I really want a sundae, but I don’t have ice cream. Can I pour chocolate on u lick until I get 2 ur cherry?
Catey: Haha, U R so cute. I’d love 2 have u lick chocolate off my body.
The rest were in the same vein, until the very recent messages:
Dylan: I can’t stop thinking abt u. I need 2 c u.
Catey: I can’t stop thinking of u either.
Dylan: What color panties r u wearing?
Catey: I’m not wearing any.
Dylan: Prove it.
Catey: Haha.
Dylan: I need 2 C u.
Catey: Call me.
Dylan:Seriously?
Catey: Call me.
“Well?” Charles was getting impatient.
“Haven’t you read them?”
“Of course I have. I just want to know what you think.”
“I think that this is very sick. I mean phone sex is bad enough if you’re an adult, but Catey is fourteen years old. She shouldn’t even know this stuff.” I could feel my stomach churning.
“Oh, honey, they learn a lot earlier these days. Sex is everywhere.” Charles grabbed the phone and scrolled down. “See that?”
I looked at what he’d pointed out. I wasn’t really sure what I was looking at. Then it hit me. We didn’t need to know the IP location, the guy’s address was in a text message. Holy cow. The text message was from two days ago.
“They were planning to meet up. I’m guessing they’ve either met, and he really is a teenage boy, or they haven’t met and he’s not a teen.”
I didn’t follow Charles’s train of thought. “Why is that?”
“Well, Catey is acting like a typical teen. If she’d met up with this guy and he was a teen, she’d still be acting like a teen. If it was a man, she’d be acting a whole lot different.” Charles was matter of fact.
I got it. She’d be humiliated if the “love of her young teen life” turned out to be a pedophile. All I could think was that Charles and I had to stop this before it went too far. I had no problem being the bad guy.
At that moment, I longed for the good old days, with no phones and no Internet. When I was a teenager, we met the guys we had crushes on in person. No texting. But there were some pretty long hours on the phone. I remember my mom footing the bill to put in what they called a “teen line.” Then I just had to fight with my sister about phone use. And the greatest invention of all: call waiting. There weren’t any predators pretending to be someone they weren’t. It was all right there in front of you. Not anymore.
“Also, did you notice the texting stopped after she told him to call her?”
“So do you think that’s the end of it?”
Charles laughed. “Hell no, now he’s talking to her instead of texting. I just can’t believe he’d text his address to her.”
We rode the rest of the way in silence. I’m not sure what he was thinking, but I was ready to kill someone. I didn’t care if it was a boy or a man. Catey was way too young for this kind of thing. Hell, I hadn’t even French kissed a boy by the time I was Catey’s age, and she was having sexting conversations. Gross.
Charles slowed the car. When we approached the house, he slowed even more, but didn’t stop. He drove about a block down and parked on the street.
The neighborhood wasn’t far from Jackie’s house. I’d say less than a half-mile. It was a street of tract homes, all the same cookie cutter style, with only the paint color to differentiate one house from another. Most had the garages protruding from the front of the home, definitely an upper middle class area of town. These houses were well maintained with simple, well-manicured yards.
“You stay in the car. I’m going to take a look around the house. Maybe look in some windows and see if it looks like there is a teenage boy in the house.”
“What if someone’s home?” I was tense.
“I’m going to call the cell number and see if I hear ringing. If I get an answer, I’ll know if anyone is home. If not, I may go snooping.”
Charles walked away as if he was taking a casual stroll down the street. I sat in the passenger seat like a good girl. When Charles disappeared around the garage to the front door of the house, it took everything in my power to stay in the car. But I did because I didn’t want to mess this up.
An hour and a half later (well it seemed like an hour and a half, but it was only ten minutes), Charles strolled right back up to the car. He got in and started the Spyder without saying a word.
I waited as long as I could stand it, and then asked, “Well?”
“I just don’t know. Something about the house doesn’t seem right. It looks very much like a bachelor pad, but I saw a backpack on the counter.”
“What counter?” I was intrigued and wished I’d followed Charles.
“I went around to the backyard, and the curtains on the sliding glass door were wide open. I saw a laptop on the kitchen table, and a backpack on the counter. Only it looked like a girl’s backpack, not a boy’s.”
“Not Catey’s backpack?” My heart lurched in my chest.
“I’m pretty sure it’s not. It was more like what a seven or eight-year-old might carry. You know, Harry Potter, or Twilight, something with that kind of design. I couldn’t see it that well.”
“What if Catey isn’t the only girl he’s ‘courting’?” I didn’t even want to think of this person with a girl younger than Catey.
“That’s not our problem at the moment. Catey is our problem.” Charles was very serious.
“But how much of a problem?” I asked it aloud, even though I knew the answer.
30
Charles drove us back to the Gotcha offices. I sat quietly, contemplating our next move. He kept to the speed limit, but just barely, and I could feel him wanting to floor the accelerator. I kept quiet, because I really didn’t know what to say. Who would explain to Jackie? I didn’t want to be the one to tell her the news.
As he maneuvered the Spyder into a parking space in our lot, Charles said, “Let me do the talking. You’ll probably say the wrong thing and get her too upset.”
I wanted to argue with him, but I knew he was right. I got out of the car and walked into the building without saying anything. I went straight to my office, looking for Lola. She was just standing as I walked in. I had disturbed her nap.
I got down on my knees and hugged her around the neck. “I’m so glad you’re just a baby, and that you’re a dog. I’m not sure I could handle being a mom to a person.” I kissed her on the lips.
When I let go of Lola, she shook her whole body as if she was shaking off water after a bath. Then she licked her lips and left the room. It’s nice to be so loved.
Lola went to slurp some water while I went to my desk and called my mom.
“Hey, are you busy?” I asked.
My mom sounded harried as usual, like there
is never enough time in a day. “Nope. What’s up?”
“I’m working on a tough one, and I just wanted to call and say I love you.” I’m not sure why this matter had me missing my mom, but I needed to tell her.
“Thanks babe, I love you, too. Is everything okay?” Her voice changed from harried to concern.
“Jackie’s daughter has an online crush, and Charles and I were just looking into it for her.” I took a breath. “Mom, I think I’m going to be sick.”
“What on earth? What’s going on?” Concern change to scared.
“We are pretty sure the online crush isn’t a teenage boy.”
“She’s a lesbian? Oh, dear, who cares? It’s all the rage these days.” There was a bit of laughter in her words.
I had to laugh, even though I didn’t really feel it. “No, Mom, I’m sure no one would care about that. We think it’s a man, not a boy, a man preying on a fourteen-year-old girl.”
There was silence on the other end of the phone.
“Mom?”
“Mimi, I just don’t know what to say. I’m so glad I’m not raising kids in this day and age.”
“I know. I’m not sure I ever want to have kids now. I’d want to shelter and protect them, but it’s just not possible to be there all the time.” My heart felt sick.
“I love you, Mimi. I’m going to call your sister and have a talk with her.”
“Great idea, Mom. I love you, too.” I hung up the phone and stared out the window.
My sister, Ann, has two kids, a boy and a girl. I was pretty sure they were getting to the age where Ann had to start worrying about this kind of crazy stuff. Mom would just mention what I was working on, and hopefully, Ann would get a hint and pay closer attention to what her kids were doing on their computers.
Jackie and Charles entered my office from the hallway. They moved like synchronized swimmers, each sitting and leaning forward in their chairs across from my desk. Somehow, this all felt so surreal.
“I wanted to tell Jackie everything with you in the room,” Charles said to me.
“Go ahead.” I braced myself to hear everything again.
Gotcha Detective Agency Mystery Box Set Page 24