The final file was the linchpin and had the hair on the back of my neck standing on end. I didn’t get any touches, but I didn’t need them to know that something bigger than a simple theft and destruction of property was involved. Corporate espionage.
I stared at the wording, trying in vain to align Doubtless Bay with anything corporate, let alone of the espionage variety. You just didn’t get Big Business and 007 in the same sentence as Northland, New Zealand.
I reached forward and ran my finger over the typewritten words. The Three Cees made an appearance, and my whole body shivered at the chill that invaded my bones. I forced an unconcerned look on my face and leaned back in my chair.
“Someone’s got a lot of money to throw around, and that’s why you’re here,” I announced.
“Correct.”
“Why a whole year?”
He reached into his jeans pocket and pulled out a stock standard police notebook. Flipping to the relevant page, he placed it on the table and spun it so I could read what had been recorded.
He had elegant penmanship and a tendency to loop the top of his Ts and the bottom of his Ls. I wondered what that said about the man.
The handwriting aside, the notebook revealed a lot more. Someone had reported another theft of corporate information this morning from within the holiday home of a businessman staying at the Shimmering Sands Luxury Apartments.
“What was stolen?” I asked.
“You can’t tell?”
“I’m not a psychic, Detective.”
“And yet you find things experienced police officers fail to find.”
“Not my fault they’re blind.”
“We’re not blind, Ms O’Dare, just constrained by the law and normal societal parameters.”
“I think you mean mundane parameters.”
“If you say so.”
I chewed on my bottom lip. I wasn’t lying; I wasn’t a psychic. My touches or feelings often led me to answers quicker than the average cop, but that didn’t mean I was a freak of nature. I just had an uncanny ability to cut to the heart of a case and find the key that unlocked its mysteries.
I bet my next Coffee Cube donut that the same corporate company was involved, as well as the same surveillance equipment, but not necessarily the same borrowed base of operations. Doubtless Bay had a plethora of holiday homes, some of which sat there vacant, waiting on their owners to leave the rat race for a weekend and make them feel lived in again. Some houses sat dormant year on year.
Finding a bolt hole was not a hard task. Getting into the holiday apartments to spy on the visiting corporate bigwig would be a little trickier. It could involve simple subterfuge, a little B & E. Or it could involve a holiday job at the Shimmering Sands in some capacity.
The soft touch of material whispered across the back of my neck. What was that? A t-shirt? No. A towel. A fluffy white one at a guess.
I looked up at the detective, who hadn’t shifted an inch in the past five minutes; his eyes glued to me and slightly narrowed. If it were Detective Pieters, I could have just blurted what I knew - or deduced - out. But I didn’t know this man and I didn’t think he’d be as accepting as old man Pieters eventually came to be where I was concerned.
I stood up and walked into the house without a word. I’d give the new cop credit; he didn’t follow me. He sat patiently on the deck; his attention returned to the scenery. The sun had set. A warm glow from inside the house provided the only illumination he needed. The crash of waves the backdrop to our picture perfect haven.
When I returned with a revised contract and pen and sat down, he slowly turned his gaze from the view to me as if reluctant to give up a moment of his worshipping. I smiled to myself and pushed the piece of paper across the table towards him. I held it down with two fingers and offered a challenge with my gaze.
He didn’t reach for the pen I held in my free hand; instead, he pulled one from his pocket and skim-read the contract then signed on the bottom line.
Even Detective Pieters had tried to negotiate my hourly rate every single time.
I blinked at Danvers, who stood up and pocketed his pen and notebook.
“I take it you’ll start tomorrow,” he said.
“I started the moment you exited your vehicle on my property, Detective,” I told him.
“I hadn’t signed the contract then.”
I smiled at him and proceeded to fold the piece of paper in question up, ready for filing inside my safe. This little beauty wouldn’t see the light of day until these cases were solved and I was about to be paid.
“I knew you’d sign,” I told him. “It’s well past business hours. You came here straight from a frustrating day in the office. Your ear is red from having your phone to it most of the afternoon, no doubt listening to Big Wig complain about whatever has been stolen and your lack of progress in the hours since he reported it. You’ve checked your watch twice. You’re late for something, but whatever it is isn’t as important as this.” I shrugged. “A date maybe. You seem like the kind of guy who puts the needs of the public before his own needs and that of his girlfriend. Not the best way to keep her happy, by the way. But you’ll figure that out. You don’t trust me or trust in what you’ve been told I can do, but still, you’re here. You like results, and if I get the results you need, you’ll put up with a little kookery. Just this one time. You also wouldn’t have come at all if you had no intention of giving this avenue a go. Again, just this one time. And anyone who stays at the Shimmering Sands Luxury Apartments in Cable Bay has a lot of cash to throw around, so it’s justified. You’re justified. I think you like to be justified, Detective. Am I correct?”
He stared at me and then muttered, “You’re very strange.”
“Didn’t Detective Pieters warn you?”
“He didn’t, no.”
But someone else did.
Suzy the Floozy strikes again.
“Just as well you’re desperate then, isn’t it,” I told him with a fake grin.
“If moving to Northland wasn’t a desperate move, lady, I don’t know what is.”
I wondered what his story was. And then I wondered if it mattered.
He wouldn’t last. Either Suzy would do him in or Doubtless Bay would.
“Welcome to the Far North, Detective,” I said and escorted him from my property.
Chapter 3
Not Even A Mouse
My surfer dude came home at eleven; smelling of rum and covered in sand, trekking the golden granules throughout my house. He was still sleeping off the surf, sun and spirits when I left. I made a quick job of sweeping the floorboards, leaving a few windows open because I couldn’t risk boiling him alive even if it was crime season, and then headed out to my car.
The garage roof still stood, the Mighty Micra no worse for wear. I checked my rearview mirror and then hightailed it out of there. I had a crime to solve, cold cases to close, and a dog to uplift from my aunt’s.
Doug loved spending time with Aunt Sadie, but he loved accompanying me on cases even more. But ducks and dogs are a bad combination, and so yesterday he’d been let loose in Lady Sadie’s small backyard.
By now, both of them should have been ready to pitch a fit.
I rolled into Mangonui five minutes later, passing the Police Station and noting the presence of a certain police issue SUV, and sneering at the realtors next door. It was too early for Suzy, thankfully. I pulled an illegal u-turn outside the liquor store and then parked out the front of my aunt’s house. Right across the road from the boardwalk.
Sadie sat out on the deck in her rocking chair husking corn. I rolled my eyes as I climbed the steps to reach her, then picked up a corn cob and started adding my haphazard efforts to her hillbilly theatre performance.
“What, no straw to chew on?” I asked her.
“I’m wearing my denim overalls,” she countered, moving her corn to the side to show me her latest outfit. The denim overalls were cutoffs. With frayed edges and artfully placed holes
by her wizened old hip bones. She wore a bright yellow singlet underneath it all and possibly no underwear. I wasn’t sure, and I wasn’t checking.
“Anybody taken a photo yet?” I enquired.
“Several. One even asked for an autograph.”
“What did you tell them?”
“That it’d cost them fifty bucks.”
“I would have settled for a tenner.”
“Yeah, but you’re cheap. I’m not.”
Said the lady in worn denim cutoffs.
She patted my knee and offered a welcoming smile. “Doug missed you.”
“Mrs Sargasso’s ducks thank you for dog sitting. As do I.”
“Any time, poppet.”
The dog in question poked his spotted nose out of the door and then barked. With more enthusiasm than a nine-year-old Dalmatian should have, he bounded out of the house and danced around our feet, upsetting bowls of husked corn and sending their outer layers flying.
“Doug!” I cried. He barked back something that could have been “Where have you been?” But was more likely “Feed me. Walk me. Love me.” Or some combination thereof. I opened my arms and let him slobber all over me.
Once that was out of the way, I turned to Aunt Sadie and said, “I’ve got a new job.”
“Do you need to leave Doug with me?”
That’s what I loved about Aunt Sadie. She never failed to offer support. Never questioned my choice of career. And could husk a corn cob in ten seconds flat.
She was a keeper, that’s for sure.
“Not yet, but I may have to call on your dog sitting talents in the future,” I told her.
“Any time, pumpkin,” she said and started on her next cob of corn.
“Who are you feeding?” I asked. “The NZ Army?”
“Close enough. The RSA is playing at the bowling club.”
“Out of towners?”
“The best kind.”
“They don’t stay too long,” I finished the local quip automatically.
“They’re retired, ambulatory, and on vacation,” she clarified. “I’m sure one or two of them wouldn’t mind a walk on the wild side of Doubtless Bay life.”
I groaned and scratched a now much more subdued Doug behind the ears.
“That’s our cue to cut and run,” I told him. His tail thumped on the deck excitedly.
“You think I can’t hook one?” Aunt Sadie asked.
“They’re not fish.”
“But I am a shark.”
“Stop it. Please.”
She cackled like the ninety-year-old fiend that she was.
“Go have fun,” she told me and possibly Doug. My gran’s last surviving sister was an equal species opportunity kind of gal. “And find yourself your own honey-bunny to snuggle.”
“I’m not in the market for a honey-bunny,” I told her primly. “I have criminals to catch.”
“Seen the new cop?”
“Seen him. Met him. Got hired by him.”
“You go, girl. Next, you’ll be swapping saliva with him.”
I choked on a laugh. “Not my type.”
“He’s male, isn’t he?”
“Well, yeah.”
“What more do you need?”
“Someone single?” I suggested.
“Single is a relative term.”
“Someone who fancies me, then.”
“Wear some lipstick. That always works.”
Not the type of in-your-face-cherry-red my aunt does, though, I thought.
“Thanks for the advice.”
She studied me over the top of her corn. “You’re a beautiful young woman, Summer,” she told me. “Any man would be lucky to have you on his arm.”
I smiled at her.
“Or on his lap,” she added. “Stuck to his face. Wiggling those hips.”
“Please stop.”
“Shaking those maracas.”
“Sadie.”
“Displaying those pins in all their naked glory.”
“Just as long as nothing else is naked in this fantasy of yours,” I muttered.
“I heard you can get push-up bras now.”
“Does it look like I need to draw more attention to my boobs?” I asked.
“Men can’t resist well-supported breasts. Buy some bras. Red ones to match the lipstick you’re gonna wear.”
“Heaven help me,” I muttered, grabbing Doug’s leash and attaching it to his collar. “Save me, Doug,” I whispered in his ear.
He licked me.
But he wasn’t wearing his superhero cape, so I was out of luck on the saving front.
“So long, Lady Sadie,” I said and started down the front path.
“Boob tube!” she shouted after me.
I closed my eyes and pretended I didn’t know her.
“One of those ones with a sewn-in bra cup for extra support!”
Not my great aunt.
“In red!”
I waved and got Doug inside the car as quickly as physically possible. The Micra might have squealed as I shot out of Mangonui; placing much-needed space between my crazy relative and my flushed cheeks. About the only place I would ever consider wearing red at all and not by choice.
I wound down the windows, turned up the stereo, and let Doug hang his head and tongue out as I made my way to Cable Bay, two suburbs over. The file Detective Danvers had left with me last night sat on the front passenger seat. The address of the holiday home vandalised last year on the top. I’d work my way back from last year’s crimes, trying to fill in the blanks Detective Douche was determined to leave for me, until I had an idea of what was what.
A little groundwork to rack up the billable hours was always a good way to start. Plus, I couldn’t help feeling the new detective would be keeping an eye on me in some capacity. I couldn’t spot a cop car on my tail, but that didn’t mean much. I got the impression, Danvers didn’t leave much to chance. If I could convince him I came by my clues the old fashioned and mundane way, he might give me a longer leash in which to operate with, in the future.
I glanced back at Doug, who slobbered delightfully over the front passenger seat as he stuffed his head out the only open window he could reach comfortably. A long string of drool hung out behind him, occasionally splashing against the rear window of the car.
I ignored the mess and concentrated on the traffic. All three cars. In less than five minutes, I was parked outside the address in the topmost file. The weatherboard house was a block back from the beach at Cable Bay, halfway up the hillside. Curtains were pulled over the windows, either the inhabitants were still asleep, or the house was once again vacant for the summer. It never failed to astound me the money people had spare to waste on empty houses.
Not taking anything for granted, I checked my wallet for my private investigator’s license, checked my concealed weapon was in fact concealed, and then let Doug out. He started sniffing around a toitoi bush and then cocked his leg to mark his territory. Something rustled in the bushes making him bark.
“Doug!” I snapped. He heeled immediately. “Time to work.”
I walked up the front path to the paint-peeled blue door, Doug at my heels. If someone were asleep inside, he would have indicated. I was pretty sure the place was vacant. But to cover my butt, and because of those pesky laws Danvers referred to last night, I announced my presence with a couple of loud bangs on the door.
Nothing stirred. Not even a mouse. Well, maybe a mouse did, I wasn’t sure. Doug was a well-trained assistance dog and knew better than to get distracted by rodents. He sat his spotted haunches down on the front stoop and cocked a single ear.
I tried the door handle. It was locked. There was a crack between the door jamb and the curtain on the window beside it, but it was too dim inside to see if the place was trashed.
“Check around the back, boy,” I commanded.
Doug took off as I slowly followed.
The place was reasonably well maintained, so the owners must have hired someone to m
ow the lawns for them. At this time of year though, they’d only need to visit once a month. Leaving a good deal of the time available for trespassers.
But having been used once for nefarious deeds, the house was clearly inappropriate now. And empty. I came out onto the back deck and watched as Doug sniffed his way around the garden, leaving a reminder of his presence here and there for future dog visitors.
I tried the door handle on the back ranch slider. Then a couple of windows. But the place was well and truly locked up. And now sported a fancy alarm box and stickers on the rear of the building.
I hadn’t expected to find any clues here almost a year after the crime had been committed. But I had hoped to get a touch of something from the location. My neck was blessedly free of sensations though, and the property was blessedly free of anything helpful.
The bigwig was staying in Cable Bay, but that didn’t mean the perpetrators were. Or that they still were. Danvers had indicated something had been stolen already. Why would the thieves stick around if they’d got what they came for?
But last time they’d stayed close. Big Wig had been burgled at his previous Cable Bay holiday home. The guy was a creature of habit. Cable Bay was nice, no two ways about it. But to holiday here twice and after he’d been robbed once here already? Something didn’t add up.
“Nothing here,” I said. “Let’s go.”
Doug bounded first around the house, tail wagging. His bark of greeting let me know we were no longer alone.
I came out from behind the house and spotted a private security company vehicle. Not exactly the cops, but close enough if you were up to no good. Thankfully, I wasn’t. And I knew the guy. Ten minutes after leaving here, the entire resident population of Doubtless Bay would know I was working a case for the cops.
“Hey, Stu,” I said, thrusting my hands in my short pockets.
“Summer! Thought that was your little rust bucket.”
I eyed the Micra but couldn’t spot any rust on it.
“Did I set off an alarm?” I asked him.
“Nah, but a neighbour saw you drive up. Neighbourhood Watch is strong in these parts.”
Chasing Summer Page 3