He beat me by a fraction of a second and I raised my hand and called for another.
“I’m just getting started,” I said, and then burped. “There,” I announced. “More space.”
Darren stared at me blankly for a moment and then let out a boom of laughter.
“I knew there was a reason why Mikey likes you,” he said.
I flicked hair over my shoulder and announced in my best Miss Piggy voice, “‘Moi has always possessed a charm that is lethal to men.’”
A biker dude snorted his beer out of his nose, causing the others to roll around laughing.
Who knew biker gangs had such a Muppet sense of humour?
Two new glasses of beer were placed between us. Dollar bills were being exchanged in the background. I noticed Charlie was placing a bet. I narrowed my eyes at him when it became obvious he was betting against me.
“You sure you want to do this, little girl?” Darren checked.
“You sure you can drink as much as Mikey?” I shot back.
He leaned forward and said, voice low, “I taught the kid everything he knows.” Then started on his beer.
I tipped my head back and downed the glass, barely swallowing. My stomach felt about the size of a basketball. My head spun. But the glass hit the table before Darren’s did.
The tavern took on a strange type of silence. There was still noise there. Heavy breaths. Surprised gasps. The clink of a nervous glass. The scrape of a boot on wood. But all eyes were looking at Darren who was staring at me.
“Mikey taught you that?” he asked.
I nodded. The room spun. Darren had started to look appealing. The guy did have a healthy amount of beard growth.
“You are one strange chick, Summer O’Dare,” he said.
“I got something she could swallow,” one of his biker mates said.
Darren reached out and hauled him across the table, fist to leather vest.
“Shut up,” he said.
“Just a joke, man,” the guy grumbled.
“This is Mikey’s girl,” Darren announced.
“I ain’t arguing the fact,” the guy said, hands up in surrender.
“Where is Mikey?” I asked, slurring my words and swaying slightly. I gave up the fight and leaned my head against Darren’s shoulder.
It was big and muscly, and so I reached up and punched it as if trying to make my pillow softer.
Darren snorted and sat back, bringing me with him. I lay across his chest like a well-fed, sleepy cat.
“Can’t hold her liquor,” someone said. Dollars changed hands; people started making conversation, someone started the karaoke machine back up.
“Mikey know she got the hots for you?” a voice said from across the table.
“Summer’s off limits,” Darren told him.
Bodies shifted; I could see through the slits of my eyelids, the guy across the table hold up his hands again.
“Should have met the boat by now,” another of Darren’s men said.
“He’ll phone when he makes the exchange.”
“I don’t know, Darren,” one said. “Word is they beat us to it.”
Darren chuckled, making his chest rumble and my cheek vibrate where it pressed against his leather vest.
“They don’t know we took it,” he said gruffly. “What they don’t know won’t hurt ‘em. Mikey will make the exchange, the deal will be set, and it won’t matter then what they come up with.”
“If you say so.”
A brush of something across my neck made me startle. Darren cut the next biker dude’s words off with a growl.
“Summer, honey,” he said. “You should go home.”
I pushed up and blinked in the low lights of the room.
“Did I win?” I asked, yawning.
“Honey, you won the jackpot at birth.” He reached up and ran his fingers through my ginger hair. But his eyes weren’t on my luscious locks; they were decidedly south of there.
I snorted.
“Puberty, Derwit,” I said. “I think you mean puberty.”
He let one of those massive booms of laughter out as I climbed to my feet, waved lazily at Charlie, and then allowed my boarder to lead my wobbly butt out of the tavern to hoots and whistles and lewd comments aplenty.
Chapter 8
And Not So Much Like A Beached Whale Who’d Guzzled Several Glasses Of Beer Over The Course Of An Evening
Cool air met my flushed cheeks. Charlie was grumbling about puking in the backseat of his surf mobile. But he had the decency to wrap an arm about me to prevent any nasty tumbles involving grazed knees and more rips in my jeans.
I sucked in a deep breath of fresh air, felt coarse rope slide across the back of my neck, and let the scent of sea and salt and the fishery wash over me.
Mikey was meeting a boat, and I had an idea of where. And considering what Darren and his goons had been discussing, I was pretty darn sure Mikey was meeting that boat this evening.
I let out a groan at my bloated belly and then stalked to the nearest bushes. A brief, embarrassing moment later, I was feeling much more like myself. And not so much like a beached whale who’d guzzled several glasses of beer over the course of an evening.
I accepted the bottle of water Charlie handed me from the boot of his car and rinsed out my mouth.
“You’re not as stoned as you looked, are you?” he asked.
I shook my head. There was some residual dizziness, but my skull hadn’t started pounding, and my vision was clear.
“I don’t recommend that style of investigating,” I told him.
“Are we on a case?”
I blinked at him.
“Of course, we’re on a case. How much did you have to drink anyway?”
“Two glasses.” He frowned at me. “And I’m a dude; I can handle it.”
I scoffed. “My boobs alone can handle two glasses of beer in an evening.”
He blinked at me and did not glance at my boobs once.
I shook my head and opened the passenger door of his car.
“Come on, Gnarly Charlie,” I told him. “I’ll swap cars at home, and you can get your beauty sleep.”
“You’re going out again? Wait a minute. You’re driving?”
“I’m perfectly sober.”
“Summer! You downed four glasses of beer in less time than it takes most people to brush their teeth.”
“What a strange analogy,” I said.
“You know what I mean.” He sighed and got into the driver’s seat. “I’ll drive you wherever you need to go.”
I stared across the car at him.
“That goes above and beyond the boarder/landlady agreement.”
He huffed out a breath and turned the car over. Black smoke billowed out of the tailpipe.
“I was getting bored hanging around home anyway,” he said. “And who knows what kind of trouble you’ll get up to.”
“I am licensed for trouble,” I agreed.
“You think I didn’t figure that out when you challenged a gang member to a drinking match?”
“He’s an old friend.”
“He copped a feel, stared down your top, and sported a woody when you draped all over his lap acting drunk and disorderly.”
“Ew!” I shouted, covering my ears. “I’m not listening to this.”
“For a good-looking girl, you are really thick.”
“Because I’m a girl?”
“Because you’re…” he waved at my chest. “Surely this isn’t the first time someone’s horned on you because of them.”
“You mean my boobs.” He winced. “Say it. Boob. Go on; I dare you. Boob. Boob. Boob.”
“Summer.” He sounded in pain.
I laughed quietly to myself.
“Did it not occur to you that they’re a tool,” I murmured, staring out at the night as it whizzed by.
I could tell he was sneaking glances at me. At my face, and not my boobs.
“I learned early on that guys wouldn’t
hide their interest in them,” I said quietly. “And that girls wouldn’t hide their distaste. Rather than try to ignore their existence, which I’m telling you now is quite an impossibility, I decided I’d use them for something.”
“That’s why you became a PI?”
I turned and looked at him.
“I became a PI because of my boobs? Really?”
“You know what I mean.”
I wasn’t sure I did, but I let it go.
“Can’t live with them,” I muttered.
“Can’t live without them,” Charlie finished for me.
I smiled. “They serve a very valuable purpose. A trick up my sleeve.”
“Or on your chest.”
I laughed, which, I was thinking, was exactly what Charlie had been aiming for.
“So, where are we going, oh Chesty One?” he asked.
“You’re getting rather lippy,” I told him. “I like it.”
He grinned but kept his eyes on the road in front of him.
“Mangonui,” I said a moment later. “You know the wharf?”
“Yeah, right next to the fish and chip shop.”
“That’s the one.”
“What’s there?”
I looked back out at the sea as we drove through Cable Bay. The rope was back, but at least it wasn’t strangling me. The Shimmering Sands Apartments were up on the left, overlooking the ocean. Was Big Wig still there? What had been stolen? What did it have to do with Mikey?
It was time Detective Douche coughed up some info, I thought. Once I talked to Mikey and checked out what the ever loving heck he’d been up to, I’d confront Danvers and demand to know what I was actually dealing with here.
Corporate espionage. The Rikas. Rope. None of it made any sense.
“Summer?” Charlie pressed.
I realised I hadn’t answered his last question.
“What’s at the wharf?” he asked again.
“Seagulls,” I told him. And Mikey Rika exchanging something with someone on a fishing vessel.
I shook my head as the rope pressed in firmer to the back of my neck. Rubbing a hand across the skin there didn’t do anything for the phantom sensations, but it helped to stop me from fidgeting. I’d started to feel like we weren’t driving quickly enough. Like a clock was ticking and we were racing it.
I shifted in my seat and forcefully lowered my hand.
The rope scraped across the skin of my nape menacingly.
Charlie took Mill Bay Road at a sedate pace that had me grinding my teeth. The Holden rumbled down the twisting road, the brakes squealing when he liberally applied them. I thought perhaps Mikey could have met someone at the boat ramp in Mill Bay itself, but the rope eased off my neck as soon as the thought materialised.
Mangonui Wharf, I purposely thought instead.
The rope returned with a vengeance.
It was late; the moon was high. I rolled down the window of the car, making the glass squeak as I rotated the handle. Even the Mighty Micra had electric windows. The scent of the sea washed in, but it didn’t make me feel calm like it usually did. My pulse rate increased.
Swinging on to Beach Road, I almost told Mikey to stop when the Police Station and the realtor’s came into view. Danvers’ SUV was parked in front of the cottage to the side of the station. The lights were out. The curtains drawn. If Suzy was visiting, they’d retired to bed.
I said nothing and the Holden rolled past.
The fish and chip shop appeared. It was after hours now, but I could still smell the fat used to cook them. A car was parked out front. I recognised it as Heather Malcolm’s. She ran the Mangonui Fish Shop and would be writing up her sales or checking stock or whatever it was she needed to do in the middle of the night at a takeaway shop.
The wharf came next, and Charlie slowed the car down. I couldn’t see any boats tied up to the side of it, but the fishery shed did block some of the view from the waterfront. There were no fishery trucks. No cars of any description. If Mikey were still here, he’d either taken his bike with him onto the wharf or parked it some distance away to avoid suspicion.
The wharf was open to anyone who wanted to walk on it or use it to fish from. Just because the fishery worked from there didn’t make it private property. But a Harley rumbling in so late at night, the rider dressed in black and sporting gang patches, would have caught the eye of someone out for an evening stroll along the boardwalk.
The engine ticked quietly as the waves outside the open window lapped up on the shore. The clink of rigging could be heard from a boat moored out in the harbour. The sound of someone’s stereo or TV wove seamlessly through the air. The Mangonui Hotel let out a burst of laughter.
“What now?” Charlie whispered from beside me.
I jerked in my seat. Then got my mojo on, reaching into the bag I’d left in the wheel well earlier and pulling my firearm free.
“Holy shit,” Mikey whispered.
I checked the gun, then replaced it in the handbag, swinging the strap over my shoulder, so it crossed between my breasts. I didn’t like wearing a handbag like this. My boobs were freaks of nature as they were. Subjecting them to a strap dividing the masses just made things messy. But I’d left my shoulder holster at home. It was summer. And even if I was wearing a skimpy singlet, I was definitely not going to subject myself to a jacket.
“Stay here,” I said and slipped out of the vehicle.
Charlie climbed out the other side.
“What did I just say?” I demanded.
“I’m not missing any of this,” he told me.
“Are you mad?”
“I like to think of it as inquisitive,” he said, smiling. “I’m curious by nature.”
“You know what they said about curiosity and the cat,” I growled, keeping my voice low.
“That I’m not a cat and this is Northland, New Zealand. And really, Summer, you watch too many movies.”
“What part of the Taipa Tavern did you miss?” I snapped at him as he rounded the bonnet of the car and stood beside me. “The bikers? Or the gang patches? Or maybe you couldn’t smell the unprocessed weed?”
He blinked at me and then looked at the fishery shed.
“It’ll be easier if you just go with it,” he said. “Roll with the punches. That sort of thing.”
No-one likes having their words flung back at them. And he hadn’t even been there when I’d said the exact same thing to Danvers.
“You’re strange,” I told my boarder. He grinned at me.
I would be lying if I said I didn’t appreciate his presence behind me as I stepped out onto the wharf. Fishing boats tugged on their moorings. Rigging rattled. Rope swept across the back of my neck, making me shudder. I strained to hear anything out of the ordinary. But it seemed like an ordinary night in Mangonui.
I flicked a glance along the main road toward where Aunt Sadie lived. Her house was lit up like Christmas. In fact, I could see the flashing lights of her Christmas tree. Red. Blue. Green. Back to red again. She was probably throwing a swingers party.
I shuddered again, and it had nothing to do with the persistent presence of rope scraping along the back of my neck.
It was highly probable that I’d missed Mikey altogether. And that I’d have to make a visit to the Rika homestead tomorrow and confront him on his home territory. But if Darren Rika and his pothead brothers scared me, their kaumatua grandmother sure as heck did.
I had to hope that I caught Mikey in the act, whatever the act was, and then was able to talk some sense into him. Failing that, I’d find out once and for all whether he was involved in the intellectual property theft from the Shimmering Sands Apartments and help him mitigate the fallout afterwards.
The fallout being Detective Alex Danvers.
Corporate espionage. The Rikas. Rope.
My boots made barely a sound on the concrete wharf, and I was surprised to hear how silent Charlie was behind me. Maybe catching waves and balancing on surfboards all day long gave one
a light step when back on terra firma.
I slowed as I approached the corner of the fishery shed. The scent of fish guts and bird poop was strong here. I heard Yoda repeat that in his Yoda voice inside my head. I sucked in a silent breath of air and held it, listening.
No conversation. No boat sounds other than those out on the moorings in the harbour. I checked over my shoulder; Charlie was still there. His eyes met mine, and he nodded eagerly. As if we were playing hide and seek and this was all some sort of exciting adventure. I swallowed down my discomfort and let the breath I’d been holding out, pulling my weapon out of my handbag in one smooth motion.
I held it up, double-handed, and peeked around the corner of the shed.
There was no boat moored to the side of the wharf. No Harley Davidson. No shake of hands or exchange of money and drugs.
But there was a person, lying out cold on a coil of thick rope.
The clouds above shifted, hiding the moon. The shape I’d made out on top of the fishing ropes became dark shadows and indistinct edges. I crept forward, checking my periphery, straining to hear a sound that would indicate an ambush.
The person came into clearer focus. It became a body and then a man; dressed in dark clothes. Chocolate coloured skin and brown hair made deciphering details in the low light harder. But he was large and wore leather. Big biker boots encased each foot.
For a horrifying moment, I thought it was Mikey.
And then the clouds shifted, and the moon shone down from above, illuminating everything.
The rope sensation slithered off my neck and disappeared.
The body. The man was dead. And he had a coil of thick rope wrapped around his neck.
Chapter 9
I Felt Like A Deer Caught In The Sights Of A Hunter
I didn’t know him. I didn’t recognise him. And a guilty part of me was relieved about that. And then the private investigator in me woke up.
I checked his pulse. None. I checked the immediate area. Nothing out of the ordinary on a dirty fishing wharf. I checked his hands and fingers. He’d scratched his neck, trying to get the rope to loosen. Blood had trickled down his throat. He had four distinct lines where his nails had gouged into flesh on either side of his neck.
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