Chasing Summer

by Nicola Claire

  And then I put my big girl undies on and drove to the Mangonui Police Station.

  I was still wearing Tia’s denim skirt, which thankfully fitted well enough to cover my butt. I lamented the t-shirt; it was no Miss Piggy. But the flip-flops felt all right. Checking that my gun was still in the glove compartment, I pulled out some sunglasses I kept in there and donned them. Then I lowered the windows and turned up the radio and tried to block out my turbulent thoughts.

  Suzy was at the realtor's. Usually, I’d avoid her like the plague, but I was itching for a fight, so I parked right next to her Mazda.

  The MX-5 was sparkling clean, and the Mighty Micra was covered in dirt. I slammed my door and hoped some of the sheep shit would fall off and find its way across the space to the convertible. I didn’t see Suzy glaring at me from the window of the realtors, but Detective Douche was from the front door of the police station.

  He let his gaze trail over the t-shirt that swamped me, the denim skirt that was a fraction too short, and the jandals that displayed chipped toenail polish. He finally looked me in the eyes.

  “You’re alive,” he said.

  I rubbed my forehead, sucked in a deep breath, and then pushed past him.

  “Summer?” he queried, following me inside. “What’s going on?”

  I needed a donut. But there was no way I was following Tia this morning to the Coffee Cube. I settled for coffee, helping myself to the carafe on the bench in the small kitchen behind the reception desk. Maisey blinked at me from her perch on her chair in front of her computer. Constable Candy and No-Name were thankfully out.

  I added sugar and milk, then stirred it all up, thinking the coffee was spinning as much as my head was. I took a deep drink and then another. And when I felt the caffeine finally kick in, I turned to face Danvers.

  His arms were crossed over his chest; his feet were set wide apart; his eyes were narrowed suspiciously. He looked like he was facing down a crime boss.

  “Where’s Big Wig?” I asked.

  “Is this how you want to play it?” he replied.

  “I’m building up to it,” I told him, taking another fortifying sip of my coffee.

  “Is it that bad, you have to hide behind your coffee?”

  “A donut would be better,” I said, but my voice lacked any of its usual mocking quality.

  “You’re worrying me,” he murmured.

  I scrubbed a hand over my face. Then I stared at it, wondering whether the mud and sheep droppings were still under my fingernails.

  They weren’t. But I felt dirty.

  “OK,” I said. “Let’s talk.” I headed into Danvers’ office.

  He shut the door behind us and leaned against his desk.

  “Start at the beginning,” he said. “Right after you left here yesterday.”

  I told him everything. Well, almost everything. I told him about Charlie not being a surfer and not who I thought he was. I told him about confronting Tia at the Coffee Cube and my belief that she knew who Big Wig was. I told him about being followed and narrowing down potential places for Mikey to be hiding, although I didn’t admit to using Stan to search by satellite.

  And then I told him about the shearing shed and finding Mikey. About losing my cell phone and then getting shot at. About someone firing at the Kaitaia gang members who’d been firing at us. About the Rika bikers rescuing us.

  I did not tell him about my neck or my feelings or how I came by some of this.

  But I did tell him I was at the Rikas last night.

  “And they don’t have a phone?” he said.

  “That’s what you take from all of this?” I demanded.

  “I’m processing. The phone? Do they have one?”

  I nodded my head.

  We stared at each other, time stretched, and then he shook himself awake and reached for his desk phone, breaking eye contact.

  “This is Detective Danvers, Mangonui Police,” he said when someone answered. “Put me through to the supervising officer, please.”

  He turned back around and looked at me, handset to his ear.

  “Roger. Alex,” he said in the next heartbeat. “Have you got a couple of dead bodies at a shearing shed up there?” I twiddled my thumbs while this Roger checked up on things.

  “OK. Sounds about right,” Danvers said. “Something’s brewing. I’ll work at it from this end, you do the same from yours, and we’ll meet somewhere in the middle.”

  He rang off and returned the handset to its cradle.

  “There were gunshots heard late yesterday afternoon,” he said. “But by the time the police managed to get around to investigating, all they could find was a shearing shed with a bit of fishing rope left abandoned in it.”

  I took another sip of my lukewarm coffee.

  “Were you checking my story or checking for the dead men?” I asked.

  He said nothing for a moment and then let out a long breath of air.

  “You’re strange, Summer. You do things I’m quite certain an average private eye wouldn’t or couldn’t do. Most of it, I can put down to superlative investigative skills. Some of it is downright kooky. Detective Pieters trusted your judgement. Both Constables McQueen and Ihaia don’t know what to make of you but have followed leads you’ve given the Mangonui Police in the past, and they’ve worked. Maisey likes you, and I’ve come to believe that Maisey Young is a very observant girl.”

  Huh. Of course, No-Name had a name; I’d known it all along, but now I’d feel obliged to use it. And Crazy Maisey was kicking butt in her job. Good for her.

  I smiled.

  Danvers ran a hand through his hair.

  “I feel like there’s more to you than meets the eye, Summer O’Dare,” he said quietly. “But I can’t help but also feel that you bring a certain amount of danger to my life. Whether that’s a good thing or not, we’ll see. But,” he paused, no doubt for effect, “I do believe what you tell me. I might not like it, but I believe it. I don’t think you’d lie.”

  I stared at him, unsure what to make of his speech. He trusted me to tell him the truth, and yet I’d been hiding what I could do since the beginning.

  Not to mention my loyalty to Tia and by connection the Rikas.

  But Tia and the Rikas had let me down. And they were quite possibly going to war. In Northland. On my home turf.

  I screwed up my nose and then said, “Here’s the thing, Detective Douche.” He huffed but said nothing. “I think a drug war is happening and it’s been happening for a while. Rival gangs fighting over their turf. Kaitaia versus Doubtless Bay.”

  “Darren Rika versus Henry Jones,” he said, proving just how much the detective had uncovered without me.

  I nodded.

  “I don’t know who killed John Joseph Logan,” I said, “but he is part of Jonesy’s gang. Mikey Rika didn’t make it to the drug exchange on the Mangonui Wharf; Jonesy took him before he even got there. I think Kaitaia took Mikey’s place, hoping to steal some of Doubtless Bay’s business. We know the Rikas stole something out from under them; possibly Big Wig’s secrets. They took Mikey in retaliation. And then someone shot their men; a third player. What it boils down to, Detective is we’ve got a war on our hands, and it involves Jonsey’s men in Kaitaia, the Rikas in Doubtless Bay, Big Wig, and a third player.”

  “A third player?”

  “Someone shot Jonesy’s men at the shearing shed, and it wasn’t a Rika.”

  “Big Wig?” He shook his head. “I mean Carmichael?”

  “Possibly. There’s also the stalker.”

  “That could be the Rikas or Carmichael.”

  “But not Henry Jones?”

  “I don’t think so. Why would they need to? Did they even know you were involved? Tia Rika did. She asked you to find Mikey. And we can assume Carmichael has known you’ve been working for me for some time. Why else drug you at his party? He wanted you out of the way so whatever the party was hiding could transpire without any eavesdropping.”

  “What wa
s it hiding?”

  Danvers shook head but started to pace.

  “Something was stolen from Carmichael,” he said, “that he wanted back, or he wanted to know who had stolen it so he could get back at them. That’s why he involved the police. But whatever was stolen, he couldn’t divulge to the police. His story about it being sensitive information proprietary to his business is lawyer speak. Whatever was stolen is likely illegal. It has to be. So, what could have been stolen that ties into two rival gangs one-upping each other in Northland?”

  “A meth recipe.”

  “What?”

  It made sense. The needles in my neck. The pot that wasn’t pot. Big Wig.

  I couldn’t tell Danvers how I knew, but I could tell him that I knew it was tied up in meth. And just hope his trust in me was enough to get us across the finish line in the end.

  “Let’s assume the Rikas stole a meth recipe,” I said. “Kaitaia might want their sticky mitts on that.”

  “Are the Rikas manufacturing meth, Summer?”

  I shook my head and then hesitated. I hadn’t smelled pot at the Rikas. But that didn’t mean anything. I rubbed my forehead. My automatic response to leap to their defence was wearing thin on me.

  I met Danvers' eyes and said, “I don’t know. They could be.”

  He held my gaze with an understanding one of his own. Good grief, the man could see right through me.

  “OK,” he said. “The Rikas stole from Carmichael, who’s in Northland to see whether he can get a foothold here.” He swore softly. “That makes Rupert Carmichael a meth dealer.”

  “Yep.”

  “You’ve knocked over a hornets’ nest, Summer.”

  “I don’t pick ‘em, I just find ‘em.”

  Danvers offered up a brief smile and rounded his desk. He started tapping away on his keyboard.

  “Rupert Carmichael has no prior arrests,” he said.

  “You didn’t look into that sooner?”

  “He was the victim.”

  “He was never a victim to me.”

  Danvers scowled but said nothing.

  “Hang on a minute,” he muttered and then tapped a few more keys. “Auckland CIB has a tag on him.”

  “Tag?”

  “They’ve investigated him for something and then wiped his slate clean.”

  “He was innocent?”

  “Not necessarily. This is strange.”

  “Stranger than me?”

  “Nothing’s as strange as you, Summer.” He didn’t even look at me when he said that, just kept tapping away on his keys. “No. There’s nothing there, but there should be.”

  “What does that mean?” I asked, rounding his desk and looking over his shoulder at last. He let me.

  Pointing to a blank entry on the computer screen, he said, “If CIB investigates someone, then they have an automatic profile done on them which should appear here.”

  “It’s missing.”

  “It’s missing,” he agreed.

  “Which means?”

  Danvers leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest.

  “Rupert Carmichael is either a very influential man or a very bad one.”

  “Could be either,” I offered. He certainly acted the part of both.

  “Yeah,” Danvers said quietly. “I was pushed to solve his case from the top.”

  “That’d be influential.”

  “And yet…”

  “And yet…?”

  “It didn’t feel oily.”

  I arched my brow at him. “Oily? Like lanolin?”

  He blinked at me. “What the devil have sheep got to do with it?”

  “You’re the one telling the story.”

  “Oil slick,” he said. “Dirty.”

  “Oh.”

  “You’re strange.”

  “Story of my life,” I muttered.

  “Anyway,” he said, drawing out the word. “Bottom line is, I don’t think it’s influence. I think he’s under a current investigation.”

  “But nothing’s there,” I said, pointing at the blank space on the screen.

  “Exactly. The prescence of nothing, in this particular situation, means that there is definitely something there.”

  “And you think I’m strange.”

  He smiled at me.

  Damn him for smiling. Fiend.

  “So, where does that leave us?” I said, with what had to be Herculean heroism. My girlie bits did not thank me.

  “With a bucket of trouble,” he murmured.

  And then his desk phone rang.

  He reached forward and picked up the handset, saying, “Danvers” into it.

  Nothing and then, “We’ll be right there.”

  He hung up and stood from his chair and then looked at me.

  “That war,” he said. “It’s happening. The Rikas just rode into Kaitaia. En masse.”

  End this, Nana Rika had said. End this now.

  This was happening, all right. War had reached our little slice of heaven. Brought here by the Rikas.

  By my friends.

  Chapter 23

  Maisey Was Sitting Behind Her Desk With Eyes Like An Owl’s

  “I’m coming with you,” I said.

  “No, you’re not.”

  “I’ll follow behind, then.”

  “Do you want to get arrested?”

  “Danvers!”

  “I thought I was Detective Douche.”

  I glared at him.

  “You can’t have it both ways, Summer. Either I’m Detective Douche. Or I’m the supervising officer at Mangonui Police.”

  “Will the supervising officer let me tag along?” I asked sweetly.

  “Not on your life.”

  “Then you’re a douche.”

  “Glad we sorted that out. Andy!” he shouted into the room at large. “Lock Ms O’Dare in a cell for a while.”

  “Sir?” Constable Candy asked.

  “She’s a danger to herself and society.”

  “Really, sir?”

  “Quit it,” I said with a hiss.

  Danvers turned towards me. “Summer,” he said. “Give me one good reason why I should allow you to enter a dangerous situation such as this?”

  “This is my case,” I said. “I have a contract with Mangonui Police. I’ve provided you with information that may lead to arrests. I may be aware of things you aren’t, and they could make the difference between life and death.”

  “Are you? Aware of things I’m not?”

  “Maybe.”

  “How?”

  “I’m not saying.”

  “Then you’re staying in Mangonui.”

  I stared at him. He waited patiently. Candy and Ihaia were storming around, putting on stab vests, grabbing helmets and assault rifles. The full nine yards. Maisey was sitting behind her desk with eyes like an owl’s. I was fairly certain she’d offered up the odd startled hoot as well.

  I crossed my arms over my chest and scowled at the detective. His face was impassive until his eyes flicked down. And then I saw it. A hint of desire.

  The man wasn’t just a leg man, he was a breast man too, but he’d tried his best to hide it.

  I plumped my boobs up a little and cocked a hip and gave him a come-and-get-it smile.

  “Summer,” he said, closing his eyes. “Stop it.”

  “You stop it,” I said.

  He made a growling sound.

  “I need to be there,” I said, my voice level, devoid of any humour. Or flirtation. “I need to be there, Danvers.”

  “Why?” he asked just as levelly.

  My neck hadn’t stopped sending me signals. My skull was thumping to a beat only it could hear but one I thought might just match a supersonic time machine rocketing into danger. I sucked in a breath of air and leaned into the detective.

  “Let’s just say I’m feeling kooky.”

  He studied me for a long time; time which I didn’t think we had. And then he gave me one short, sharp nod of his he
ad.

  “In my car and at my side, at all times.”

  “Got it,” I said, sealing my lips before I said anything else.

  He stared at me a for a little while longer.

  And then I was sucked up into the maelstrom of the Mangonui Police’s war efforts.

  Candy handed me a vest. Ihaia shoved a helmet into my hands. Tactical plans were discussed, fallback positions identified, contact with Kaitaia Police was made. And then I had just enough time to grab my gun, check it over, reload it, and shove it in a vest pocket before we were hurtling toward Kaitaia, lights and sirens blazing.

  I sat beside a very tense and alert Detective Danvers who looked nothing like a Detective Douche at that moment and very much like a man on a mission who knew how catastrophically bad things could go. I knew I was placing him under undue stress by tagging along, but this was the Rikas, Tia’s family, and having just found Mikey and saved his tattooed butt, I didn’t fancy the idea of him being mowed down by a drug thug hellbent on seeking dominion over Northland.

  I rubbed at my neck and tried to ignore the sensation of blood trickling down my spine when Danvers said, “You do that a lot.”

  “What?” I said, distracted by the sensation of heat burning a path across my neck. Like the heat of a bullet as it passed through flesh.

  “Rub your neck. Do you have an old injury there?”

  I let out a sigh. “No,” I said.

  “Stress-induced muscular cramps?”

  “Something like that,” I muttered.

  He said nothing for a while and then, “I had a sister.” Had. Not have. “She used to rub her neck like that, too. Often.”

  And then the Kaitaia Police station appeared and Danvers was pulling in next to the incident van, and people were everywhere, and I didn’t have time to question him further. Not that I was sure of what I’d say or if I dared to ask it. But I watched the detective with new eyes, even as the sensations across my neck multiplied and the burn heated up until it threatened to make me burst into tears.

  I turned away from the anxiety-filled excitement outside the police station and leaned against the hood of Danvers’ ute. My eyes scanned the street. There were cabbage trees and acacias in the garden. Beat up Fords and Toyotas parked along the road. Someone had graffitied the side of the police station, and it had been painted over in white. The rest of the building was painted pink. A ponga fence marked the edge of the station’s property. Strangely enough, it was in pristine order. Cops spilt out of marked and unmarked police cars; the residents in the street watching warily through their windows.