BOOKER Box Set #2 (A Private Investigator Thriller Series of Crime and Suspense): Volumes 4-6

by John W. Mefford

  Anything to avoid a return to the basement, the drug-induced delirium, and the invasive, slithering tongue.

  Oh God, the tongue.

  Suddenly, the force of a twenty-pound bat slammed into her torso. The man had swung his sledgehammer fist. She heard a crack just below her left breast. Touching her side, she felt a sharp bump—a broken rib. Spears of pain pierced her chest, evaporating every ounce of fight left in her, as if a giant helium balloon had just been shot out of the sky. Helpless screams clogged her ears, nothing more than the shredded, rubbery flesh of the balloon falling hopelessly to the pitiful earth.

  Her last gasps for air only served to fog up the windows. Within seconds, the old woman’s silver hair and yellow, flowered robe blended into nothingness—just like the girl’s hope.

  The young girl had finally been defeated.

  2

  Hunched over, squinting a single eye through her front blinds, the eighty-nine-year-old great-grandmother watched the silver dually back out of her yard. Through the cover of darkness and fogged-up windows, the images from the truck were nothing more than a hazy blur, reds and whites thrashing all over the cab.

  Damn, that girl was putting up a pretty good fight.

  The woman’s eyesight wasn’t as bad as some people thought, especially her eldest daughter, who insisted that she move into a senior home down in Florida.

  Those places smelled. The only way she’d end up in an old folks’ home was if they strapped her to a gurney and put her in one of those CareFlite helicopters. But they had better bring an army of medics and a valium. Helicopter or plane, it mattered very little. She hadn’t been fond of heights since 1973, when she’d been stuck on the ledge of a lighthouse down at the coast just as the leading edge of a hurricane battered the seaside town of Port Isabel.

  The pickup’s diesel engine growled, and she watched red lights disappear into the murky fog.

  Stepping away from the window, the old woman reset her spectacles, then dropped her hands in the front pockets of Martha—her housecoat that had been part of her life for the last twenty-six years. She padded over to Duffy, her overstuffed, brown suede chair. Everything that had meaning in her life had a name.

  Using her arms as anchors on either side, she slowly dropped into the chair, her hundred-pound frame barely putting a dent in old Duffy. She took the remote control in her hand but hesitated before unmuting the Weather Channel.

  The way that man held the girl didn’t seem right. Her eyes were bugging out. Her arms and legs were dancing around like they’d been plugged into an electrical socket.

  Then again, drugs would do that to you, especially heroin.

  Over the years she’d seen everything from the front porch of her simple home. Tapping a finger to her cheek, she counted the time since she’d lived on Shorecrest Drive. It was either forty-one or forty-two years since she’d moved in. She acquired the place for practically nothing because everyone complained about the airport noise. Didn’t matter much to her. It helped her sleep at night usually.

  Maybe that’s why she’d tossed and turned in her bed this evening. Damn fog had grounded the airplanes. She’d never thought much about how reliant her sleep patterns had become on the streaking jets’ white noise.

  She chuckled out loud, recalling all the kids who’d ended up at her house late at night. There was that one girl who simply passed out on the front lawn. The old woman’s three-legged pooch, Gunsmoke, had gone outside for his late-night pee and started barking. Sitting on Duffy in her living room, she heard the commotion and ran outside. She was hit with a rancid smell of booze twenty feet before she got to the girl. The old woman turned on a hose, and the girl came to life and stumbled away.

  Thinking about her recently departed puppy, her eyes became glassy. He’d been her sidekick for the last fourteen years. Always there to protect her.

  A quick memory came to mind—those two boys, or should she call them young studs?

  About ten years back, after a flurry of doorbell rings, she hurried to the front and swung open the door. Two college hunks stood there bare-ass naked trying to cover their junk. For one fella, it was a failed effort. His hands just weren’t big enough.

  God bless him…and his junk, she’d thought to herself. With her eyes burning a hole in his midsection, he said, “Is this the Bachman Lake Whorehouse?”

  If she had been twenty years younger, she could have said or done any number of things. Instead, she just replied with, “Fraternity prank, huh?”

  They nodded, and she shut the door. She’d never forget the images. One in particular.

  Sound came from the flat screen—she’d accidentally clicked the volume button—and a rain slicker squeezed the chubby cheeks of a meteorologist stuck in the middle of a hurricane on the Indian coast. He was actually leaning at a forty-five-degree angle to offset the high winds. Hope that wouldn’t hit Dallas any time in the next couple of days. Wait, he was actually on the other side of the planet. Nothing to worry about for at least a week, she figured.

  The sounds of crashing waves behind the weatherman allowed her mind to drift, and she couldn’t stop thinking about the desperate pleas from that girl. The hysterical tone of her voice, tears draining down her freckled face. Drugs or not, she seemed distraught, afraid for her life even. But who wouldn’t be afraid to go back to jail, especially if she was on the verge of being cut off from her drug supply?

  It was a damn shame that it took a bear-sized man to endanger himself and wrangle these young kids into understanding right from wrong. Rules weren’t made to be broken, her mother would say when she used to cut in line at the ice cream parlor.

  A quick image of the girl’s white-knuckled hand clutching the old woman’s robe flashed across her frontal lobe. Her fingers seemed different. Had she used an ink pen to draw something? Maybe it was the phone number to her drug dealer. Could have been a smiley face to help her survive the daily struggle of living with a drug addiction. Who knew? Her eyes were almost as sharp as her mind, but she wasn’t Wonder Woman. Sheesh!

  With the girth of a California redwood, the man looked like he had the strength of the Man of Steel. But his yes ma’ams and no ma’ams didn’t fool her. He gave off a vibe of someone who’d been in a few scraps. With his extra wide pickup, ropers, and massive brass belt buckle, he was pure Texan. That buckle was almost as big as Captain America’s shield. Made her think about an old program she used to watch, Walker, Texas Ranger. Chuck Norris…now that was a man who could do some damage to the bad guys.

  Come to think of it, she never actually saw the man’s badge. He could have been a cop wearing street clothes, or even a Texas Ranger like her hero, Chuck Norris. Nothing to worry about, though. He had the piece of paper that clearly stated the distraught girl had purposely skipped her court appearance for breaking the law.

  Rules weren’t made to be broken.

  She clicked the remote four times, then found an old rerun. A smile parted her lips as she watched Chuck Norris kick the asses of fourteen would-be assailants in about thirty seconds.

  An American hero.

  3

  “Eat more chicken!” Samantha threw a fist in the air, punctuating an exuberant ending to the “Happy Birthday” song for my assistant-partner at Booker & Associates.

  “Hey, Alisa, are you in some type of catatonic state from the mesmerizing torches of age?” Justin, my best friend since the beginning of time, laughed so hard his slim shoulders popped up and down. He was so out of control his wrinkled forehead turned shades of red.

  “Very funny, One Nut. It just so happens that I was carded buying wine at the grocery the other day.”

  My shapely business partner who also happened to be the best damn researcher any private investigator could ask for, planted a hand on the hip of her Lucky Brand jeans while standing at the head of the table, daring Justin to attempt a comeback of his own.

  Justin opened his mouth, looked into the corner of the restaurant, then pointed a finger toward Ali
sa at the end of the trapezoid table. “That’s kind of interesting, Alisa. But I heard they felt sorry for you.”

  She twisted her head, her amber eyes not leaving Justin. She, like the rest of us, was obviously weary of where the ponytailed bar owner was taking this.

  “Yeah, they found you staring through glass doors at the frozen cans of orange juice for two straight hours.” Covering his mouth, a snorting chortle escaped his lips. “On the can, it read ‘Concentrate.’”

  “Is that supposed to be some type of blond joke, One Nut?” She arched an eyebrow as I heard a couple of “oohs” behind me.

  “Nope. Just an Alisa joke…who happens to be blond.”

  We all busted out laughing until David, the owner of the five-star restaurant we were holding the party in, popped the cork on a bottle of champagne. A high-pitched shriek came from behind me. Not a fan of screaming women, even if it was in response to the sudden pop, I turned slowly and found Cindy burying her face in the neck of her boyfriend Henry, a Dallas County assistant district attorney and one of my old college buddies. Since the pair had been an official couple for a good two months, I was trying to categorize Cindy as a friend as well. But we had a history, the kind where I used to look over my shoulder every time I neared my East Dallas condominium. Let’s just say my acceptance of her in any normal fashion was a work in progress. But I kept my thoughts to myself. A small hand tugged on my Hugo Boss shirt.

  “Daddy, Daddy.”

  I looked down at my five-year-old daughter, Samantha, her thick locks pulled back by a purple headband that her mother—my ex-fiancée—had given her. Even when she wasn’t smiling, which wasn’t very often, tiny dimples highlighted her cute cheeks.

  “Yes, Mittens.” I’d given her this nickname when she was a mound of baby fat, her fingers undetectable.

  “I counted thirty-nine candles, but everyone keeps saying happy thirty-sevenvph.”

  Samantha butchered the last word, but I knew what she meant.

  “Samantha, darlin’.” Alisa leaned down and ran a gentle hand through Samantha’s thick mane, her double shot of tequila already making her sound like a Southern belle. “With that many candles, it’s easy to get lost in counting.”

  “Okay, Auntie Lisa.”

  Samantha nuzzled her head against my side.

  “Do you know how to subtract numbers?” Alisa asked.

  My little girl shook her head, then brought a finger to her jack-o’-lantern mouth. “Wait, is that when you do minus?”

  We chuckled, and Alisa replied, “Yes, darlin’. Just between us girls, here’s a trick you need to remember. Whenever you’re counting candles on my cake in the future, always do minus five. So, if you take thirty-seven minus five, what do you get?”

  Tapping extended fingers on the opposite hand, I could see her full lips moving—a trait she inherited from her curvaceous mother. Thankfully, I’d yet to see my little girl exhibit her mother’s Latin temper. Damn, Eva was a passionate woman. That’s kind of how we got into this…arrangement.

  “Thirty-two?” Samantha raised her shoulders, her saucer-plate eyes appearing as if she’d just used the Pythagorean theorem to come up with the answer.

  Alisa clapped. “Good girl, Samantha. You’re going to grow up to be a financial whiz.”

  Henry, Cindy, and Justin had shuffled closer, while David and his boyfriend Dax were walking back into the side room of their restaurant—Asian fusion with an ambiance that matched the Spider Man lair, literally. I glanced over at David, who looked more like an investment banker dressed in blue Armani, realizing the only reason we’d been able to hold a party at the swankiest restaurant in Dallas was because he’d used his financial genius to swindle Justin’s sister out of twenty-five thousand dollars. We’d traveled a long path to get where we were, including Justin, who’d recently partnered with the Double Ds to develop a mobile food business. Thus far, Fajita Rita’s was raking it in.

  “Maybe Samantha can learn a few financial tips from David,” Justin offered.

  I felt the skin between my eyes coil up like a snail, “Justin, are you—”

  “Certifiably nuts?” Alisa finished the rhetorical question. Her eyes shifted to David to ensure he couldn’t overhear our conversation. “Perhaps, I should have used the singular. One nut.”

  Cindy belted out another shriek. I gave her the eye before I remembered I’d made a promise to try to be friends with Henry’s new squeeze…who had a face like a horse.

  “Daddy, Daddy.”

  Samantha to the rescue, tugging on my shirt again.

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “Why does everyone call Uncle J ‘One Nut’?”

  Cindy’s torso lurched forward, failing to cover an obnoxious snort. I scratched my facial scruff, biding me a precious few seconds to figure out how to dodge this question until about fifteen years in the future.

  Resting my hand under her adorable chin, I said, “You know how people get nicknames and sometimes it doesn’t make sense, but people just give them that name because they care about them?”

  She scrunched her eyes.

  “You know, like your nickname, Mittens.”

  Samantha waved me closer so I could hear her whisper in my ear. “Daddy, don’t you remember, I don’t really like to be called Mittens around other people. That’s just between us. Got it?”

  Some snickering around us since Samantha’s soft voice was louder than she knew. “Got it. I think I see a piece of cake over there just for you.”

  Glancing to our right, Dax was cutting off a slice of red velvet cake. “Extra icing?” he asked Samantha with a smile.

  She took two steps, then turned back around. “Daddy, what does the Double Ds mean?”

  Alisa and I locked eyes. I could almost picture an enormous timepiece, its big hand shifting one notch, emitting the sound of cathedral bells across the land. My mind had recognized a new milestone in my not-so-little Samantha’s life—she’d reached the age when her perceptiveness had outgrown her age, which led to a flurry of unending questions. I wasn’t sure this was reversible, so we just had to roll with it.

  I leaned over and tickled her rib cage. “Double means twice as good, right? So, two Ds are better than one.”

  Alisa brought a hand to her stressed face, realizing my line of bullshit made no sense.

  “But Daddy, why do you always say that when you talk about Mr. Dax and Mr. David?”

  Usually quick-witted, I wasn’t prepared for Samantha at age sixteen, so I acted like I didn’t understand the question. “How about a double tickle attack?” I goosed her with both hands, and her youthful chuckle filled the room.

  “But Dad—”

  “Can I have your piece of cake, Samantha?” Not exactly my idea of a great role model, Cindy, of all people, had chimed in.

  “What?” Samantha instantly became focused on the sugar high that sat ten feet away.

  “Did I tell you how cool your fingernails are? I just love that purple.” Cindy draped an arm over Samantha’s shoulder and walked toward the cake plates at the far end of the table.

  I think Henry saw wonderment in my eyes. “Can you believe Cindy’s that good with kids?”

  I knew my Asian buddy was blind and oblivious when it came to any topic regarding Cindy, but I had to admit he had a point.

  “She’s a keeper.” I popped his shoulder, then saw someone enter the room.

  “Josh?” Alisa’s voice turned higher as she maneuvered around gifts and chairs to reach her new boy toy. And I do mean boy. At ten…no, make that eleven years younger, Josh had completely captured Alisa’s attention like no one I’d seen.

  Almost half a foot taller than Alisa, Josh had the look of a California surfer. I could picture him posing next to a surfboard stuck in the sand while he was being interviewed by Surfer magazine, wiggling his thumb and pinkie while saying, “I’m stoked! I was just shooting the curl and the waves were spitting hard.”

  Instead, he held up a courteous hand and said, “S
orry I’m late, everyone.”

  Alisa reached her arms around Josh’s neck and planted a smooch on him, her leg kicking back as if it was attached to a pulley in her heart. Or something like that.

  “Did you just see her leg pop up? I guess that’s the female version of getting a boner for a guy.” Justin’s version of my thoughts. I smirked and motioned for him to keep his volume down. We weren’t sixteen, although we’d been known to act like it. Still, it was Alisa’s birthday and my five-year-old daughter was in the room. I glanced over at the table and saw her propped on her knees, her Scooby Doo tongue trying to scoop pink frosting off her lips. Now wasn’t the time to yank Alisa’s chain.

  I noticed Dax give Josh the snooty onceover, likely because of his attire—sweats, black-and-white-striped shirt, and cleats.

  “So, what’s the scoop on Josh?” Henry asked me. He wore a Tommy Bahama silk shirt with a palm tree print and balanced a clear glass of soda with a plate of cake.

  While Josh had the boyish looks of a young actor, I couldn’t categorize him as innocent. He’d been convicted of computer hacking. I’d never heard the story behind the story, but he was a felon, at least until he completed his community service, at which time the courts were expected to reduce his conviction to a misdemeanor. His record made him a pariah in the real job world. He’d helped us with a murder case a month or so ago, and I paid him for a few hours of consulting on another case. But mostly, our caseload hadn’t required his skillset, which made Alisa quite sad.

  “He’s still refereeing soccer games mostly. That and delivering pizza on the side.”