Dead Friends Don't Lie (Jake Hancock Private Investigator Mystery series Book 6)

by Dan Taylor

  “That’s just my wrapping, honey. Look, I just want to find out if this is the right place. If you open the door for a second I can check.”

  “And how would you do that?”

  Another good question. A great one, in fact.

  “I’d… compare the photo I have of Mrs. Karen Baxter with the photos inside of Ms. Karen George.”

  “They have the same first name?”

  “They do.”

  “Then it sure sounds like you might have the right place,” she says.

  Jacob Hancock one, Precocious Babysitter zero.

  “It’s starting to sound that way, yeah.”

  There’s silence a second.

  Then she says, “But I can’t open the front door to strangers.”

  “I don’t want you to open the door. That wouldn’t be sensible, and you sound like a sensible young lady. You can just take one of the photos to the patio door and show me through the glass.”

  “How do you know there’s a patio door?”

  “I assumed there is.”

  Silence again.

  “I don’t know about that…”

  “Please, you’d be doing this uncle a huge favor. I’ve traveled a long way.”

  “Okay.”

  Bingo!

  Before she goes to get a photo, I say, “And make sure it’s one of her and a man.”

  I don’t know if she heard me, as she doesn’t reply.

  Feeling even more like a creep from an episode of Dateline NBC, I go around to the back again.

  The patio door is dark, but twenty seconds later a light comes on and a girl of around twelve or thirteen comes to the door. I give her a thumbs-up.

  She presses the photo to the glass, and good girl that she is, she did hear what I said about bringing one of Ms. Karen George posing with a man.

  The photo’s old, a little grainy, maybe taken in the early two-thousands. The man looks nothing like the Cole Baxter I remember from last year… But it sure looks like Cole Baxter with an undercut, bangs, and a wispy goatee.

  Double bingo!

  I take out my phone, and pretend to compare it to an imaginary photograph stored on my phone.

  I frown a second, making it look like I’m comparing Karen George of today with Karen George of then.

  Then I smile and give her another thumbs-up.

  “Is that her?” she asks.

  “It is.” I pretend to start blubbering, wiping my eyes with my gloved hands. In between sobs, I say, “It’s her… Jesus, I thought this day would never come… It’s a miracle… It truly is.”

  But what the precocious babysitter says next throws a spanner in the works. “Now that you know it’s the right place, you can come back tomorrow when Ms. George is home.”

  I think fast. “But the circus is leaving town tomorrow.” I start blubbering again. “That’s just my luck.”

  “But I thought you’d traveled far, from Jacksonville, Florida?”

  “That’s where I live, but the circus is in Palmdale. Never mind. I suppose I can wait until next year to meet my nieces and/or nephews. They’ll be so broken up to find out their uncle was here and he didn’t get to see them.”

  I turn to leave and get two steps before I hear the sound that patio doors make when they open, that vacuum-unsealing sound.

  “Wait, I suppose it wouldn’t hurt if you just came in and saw them for ten minutes or so,” she says.

  I turn back, and the babysitter, looking unsure but conflicted, is poking her head through the partially open patio door.

  “Are you sure?” I ask.

  “Yes.”

  I put a gloved hand to my heart. “You’re an angel for doing this.”

  22.

  THE BABYSITTER ESCORTS me through the dining room and the kitchen, and then to a door that I presume leads to the living room.

  Still acting precocious and sensible, despite leading a strange man dressed as a psychotic clown to the children she’s babysitting, she says, “Go in there gentle. You don’t want to spook them. And don’t worry if they look skeptical. They’ve never met you, remember.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind, thanks.”

  “Okay, I’m going to open the door now.”

  She does, and I see a girl and boy kneeling on the floor in front of a large widescreen TV, watching what looks like a Disney movie.

  They turn around and then, after looking at me wide-eyed for a second, start screaming.

  This is what I wanted to happen, just not upon seeing me for the first time.

  The babysitter rushes past me and says, “Guys, it’s okay. This is your uncle, visiting from the circus.”

  The girl and the boy stop screaming and then look at each other, and then they say at the same time, “It is?”

  The babysitter smiles. “Yeah, isn’t this a nice surprise?”

  It’s now make or break. I figure if the kids carry on being freaked out, the babysitter might sense that this ludicrous situation isn’t what I’ve tricked her into thinking it is. She might not trust her own skepticism in regard to some uncle showing up unannounced, dressed up as a clown, but she’ll definitely smell a rat if either or both of my “niece and nephew” shits their pants.

  But I needn’t have worried, as the girl and boy stand up and come running towards me, both saying, “Uncle Bobby!”

  The girl hugs my right leg and the boy my left.

  I pray that they don’t get any saliva on my pant legs.

  The babysitter asks me, “Uncle Bobby?”

  And I reply, “Bobby, that’s my name. And I’m definitely their uncle. Sis must have talked to them about me.”

  And then I say to the kids, “Okay, guys. Uncle Bobby’s had enough of the leg hugging,” but they don’t let go.

  The boy looks up at me. “Are you going to do a magic trick, Uncle Bobby?”

  “Well, I’m a clown, Nephew. We don’t really do magic tricks.”

  Then the girl looks up at me, says, “Sure they do. You can make balloon animals.”

  Not technically a magic trick, not if you don’t consider tying knots into elongated balloons so that they loosely resemble animals with tubular limbs magic. And my nephew and niece are shit out of luck. I didn’t bring any balloons with me. I have some condoms in the glove compartment of my rental, but something tells me rushing back there, bringing them back, and then blowing them up and calling them pufferfish might be pushing my luck with the babysitter.

  I go to say, “Maybe some other time,” but stop myself, thinking of an idea. Instead I say, “Hey, would you guys like me to do a clown show for you?”

  Looks like the babysitter runs a tight ship, because the boy and girl look around my lower limbs so they can ask her “Can we, Mary? Can we?”

  The babysitter chuckles. I have no idea why. Then she says, “I suppose, but only if you guys don’t get too excited. It’s your bedtime soon.”

  They both say at the same time, “Great!”

  The leg hugging’s been going a little longer than I’m comfortable with, so I pry those little guys off, a tad more forcefully than maybe their real Uncle Bobby might. And then I tell them to take a seat on the couch, so they can watch the clown show.

  The babysitter starts to make her way to the sofa, but I stop her by saying, “Hey, Mary. You want to go and make the kids some snacks for the show? Maybe something warm, which takes around five minutes to prepare?”

  “I think it’s a little late for snacks, Uncle Bobby.”

  “Still, you can’t be in the room when I do my show.” I lean in, and add in a whisper, “Having babysitters present during clown shows ruins the magic.”

  Also whispering, she says, “I thought clowns didn’t do magic, Uncle Bobby.”

  Shit. I think she’s onto me.

  “Oh, they do. Plus, and I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I’ve got a little stage fright. This is the first time performing for my nephew and niece, and having you here is only adding to it.”

  I expec
t her to be pedantic, maybe say this isn’t a stage but a living room, but then it becomes clear what the babysitter’s motivation is for being reluctant to leave the room. Not the wellbeing of the two children who she’s babysitting, but money. I look down to see she’s holding out her hand, with a wry smile on her face. Fine. I take out a wad of cash and peel off a twenty for her. Upon having it placed in her hand, she coughs. So I peel off another twenty.

  This babysitter will make a great businesswoman someday. She’s a piss-poor babysitter, but we’re not all perfect.

  I tell her, “Go and order yourself a pizza, kid.”

  She mutters something about saving up for breast augmentation surgery as she leaves.

  L.A., the city of angels…

  When she’s closed the door, I say to the awaiting real Uncle Bobby’s niece and nephew, “Okay, guys, who’s ready for a clown show!”

  23.

  FIVE MINUTES LATER I’m running through the dining area, the babysitter hot on my heels. Just as I make it to the patio door and stop to open it, she attempts to tackle me, but I block her attempt with a palm to the forehead. She falls to the ground but still manages to hook an arm around my leg, attempting a citizen’s arrest. While shaking her loose, I open the patio door. And then I leave the babysitter behind, she having learned the greatest lesson she’ll ever learn about letting strange men into clients’ homes. Still, she’s adequately compensated, and I’m sure she’ll see a great return on her boob job as an adult, the funds for which I contributed to.

  From the house, it’s just a quick dash to my rental.

  Adrenalin flowing, I get in the car, start getting the fudge out of Dodge, and secure my cell phone in the glove compartment. I don’t trust these damn clown pants pockets with what is now such a valuable item.

  Is getting Megan back worth kidnapping Cole’s kids for? What do you think I am, a sick fuck? But it is worth scaring the shit out of them so that I could record their screams using the voice recorder app on my cell phone.

  Just after the babysitter left the room, I went through the motions of doing a few tricks I’d learned for my nephew’s birthday party gig. Making coins seemingly appear from behind their earlobes. A failed handstand. That sort of stuff. Then, when I heard the babysitter go upstairs, probably to search through Karen George’s dresser drawers for cash and other stuff she could steal, I took out my phone, started the voice recorder app, leaned in close to their excited, expectant faces, and told them, “Tonight, when you’re trying to sleep, the bogeyman will be waiting under your bed.”

  They glanced at each other and chuckled.

  Clearly, I didn’t understand children as much I thought I did, as they looked more scared when I pulled the friggin’ coin out from their earlobes. Figuring I had to work fast, I turned it up to eleven.

  I leaned in farther still, and said, “When the Easter Bunny delivers all the eggs, he pisses all over your bedroom carpets, and your mom has to spend days scrubbing them clean.”

  It had a little effect, but not as much as I’d hoped. The boy, let’s call him Kevin, said, “I don’t like this trick, Uncle Bobby.”

  He glanced at his sister for reassurance that this was normal clown behavior or at least normal Uncle Bobby behavior, but she was equally freaked out. But it didn’t distract her from being concerned about my oral health, as she said, “Your breath smells funny, Uncle Bobby. Did you brush and floss your teeth this morning?”

  Just for the record, I did.

  Figuring the babysitter might find Karen George’s collection of dildos any second and come running down the stairs, bemused about what she’d found, I decided to play my trump card: the truth.

  I smiled a creepy smile, and said, “Not only did I not brush and floss my teeth, but I’m not your Uncle Bobby.”

  That did the trick. Those two little angels screamed for their lives the couple minutes it took their precocious babysitter to A) work out that what was going on downstairs probably wasn’t part and parcel of a regular clown show, B) that I probably wasn’t their Uncle Bobby, and C) that she might not get another babysitting gig ever again if Ms. Karen George found out she’d let a stranger dressed as a psychotic clown into the house who was unusually fixated on getting some alone time with her kids.

  That babysitter came down those stairs so fast it sounded like she’d maybe tripped and skidded down them face first, bumping her chin on each step as she went. On top of making a great businesswoman in the future, I’m sure she’s a shoo-in for a sports scholarship if her parents can’t afford to pay for college. With her babysitting career probably down the toilet, that’s a good thing.

  She came bursting through the living room door just as I was recording my pay dirt: the boy screaming, “Please, Daddy, come and rescue us!”

  Great athlete or not, I was easily able to run around the babysitter and make my way through the door to the kitchen. The rest you already know.

  I’ll probably never know why the boy directly addressed his daddy despite the family thinking he’s dead and that they attended his empty-casket funeral. Maybe he’s skeptical about his father’s death? Who knows. Regardless, he did me a solid.

  I have two minutes of those two angels screaming like they’d just seen a bum take a crap in a postbox, and I’m going to use it.

  Do I feel good about what I did? Absolutely not. But it was necessary. As Andre said, Cole is well hidden. I might never find him. Which might mean never getting Megan back or taking away his ability to kill me at any second. Plus, it was probably more traumatic for me than them. Sure, it was a scary couple minutes. But just imagine the embarrassment of getting caught harassing some kids, while dressed as a clown, and getting arrested by a just-into-puberty teenage girl. If she’d have dived and clipped my ankle just right with her hand, she could’ve sent me sprawling into the patio door window, and I’d have maybe whacked my noggin off the glass, rendering me unconscious. From there, all she’d have had to do was dial nine-one-one, and those cops would’ve showed up at Karen George’s door faster than it takes a colorblind person to fuck up completing a Rubik’s Cube.

  I shudder as I imagine the district attorney playing the voice recording back in court and the good people in the stands gasping in unison after they’d heard that shit I said about the Easter Bunny.

  I dodged a bullet.

  Tomorrow, when everything is in place on Andre’s side, I’m going to fool Cole into thinking I have his children and that we’re holed up in some dingy basement… No, dungeon. I’m sure he’ll come to his senses and realize I’m not a man to be messed with.

  But won’t Cole just phone his wife and call my bluff?

  I’d bet my last Jolly Rancher Cole doesn’t have the nerve to phone up his wife to ask her if the guy he’s manipulating into marrying his sister has kidnapped her children for real, letting her know—surprise!—he’s not really dead and that he faked his death.

  I need to get the audio cleaned up first. I’m not good with computers. I was born a generation too early and enjoy strip clubs and premium-grade marijuana too much.

  So when I’m on North La Cienega, which I’ll be driving straight on for a few minutes, I take out my cell phone and dial one of my rain-check numbers, which I use in case of an emergency.

  The guy who’s going to be burning the midnight oil, cleaning up my audio, is none other than Hollywood sound guy virtuoso Denk Throwclap. As well as being the guy who mixed the sound for Hollywood classics Kill by Night 3, Trevor’s Going to Shit When He Sees Who Mom Brought Home - Part Two, and Warrior Hero 4: The Gates of Destiny, he’s also the guy who I caught cheating on his then-client-of-mine wife with a dwarf hooker duo. His wife forgave him, but I’m not so forgiving.

  When he answers, I say, “Hey, Denk. How’s Gwen? She doing well?”

  He groans. “Jake Hancock. I thought this day would come.”

  “That sounds like a line you stole from Warrior Hero 5.”

  “I didn’t work on that one. The script was shit.�
�

  “Worse than four?”

  “Have you phoned me to talk about how my career’s going or is there an ulterior motive?”

  “Relax, I just need a favor.”

  “I don’t suppose I could try to refuse, could I?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think you’re worse than the green slime I clean off the bottom of my koi pond each spring.”

  “Denk, why all the hostility? It’s just a small favor between friends.”

  “I wouldn’t be friends with you if you were—”

  “Also into sex with small people with disproportionately sized heads and limbs?”

  “No.”

  “That’s the difference, you know, between midgets and dwarves. I looked it up before writing my report for Gwen.”

  “I know that, Hancock.”

  “I thought you might, Denk.”

  “Just tell me the favor.”

  “Can’t I toy with you a little more first?”

  “I’m one smartass comment away from telling you to go fuck yourself, knowing full well you’ll ruin my reputation.”

  “Okay, I’ll play nice. I wouldn’t want that to happen.”

  “The favor?”

  “I have some audio I need you to work on.”

  “What was it recorded with?”

  “A cell phone. The one with the fruity name.”

  “What do you want doing to it?”

  “Don’t you want to know what it is, first?”

  “I want this conversation to be as brief as possible, and to never hear from you ever again after it’s done.”

  “I’ll tell you anyway. My nephew and his female friend from school are doing a drama project. I recorded them screaming and they want to use it as sound effects for a play they’re performing. The audio needs my voice taken out, any background noise removed, such as the audio from Finding Nemo that was playing in the background, and the screams cut into sound clips and arranged into a three-minute montage. The voices also need cleaning up, so that they sound like they weren’t recorded on shoddy equipment. Oh, and an echoey effect added so that it sounds like they’re in a dungeon.”