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

by Dan Taylor

  I receive a text message from Andre. And it’s good news. Very good news.

  After a lengthy cacophony, when Brian comes back on the line, he sounds a little worse for wear. “Okay, Hancock, you can let them go now.”

  “You okay, Brian?”

  “Not really. Those little Sporks you get in hotel rooms? I have one sticking out of my neck.”

  “Ouch. Has Megan made it a good distance from the hotel room?”

  “She has, thank God.”

  “And with her passport?”

  “With both our passports.”

  “At least you’re stuck in a nice, warm place for the time being.”

  “I’m in Bogota.”

  “Okay, then a warm place. But I just got some news I think you’ll like, Cole. Wait, it is okay to start calling you Cole again, right?

  “What news?”

  “You’re going to have a new brother-in-law! But it’s probably more appropriate if you call him Uncle.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “That date this afternoon, Julie didn’t get stood up, at least not by me.”

  “Why am I thinking I won’t care about that Spork in a few seconds?”

  “Because you’re right, but in a good way. Julie’s netted herself an honest-to-God millionaire. John and Joe are going to get quite the life.”

  “Who?”

  “You sure you don’t want to guess? You’ll kick yourself when I tell you.”

  “Just tell me.”

  “I’ll give you a clue. His name rhymes with… Bandre.”

  “That’s not a word.”

  “Doesn’t matter. It still rhymes with it.”

  He thinks a second. “Wait a minute, you don’t mean—”

  “That’s right. Uncle Andre. Don’t you think they’ll make the cutest couple?”

  Epilogue

  COLE DOESN’T AGREE that Andre and his sister would make the cutest couple, not if his three minutes of what sounds like projectile vomiting are anything to go by.

  I feel sorry for the guy. Enough to let him know that I didn’t kidnap his children. For some reason, Cole’s extra pissed at me for knowing that his children aren’t locked up in some rented dungeon. You can’t please everyone.

  After the pharmaceutical-grade aphrodisiac wears off, Julie doesn’t renege on her promise to marry Andre. In fact, from what Andre’s been texting me—which he’s really competent at, now—Julie’s keener than ever to tie the knot with “her big, sexy, filthy rich British man-bear.”

  They plan to get married forthwith, and for some reason aren’t using Andre’s sizable bank account balance to have an extravagant wedding with all Julie’s family there (minus Cole, of course), but are planning to elope and get married in Las Vegas. After that, they plan to spend their honeymoon at Disneyworld. Either Andre’s a classless man, or he’s going to make one hell of a stepdad to Julie’s bouncing bundles of joy. It’s going to be quite the learning curve for ol’ Andre: getting to grips with changing dirty diapers, comforting John and Joe when they have nightmares, and smiling through the first time one of the kindergartners asks if he’s their granddad. I’m sure those two little fellows will have a bright future, with Jimothy and Timothy pitching in as babysitters when Julie and Andre require some alone time.

  But before they get married by a guy dressed as late-period Elvis, Andre’s got a promise to keep. The day after I got Megan released, I have the operation to get the souped-up pacemaker removed, in Andre’s surgical room in the basement of his mansion. Unlike in regular hospitals, I’m discharged pretty much straightaway. In fact, as one of Andre’s drivers drives me home, I don’t think the anesthetic has fully worn off. And I’m still wearing the hospital gown and talking about, if I’d applied myself, I would’ve totally been able to go twelve rounds with “prime-era Mike Tyson, before he stopped using his jab to get inside against much bigger men.”

  Andre’s surgical team isn’t completely unethical. Accompanying me in the car is a nurse who’ll look after me in my apartment, making sure my bandages get changed daily, to hold the bedpan for me to piss in, and to restart my heart should it stop. That kind of thing.

  She’s a real hottie and super attentive, but she’s a stickler for my not smoking weed.

  Why didn’t the device activate the souped-up pacemaker when Cole pressed it? I questioned Andre about that, but he kept his cards close to his chest, made up some bullshit to satisfy my curiosity. What do I think? It was out of range, and I can’t help but think Andre knew that the whole time, and felt less than inclined to tell me when he learned my plan involved his seducing a much younger woman. That old dog.

  Anyway, two days into my recovery, I get a visitor. She comes storming into my bedroom as I’m lying on my stomach, eating ice cream and receiving a massage from Nurse Hot Features.

  “It’s taken me three days to get back from Columbia,” she says.

  I turn my head, look at the door. “Oh hey, Megan. Were there any decent in-flight movies?”

  She raises an eyebrow. “Do you have any idea how difficult it is to get the United States Embassy to give you a plane ticket home?”

  “I haven’t seen that one. Is it good?”

  Nurse Hot Features is stronger than she looks, as she manages to stop Megan kicking the shit out of me. For some reason, Megan expected me to phone ahead and arrange for a ticket to be left at the embassy for her. Like I’m some sort of mind reader. In my defense, I assumed Megan had her purse with her when Cole kidnapped her.

  How did Megan get into the apartment building? My cozy neighbor in apartment 5J, Margaret Hammer, let her in of course. She’s a doll.

  With a promise that I’ll make it up to her, Megan leaves, a little calmer, and looking like she spent two weeks camping in the Amazon rainforest.

  On the fourth day of my recovery, Nurse Hot Features leaves, telling me I should be out of hot water and that the stitches in my chest will dissolve after my wound has healed.

  I’m alone in my apartment ten seconds before I realize I completely forgot about someone the last few days. I rush to the phone and dial her number.

  Looks like lady luck is with me, as Annabelle thanks me for being sensitive enough to know that she needed the last four days to be alone, to grieve the loss of Greg without me pestering her to come over and watch movies with me.

  Naturally, I tell her no problem, I figured as much. And then I ask her if she’d like to go on vacation.

  A day later, with those stitches still not dissolved yet, I’m sitting eating breakfast, waiting for my espresso to cool. It’s been days since I used the machine. I lift it up to my nose and smell it, and then think to myself, I didn’t make an almond espresso. Not only that, but I don’t even think an almond espresso is even a thing. And if it were, I don’t have the ingredients to make one. I don’t drink it. Instead, I pour it into a water bottle, so I can send it off to a laboratory to get tested.

  I push back the date of the vacay a couple days, telling Annabelle I’ve got a loose end to tie up.

  I hadn’t figured on going out of my apartment the couple days before traveling, as I’ve got a decent supply of beer, but I make a trip out anyway, wearing the loudest clothes I own apart from the clown costume. I did a stint of community service a while back, after getting a dangerous driving conviction for nearly running down a bum, and I kept one of the high-visibility vests me and the other lowlifes got issued, when we did community service. I wear this for a couple trips out of my apartment, so I can be seen easily by you know who, and decide to keep my apartment unlocked the next couple nights.

  Three nights later, a shade before two in the morning, my good friend Sandra wakes me up with—you guessed it—my tomato knife to my throat. Poignant. But what she doesn’t know—after her failed attempt to poison me with cyanide in my espresso, which she’d put in the machine filter basket after she’d made espresso for me when she was here—is that Detective Dukes is staying the night under my bed. H
as been for several days.

  Figuring that ridiculously small gun, a G43, is her weapon of choice, I spent a day finding out about unsolved murders committed using the caliber of bullet used in that pistol, ones that looked like pro hits. Then it was just a matter of convincing Detective Dukes that it’s totally worth spending numerous nights under my bed in order to catch a mass murderer, and that I won’t blow the whistle on Captain Horse’s secret that Greg was killed by the same mass murderer.

  Which brings us to now, with that same mass murderer holding my tomato knife to my throat.

  Before she can saw through an artery, Detective Dukes springs out from under the bed, wearing classic PJs and a night cap, and says, “Freeze, shit face!”

  As a way of thanking her for letting my would-be killer into the apartment building, though she’d never admit it, I send Margaret Hammer a hamper of assorted goodies, one of which is a new drink all the hipsters are drinking in L.A.’s trendiest cafes: an iced almond latte. Just fucking with you. If I were to poison that woman, I’d use rat poison.

  Two days later, I’m sitting on a beach in the Caribbean, trying to get Megan drunk so she’ll talk to me in sentences not consisting mostly of cusswords. Annabelle’s swimming in the ocean, content in the fake knowledge that her boyfriend was a good guy who didn’t nearly get me killed.

  And me? Well, I’ve really grown as a person since I was here last. The next time I stroll down to the bar to get a round of mojitos, which will be soon, I’ll be doing so wearing flip-flops.

  We enjoyed our time in the Caribbean. But I was itching to get back.

  I’ve got to go see someone, and I won’t be doing so dressed as Marky Mark for the first time since we investigated a crime together.

  I’m sitting in my rental now, in the parking lot of the diner she works at. And the L.A. heat is much hotter when you’re not wearing ‘90s white rapper attire.

  Wish me luck.

  The End

  Personal Message from the Author

  I hope you enjoyed this book or any other of my books as much as I love to write them! If you have, click this link and tell me. I personally respond to each email I receive, and love reading what fans of my books have to say.

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  Dan Taylor

  About the Author

  Dan Taylor is an English dude stranded in Oslo, Norway. His girlfriend, a Norwegian national, captured him, but he doesn’t require rescuing. He’s the author of the Jake Hancock series and doesn’t take himself seriously as an author, though he works his ass off to make his readers and himself laugh. He doesn’t like skiing, probably because he sucks at it, but he can build one hell of a snowman. He’s silly, but you already knew that. You can read his blog at https://jakehancockbooks.wordpress.com/

  The Jake Hancock P.I. series

  Kiss Hidden Lies

  Out of Crime

  Served Ice-Cold

  Saving Grace

  Our Little Secret

  Dead Friends Don’t Lie