by K. J. Emrick
SECOND Guessing
A Sidney Stone Private Investigator (Paranormal) Mystery Book 2
K. J. Emrick
S. J. Wells
First published in Australia by South Coast Publishing, October 2019.
Copyright K.J. Emrick (2012-19)
* * *
This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and locations portrayed in this book and the names herein are fictitious. Any similarity to or identification with the locations, names, characters or history of any person, product or entity is entirely coincidental and unintentional.
- From a Declaration of Principles jointly adopted by a Committee of the American Bar Association and a Committee of Publishers and Associations.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Contents
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Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Epilogue
More Info
Acknowledgments
About the Authors
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Prologue
Here’s the thing about being a private investigator. You can’t really talk about your cases.
It’s kind of like being a police officer, in a way. There’s a confidentiality that you don’t want to violate with all of your clients. You don’t want to be sued. More than that, you definitely don’t want to end up without any new clients when word starts to spread that you can’t keep your big mouth shut.
So, since you can’t talk about what you’re doing, everyone you know assumes that you work glamorous, mysterious cases full of excitement and danger. Telling them “I can’t talk about it” leads people to look at you like a cross between Nancy Drew and James Bond. I’m not saying that I don’t get into more than my fair share of danger. Just last month I had to replace the passenger door on my Mustang after a shotgun blast ripped open the sheet metal.
Yeah. My mechanic loves me.
My friends keep asking me when I’m going to be in the newspapers again. What big case am I working on now, they ask. I always laugh the question off before changing the subject. Getting my name in the news is not always a good thing. Usually it only happens when things go wrong. When someone dies, or when someone goes to jail, or when one of the downtown shops needs to replace their front windows because a car went crashing through.
Yes. That really happened. And yes, it made the news.
So actually, I guess there’s plenty of excitement. Sometimes. Those cases are the exception though, and not my usual case. My usual case is the sort of thing you see me doing right here, right now.
I’m in a dumpster behind a Chinese restaurant, hip deep in trash bags, looking for my client’s ten-thousand-dollar diamond tennis bracelet.
Make your jokes now. My case is rubbish. I should brush up on my trash talk. There must be clues littered on the ground everywhere.
It’s a dirty job, but someone has to do it.
Ha, ha.
Work has been slow for me recently, and the truth of the matter is that if I don’t work, I don’t get paid. You can’t wait for the more exciting cases. You have to take what comes your way, when it comes your way, unless you want to go broke. I happen to like money. Money buys me chocolate. It also pays my rent. So when I don’t have a big case paying me big money, I take little cases that pay me small amounts of money. This case is going to pay me a five percent finder’s fee.
For those of us who can do math in our heads, that’s five hundred dollars.
But only if I can find the thing.
My client said she last remembered wearing her bracelet while having dinner here at Yun’s Rising Sun Palace. I’ve heard good things about this place although I can’t say that I’ve ever eaten here myself. It’s a little outside my price range. This isn’t your typical buffet like you find in sections of Midtown Detroit. The Rising Sun Palace is a very exclusive eatery in the University District, catering to rich kids away at college and powerful business types. From what I understand there’s no prices on the menu because if you have to ask, you can’t afford it.
The owner of the bracelet was here two days ago, and the trash won’t get picked up until tomorrow, so I figured it was worth a shot to crawl through the refuse and hope that maybe the bracelet got swept up with the fortune cookie crumbs and tossed out. Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. I’m grasping at straws.
And napkins. Straws and napkins and used chopsticks. And stuff that was probably food at one time but now is just a sodden, liquidy mess.
Pro tip number thirty-two from the private investigations handbook, written by yours truly. Never go pawing through a dumpster without wearing rubber gloves. I’m not worried about leaving fingerprints behind, I’m worried about what I’m putting my fingers in. Always glove up when you’re touching trash. You do not want to get this stuff on your skin. Also, never—and I mean never—wear any clothes when you are in a dumpster that you don’t mind throwing away later. No amount of washing is going to get the nasty out.
When I’m done here, I’m burning these clothes.
I bought this whole outfit from the Goodwill on Grand River Ave especially for this occasion. The jeans and the t-shirt cost me ten bucks. The sneakers are a size too big, but they were only another eight dollars. Not bad for an outfit I’m only going to wear once.
Something squishes through my fingers as I tear open the last of the black garbage bags. So gross. This is thoroughly disgusting. What’s worse, is that nowhere in this mess is a diamond bracelet with sparkly diamonds in the shape of butterflies. It’s not here.
“Damn it.” Wiping my messy rubber gloves on my throwaway jeans, I indulge in a few more choice words about the nature of the universe before giving up with a sigh and hauling myself over the edge of the metal bin. The edge of my shirt snags on the rusty, peeling side and tears. Oh, this just keeps getting better and better. Maybe I should have just wished for the stupid bracelet to appear in my pocket. That would have been easier than going through all this trying to find it the old-fashioned
way. One single wish, and this whole case would have been over.
Don’t laugh. I know a guy who can make things like that happen.
However, I’ve learned the hard way not to waste a magic wish on something I can do myself. Hard work pays off… even if it’s just for five hundred dollars. Besides. I’ve only got so many wishes left to use up.
More on that later. Stick around.
My train of thought gets interrupted—rather rudely, I thought—when I jump down from the dumpster and practically land on the man standing in the alleyway. He doesn’t even come up to the top of my head, and I’m only five-foot-seven. But, with his arms crossed and his eyes glaring like they are he just looks mean. You know how some people give off a vibe that’s as easy to read as the front page of the National Enquirer? That’s the sort of feeling I get from this guy. Nothing good.
Of course, I should have known he was there before I nearly landed in his arms. At least, I would have, if I wasn’t so distracted by the muck covering my hands and soaking into my shoes and smeared on my pants and—yes—streaked through my honey-blonde hair. It was just all so gross. I didn’t have my head in the game, as they say, or I would’ve known the guy was standing there three seconds ago.
No, really. I get to see three seconds ahead into my own future. It’s my gift. Might not sound like a lot, but it’s come in handy more than once… when I’m paying attention.
Like for instance. This guy’s about to say, What you doing in our garbage, like he’s a cliché bad guy in an old movie. Watch.
He looks me up, and down, and says, “What you doing in our garbage?”
See?
The guy’s very Asian, with the dark hair and the upturned eyes and the poor grasp of the English language that still puts him further ahead than most school kids in America. This guy can speak two languages, even if he hasn’t mastered both, and most high schoolers in the good old USA can barely pass their English finals. Even though he’s dressed in nice slacks and a fancy shirt, he’s wearing some chunky gold rings on both fingers that probably cost ten times what I paid for the outfit I’m wearing. I figure he’s probably part of the family that owns and operates the Rising Sun Palace. My bad luck to have him standing there just as I finish making a mess of his once neatly packed dumpster.
‘Bad Luck.’ That’s my middle name.
Well, not really. That would be a horrible middle name for a girl, wouldn’t it? Who would do that to their baby girl?
“Look,” I tell the man, “I’m sorry about the mess. I was looking for something, but it wasn’t there. No harm done. If the city trash collectors get mad when they come to do their pick up, just tell them it was my fault.”
“Your fault?” he says back to me, scrunching up his hard face with a frown. “Who you?”
“My name’s Sidney Stone.”
He looks like he doesn’t believe me. I hear his next question before he says it, the same question I knew he’d ask. “Sidney? Isn’t that a boy’s name?”
“Not the way I use it.” I smile at him, but my joke is obviously lost in the translation. “Okay. I’m just gonna go now…”
He moves to block my way out of the alley. Not hard to do, since there’s only one way in. I’ve got the Chinese restaurant on my right, and some kind of wholesale warehouse on my left, and a brick wall behind me. There’s nowhere for me to go unless I can fly.
For the record, I can’t fly.
“You stay here,” the man tells me, pointing a finger in my face. “You going to explain to Li Qiang Chen why you here.”
I could take that finger and break it. I could throw his head into the brick wall if I wanted to. There’s no doubt in my mind I could take him. But, like I said, I’m sure he’s part of the family that runs this place. Fight one member of the family, and you’re likely going to fight all of them. The best way to win a fight, believe it or not, is to not start one.
Using words to get out of problems isn’t as easy as using your fists, but it’s usually the better option.
“Listen. I’m not here to cause trouble. I just explained it to you. I was looking for something. A woman’s bracelet, with these little diamond butterflies all around it.” I circled my wrist with a finger, indicating the imaginary line of a tennis bracelet. “It was kind of a shot in the dark that it would still be here, but I figured I should look anyway…”
The man’s arms unfold from across his chest.
They fall down to his sides, and when they do he thrusts his hands deep into the pockets of his black slacks.
The expression on his face is not a pleasant one.
Oh.
That gift of mine I mentioned? The one where I can see my own future, three seconds ahead of time? It’s like living my life on fast forward with everything that will—or might—happen to me playing like a movie in my head. It helps make me a better private investigator, but the thing that makes me a great one is my instincts. I’ve learned to trust my hunches. My intuition. Whatever you’d like to call it. I’ve got a knack for understanding human nature.
And right now I’ve got a pretty big hunch bubbling up inside me.
The door to the Chinese restaurant is about to open.
I see it before it happens, and when it does the loud sounds from the kitchen pour out into the alley. Lots of voices talking over each other in Chinese, pots and pans clanking on stoves, food sizzling. Then the door closed again with a loud clang. When I look, two more people are standing here with us.
Great. Guess now it’s a party.
The one guy… well, to put it politely there’s no way he should have been able to fit through that door. Over six feet tall, and easily that much around at his waist, he’s wearing a pristinely white shirt tucked into equally white pants. His tie is white, and wide. Even his shoes are white. Not the sort of outfit that one usually wears for a romp in a back alley. Those clothes aren’t disposable in the least. In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s all made out of real silk. His bald head shines. His three chins strain at the stiff collar of his shirt.
As for the other guy, if Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jet Li had a love child, this would be him. Bulging muscles. Short hair with a rat-tail at the back tied at the end with a black ribbon that matches his sleeveless gi. Definitely not how a waiter would be dressed. That one’s obviously a bodyguard. The big guy next to him’s obviously the boss.
“What seems to be the trouble, Miss Stone?” he says to me.
He knows my name.
That’s a little unsettling. No, actually that’s a whole lot unsettling. I mean, I’m used to knowing things that other people don’t, but when someone else does it to me…
That can’t be good.
“You’ve got me at a disadvantage, sir.”
He looks me up and down, his eyes paying special attention to the grime smeared on my clothes and hands and everywhere else. “Yes. I’d say so.”
Not what I meant, but he’s not wrong. I look like a beggar at the back door of this guy’s very successful restaurant. I don’t usually care what I look like, in front of anyone, but what I wouldn’t give right now for a brush and some soap. Lots and lots of soap.
“Look,” I tell him. “I think there’s some misunderstanding. I don’t know how you know my name, but I don’t know you. I was looking for something. That’s all.”
“Arnie Chen.”
“Excuse me?”
“That is my name, Miss Stone. Well, actually it’s Li Qiang Chen, but here in America, I go by Arnie. It is easier for people to pronounce.” Looking over the edge of the dumpster, he snorts. “You appear to have made a mess of my garbage bin.”
“That’s where messes go, isn’t it?” I ask him, trying to be cute.
He doesn’t look impressed by my humor.
“Perhaps so, but you are not a woman to do things without a reason. There is a purpose as to why you have chosen to go through my garbage. Tell me what it is, please, before I begin to get upset.”
Yeah, I really don’t
think I want to see him when he’s upset. Besides. If I’m right about what I just figured out, then he needs to hear what I know.
“I was looking for a bracelet. My client lost it, and this is the last place she remembers having it, so here I am. That was just two days ago so I was hoping that maybe it got put into the trash by mistake.”
“Ah, I see. You are a woman who does whatever she needs to do to, in order to obtain what she wants.”
“That’s about right. A little more poetic than I would have put it, but yeah. That’s me.” Then, very deliberately, I turned to look over my shoulder at the man who was blocking me from leaving the alley. “I came looking for that bracelet, and here it is. I was just looking in the wrong garbage.”
The guy with his bulky golden rings flinches when he realizes I’m talking about him. The look on his face is a comical mix of anger and fear. His eyes dart to Arnie Chen, pleading to be heard. “Sir, she lies—”
Arnie holds up a hand, and the guy immediately stops talking.
“Miss Stone,” he says to me, “explain yourself.”
“Sir,” the ring-fingered thug tries again.
The look Arnie gives him is hot enough to melt ice on a winter’s day.
After a moment, he turns to me again. “Explain yourself,” he repeats.
“Sure thing. This man works for you, I assume?”
“Yes. He does. He is one of my restaurant’s hosts. He takes care of my more prominent guests who dine in our private dining areas.”
“Prominent? That’s a pretty big word.”
He smiles like a cat who just ate a plump canary. “Yes, it is. I believe a man should be able to show his dominance in all things, including his mastery of any language he chooses to learn. I am the master of my own destiny. Wǒ shì wǒ zìjǐ mìngyùn de zhǔrén.”