T. Lynn Ocean - Jersey Barnes 01 - Southern Fatality

by T. Lynn Ocean

  “So, then I could hire—”

  “The thing is, Lolly, I just retired. I’m not working anymore. I didn’t do domestic cases anyway.”

  “How old are you?”

  “I don’t keep track. What’s your point?”

  “Well, whatever your age, it’s certainly too young to retire,” she surmised.

  “You’re never too young to retire,” I countered. Especially when you had been doing the kind of work I had been doing. The last time I was shot at, even though the lead missed my head by several inches, it made me wonder what I was working for. I had enough money and investments to live comfortably. I loved my work, but I also loved my life and decided to start living it in a more stress-free, normal manner. Thankfully, our next pitcher of beer arrived, and pouring the liquid into empty mugs gave me a minute to formulate my turndown. Unfortunately, all I could come up with was a simple “no.” It would have to do.

  “Oh, couldn’t you please help? You’re the only detective I know in Wilmington.”

  She’d known me for exactly half an hour. “Sorry, but no.”

  “Pulleeeze?”

  I started to put her off again when Bill spoke up. He didn’t know exactly what Rita and I did—only that my clients were all good guys and that I occasionally did some dangerous stuff. But he did know that I was not your average street dick and he was starting to irritate me by pushing the issue.

  “Honey, couldn’t you just look into things for Lolly? Find out for sure if the bastard’s cheating on her, before she divorces him?”

  I had no desire to take on some two-bit domestic squabble case. “I don’t think so, Bill, but I’ll recommend a good local private investigator.”

  Both of them frowned at me and suddenly I was the bad guy.

  “It would just take you a day or two, Jersey Barnes.” Bill used both my names only when he really wanted something. I sighed, silently cursing my lack of willpower when it came to that pleading puppy-dog look he could produce at will. It was especially effective when he aimed it my way after I’d had a few beers. Sighing, I returned the cut-down-on-beer goal back to my mental to-do list and, knowing it probably wouldn’t happen, downed another tasty swig.

  “Okay, okay. I’ll just tail Samuel for a day or two and check into some things.” Surely it wouldn’t take too long. I’d get some photographs, maybe a recording of a phone conversation. Lolly would cry, get really mad, get an incredibly lucrative divorce settlement, and get on with her life. Another cheating hubby caught in the act. I still found it hard to digest the thought of Samuel Chesterfield screwing around on his new wife, especially one who looked like Lolly. On the other hand, a lot of smart men have made a lot of bad decisions, thanks to the ability of testosterone to turn even the sanest person into a blithering idiot. I could always begin my retirement next week.

  Lolly clapped her hands in thanks and Bill gave me a quick but succulent kiss, the depths of which reached every nerve ending in my body. Even though I’d just agreed to take a job against my better judgment and I wanted to be mad at my boyfriend, the only thing occupying my mind at the moment was the thought of my hands running the entire length of his lovely body. And, of course, how he would reciprocate.

  THREE

  It took Only two days of tailing Samuel Chesterfield to realize he was involved in some funny business and it didn’t appear to be with another woman.

  Tailing people is not one of my favorite chores. It’s a boring task, but relatively easy to do in my Mercedes-Benz AMG S-series. Its jet-black finish makes it inconspicuous and a hopped up V-12 engine makes it brutally fast. Uncle Sam confiscated it from a Colombian drug dealer who had the bad taste to dip his fingers into the terrorism pot, and my handlers gave the sedan to me when they discovered that it had a Hess & Eisenhart armor job with bulletproof everything. I was jazzed about the deal, especially when I learned the car was armored by the same folks who made all the presidential limousines. Driving it, I felt like a diplomat, until the first time bad guys were after me and Secret Service agents didn’t swarm in to help. Still, the car had some major cool factor and, to my delight, it became my personal property when the government decided to pull it from service. Surprisingly, my lowball offer was the winning auction bid. It probably helped that the man running the auction owed me a favor.

  Chesterfield’s vehicles, on the other hand, were difficult to miss. Both of them. He owned a chauffeured Lincoln stretch limo, but while I’d been tailing him, he’d been driving himself in a white Lexus sport utility vehicle. Yesterday, he had two different lunch appointments, both less than half an hour. Even for a guy of his stature, two lunch appointments in one day, in one hour, was a bit much. Especially since he only drank coffee during both of them.

  Earlier today, he paid a visit to a dry cleaner but instead of retrieving laundry, he spoke briefly to another customer at the counter. I attempted to follow his friend, but the fellow exited the rear of the building and vanished.

  I figured the quickest way to get some answers would be to bug Chesterfield’s home phone lines. It would be an illegal tap, but I usually didn’t let a little thing like the law stand in my way. Not being one to work any harder than necessary, I called my partner and asked her to do it.

  Rita laughed into the phone, but it wasn’t a ha-ha humorous laugh. More like disbelieving. “Are you nuts, Jersey? The phone is going crazy with people calling to ask if it’s true that you retired. I’m handling my jobs plus your leftovers. My knee is still killing me from that little brawl I got in last week and Suzie started having labor pains, so now we’ve got no secretary.” She paused, laughed again. “Sure, I’ll just drop everything to go and install a little wiretap for your lazy, thoughtless fat ass. Besides,” she continued, “what do you need a tap for? I thought you retired.”

  “I am retired, and I take offense to you calling me fat. But you’re better at tapping than I am.”

  “Maybe you need a little practice,” she complained. “Who you listening in on, anyway?”

  “Samuel Chesterfield.”

  “The Samuel Chesterfield? He’s in town?”

  “Yes, and yes.”

  “I don’t even want to know why you’re interested in Chesterfield.”

  “No, you probably don’t. It’s not real exciting. But my evening with Bill made it all worthwhile. We went through an entire can of whipped cream, and it wasn’t on top of the pie.”

  Rita snorted. She had laughed at a typical request and hadn’t laughed at my normal humor. She was stressed out.

  “Okay,” I said, “hire a temp to help you out until Suzie pops out the kid and comes back to work. Just keep the temp out of the files and out of the blue room.” The blue room housed lots of nifty gadgets including several illegal ones. We certainly didn’t need a nosy temporary employee rummaging around in there.

  “In other words, you’re telling me to hire a warm body to sit here and take messages that I’ll have to return anyway?”

  “Sure. In fact, tell the temp service you want a hunky guy—he’ll make for nice scenery. If nothing else, he can type some correspondence and keep the coffee brewing. Oh, and have him send something to Suzie. Flowers, or diapers, or whatever it is you’re supposed to send a new mom.”

  “First of all, go do your own tap. Second of all, hunky guys don’t know how to draft business correspondence. Forget the temp agency. I’m going to hire a sexy masseur who can operate a coffeemaker.” Rita hung up without saying good-bye. I climbed in my car and headed to the office for the equipment I’d need to tap the Chesterfield’s home phone line.

  Because most of its occupants were at work, the residential building was relatively quiet when I arrived. Luckily, Chesterfield’s alarm system was not set and it only took a few minutes to break in. It would have been easier to ask Lolly for a key, but I didn’t want her to know that I planned to rummage through her belongings.

  The first thing I noticed about Chesterfield’s place was that it seemed pretty nice for a sho
rt-term rental. Then I remembered that, according to courthouse records, he’d just bought the building. The outside wasn’t much, but the interior oozed taste with designer furniture, carpeting thick enough to envelop bare feet, and randomly placed original artwork that could have been painted by any five-year-old, but was probably insured for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

  I decided that if I was going to tap the phone, I might as well drop an earpiece or two at the same time. Lolly was out shopping with Bill, and Chesterfield and Jared were doing the male bonding thing at the newest Chesterfield Financial branch office, so I had plenty of time. I placed a mike in the bedroom and another in the bar and lounge area, which separated the kitchen from the living room. I probably wouldn’t have a need for them, but at least they were in place if I wanted to become a fly on the wall.

  I briefly wondered where I’d be had my retirement plans gone as expected. Probably lounging on Incognito, my forty-eight-foot boat that was a gift from a very appreciative past client. My one extravagance, I kept it docked at the Point Cape Fear Marina and hired a dockhand who made sure the refrigerator was well stocked and that the boat was always clean and ready to go. Incognito was an upscale sport-fishing boat, but like my kitchen at home, the outriggers were never used. She cruised at thirty knots, and Bill and I enjoyed taking her out for promiscuous weekend trips. Had we been on the boat right now, we’d probably be drifting just off the coast, making good use of the master stateroom….

  Shaking my head to clear distracting thoughts, I got down to business. I took care of both phone lines. An answering machine was plugged into the main number and the other line had only one outlet in the son’s room, next to a computer desk loaded with various hardware. When I first met her, Lolly mentioned that Chesterfield was training Jared, and that Jared had just graduated from the Citadel in Charleston.

  With that in mind, it wasn’t unusual for a twenty-one or twenty-two-year-old to live with his parents temporarily, but studying the son’s room, I had to wonder if Jared had decorated it himself. It had a decidedly feminine touch: everything in perfect order, light pastel wall colors, and no dirty clothes lying around. Aside from the cluttered desk, nothing personal was in sight. A single framed photograph of his mother, Lolly’s predecessor, and a current copy of GQ magazine lay on the night table beside a low-profile platform bed that was piled high with striped pillows. I’d have to run a full background check on the kid to see if anything interesting turned up.

  On the other side of the roomy condo, the master bedroom reeked of opulence and came complete with its own flat-screen television, wet bar, and leather sofa. Without leaving signs of intrusion, I did a cursory search through Chesterfield’s dresser, paying careful attention to the sock drawer. I once found a government handheld satellite tracking device nestled between two pairs of white athletic socks. Like digging a hole on the beach just for the hell of it, I theorized that concealing goods in a sock drawer was a genetic thing for males. Women were much more creative. Much to my disappointment though, Chesterfield’s sock drawer revealed only clean socks, neatly folded into matching pairs.

  Moving on, I tossed his study, the wet bar, and the entire kitchen. I didn’t know what I was looking for, and as if to meet my expectations, I found exactly nothing. I suddenly wished that Ox were by my side, along with one of his brilliant suggestions. His input was always laced with striking clarity and he often helped with challenging cases when I asked—and sometimes when I didn’t. Occasionally, he’d have an epiphany that was preceded by a vision, which I found both disconcerting and intriguing. But the man’s suggestions were always legitimate, albeit borderline psychic. And in addition to his connection with protective spirits, he could kick some major ass when the situation called for it. Not to mention the fact that ever since he played the starring role in a vivid dream I had last week, the mere sight of him made me tingle in all the right places. Thoughts of quitting work and entering a new phase in life may have nudged my subconscious to consider Ox as more than a best friend and business partner. Or maybe I’d wanted to explore the possibility of sex and romance all along, but the timing hadn’t been right.

  My hands started to sweat beneath the latex gloves I wore. Medical-quality gloves are the perfect choice to work quickly without leaving prints, but they do not breathe. I continued poring through Chesterfield’s personal life and, after twenty minutes, found a curiously placed flash drive stored inside a leather case. About the size of a wand-shaped key chain, the data storage device had a USB interface on one end. A lot of computer users prefer flash drives in lieu of floppy disks or compact disks, but it was odd that I found the thing concealed in a gym bag, in the coat closet by the front door. I’d have to find out which health club the Chesterfields belonged to.

  Immediately, I called my friend Soup—who happens to be one of the best computer guys in the country. He answered on the first ring. The good thing about computer junkies is that they’re always home, in front of a flickering monitor, hacking into prohibited cyber-territories.

  “Talk to me.” Soup was an ex-Fed, and acquired his name because he always ate soup right out of the can when he was on a surveillance assignment. Everyone else would scarf down candy bars, doughnuts, or pastrami sandwiches but Soup was more inclined to drink his meal. He was a soup connoisseur, and could discuss the subtle flavor nuances of dill tomato bisque or asparagus crème the way other men analyzed football.

  “Soup, it’s Jersey,” I responded, as if he didn’t already know. With the gadgetry he had, Soup would know if the queen of England was calling before she uttered her first royal word. “I need you here yesterday, and bring something that will copy the files from a USB flash drive. I want to know what’s on it, but leave the original. And, of course, it might be copy protected. Can you do it?”

  “Damn, Jersey,” he complained. “I’m in the middle of lunch. And, I’m condom-close to breaking in to my favorite airline’s reservation system. I’m working on a few first-class tickets to Cozumel.”

  “Lunch can wait. You owe me,” I said. “Not that I’m keeping count, or anything, but I believe that last time we tallied, you were in the hole by quite a wide margin. Real wide.”

  “Crap,” he said.

  “You have to be quick about it. No stopping at the deli on your way over for a cup of minestrone.” I heard the rapid click of his computer keys in the background and knew he was closing whatever files he had open.

  “I’m on the way. Give me the small print from the memory stick.”

  I read the product information from the flash drive including something that ended in gigabytes.

  “With that much memory, it’s a relatively new one. It’ll hold way more data than a DVD, believe it or not.”

  I told him I did believe it, gave him the address, and hung up to wait.

  FOUR

  Where the heck have you been, for crying out loud?” Spud said in greeting when I walked through the door. “I need to get to the drugstore before they close. I’m all out of heartburn pills.”

  It was a Sunday afternoon in the middle of June and the day called for enjoyable outdoor activities. I was supposed to be retired and frolicking on my boat, Bill had just told me that Lolly was planning to go public with her cheating-hubby accusations, and to top it all off, I’d received an offer for a Medicare-paid scooter along with free coupons for adult diapers and fiber supplements. Rita probably put my name on their mailing list just for laughs, but I figured I ought to at least have been slurping a banana drink with a little umbrella in it, enjoying a water view from somewhere, before opening such insulting mail.

  Filling my lungs and holding the breath for a long beat, I willed myself to take Spud and his attitude in stride. Incognito wasn’t going anywhere. She would still be in her dock next week, patiently awaiting my arrival. Or next month, the way the Chesterfield thing was panning out. It had been days since I’d bugged the family’s high-rise condo and so far, nothing had jumped out and announced itself as a cl
ue.

  I let the breath slowly out and displayed my benevolent smile. “Hiya, Spud. I thought it was cholesterol pills you were out of.” Even though my father collected prescription drugs like an investor collects portfolios, he was in good health. Although arthritis caused a stiff walk and knobby knuckles, he got around just fine, especially when using one of his hand-carved wooden walking canes. The one he sported today was adorned with a mermaid in lieu of a handle. Her curvaceous nippled breasts were the finger grips.

  “Yeah, well,” he said. “I won some cholesterol pills from Trip last week during our poker game. But now I need heartburn pills. I’m starting to belch, and you can’t attract babes sounding like a frog, for crying out loud.” Spud’s idea of a babe was any woman who could walk faster than he could, regardless of any healthcare aids in use.

  “Okay, I’ll drive you to the pharmacy before they close,” I agreed. “Let me get something to drink first.” Spud’s eyesight had deteriorated to the point that North Carolina deemed him unable to safely operate a vehicle and took away his license.

  Seeing me tote him around, people assumed Spud was my grandfather. They didn’t factor in that he’d impregnated my mother when he was twice her age. If I thought too long about the injustice of regaining a father just in time to play chauffeur for his aging body, I felt cheated. But as Ox pointed out, the spirits had a purpose when they deposited Spud on my doorstep.

  “I was going to drive myself but Ox busted me just when I cranked the ignition.” The mermaid’s tail swished with annoyance. “He threatened to call Dirk and have me arrested.”

  A smile tugged at my mouth, as I knew it to be an empty threat. Ox was a direct approach type of guy. If forced, he’d have gently removed Spud from the car and deposited him in a booth at the Block.

  A month ago I had received a call from a highway patrolman at the Department of Motor Vehicles, where Spud had failed the eyesight test and thrown such a tantrum that only the mention of arrest quieted him down. When I arrived to collect Spud and his vehicle, I paid an off-duty cop to follow us home in Spud’s car. Dirk Thompson ended up joining us for dinner and swapped insults with Spud right up to the point of cheesecake with fresh blueberries. By the time we sipped after-dinner drinks of Baileys Irish cream on ice, Spud admitted that maybe it was best if he didn’t drive. Later, Dirk told me he hadn’t enjoyed a night out so much in a long time and that, if I ever needed anything out of the department, I should give him a call. He’d since become my main source for running quick vehicle registrations and license checks.