Love Finds You in Carmel by-the-Sea, California

by Sandra D. Bricker

  “That’s plenty,” Deke said. “Thanks for the help. I’ll see you tomorrow night?”

  “Pick you up at seven.”

  Nick thought about Deke for several minutes after he hung up the phone. He wondered what it must be like to deal with jealous husbands and insurance fraud all day long. Not that beautiful Monterey constituted a hotbed of crime or anything—not in comparison to his hometown of Chicago, anyway. But if a murder occurred or drug traffickers passed through on their way up north, they always seemed to land on Nick’s desk.

  He couldn’t really complain, though. At the end of every day, he still got to climb into his Jeep and take the Cabrillo toward home. Almost without fail, the second he made that turn onto Ocean Avenue, the pressures of the job blew away with the Pacific breeze.

  Home.

  Carmel-by-the-Sea embodied the idea of home for Nick, even after only a few years as a resident. It was located fewer than fifteen minutes from Monterey and yet felt like a whole world apart, as far as Nick was concerned. Something about the place just soothed his soul.

  “Bench. Coroner on line three.”

  Further thoughts of soul-soothing would have to wait until the sun went down.

  “Nick Benchley… Yeah, Barnes. Whaddya got?”

  Annie pushed her bicycle through the lattice gate and stood in front of the ivy-covered fence, surveying Casanova Street as she waited for Sherman to catch up to her. She clipped the leash to his bright blue collar and climbed onto the bike.

  The dog seemed to realize just at that moment what was taking shape for this unexpected outing. With his big velvet ears pinned back and the appearance of an arched eyebrow, he regarded her with one part surprise and equal part disgust.

  “Oh, don’t give me that look, Shermie,” she told him lovingly. “The exercise will do you good. And I promise to pedal as slowly as you need me to. Okay?”

  He didn’t look convinced, but he obediently trotted along beside her as she rode with her arm extended to keep the leash a safe distance from the bicycle. It was a short couple of blocks up to Ocean Avenue, but when Annie navigated the corner to the right, Sherman stopped in his tracks and plopped down on his considerable fanny. She jammed the brakes and balanced the bike against her left leg.

  “Sherman, come on, boy. It’s just up there. Look! You can do it.”

  He apparently disagreed. Sherman clearly had no intention of moving from his spot, so Annie climbed off the bike and crouched down beside him.

  “Listen to reason. It’s just a couple more blocks, buddy.”

  He shook his head so swiftly that his tags jingled out the punctuation to his refusal.

  “Are you kidding me with this?”

  Sherman looked up at her without a trace of amusement, and their gazes locked.

  “Seriously?”

  The beagle sniffed the air and turned his head, tracing the path of a car turning down Ocean as it headed into Carmel Village.

  Annie sighed. Sometimes it was just the better part of wisdom to admit defeat and march on. Wrapping his leash around her wrist, Annie pushed her bicycle forward. After a few steps, Sherman got up and followed suit, and the two of them ambled down the sidewalk toward the village without further incident.

  There was something about Carmel, something unique and otherworldly. The village just oozed casual European sophistication, lightly dusted with the glamour of a classic Hollywood movie set and nestled into one of the most beautiful and scenic landscapes along the Pacific Coast. Annie remembered reading somewhere that when Carmel was originally created, the lots had been sold for one hundred dollars each. But over time, roads were built to curve around trees to ensure the maintenance of the natural beauty, and development evolved to where some of the property values rocketed into the millions. When Gram had retired from Hollywood in the 1960s, she’d purchased her two-story, sunny-yellow storybook house for a fraction of the one million dollars it was now worth.

  “Morning, Annie. Morning, Sherman.” Greetings from her favorite barista rang out the moment Annie crossed the threshold at the propped-open, weathered front door.

  This particular coffeehouse had been a longtime favorite of Annie’s even before she took up residence in Gram’s nearby home. Like so many establishments within Carmel Village, the shop’s owners were dog-friendly and allowed her to bring Sherman right inside with her. Despite the fact that she wasn’t a big fan of coffee, Annie knew the place would surely become her regular spot for morning coffee because of their high regard for Sherman and his kind. And also because her friend Evan worked as a chef at the bistro next door.

  “Hey, Kayla.”

  “The usual?”

  “Please.”

  Annie took her latte and cinnamon Danish and grabbed a newspaper as she led Sherman up the rounded tile stairs and across the oak-slatted floor to the empty table by the window. As Sherman settled in at her feet, Annie pulled on the paper tucked under her arm and spread it out across the cherry tabletop.

  The Monterey Herald’s classified section didn’t appear to have a whole lot to offer beyond a few secretarial gigs, some restaurant work, and the need for a high school math and science tutor. Annie chuckled at the thought. The closest she’d ever come to utilizing her math skills was in her last position as a mortgage counselor for Equity Now, and they’d provided a very reliable calculator for people like Annie.

  She’d dropped out of college less than a year from completing her degree when she began to realize how different a person needed to be from herself in order to make a good therapist. Consequently, she jumped into the first paycheck-generating position she could find, and voila! A mortgage acceleration counselor was born.

  She was pretty good at the job too. She enjoyed working with people; she was dependable and trustworthy, always going the extra mile for her customers. But Annie thought that if she had to explain one more time why a mortgage would not accelerate if the extra principle payments were consistently skipped in deference to a trip to the mall or a newer model car, she might just pull out all the springy curls from her throbbing head and set them on fire. When the layoff news came, Annie’s relief might have been colored by panic—if not for her dead aunt Henri.

  She used to spend her summers in Ohio with Uncle Frank and Aunt Henri on their farm. When Frank died, Aunt Henri continued to live there for many years, running the place with the help of two hired hands who made a sort of bunkhouse out of the garage, and they lived right there next to the barn.

  Aunt Henri shopped with coupons and reused the bags that the bread came in. She insisted on lights-out by eight thirty in order to conserve electricity, and she kept the thermostat down as low as a body could stand, even in those cold Ohio winters. So imagine Annie’s astonishment when, upon her death, Henrietta left her a tidy little nest egg! She’d thought her mother, Henri’s sister-in-law, might have a coronary over the news.

  “You’re my favorite niece,” Aunt Henri wrote in the letter she left behind.

  Annie was her only niece, but Henri was always saying things like that.

  “You know why you’re my favorite niece, Annie? Because you’re not afraid to wear hats.” Or “…because you sink a mean little white ball in putt-putt.”

  Aunt Henri’s nest egg had been hidden away, weaving a catch-you-if-you-fall net for the nearly three years since her death. Rather than making the wrong decision on how to use it, Annie had unofficially decided not to use it at all and tied it up with a five-year bow when she purchased a certificate of deposit at her father’s suggestion. But when she saw the classified ad in the Herald just then, right on the fold of the second column, the nest egg sprang to her mind. Along with Gram’s hospitality of putting a roof over her head for the time being, she would at least have a few dollars to fall back on in case she’d made a colossal error in judgment by dialing the number listed in the advertisement.

  “Yes. I’m calling about the job listed today in the Herald? Private investigator’s assistant, no experience necessar
y?”

  Chapter Two

  “The stuff that dreams are made of.”

  Humphrey Bogart, The Maltese Falcon, 1941

  Annie wore her crocheted Goorin baker boy hat in Aunt Henri’s honor when she met with Deacon Heffley, the proprietor of Heffley Investigations. And when he told her the starting salary for the entry-level position, she tossed a quick thank-you upward for the financial backup. Twenty minutes later, she’d taken the job without another conflicting thought.

  She sailed through the front door of the house, and Sherman greeted her with a stump of a bark and a frantic tail that wagged so hard it looked as if the force of it might knock him over.

  “Gram?”

  Annie bounced into the empty kitchen and picked up a folded note from the table.

  Gone to see a man about some green beans.

  Love, Gram

  Annie dropped the note to the tabletop and scurried across the black-and-white-checkerboard linoleum. Taking hold of the pen hanging from a string on the front of the refrigerator, she squealed as she tried to cross off item number one from her “Five-Point Plan for Change” to-do list, which was stuck to the freezer with an out-of-season “Jesus is the Reason for the Season” magnet. When the pen wouldn’t produce one streak of ink, she rummaged through the drawer next to the sink, pulled out a fat red Sharpie pen, and made a large X through the first item on the list.

  “One down, four to go!” she announced to no one but Sherman. At least he had the heart to grin at her with enthusiasm.

  Item number two on the list blinked at her.

  Get some great hair.

  And with that, she was off. She loaded Sherman into the Taurus and hit the road toward Monterey. Not until she reached the exit did she realize that she still held the red Sharpie pen.

  Jake thought he could squeeze her in, but he had two people ahead of her: a quick cut and a blow-out. Annie picked up one of the entertainment rags from the table and led Sherman by his leash toward the seat in the corner that resembled a large orange bucket. She hadn’t even made it all the way through the tell-all about John Travolta when Jake grinned at her from behind the counter.

  “What are we thinking today?” he asked eagerly. “Highlights for the Shermster?”

  “I want to go all the way,” she exclaimed as she followed him toward his station, stopping long enough to fasten Sherman’s leash to the empty receptionist’s chair. “Cut. Straightening. Highlights. Whatever you think. Glam me up!”

  Jake momentarily looked as if she’d handed him a blank check with his name on it.

  “Cut it off,” she declared boldly. “I’m a new woman, and I need to accessorize the change with new hair.”

  Two of the other stations were occupied, and they both looked on in anticipation, but Jake just clicked his tongue at her and shook his head at her reflection in the mirror.

  “What?” she asked. “Isn’t this the moment you’ve been waiting for?”

  “First tell me what brought you here in such a hurry,” he said with a pinch of suspicion, shifting his weight to one hip.

  “I told you. I’m a new woman.”

  “And what was wrong with the old one?”

  “You don’t have that kind of time,” she insisted. “But I could send you a copy of my five-point plan for change.”

  Jake gathered her curls into his fist the way Zoey often did, and he held them up over her head. Turning to the strangers filling the other chairs on the salon floor, he cocked his head. “If you had this Sarah Jessica Parker hair, would you want me to chop it all off for you on a whim?”

  Annie groaned as every woman within earshot, including the stylists, expressed their displeasure and sincere warning against her triumph over point number two. Jake had been comparing her to SJP since the first time they’d met, but now he’d brought perfect strangers into it!

  “Jake, you know Sarah Jessica has changed her hair numerous times over the years to reinvent herself, and her hairdresser has presumably allowed her to do it. She’s been curly and straight, long and short. For goodness’ sake, she even went Brown Sugar #67 for a while until she came to her senses. What is so wrong with me diving in for a great big old change? Maybe something silky and bouncy. What do you think?”

  “Here’s what we’re going to do today,” Jake declared, as much to his eager audience as to Annie. “We’re going to give you a trim and a deep silk conditioning. And then, if you go home to your life, give it some serious thought, and decide to go Sarandon red or Aguilera experimental, you come back here and we’ll talk.”

  Two hours later, Annie walked out of Jake’s salon with her dog in tow, looking very much like a softer-edged version of the woman who walked in—her curls diffused and the ends less ragged, but pretty much the same girl, only seventy-five dollars poorer.

  She’d called Zoey on her way to Jake’s to announce her intention to see her afterward with a whole new head of hair. When Zoey opened her door to Annie now, her perfect features dropped a little, and she tilted her head slightly.

  “Did you change your mind? I thought you were having your hair restyled.”

  “So did I. Jake is what happens when you’re busy making other plans.”

  “Oh. Well, it looks nice anyway. It doesn’t even look like it needs too much of a trim.”

  Annie didn’t bother to tell her that she’d had the trim. The disappointment wasn’t worth sharing.

  “Come on in. Do you want a soda?”

  “Something sugar free,” Annie replied as she followed her inside. “With crushed ice…and maybe a cherry.”

  “As always, I have Diet Coke,” she told her, deadpan. “With cubes. In a glass.”

  “Perfect.”

  The trek from front door to kitchen at Zoey’s Monterey digs was farther than several laps around Annie’s old apartment just a few miles away. A few years younger than Annie, Zoey had everything in life that Annie almost didn’t dare dream about: a husband nearly as pretty as Zoey; a fabulous house with a gourmet kitchen, workout room, and pool; and a refrigerator that actually dispensed cubes of ice and filtered water right through the door. Although Annie did have an ice maker now that she lived with Gram, it was a small consolation.

  “So tell me about the new job,” Zoey said, setting a frosted glass in front of her. Annie thought it looked like a Super Bowl ad for diet soda.

  They sat on barstools on opposite sides of the granite-topped counter, and Zoey arched her eyebrow eagerly. “Is there a 401(k)?”

  “Uh, no. Well, I don’t know, actually. I’ll learn more about that once I start.”

  “Well, there are benefits, right?”

  “Health benefits? Oh, I’m sure there are.”

  “Annie.”

  Zoey’s face dropped into her hands and she shook her head vigorously. Her streaked gold-and-sandy blond hair rippled like an advertisement for shampoo.

  “Tell me there’s a paycheck involved,” she added hopefully, peering up at Annie between her fingers.

  “There is a paycheck involved.”

  “And we know this for certain.”

  “We do.”

  “Well, that’s something, then.”

  Annie decided not to tell her that it was several hundred dollars less per month than her call-center job. But to be fair, Zoey didn’t ask.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, reaching across the counter and squeezing Annie’s hand. “Tell me. What will you be doing?”

  Annie tried to put the kibosh on her overflowing enthusiasm, but there was nothing to be done. It bubbled up like the head on a carbonated drink. “I’m going to be a private investigator!”

  The beginning of a smile dawned on Zoey’s face, but it seemed to fizzle midway and kind of froze like that, as if it had been caught on its way to something.

  “Oh,” she said at last. “That’s… Well…a private investigator?”

  “Yes! I’m going to be a real, honest-to-goodness PI, Zo.”

  “Don’t you have to have a
license for that?”

  “Well, I’m starting at entry level,” she explained. “I’ll learn the business from the ground up, working in the office and answering phones.”

  “So you’ll be a receptionist.”

  “No,” Annie corrected her, “a PI assistant. I’ll sit in on client meetings and take notes for the files.”

  “Oh. More like a secretary, then.”

  “An assistant,” Annie repeated. Isn’t she listening? “After I get to know the business a little, I’ll learn how to do research and gather important information for his cases. Then I’ll start going with Deacon on stakeouts. And when I’m ready, he’ll help me get my license!”

  “Deacon is…?”

  “Oh! Deacon Heffley of Heffley Investigations.”

  A couple of minutes ticked by while Zoey fussed with her soda. When she finally looked up at Annie, she sighed.

  “Is it too late to give this some more thought?” she suggested.

  “What?”

  “Really think about this, Annie. Make sure it’s, you know, a logical choice.”

  Between Zoey and Jake, Annie’s enthusiasm was really taking a beating! She suddenly felt a little like a piñata, once filled up with hope and excitement and energy but now being smacked to a pulp to expel what was inside.

  “I’m not trying to be a bummer,” Zoey apologized.

  “No?”

  “I just worry about you, Annie. I always kind of hoped you would use the tuition reimbursement plan at Equity Now to finish up your degree. You wanted to be a therapist, and you were so close. What did you have, another year?”

  The look Annie gave her came right out of nowhere, and Zoey picked up on her irritation right away.

  “Just promise me you’ll take this one last night and really consider whether this is the right choice for you. Okay?”

  Annie nodded.

  “A little more thought can’t hurt anything. Maybe pray about it, right?”

  She nodded again, and it dissolved into a sort of shrug.

  “And then if, tomorrow, you feel like this is the thing for you, we’ll go out to dinner and celebrate your new job. Okay?”