You Don't Know Jack Read online

  "Crazy old fart!" Ida shouted. "Sprayed us with his hose! I'm thinking about suing!"

  "Where's Aunt Abby?" I asked my mother. Mom, named for Eleanor Roosevelt, is the beauty of the family, looking as little like her namesake as I do mine. She has the small frame and wide blue eyes of all the Crains. I get my height and hooters from the Smarts.

  "Abby's at the house, cooking." Aunt Abby coped with stress by cooking, eating what she cooked and then complaining about her inability to stick to a diet.

  I eyed my mother and my aunt. "And your excuses for going along with this—" the word "voodoo" sprang to mind and I curtailed it; I didn't need to alienate anyone else. "This... spirit raising exercise?"

  "We had to do something," Aunt Mamie said, standing and pointing toward the closed sign. "We can't go out and clients can't come in."

  "These reporters are awful. When they aren't jamming the phone, they're jamming the streets." My mother shoved up and out of her chair, looking close to tears. "If this keeps up they'll run us out of business."

  "They keep saying Apollo killed Lars!" Ida brayed. "Poppycock!"

  "That boy wouldn't swat a fly." Sophie placed the Ouija board and its thingamabob into its box.

  My mother began dousing the candles. "Some clients are afraid of having him do their hair. Or of having him in the shop even if he's not doing their hair."

  "Don't despair about that, Eleanor." Madam Zee clattered to her feet and began returning the chairs to their usual spots about the room. "Just as many others will get a sick thrill having their hair done by a possible serial killer."

  Ida nodded. "It's the most excitement I've had since I threw my panties on stage at a concert back when Tom Jones was hot stuff! 'Course that was just naughty, not murder!"

  I blew out a breath. "What about the police? Can't they do some crowd control?"

  "They say their hands are tied." Aunt Mamie peered between a couple of slats in the blinds.

  "Yeah, some excuse about the bill of rights and freedom to assemble or one of those freedoms." Mom tucked the candles into the cupboard above the washing machine. Besides her name, the other thing she had in common with Eleanor Roosevelt was intelligence. Not knowing the exact reason the police had given was a testament to how frazzled she was.

  "I should hire Oscar to hose off the parking lot." Aunt Mamie turned from the window, a smile playing at her mouth.

  "Too bad we didn't contact Lars' spirit. I'm sure he'd tell us who really killed him." Sophie stuck the Ouija board box into her tote bag. "Then those reporters would scurry off to hound someone else."

  "But without Apollo, the whole thing was a bust!" Ida replaced the magazines on the coffee table.

  "So, that brings us back to our original idea," Madam Zee said, suddenly quiet and spookier than ever.

  "What's that?" I asked, not sure I liked the way she eyed me.

  "Our main plan was to ask you to investigate, Jack B," Madam Zee said.

  "Yeah!" Ida perked up. "And we can help!"

  "You've been an inquiry agent for a while now, Jack B." Sophie looked hopeful. "And we've heard you're very good at it."

  "We'd pay you, of course," Madam Zee said.

  "Yeah!" Ida said. "And we can help!"

  Tears stung my eyes at their unwavering belief in Apollo's innocence, and I was touched at their trust in my sleuthing abilities, but this investigation was a one-woman undertaking. If Lars was murdered by a serial killer, then what I intended could be damned dangerous. And even if a serial killer hadn't murdered Lars, someone had and that could also be damned dangerous.

  The triple shot, double mocha Grande special was getting colder by the second. "Where is Apollo?"

  "He doesn't want to talk to you," all five women said at once.

  Old news. I'd had a front row seat to every excruciating moment that represented why he wasn't speaking to me: the betrayal, the arrest, the charge of first degree murder. Much worse than getting a manuscript rejected, and he wouldn't let me bring him chocolate and wine. But the worst was my not being able to bail him out. "I can't help him if I can't talk to him."

  "You'll do it then?" Madam Zee clapped her hands setting off another noisy clatter.

  "Yes, but you're not going to pay me. Now where is Apollo?"

  My mother touched my cheek. "I'm sorry, darling, but he made us promise not to tell you where he went."

  Great. Now what was I going to do?

  As though she hadn't just broken my heart, my mother added, "Wasn't it nice of Stone's brother to offer to represent Apollo?"

  "Very nice," Sophie said, her half glasses slipping farther down her Mrs. Santa nose. "After all, he's a high mucky-muck attorney with high mucky-muck clients. Like my Hermie always said, 'those bastards are money grubbing ambulance chasers.'"

  "Yeah! Charge an arm and a leg just for a consult!" Ida slapped a thin magazine against her gnarled palm for emphasis. "Otherwise I'd hire him to sue that old fart hoser in the alley!"

  "Duke isn't an ambulance chaser." My mother shook her head. "Still, his fees are steep. I don't know how Apollo will come up with that kind of money."

  Neither did I. The cash Lars had given me might not cover half a day of Duke Maddox's services. The hole Apollo was in kept getting deeper.

  Sophie suggested, "He could always sell that snazzy car."

  "He still owes money on the car, but it's okay," Aunt Mamie said. "Duke is representing him pro bono."

  "Ahhhhh," The five women sang out like a melodious quintet who'd been practicing for a recital. "Duke Maddox... generous and sexy."

  Hell, I might have said it too. I was thinking it.

  Duke Maddox was the other sexy man who'd blown through my life this past week like an intriguing, compelling breath of fresh air across an otherwise dreary landscape. But right now I was trying to figure out why he decided to take on the case considering it flew in the face of Stone's opinion of Apollo, or why he was doing it for free. But I was grateful. And sleuth that I am, I realized they were telling me where Apollo was without violating their promise to him. My BFF was with his lawyer.

  "Does Duke have an office in Renton?" I asked, figuring Apollo's car parked where it was meant he was in the neighborhood somewhere.

  "You gonna take up with him, Jack B?" Ida Schultz crowed. "You need a man in your life!"

  My mother nodded. "I used to think you and Stone belonged together, but after he arrested Apollo I realized that he's not good enough for you."

  My mother would approve of Duke, though. Duke was designer suits and candlelight dinners at the most expensive Northwest restaurants, exactly like the men she dated. "Anyone know where his office is?"

  "Let me read your tea leaves, Jack B," Madam Zee said in her spooky woo-woo voice. "The leaves don't lie. If Duke Maddox is your perfect love the leaves will tell."

  "Better than one of those internet dot com hookups they advertise on TV!" Ida Schultz said.

  "I'm not looking to hook up with any man right now, just directions to Duke's office."

  My mother shook her head. "We don't have that, dear, but it's probably in the phone book."

  I grabbed my sunglasses and headed for the back door. Aunt Mamie caught up with me in the back room. She pressed a key into my hand, and whispered, "You didn't hear this from me, but Apollo and Duke aren't at his office."

  I looked at the key questioningly.

  "Peter, er, Sharkey's house."

  Dismay and relief danced inside me. I wasn't sure which I felt more: disgusted that my aunt had a key to Sharkey's house, happy to know where to find my BFF, or shocked, yet intrigued, at the suggestions that I should hook up with Stone's older brother.

  Oscar Orkan was still patrolling the alley. I slipped past him unscathed. Sharkey's house was seven blocks away, near where Apollo and I were parked. My cell phone rang. Dinah Edger. My pulse jumped. We hadn't spoken since the night Lars died, since she realized I was the one who'd found the body. Whatever she wanted, it couldn't be good.

/>   CHAPTER EIGHT

  Cheatin' Heart Inquires is a business based on trust. As I have neither a P.I. license nor a legally binding contract with my clients, I trust my clients to pay me, and my clients trust me to do the job they hire me to do.

  Dinah Edger was not a happy client.

  As I hurried toward where I'd parked my car she set fire to my ear with a string of blistering expletives that would make a longshoreman blush. My own fuse lit. I didn't need her grief. I had a few other priorities tipping my full plate. First inclination: Tell her to go to hell. Second inclination: Return the money she'd advanced me to investigate her husband, Frankie Steele, and tell her to go to hell.

  Instead, I took a deep breath, counted to ten twice and did my best to calm us both down. "We need to talk."

  "Agreed. How soon can you be at my office?"

  At the nightclub? I checked the time. "If traffic is light, within the hour."

  "Good. Ring the bell beside the front doors, it's under the plaque, and I'll buzz you in."

  I hung up.

  This meant I would have to put off finding Apollo for a while, but as I arrived at Old Yeller, I realized that was a moot point. The orange VW had gone. He'd driven away while I was at the beauty salon. I dumped the cold Mocha Grande on his vacated parking space like a big dog pissing on its territory.

  "You aren't going to litter, are you?" A deep male voice froze me in my spot.

  Paparazzi! Headlines flashed across my mind's eye: Prime Witness Caught Littering.

  "Jack B?" he said, and this time I detected a hint of the familiar in that husky voice. Not Stone, but a close relative.

  I spun and found myself looking up into the handsome visage of a man with trim dark brown hair and keen hazel eyes. He was as polished as my mother's dinnerware in anticipation of a special occasion, but something about Duke Maddox reminded me of a great white shark. Maybe it was the body-sleek business suit, crisp white shirt, or that king-of-the-ocean smirk. Look out little swimmer I'm about to gobble you up. And damn my man-crazy gene, instead of hauling ass out of dangerous waters, I felt like jumping in.

  My breath caught like cashmere on a nail.

  Every heterosexual woman who'd ever sworn off men would understand the heat flushing through me. I tossed the empty cup onto the back floorboards of Old Yeller. "I don't suppose you defend litterbugs?"

  A twinkle sparked in his intense eyes. "I was going to call you."

  "You were?" Had our meeting been accidental? Or were the Golden Oldies playing matchmaker after I'd distinctly told them not to?

  "I'd like to set up an appointment to take your deposition."

  Oh. Of course. Duh. It was then I noticed the brand new, low slung Jag parked four spots over. I sank onto the driver's seat of my aged Mustang. "Do you have my number?"

  He nodded, dislodging a lock of hair that softened his expression, made him look much more approachable. "My client supplied it."

  He could have gotten it from Stone, too, I supposed. I shouldn't look for meaning in the fact that Apollo furnished it. "How is Apollo?"

  Duke glanced off into the distance, then back at me with that gripping gaze. "It's not easy being accused of murder..."

  My throat tightened at the thought of the hell my BFF was living. "Especially when you're innocent."

  He studied me a long moment and the heat in my veins grew even hotter. I needed distance. Now. I closed my car door, intending to start the motor and drive away, but he tapped on my window.

  Reluctantly I lowered it, silently asking: What?

  He planted his hands on the roof and leaned toward me. He smelled like sex in the afternoon. I swallowed hard.

  He said, "If you think Apollo is innocent, how did you end up being a witness for the prosecution?"

  I tried not to smell him. "You wouldn't believe it."

  "Just the same, I'd like to hear the story."

  I glanced at my watch. "I'm afraid I'm going to be late for an appointment."

  "Then some other time."

  I nodded. "Just have your secretary call me later to set up the appointment for the deposition. I'll do anything I can to help get Apollo out of this mess."

  "Really?"

  "Really."

  "Then how about I take you to dinner tonight and you can tell me that story as well as how you plan to help my client."

  Dinner? With Duke Maddox? Would Madam Zee's tea leaves have predicted this? I started the ignition, my finger reaching for the auto window button.

  "Well...?" His warm breath brushed my face.

  "Er, ah, sure." Why not? It was dinner, not a night of hot sex, and I had to eat. "When and where?"

  "Do you like seafood?"

  "Does Heidi Klum host Project Runway?"

  "I'll pick you up at eight." He flashed that I'm-going-to-eat-you smile.

  I squirmed in my seat, not turned off, but on by that thought. I shut my window and drove off. In the rearview mirror I saw him watching me drive away.

  I headed to Seattle, my mind reeling, my body retaining the heat of the encounter. I told myself to get a grip, that Duke was not interested in me as anything more than a means to an end, a way to help his client. Besides, I'd sworn off men.

  And what about my own client, Dinah Edger?

  Would her mouth be blue from all the swearing she'd done this morning? Not that I blamed her for being upset. Her life sucked on several fronts: Someone committed murder in her place of business, two of her former performers had perhaps been victims of the same killer, her much younger husband was possibly cheating on her, and, though she'd given me money to, I had yet to come up with anything concrete on that score.

  Not to mention, I'd disobeyed her specific order not to go to the nightclub by being there the evening Lars was stabbed to death. I didn't have a license or a contract, but I had a conscience. So, yeah, I was still inclined to cut her a break.

  I understood some of what she was dealing with — like the sickening ache of suspecting the man in your life might be cheating, like the devastating thoughts and images those suspicions roused to shatter your spirit, suck away your self-worth and make you wonder why you were unlovable.

  It was hard enough to think he would prefer someone else, and humiliating to have to speak these suspicions to a complete stranger. But worst of all were the clawing need to know and the desperate hope to be wrong.

  Dinah was as tough as they came, as tough as I'd seen, but she wasn't made of iron. I knew what it had taken for her to seek my help. I touched my wrist tattoo. Her heart could be broken, too. If I could, if it were true and Frankie was cheating, then I had to find out and spare her what had happened to me.

  No woman should find out their man preferred someone else's bed by being confronted with the cheater and his paramour doing the nasty. Better to have the awful truth confirmed by someone you've hired. On your terms. Not by the whim of fate or inevitability or the heartless bastard himself.

  But don't think I've turned all mushy and soft. I'm not just a fake-P.I. with a skewed sense of right and wrong. I had ulterior motives for wanting to continue my investigation for Dinah. I was meeting her at the scene of the crime. It was a chance to look around — without nerves scrambling my discerning eye. As upset as I was about Lars' death, and stumbling over his corpse, today I would be cool-headed and assessing. I had to find a clue that would help me solve his murder.

  "You can, darlin'."

  I jumped as Lars' voice filled my head. I would have cursed at him for startling me, but what he'd said took priority. "Is there a clue to be found, Lars?"

  "How should I know? I'm dead."

  Now I did swear. "If you're not going to help, stop popping into my head."

  "Cranky, as usual. You really should work on that, darlin'. Have you considered getting laid?"

  "Oh, shut up!"

  "I beg your pardon?" Dinah's voice came through the speaker near the front door of Club Jaded Edge. I glanced around, saw the surveillance camera and knew she coul
d see I was standing there. Alone.

  "Sorry." I smiled weakly. "I wasn't talking to you." No, I was arguing with a ghost. My cheeks were hot. Not the start I'd wanted for this meeting.

  She buzzed, the latch released, and I slipped into the nightclub foyer. Shadows engulfed me and the lock engaged with a nerve jarring click. As my eyes adjusted to the dim light, I noted there was no thumping, luring music today, just an eerie goose-bumpy quiet. My gaze darted across the posters of the current performers and the memorial to Jade Edger.

  I wondered if Lars' ghost had followed me inside, or if he'd met with resistance from the spirit of Jade Edger that I felt permeated these premises. Did misery love company in the ghost community? I shivered and scooted into the main audience gallery. So alive the night Lars died, it seemed now as sad and shabby as a downtrodden whore reeking of cheap perfume and debauched nights.

  I descended past the empty, half-moon booths. Spooked. Pop Goes The Weasel ticked through my mind as though on the last note some psycho was going to pop up from under one of the tables and grab me. So much for cool-headed thinking.

  A figure came through the access to the dressing rooms and I froze.

  "Ah, there you are," Dinah said as if I were late.

  I wasn't. Five minutes early, in fact.

  Despite the reproval in her voice, I felt my nerves ratchet down a notch. Even angry, there was nothing frightening about this gorgeous cougar... unless you were young and male. My breath sputtered out. "Hi."

  "Let's go to my office." She led the way into the employees only section and down the hall past the dressing rooms. The police tape was gone from the room where I'd found Lars' body. I heard activity inside.

  "Who's that?" I asked, my nerves showing.

  Dinah glanced over her shoulder. "Cleaning crew. They specialize in crime scene mop ups."

  I hesitated, aching to stop them. To force them out of the dressing room so I could search for the clue or clues that would prove Apollo's innocence. Yeah, like I would spot that definitive something the SPD's investigative team missed.

  Dinah looked at me impatiently. "Reopening tomorrow night. Rehearsals tonight."