Once Bitten Read online

  As he hopped over the side of the Quagmire to the dock again, he awarded one last, lingering look at His Girl Friday. A man could dream, or so John figured, and if he did, why not do it big?

  His office was nestled near the waterfront on the westward prominence of the largest of the Sister Islands trio, Big Sister. This was the least-desirable area of the island, where the commercial shipping ports were located, not the posh cruise line harbors that graced the gilded South Shore or the nearby, more affluent Little Sister. Tourists seldom visited the west side of Big Sister because there were no museums here, no theaters, resorts or white-sand beaches. The shopping here was of the practical, residential variety, like grocery stores, convenience stores, pharmacies and movie rentals.

  As for John, his office was located in the heart of a strip mall. His closest neighbors were a Vietnamese nail salon, a spray tanning studio, a cigarette outlet store and a cash-advance shop. Low-slung with a peach-colored stucco façade and imitation Spanish-style red tile roofing, the mall had more vacant storefronts than occupants. Mangy palm trees ran along the sidewalk parallel to the narrow colonnade fronting the shops. Most of the parking spaces in the weather-beaten lot were empty.

  A woman stood outside of his office, her back to him as he pulled in at the curb. She had her hands up to frame her face against the glass as she tried to peer beyond the window into the narrow reception area.

  Dick Halloway, the attorney, had told John he might be sending a client his way in the upcoming week, and all at once, John felt a giddy rush of excitement as he got out of his car.

  “Harker Private Investigations?” he called, and the woman at the window turned to him. “Are you looking for Harker Private Investigations?”

  “I am, yes,” she said, nodding. She carried a large crocheted beach purse tucked beneath her arm and shifted this enough to reach for him, offering her hand. “My name is Ruth Weston.”

  “Jonathan Harker,” he said, accepting the shake. “Please call me John.”

  He unlocked the office door and held it open wide, letting out a blast of air-conditioning as Ruth Weston walked past him. “I hope you didn’t have any trouble finding this place.”

  “Not at all.” She glanced around uncertainly. Sandy was still out to lunch and Ruth’s gaze lingered on the pair of painted shells on her desk with their googly eyes and feather headdresses all askew.

  “I appreciate Dick sending you out,” John said. “Can I get you some coffee? A soda?” When she shook her head, he continued. “I don’t know if he explained how this works or not, but generally it doesn’t take very long.”

  In fact, he seldom had anything to do with the clients directly at all. Dick or his staff usually took care of all of the interpersonal song and dance and relayed instructions to him: do this, do that, search for this, research that.

  Ruth Weston, at the moment as close to a potential cash cow as John had seen in weeks, looked at him, puzzled. “I’m sorry?”

  “You’re here for, what? Personal injury claim? Or maybe a divorce? Infidelity investigation?”

  She shook her head. “I don’t…”

  “I’m sorry.” John smiled warmly, if only to disguise the face he was disappointed it wasn’t a divorce case. Cheating husbands had to pay big time if caught. “Why don’t you come back into my office, have a seat? Dick hasn’t sent me any of your paperwork yet. I’m sorry for that, but I’m sure it’s on the way.”

  Ruth shook her head again. “Who’s Dick?”

  John’s smile faltered, then faded. “What?”

  “I’m sorry. You keep mentioning someone named Dick. I don’t know who that is.”

  “Dick Halloway,” John said, his turn to be confused. “Richard Halloway, attorney-at-law.” Because she shook her head again, he said, “He didn’t send you here?”

  “No. Bill Eckerson did.”

  He was so at a loss, for a moment, that name, Bill Eckerson, simply bounced around inside of his head, meaningless but somehow familiar.

  “He’s a private investigator in Key West,” Ruth said hesitantly, and all of the tumblers in the padlock of John’s mind fell obligingly into place. Now he knew who Bill Eckerson was.

  The competition.

  “He told me I should try you,” Ruth was saying. “He gave me your name and number. I spoke with your secretary this morning.”

  As if on cue, the string of brass jingle bells Sandy had affixed to the door jangled loudly, as she came breezing through. “Well, hi,” she exclaimed with a bright smile. “You must be John’s two o’clock.” She thrust her hand out to Ruth. “Maureen Dodd.”

  “I had a two o’clock?” John asked.

  “Ruth Weston.” Ruth accepted the shake.

  “We spoke on the phone this morning,” Sandy said happily.

  “I had a two o’clock?” John asked again.

  “Not exactly.” Sandy sailed across the foyer, disappearing into his office. “Would you like a diet soda, Mrs. Weston?”

  “Yes, please,” Ruth said. “And it’s just Ruth.”

  John followed Sandy into his office, watching as she flipped on light switches. “I had a two o’clock?”

  “No. You had a…” Sandy glanced at the wall clock. “Two oh-seven. It’s now two-ten. So you’re actually a little bit late.”

  He blinked at her. “What?” Shaking his head, he said, “Never mind. Did I know about this appointment?”

  “I don’t think so,” Sandy replied. “I only found out about it myself at lunch. Gracie told me.”

  In addition to being a shell artist of some apparent renown, Gracie Dodd was also a self-proclaimed ‘psychic intuitive.’ Which, by way of John’s personal translation, meant ‘full of shit.’

  “You talked to Ruth Weston this morning,” John told Sandy pointedly.

  “Oh, but she didn’t make an appointment,” Sandy said. “I told her you wouldn’t want her case.”

  What? At the moment, John was so broke he would have accepted a case that involved finding a needle in a haystack, literally. He thought about pointing this out to Sandy, but considering her last paycheck had bounced, she was undoubtedly aware of it.

  “It’s a missing person,” Sandy finished, and John bit back the sharp response he’d wanted to blurt. Because she was right. He didn’t want it.

  Missing person cases were a time drain. Worse than background checks or personal surveillance on cheating spouses, they were generally commissioned by someone who could ill afford to pay for them, like a divorced mother on the hunt for a dead-beat dad owing back child support. These were clients who couldn’t put up much by way of retainer, who debated every line item in their invoice and typically had to be turned over to collection services for non-payment. John had been skunked a time or two by them, until taking the old adage duly to heart: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

  “It’s her daughter,” Sandy said, with a pointed glance over her shoulder toward the doorway and the woman waiting in the foyer beyond.

  “Then have her call the police,” John said.

  “She did. She told me they’ve closed the case.”

  “There’s probably a good reason for that.”

  Sandy folded her arms. Which pushed her tits up provocatively beneath the neckline of her tank blouse. They were small but pert and had always made him think of a line or two from that old John Hughes’ flick, Weird Science: “Anything more than a handful and you're risking a sprained tongue.”

  “She’s gone to other private investigators and they’ve all turned her down,” Sandy said.

  “There’s probably a good reason for that, too,” John replied. “Look, give her the Macintyre Agency’s name and number. They pick up this kind of thing from time to time.”

  “The Macintyre Agency referred her to Bill Eckerson. Who referred her to you.”

  “Then refer her to…to…” His voice sputtered to a halt.

  “There’s no one else,” she said. “Just you, John. She doesn’t b
elieve her daughter ran off, like the police said. She thinks something’s happened to her, something bad. Mothers know these things. It’s called intuition. Don’t laugh.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Not here, no,” she agreed, pointing to his mouth. “But here.” She poked her fingertip against his forehead hard enough to make him complain.

  “Ow! Stop that. You don’t know what’s going on in my mind.”

  Sandy began ticking off on her hand, lifting her index finger. “You were wondering if I’d notice that you’ve changed your clothes. Which I have.” Another finger popped up. “You’re hungry because you didn’t each lunch, and you skipped out on a second scone this morning. Oh.” A third finger. “And you were checking out my boobs.”

  He opened his mouth, then closed it again. She had him there.

  “My mother is intuitive,” Sandy said. “Don’t laugh.” When he opened his mouth, she jabbed that wicked forefinger into his head again. “Today at lunch, she told me that I’d better get back to the office because you’d have an appointment coming in.”

  “Ow! You said Ruth Weston hadn’t made an appointment.”

  “She’s here, isn’t she? Gracie told me once that a mother’s intuition is one of the most powerful psychic abilities a human being can possess. It’s like a sort of sixth sense.”

  “A sixth sense,” he repeated.

  Sandy nodded. “Gracie said mothers are uniquely able to use extrasensory perception as part of protecting their young. Dreams, premonitions, recurring thoughts. They’re all methods of manifestation.”

  He blinked at her. “Methods of manifestation.”

  Sandy nodded again. “Plenty of doctors agree that it’s real.”

  “Which ones? Dr. Phil?” he asked. “Dr. Pepper? Dr. Seuss?”

  She got him in the forehead again with her finger. “I think you should talk to her.”

  “Ow! Fine. Whatever you want.” He danced away from her, swatting at her hand. “Just stop doing that.”

  Sandy beamed. “Great. I’ll show her back.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  Lucy Weston was a beautiful girl: big, bright blue eyes, pale blonde hair. She beamed up at John from the glossy five-by-seven headshot that her mother, Ruth, had given him. At twenty-two, Lucy was young and ingenuous, taking what Ruth called a “temporary break” from her college pursuits to try her hand at a modeling career.

  “That’s how she fell in with that man, Boyd Wilder,” Ruth told him, her voice curdling. “Do you know who he is?”

  “Vaguely,” John replied. There wasn’t a person on the Sister Islands, Big or Little, who likely didn’t know who Boyd Wilder was. His great-great-grandfather had been none other than Duvall Wilder himself, American entrepreneur, multi-millionaire businessman, the founder of the Sister Islands. Beginning with Duvall and working its way from there over the generations, the Wilder family had pretty much single-handedly developed the Sister Islands into the gleaming, tropical tourist Mecca that it was today.

  Ruth fished out a DVD from inside her bag. This, she tossed with a disgusted sort of snort, letting it fall with a loud, flat plop against his coffee-stained blotter.

  Show Me! the title of the DVD proclaimed in large, hot pink letters. Beneath that, in vivid yellow, the subtitle read: Spring Break in Cancun. Beneath that, an image of a half-dozen or so young women, all blonde, tanned, big-breasted and wearing bikinis stood together in a close huddle, facing the camera. Laughing in wide-mouthed, giddy unison, they’d all flipped back their bathing suit tops to expose their breasts, which had been blotted out with superimposed black stripes.

  “That’s what he does,” Ruth said, still speaking with a disgusted undertone as if she’d taken in a mouthful of lye. “Have you heard of them?”

  “Can’t say that I have,” John murmured, taking the DVD box in hand. To the best of his recollection, this one hadn’t been as entertaining as the one shot in Acapulco. But I might have to double-check once I’m back at the boat, he thought.

  “He took his family fortune and that’s what he did with it, those horrible movies,” Ruth went on. “He owns bars by that name, too, or at least that’s what he calls them. They’re strip clubs, little more than whore houses, if you ask me. There’s one here on Big Sister, another in Key West, one in Miami, Cancun.” Ruth shook her head. “I don’t know where-all. Anyway, Lucy was working at a Denny’s while she was going to school. She told me he’d come in sometimes, always trying to get her to come and be a cocktail waitress at his club. He promised she’d make ten, twenty, even thirty times the money she was making at the restaurant. She fell for it.”

  She looked sad now, as well as disgusted. “She told me he said he had connections.” This, she emphasized with hooking finger quotes. “He knew people in the modeling industry, that’s what he told her. He could help her get her foot in the door. I tried to warn her. I told her time and again, but she wouldn’t listen. It’s like he brainwashed her somehow. He had her absolutely spellbound. She’d have told you he walked on water, I’m sure.”

  “How long has she been missing?”

  “Seven days. No phone calls, no emails, nothing. The police searched her apartment only long enough to find a printed email itinerary from one of those online travel services, a flight booked to Los Angeles. That’s where they say she went to pursue modeling and acting. But she wouldn’t do that. I know she wouldn’t. And if she did, it was only because he told her to, because Boyd Wilder said so. He promised her a modeling job, to make her a star, something.”

  John set the DVD down and looked at her. “Mrs. Weston,” he began.

  “They won’t look for her anymore,” Ruth said, her voice on the verge of breaking. “Please, Mr. Harker. The police say they’ve closed the case unless I can find evidence that something’s happened to her, some sort of foul play. I don’t have a lot of money, and those other places, the detectives your secretary told me to call, the prices they gave me…there’s no way I can afford them.”

  “Mrs. Weston, I don’t think you understand the amount of work an investigation like this can entail,” John said. “Especially if the police found evidence to suggest your daughter has gone to California. There are travel expenses involved, meals and lodging, car rental fees.”

  Ruth reached for her bag again and rifled around inside.

  “It can take weeks, months even, and while I don’t know what Bill Eckerson or the other agencies you’ve contacted quoted for a retainer, I can promise you that, as exorbitant as it might seem, all of it goes toward necessary expenses in order to…”

  “Five thousand dollars,” Ruth Weston said. She pulled something out of her purse and slapped it down on his desk, a cashier’s check from First State Bank of the Florida Keys.

  John blinked at it, then at her. “What?”

  “That’s what I can afford to pay you,” she said. “That’s all I can afford to pay you, Mr. Harker. I want to find my daughter. I need you to help me do that.”

  Her tears fell, one slipping after the other in slow procession, and she sniffled proudly, wiping at them, trying to hide them from his view. “Please,” she said in a small, pained voice. “Help me.”

  ***

  “I’m going to the Pink Palace for supper,” Sandy told him from his office doorway, silhouetted against the backdrop of encroaching sunset beyond the polarized picture windows fronting the foyer. “Gracie’s trying her hand at Asian-fusion. Want to come?”

  Gracie Dodd may have been many things—ex-military wife, affluent shell artist, aspiring psychic, fan of expansive, roseate Mediterranean Revival style architecture—but chef of some skill and renown, even if only among her own kin was not one of them.

  “Uh, no, thanks,” he said. “I’m going to try and get up early tomorrow, start on this case.”

  He’d deposited Ruth Weston’s check in his bank account almost as soon as the woman had left his office. He’d then dropped payment for his overdue slip rental fees through the brass mail slot in
Gilbert’s door at Coconut Grove, and wrote out a new paycheck for Sandy, adding in a generous bonus because she’d never brought up the matter of its bouncing predecessor.

  “What’s this?” she’d asked, looking up at him when he’d presented it to her at her desk.

  “Severance pay,” he’d replied, dropping her a wink. “You’re fired. Get out of here.”

  “Yeah. Ha, ha,” she’d answered, and he’d laughed as he’d returned to his office.

  Now Sandy stood in his doorway, a slight smile tugging up the corners of her mouth. “That was a nice thing you did,” she told him. “Taking her case.”

  “Nice, hell.” He flapped his hand as if shooing a fly. “It was five thousand dollars.”

  Sandy walked across the office as she said, “That’s not why you did it.” Then, stepping behind him, she added, “And you know it.”

  Her hands hooked against the meat of his shoulders, and he uttered a low, breathless groan as her fingertips dug in, moving in slow, firm, concentric circles. When she drew away, abrupt and unexpected, he groaned again, this time in dismay. “Come on,” she told him. “Your back’s a mess. Lay down on the floor over here.”

  On her resume upon applying for the job as his assistant, she’d listed Therapeutic Massage Certification as one of her merits. More so than any typing speed or proficiency in the subtle nuances of the Microsoft Office suite of software, this had ultimately landed her the gig. For her interview, she’d shown up in a short, spritely sundress that had revealed the tantalizing lengths of her sun-kissed, coltish legs, and she’d volunteered to give him a demonstration of her masseuse skills. He’d hired her on the spot.

  Prone on the carpet, he closed his eyes and luxuriated in the sensation as she balanced atop his spine, much like a tight-rope walker in the circus.

  “Relax,” she told him, stepping slowly back and forth, poking her toes into his shoulder blades and applying circular, nearly orgasmic pressure. After parading around on his back for awhile, she sat against his ass, then reached up beneath his shirt, pulling it loose from the waistband of his slacks to knead his bare skin beneath.