Danger-Close: A Jake Thunder Adventure (The Jake Thunder Adventures Book 1) Read online

  Danger-Close

  by

  Jon F. Merz

  Don't miss Jon's Incredible Lawson Vampire Series!

  The Fixer

  The Invoker

  The Destructor

  The Syndicate

  The Courier

  The Kensei

  Interlude

  The Price of a Good Drink

  Red Tide

  Rudolf the Red Nosed Rogue

  Visit the author on his website: Jon F. Merz

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Special Excerpt from THE FIXER - Chapter One

  Special Excerpt from THE FIXER - Chapter Two

  Chapter One

  The look said it all.

  I’d seen it enough times before to recognize the flash of surprise followed by the surge of disappointment and embarrassment.

  I smiled in spite of it.

  "Not what you expected, am I?"

  She tried to recover but it was too late and she gave up halfway through a stuttering recant, finally letting it all drop out. "Well, I just thought that you’d be, well…"

  "Not a paraplegic?"

  She nodded. I smiled some more.

  "Did you come here with the intention of hiring me for my ability to walk or for my ability to solve your case?"

  "The latter."

  I looked at her again. Tall, short blonde hair and in possession of the kind of curves most of the fashion world thinks of as fat but real men still crave. Her eyes blossomed hazel every time she blinked, which seemed to be a lot.

  I watched her gaze travel around my office on Centre Street in Jamaica Plain, first focusing on my honorable discharge from the Air Force, then the numerous pictures and letters on the walls.

  "Satisfied clients," I said.

  She nodded.

  "Except the Rodney Dangerfield one."

  "What?"

  I pointed. "The autographed picture? I never worked a case for him. I'm just a huge fan." I grinned. "You ever see Caddyshack?"

  "Is that movie?"

  "More like a comic epiphany, I think."

  She tried to smile. I could see I was getting nowhere. I waited. "Take your time."

  She sighed. "Forgive me, please, it’s just-"

  "Not normal per se to find a private investigator in a wheel chair, I know." I pivoted around and looked out of the window. "Want to tell me why you’re here? It might take some of the pressure off of making conversation."

  "My sister’s dead."

  "So are a lot of other people. What made her so special?" I turned back around.

  Tears had formed in the interim, and they marked time in the lower lids before running off down her face, one at a time, in slow motion. She was obviously used to the effect it had on most men. Too bad, I didn’t fall into that category. Still, I had to give her a nod for trying.

  "She got mixed up in something she didn’t belong in."

  I leaned forward across the desk. "Spell it out for me, would you? I bill out by the hour and cryptic speech tends to cost you a lot."

  "Drugs, Mr. Thunder. She got involved with drugs."

  "Again, so what? Lots of folks get mixed up with that garbage. And a lot of them end up dead."

  "But she was my sister."

  "Mrs. Patterson, I’m not a revenge service. Unless there’s something extraordinary about this case, I’d say you’re better off letting the police handle it."

  "The police have no idea, no clues, and no reasonable place to start their investigation. Unless a miracle happens, my sister’s file will get shoved into some gray metallic file cabinet marked ‘unsolved’." She frowned. "I don’t want that."

  "That’s a reasonable assumption," I said. "But what makes you think I’d be able to find her killer?"

  "Killers, more likely."

  "You’ve got some information then?"

  She nodded.

  "You tell the cops about it?"

  She shrugged. "Some. But if I told them too much, they’d label my sister as a junkie and pay even less attention to the case."

  "All right. So, why don’t you tell me about it?" I gestured to the single armchair across from my desk. "Get comfortable."

  She sat and crossed her legs. Fishnets. I took a subtle breath of air. Some women still knew how to dress in an age of wispy anorexic models that looked more asexual than anything feminine. Thank God for the small pleasures in life.

  "I guess her problems stemmed from the fact that she was over thirty and hadn’t married yet."

  "That’s a rather antiquated sentiment."

  "Not in my family, Mr. Thunder. We’re old money. The women marry young and into rich families."

  "That what you did?"

  "We’re not discussing me."

  "Might help give me some more background on the case." It was bullshit and she knew it. With a look like hers, she’d been around the track and knew all the dangerous curves better than most NASCAR drivers. Still, she gave me a quick half smile.

  "My sister never found anyone she wanted to marry. She felt that two people should be in love before they get married."

  "Jeez, imagine that. What a crazy notion."

  "Are you always this sarcastic?"

  "Usually."

  She looked at me for a second more and then continued. "Despite a rather endless stream of suitors, she chose none of them. In fact, she decided to cut ties to the family altogether and make a go of living her own life."

  "Respectable."

  "It was utter insanity."

  "If you say so."

  "Turning your back on an annual allowance of ten million does not fall under rational thought, Mr. Thunder."

  "Call me Jake."

  "I’ll call you Mr. Thunder."

  It felt like I was tangoing with a porcupine. I smiled. "Maybe she was one of those nutty people who doesn’t think money counts for everything in life."

  "That’s exactly how she felt."

  "I’m guessing her views on life didn’t go over that well with the rest of the family?"

  "Correct. Everyone except for me severed all ties with her."

  "Rather extreme, wouldn’t you say?"

  "Mr. Thunder, my family does not stray out into common society much. We belong to a strat
um that sticks to its own kind. Parties, jobs, wealth, it all stays where it belongs: at the top of the pyramid."

  "Well, you’re certainly dipping down low by coming here, aren’t you?"

  "If you say so."

  I walked into that one. "It’s just I don’t imagine your kind has an arsenal of private dicks they can call on at any minute of the day. That’d be why you’re here."

  "You are correct about us not usually using private, uh…’dicks,’ as you say. But I came to you because your reputation precedes you."

  Nice to know the fact that I had two bum legs wasn’t included in that rep. "All right, so your sister goes out into the big bad world on her lonesome. What happened?"

  "Despite what she said about not caring about the family and the suitors, she was desperately lonely."

  "Too bad I didn’t meet her. I might have helped out."

  "She wanted children, Mr. Thunder."

  "Ouch. Don’t assume all of my legs aren’t working. Point of fact, my middle one works just fine, thank you."

  It took her a minute to grapple with what must have constituted gutter lingo to her. Then she forced a smile. "Ah, yes. How clever."

  "That’s me, Mr. Clever. You oughta see me at charades."

  "My sister’s loneliness began affecting her life and her work. Since I was the only one she kept in touch with, she confessed everything to me."

  "Like what?"

  "She started drinking quite a bit."

  "Nothing wrong with taking the edge off every once in a while."

  "Every night, Mr. Thunder? Wouldn’t you agree that would tend to make the edge quite dull?"

  "For some." I hoped the bottle of Jim Beam I kept hidden in my top drawer wouldn’t suddenly materialize on my desk.

  "She was drinking a lot. And spending a lot to keep her in spirits. It was money she didn’t have."

  "What’d she do for work?"

  She looked like she’d swallowed a moldy piece of cheese. "Retail. She worked in retail."

  "The nerve."

  "Mr. Thunder, please, this is hard enough without your insipid commentary every few seconds. I don’t see how injecting barbed comments will help you solve this case. Honestly, do you treat all your clients this way?"

  "I’m making a special effort to impress you." I grinned. "Is it working?"

  "Not in the vaguest."

  "Marry me."

  "Pardon me?"

  "Never mind, we’ll build up to that one." I pivoted around again. Outside on Centre Street, the lunchtime crowd packed the sidewalks while cars crawled by. "Go on."

  "She’d spend her nights at bars. Usually with a few useless friends she’d managed to acquire at work. I don’t think any of them knew her true background. Perhaps they thought she was just another thirty-something adrift in a sea of misdirection."

  "Zowie, that was poetic. You should be a writer."

  "I’ve penned a few poems in my time."

  "How much time is that?" I faced her again.

  "Excuse me?"

  "How old are you?"

  "Does that have a bearing on the case?"

  "Might."

  She raised an eyebrow. "I am three years older than my sister was."

  "Thirty-six?"

  "Close enough."

  "Good age."

  "I think so."

  I smiled. She smiled. There might be some progress yet.

  "So she had these friends."

  "Yes. They spent quite a bit of time together."

  "Any lovers?"

  "I don’t know."

  "You just said she told you everything."

  "I didn’t say that."

  "You said she confessed everything to you. I’d assume that included whoever she was sleeping with."

  Again the look of revulsion crossed her face. Someone hadn’t kept this poor woman properly serviced. That seemed fairly evident.

  "She mentioned one or two of them. One was an actor in New York. He never amounted to much. He made a habit of coming to town for the purposes of staying with her, sponging off of her, that type of thing. "

  "What about the other guy?"

  "Local, I think. Not really a boyfriend, per se."

  "A fuck buddy."

  That did it. She almost stood up. "Mr. Thunder, your terminology is a little alarming at points."

  "Well, what would you call it?"

  She paused, searching. "A rendezvous?"

  I shook my head. "I don’t speak French. And I’m used to my terminology. So, we’ll use fuck buddy for now until we come up with something we can both agree on. How’s that?"

  She pursed her lips tight enough to make diamonds. "Fine."

  "So, who’s the local dude?"

  "His name is Don Woolery."

  "He work with her?"

  "No. She met him at a bar she used to frequent."

  "Which one?"

  "Joey’s on Newbury Street."

  I knew it. The place had only installed a handicapped access ramp after the local activists had crawled all over them. Some places only wanted upright business. That pissed me off.

  "Okay. What else?"

  "There’s not much else."

  "When’d you hear from her last?"

  "A week ago Thursday."

  "How long’s she been dead?"

  "The police recovered my sister's body on Monday morning outside of Cleveland Circle. In the reservoir."

  That meant at least a 96-hour window. That would make things tough. "They do an autopsy?"

  "Yes. I was told it was standard procedure."

  "Yeah, it is. What’d they find?"

  "They said she’d been shot. Twice."

  "Head shots?"

  "I think so."

  Execution-style. I nodded. "This Don guy, she like him a lot?"

  "Nothing close to love, but they had an understanding."

  "What kind of understanding?"

  She raised her eyebrows. "The rendezvous kind."

  "All right, so no real sticky unrequited love stuff clogging the issues then."

  "I don’t think so, no."

  "Good."

  She leaned forward letting the skirt ride up exposing more thigh. And garters. Sometimes God actually does smile down on me.

  "Do you think you can find out who killed her, Mr. Thunder?"

  I kept staring at her legs. "Don’t know, really. I can check out a few things, see how they play out. Poke around. See what develops." I looked up. "That sound okay?"

  "I suppose it will have to."

  I leaned back. "Mrs. Patterson, you’re going to have to trust that I know how best to run this down, all right? No interfering. I don’t want you off running your own investigation. Since we’re dealing with killers, it only makes sense this will be a bit dangerous, understand?"

  "Yes."

  "Dangerous might mean you’d only get hurt if you try to sniff out stuff on your own."

  "I won’t."

  "All right then. I’ll need some contact information. A number where I can get a hold of you day or night in case something develops."

  She withdrew a wheat-colored vellum business card and pressed it into my hand. I looked at it.

  Vanessa Patterson

  555-9090

  "You kept your maiden name, huh?"

  "I’m proud of my heritage."

  "This a cell phone number?"

  She nodded.

  "Do you have a home number I can reach you at as well?"

  She looked away. "My husband might not like the idea of a strange man calling me at all hours of the night."

  "Guess he doesn’t know you’re doing this, eh?"

  "He never approved of what my sister did. It’s one reason my family loves him so much."

  "And why do you love him so much?"

  She paused. "That’s rather personal, don’t you think?"

  I smiled. Her pause told me everything I needed to know. "My fee is $500 per day plus expenses."

  She sat back. "Th
at’s outrageous."

  "You didn’t do any checking around, did you?"

  "I heard you were a good detective. I didn’t comparison shop, no, if that’s what you’re asking."

  "Well, Vanessa, you get what you pay for."

  "It’s just that $500 per day-"

  "-plus expenses."

  "Seems very expensive given your condition."

  I cocked an eyebrow and said nothing for thirty seconds. She shifted only after twenty-five of them passed. "You don’t get a discount because my two lower extremities aren't working properly, Mrs. Patterson."

  She sighed. "I’m sorry, that was wrong."

  "You’re damned straight it was."

  "Sorry."

  "Forget it. If I had a buck and a cigarette every time someone made a crack about my condition, I’d be a dead millionaire."

  She pulled out a slim checkbook and scrawled out a check, ripped it off and handed it to me. "At $500 per day you must at least be close to the millionaire part."

  I glanced at the check. "I do well. Certainly not in your realm, though."

  "No, I wouldn’t think so." She said it so matter-of-factly, it only reinforced the idea that she must have truly been one of those incredibly rich people who only come down from Olympus on rare occasions. Lucky for me this happened to be one of them.

  She gestured at the check. "There’s enough there to cover the first week’s worth of work. If it runs past that, I’ll have another one sent to you."

  I tucked her card and check into my breast pocket. "You’ve got my number?"

  "Yes."

  "Call any time, day or night." I smiled. "If you have anything else you want to tell me about."

  A funny look crossed her face and she let the small grin out of its cage again. "I’ll do that."

  She stood up and extended her hand. "Thank you, Mr. Thunder."

  I took her hand and held it for a second. "It’s Jake, Vanessa."

  She let me hold on to her hand for another second, then pulled free from my grasp. "Call me when you have something."

  A thought crossed my mind. "Tell me something."

  "Yes?"

  "What happens if I find out who killed your sister?"

  "You don’t seem like someone who uses ‘if’ very much…Jake."

  "I’m not. But I’m also something of a realist. Answer the question."

  "When you find them," she paused. "You’ll give me the information I need to send them straight to hell."

  "I’m not an assassin, Vanessa."