Baited Read online

  BAITED

  Lori Armstrong

  Published by LJLA, LLC

  Copyright 2014, LJLA LLC

  Cover by: The Cover Collection

  Edited by: Valerie Gray/EditABook

  ISBN: 978-0-9888235-3-2

  This ebook is for your personal enjoyment and may not be re-sold or shared with others. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. All characters and situations in this book are fictional and products of the author’s imagination.

  Chapter One ~ setting the bait

  My father never took me fishing as a child. Neither did he teach me to throw a ball or ride a bike. He occasionally showed me his backhand, though. So any resentment I have about missing those rites of adolescence remained trapped on the tip of my bloodied tongue.

  Fishing expertise would have come in handy that morning. A guy I dubbed “Matchstick” strolled into the offices of Wells and Collins Investigations just as I was indulging in my third smoke break in thirty minutes. I’d had nothing to look forward to that day besides filing, and filing made me cranky.

  “Can I help you?” I asked, eyeing the snappy slogan on his T-shirt—It’s not the size of the rod or how deep you fish, it’s all in the way you wiggle the worm.

  “Uh, yeah.” He frowned at the mess distinguishing my office from the reception area; folders heaped on the desk, fashion magazines strewn on the floor, the anodized ashtray overflowing with crimson tipped cigarette butts. “I’m looking for Kevin Wells.”

  “Sorry. Kevin is on assignment today. But I’d be happy to help you.”

  The man’s questioning glance zoomed past my insubstantial breasts, traveled over the pinkish scars marring my throat and lingered on my mouth. Most men are spellbound by full lips like mine—they look as if they’d lost a round with a killer bee.

  He blinked away whatever oral fantasy he’d fallen into and managed, “You his secretary then?”

  “He wishes. I’m his partner, Julie Collins. And you are?”

  “Rich Barber.” He thrust a freckled, skeletal hand across my desk, which I took without pause, my manners intact. “Jimmer sent me. Said Kevin might be able to help me out. But if he’s not available…”

  “And Jimmer forgot to mention little ol’ me?” I tsk-tsked. “Gender bias. That boy is in so much trouble next time I see him.”

  “Whoa.” He backed up. “The last thing I need is a pissed off Jimmer Cheadle hot on my tail.”

  “Relax. I was kidding.” My estimation of Mr. Barber jumped a notch if he was leery of my six-foot-six, ex-commando pal, Jimmer. “Have a seat.” I pointed to the chair opposite my desk. “Tell me how you think I can help you.”

  Rich was wound so tight he bounced when his bony butt connected with the buffalo skin cushion. Without preamble he said, “My friend, JC, is missing and I think his wife killed him.”

  I let that sink in for a minute. I slowly ground out my cigarette. “Don’t know what Jimmer told you, or what detective novels you read, but we don’t investigate homicides. Contact Detective Mitch Jones at the Rapid City PD. In fact, I’ll call him right now.” I reached for the phone.

  But Rich’s cool, strong hand covered mine. “They know he’s missing. His wife is the one who filed the report.” His single red unibrow wrinkled above his flat nose. “Don’t you read the paper? They did an article on his disappearance a couple of weeks ago.”

  I prefer to get my news from TV. Actually, I haven’t read a newspaper since Ann Landers kicked the bucket and they’d discontinued her column. I’ve always taken perverse pleasure in knowing there are people out there with lives more screwed up than mine. “I must have missed that. If the police know he’s MIA, why aren’t you talking to them?”

  His face turned the mottled reddish orange of a prairie sunset. “I tried. They umm...laughed.”

  That struck me as odd. Cops never discount any theory on a case, no matter how outrageous. “They laughed? Why?”

  He squirmed. “Because I told them that JC’s psycho wife, Cindy Jo Cracken, probably wrapped an anchor around his neck and took him fishing.”

  I could imagine my friend Jimmer right now, standing in the hallway, holding his stomach in silent mirth, waiting to see how his latest practical joke had panned out. Last week he sent me an eighty-year old woman who demanded I find her lost libido. The thought of powdered wrinkles covered in sweat slapping against another body of sagging skin...Yuck. I couldn’t have sex for two days.

  Rich sighed. “Go ahead and laugh.”

  “So this is some kind of joke?”

  He shook his head.

  “Then you’d better start at the beginning.” I unearthed a legal pad and waited, Bic pen poised, picture of PI efficiency.

  “Four weeks ago my friend, JC Bettleyoun, disappeared. His wife claims he got in his truck and drove to Kansas City. No one has heard from him since.”

  “Why was he going to Kansas City?”

  “Supposedly he was attending the regional American Bass Anglers Association meeting and he had an appointment with a potential sponsor.”

  “Bass?” I repeated inanely. “As in fish?”

  “Yeah. JC was gonna try his luck as a professional bass fisherman.”

  Now I knew Jimmer had to be busting a gut someplace close. “Look—”

  “You don’t believe me either.” Rich jumped up off the chair. “Never mind.”

  “Rich, sit down.” He flopped back into the chair, his breath coming as fast and shallow as an air-starved goldfish. “I’m just surprised, is all. People really get paid to fish?”

  The peculiar look on his face read; clueless female. “There’s huge money in professional fishing. JC entered a couple of bass tournaments down south a year ago last summer when he and Cindy Jo were on vacation. Shocked the hell out of everyone when he actually won a few.” He leaned forward over his spindly thighs, confiding, “See, JC is a pretty big talker, but he never follows through with anything. Know the kind of guy I mean?”

  I nodded. That pretty much described most of the men I’d dated. With one exception. “Does he have a job?”

  “The most successful thing JC ever did was marry Cindy Jo. Once they hooked up, he’s never had to hold a regular job. He knows she’ll haul out the checkbook whenever he runs short.”

  A sugar momma. How novel. “Was he proud of that?”

  “At times.” His cheeks bloomed when he realized he’d been trash-talking his buddy, but he pressed on. “I thought bein’ at her beck and call was a high price to pay for the limited funds she doled out. Anyway, she made fun of him when he told her his plans to go pro. Said fishing was a hobby, not a job. That might’ve been the end of it, but JC has a mean streak a mile wide and the temper to match. So, during the sports show, this winter, he bought a brand new fishing boat.”

  Hardly grounds for murder, but I kept listening. “What did Cindy Jo do?”

  “Hit the roof. Told him he’d better take it back to the dealership ’cause she wasn’t paying for it.”

  “Where does Cindy Jo get her money?”

  “She owns that nail salon off of Jackson—Hot Tips. Pretty successful place, I guess. She bought thirty acres outside of Hermosa and put a brand new double wide on it just last year.”

  “They have any children?”

  “Not the normal kind.” I lifted a brow and he rushed to explain, “Cindy Jo’s twenty years older than JC. Never could have kids, but she does have them yippy damn dogs she calls her babies. Drove JC nuts, the way she pampered and fussed at them.” His thin lips made a girlish moue of distaste. “When one vanished a few months back, I thought he’d have to admit her to the psych ward, the way she carried on.”

  “Still, the fact he bought a new fishing boat wasn’t exactly reason to kill him.” I relied on th
e old standby in our business: marital infidelity. “Was JC screwing around?”

  Rich opened his mouth as if to laugh, but thought better of it. “No. JC was a jerk, and smart women avoided him. Truth is, he could’ve screwed any chick and Cindy Jo wouldn’t have cared.”

  My skepticism must’ve showed.

  “Sounds strange, but she was jealous of the time he spent fishing. She whined he paid more attention to his rods and reels than he did to her.”

  “And did he?”

  “Well, yeah, especially after he bought the boat.” A gusty sigh, like one might expect after a satisfying bout of sweaty sex, filled the room. “It is a sweet machine, with top of the line digital fish finder—”

  “Which is all interesting,” I interrupted his almost orgasmic reverie, “but where’s Cindy Jo’s motive?”

  Rich scratched the red stubble on his chin. “That’s what made Cindy Jo crazy. He didn’t use her money to buy it. I don’t know where JC scrounged up that kind of cash, but I have my suspicions. He figured since he’d paid for the boat, he didn’t have to answer to Cindy Jo ’bout how much time he spent fishing. And, JC wouldn’t even let her set foot on it.”

  “How’d that go over?”

  “Guess she was mad enough to spit nails.” He chortled at his own humor.

  I bit back a smile. “So he up and went to Kansas City to prove he could be a pro fisherman without her blessing? Did you know he’d hooked a potential sponsor?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t even know he had a sponsor. He would’ve shared the news with me, or asked me to ride along, but I knew nothing about it. I heard it all from Cindy Jo.”

  Something didn’t fit. “Would JC have asked you to come with him if he’d been doing something illegal on his way to Kansas City?”

  Rich blanched but didn’t answer, which in itself was the answer I needed.

  “Could he be ‘running errands’?” ‘Running errands’ is slang for drug trafficking on I-90—the interstate that bisects South Dakota. I had it on good authority that the highway patrol zeros in on out-of-state license plates, leaving local drug runners somewhat safe. Especially when the locals are willing to rat out a competitor from another state. The SDHP gets a big drug bust and the locals get to carry on, business as usual. “JC was into something bad, wasn’t he?”

  His morose nod made me feel as if I’d kicked a puppy, but I soldiered on. “Think about this. If he was running drugs, and if he double-crossed his new employers, his body may be moldering in the middle of a cornfield. And if that’s the case, I doubt anyone will find him until threshing time.”

  His congenial tone disappeared and his eyes snapped with resentment. “That’s a possibility, but Cindy Jo is involved somehow, I just know it. She killed him. Even if she is a little bitty thing, she’s as mean as rattlesnake.”

  That stopped me for a second, but his line of logic lacked a hook. I hate turning down business, but I felt compelled to point out, “Still don’t see the motive. She couldn’t have killed him for a life insurance policy, because you have to produce a body to make the claim.”

  Rich picked at a hole in his ratty jeans, avoiding my gaze. Finally he glanced up at me with haunted, watery eyes. “Maybe I’m off base, but will you at least talk to Cindy Jo, even if it proves I’m the one that’s crazy?”

  Poor man. I didn’t want to get his hopes up, but this whole situation smacked of a bad episode of Maury Povich. Luckily for him, I’d been born a sucker for a sad story with a rotten ending. “Sure. I’ll talk to her, see what else I can find out,” I said, withdrawing a blank contract from my desk, “but it’ll cost you.”

  Red splotches appeared on his forehead, nearly matching the color of his hair. “How much?”

  I immediately knocked off two hundred dollars from the standard retainer. “Three hundred to start. That’ll buy you a day or so of seeing what I can dig up. Beyond that, I’ll call you before you rack up any more charges. Will that work?”

  He nodded.

  I filled in the contract and handed him a pen. He nearly knocked off one of the glass statues on my desk as he maneuvered his arm around to sign the paperwork with his left hand.

  After he’d signed on the dotted line, he stood, dug in the left front pocket of his skin-tight Wranglers, and tossed three crumpled sweaty Benjamins on top of the paperwork.

  “One last question. Did JC take his boat with him to Kansas?”

  “No. That’s why I think he’s dead. JC wouldn’t take off and leave his boat behind. It meant more to him than anything and Cindy Jo knows that.”

  “So where is the boat again?”

  “Still docked down at Angostura, far as I know. Slip twenty-seven, cherry red boat with a matching tarp. Thinking about checking it out?”

  I shrugged. “Can’t hurt.”

  “Do you know how to drive a boat?” His skepticism wasn’t winning him any points.

  I did have some boating experience, thanks to an ex-boyfriend who’d introduced me to the joys of water-skiing among other, less wholesome, but far more appealing water sports. “Why?”

  “Cause my boat is docked down there. Not as fancy as JC’s, but it runs.” From a large key ring attached to his belt-loop, he extracted a black lanyard with two small keys and handed it over. “Take this in case you need an excuse about why you’re poking around. The old guy that runs the bait shop is awful nosy.”

  “Thanks. How will I know which boat is yours?”

  “Mine’s the only one with a lighted bow fishing platform.”

  At my dubious look, Rich’s crooked grin split from one big ear to the other.

  “I’m an eighth Lakota. Bow hunting and bow fishing are the only parts of my heritage I actively pursue.”

  I considered his flaming red hair, blue eyes, toothpick body and lily-white skin. “An eighth Sioux, huh?”

  “Got that same look when my unci dragged me to Pine Ridge and enrolled me in the tribe.”

  My Lakota language skills were pathetic but I recognized the word oon-chi. “Your grandmother?”

  “Yep. Truth is, blood doesn’t lie.”

  As I well knew. “My brother was from White Plain.”

  “Were you born there, too?” he asked, taking the high road, choosing not to judge me by my blond hair, blue eyes, high cheekbones and fair complexion.

  I shook my head. “But I do some bow-hunting.”

  Pleasure warred with shock on his face. Pleasure won out. “What’s your draw weight?”

  “Fifty pounds. I just got a new composite bow.” I left out the tiny detail that my previous bow had been forcibly retired after being used to kill a man. I’d found out the hard way that factoid did not always instill confidence in new clients.

  We spent the next few minutes discussing the minutiae about bows that only enthusiasts would understand. After giving me a brief rundown on the basics of bow fishing, and how his particular equipment worked, he encouraged me to try it out. And I admit he’d hooked my interest. Maybe more so in trying my hand at bow fishing than in investigating this case.

  “I gotta get to work; hate to blow my shot at ‘Employee of the Month’.” Rich winked. It wasn’t an accomplished wink, or a lewd wink, but a shy wink from a man I imagined hadn’t had much practice in the art of flirting.

  Something unexpectedly sweet moved through me.

  He turned to go, but stopped just inside the doorframe. “Say, if you happen to come across a knife on JC’s boat, would you let me know? He borrowed it a couple of months back...” His ears turned pink. “It was a gift from my unci. She spent a lot of money on it after the sales guy convinced her it’d been specially made for lefties.”

  “But it wasn’t?”

  Rich shook his head. “No. It’s not a switchblade. Most of them have a thumb release button on both sides, so they work for right and lefthanders. Mine is a fixed blade.”

  I blinked. I was learning all sorts of new stuff today. But all knives looked alike to me. “How will I know it’s
yours?”

  “It’s got a six inch blade with the brand name Boker etched in the steel. My initials RAB are carved on the bottom of the handle. If you find it, make sure it stays in the leather sheath. It’s sharp.”

  “Thanks for the warning. I’ll be in touch after I do some poking around.”

  His keys jangled against his bony hip as he left. I leaned back and lit another cigarette, deciding on my next move. Filing could wait; I had my first solo bona-fide case this week.

  As I sat smoking, reflecting on everything I’d just heard I looked down at my ragged cuticles and bitten-to-the-quick nails. Since business was slow, this seemed like an ideal day to get a manicure.

  ****

  Hot Tips was located in one of those 1980s low-slung shopping plazas. It was nestled between a travel agency and a chiropractor’s office. The sign, once painted a trendy mauve, had faded into the grayish pink of a dead jellyfish. A brass bell tinkled as I pushed open the glass door.

  The heavy scent of acetone greeted me, as well as the sounds of classic rock. High and low murmured tones of unrecognizable female conversation added to the background noise. I leaned on a kidney-shaped reception desk and expected to wait. I’d barely begun drumming my fingers on the desk when a peroxide blonde bounded from behind the burgundy privacy screen separating the waiting area from the main shop.

  “Can I help you?”

  “I’m here to see Cindy Jo.”

  She snatched up my right hand and scrutinized it. “I’ll say. Sweet Lord in heaven look at this mess! And here I thought they’d outlawed pickin’ cotton the same time as slavery. Girl,” she drawled in her thick southern accent, “what have you been doin’ to these poor things?”

  Embarrassed, I tried to pull my unsightly hands away but it was impossible to fight against Miss Texarkana’s firm grip. “I’ve never much been into the whole nail routine, so I thought I’d give it a shot.”

  “Then you’ve come to the right place, sugar, and from the looks of it not a minute too soon.” Over her shoulder she yelled, “Cindy Jo? Your three o’clock is here.”

  I didn’t bother to correct her.