Sleuth LLC: Birds of a Feather

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Starke, FL

Friday

I WENT TO A LITTLE café for breakfast; then I killed a couple of hours exploring the little town some more. There was a former county courthouse building that dated to the turn of the previous century and was now occupied by the community college—the new courthouse was on US-301, a mile north of the old one. In addition to a short main street that was obviously struggling to survive, there was a really quaint old brick street that ran north from downtown parallel to the railroad. It was lined with mostly old, mainly multi-story houses, so I figured it must be where the power base of this town had once, and might still, live.

I arrived at the Golden Arches at a quarter to twelve and found my client already sitting at a corner table in the most out-of-the-way corner of the busy restaurant. I set the tray holding my chicken Caesar salad and iced tea on the table across from him.

“Okay,” he said, “I’m here.”

“Good, because I have news. Just remember one thing though—you absolutely must not go off half-c****d with this, okay?”

“Why would I do that?”

“If and when I provide you with proof that your wife is having an affair, you might be tempted to get physical with someone.”

“Yeah.”

“And, however satisfying that might be, you won’t do your children any good if you’re in jail for beating someone up.”

“I know.”

“I hope you do, because right now you have the moral high ground. On the other hand, if you do something stupid, that high ground can and will turn into instant quicksand under your feet.”

“I read you, loud and clear.”

“All right, then. I think by this time tomorrow I’ll have evidence that you can take to court.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. What I need to ask you is this: do you and your wife have joint bank accounts?”

“Yeah, checking and savings.”

“If you’re smart, you’ll stop by the bank on your way to work and move the savings account balance to an account that’s in your name only.”

“Why would I do that?”

“If I get the goods on her, she’ll know it, and she might haul ass. When a spouse decides to leave in a hurry, they frequently raid the bank accounts, so you need to protect your assets.”

“s**t… I hadn’t thought that far ahead.”

“Then it’s time you did. I wouldn’t mess with the checking account—she’s liable to make a purchase using a debit card or something—but people don’t pay that much attention to savings accounts unless they’re saving for something and the goal is getting close.”

“Thanks,” he said, “I’ll do that. When will you have some information for me?”

“You get off at seven in the morning?”

“Yeah.”

“Call me when you do. I might want you to stop by my office and pick up some evidence.”

“Evidence?”

“Digital photos, maybe. Depends on how things go tonight.”

“s**t. You know something, don’t you?”

“Nothing I can take to court at this point, but yes, I know something.”

“Can you tell me?”

“Tomorrow morning, okay? Go to the bank and take care of business, then go work your double shift. You’re paying me to handle this, so let me handle it, okay? And remember to keep your cool.”

“Okay.”

“And this is most important: stay calm and don’t give your suspicions away to anybody. Be careful what you say at the bank—you don’t have to explain your actions to them.”

“Yeah, and that son of a b***h at the bank knows everybody in town.”

“Any chance he might call your wife?”

“He doesn’t particularly like her, so I don’t think so.”

“Good, because I won’t be able to catch her doing anything if somebody spooks her.”

“Yeah.”

He left to go to the bank, and I finished my lunch. Then I went back to the motel and took a nap. I’ve got the rest of the day to kill, I thought. Might as well get some rest.

Starke, FL

Friday evening—late

A LITTLE AFTER nine, I checked out of the Starlight Motel, drove down the street to the Dixie Motel, and parked on a side street. I spotted a car nearby that belonged to the hapless Sybil—my client had described it in some detail, including the tag number. I walked the short distance to the motel and entered the office, where a middle-aged man was watching television behind the front desk. “Help you?” he said, when he finally registered my presence.

“Do you have a Jack Nelson staying here?” I said.

“Who wants to know?”

I handed him my card and said, “I do. Is he registered under his name?”

“I can’t give out that kind of information.”

I carefully placed a twenty on the desk.

“There just might be someone by that name in room twenty-seven, around back. Why do you want to know, Mr. Investigator?”

“Because he’s shacked up with a woman who’s married to somebody else.”

“I can’t help you there.”

“You could let me borrow a passkey for a few minutes.” I placed two more twenties on the desk.

“I guess I could do that, but what happens if the chain is on the door?”

I placed a fifty beside the twenties.

“Mister, for fifty bucks, you can break the door down for all I care. I’ll fix it and still be money ahead. Can I watch?”

“Sure you can, as long as you don’t get in the way. A witness is always good to have.”

He retrieved a passkey from under the desk and said, “Follow me.”

He placed a sign saying “Back in ten minutes” on the office door and locked it behind us. Signs like that always crack me up, because they seldom say when the ten minutes began, thus rendering them meaningless. He led me to a breezeway that took us to the rear of the motel. It was a slow night; there was one lone car in the rear parking lot, and it was parked right in front of room twenty-seven. We walked to the door of the room and stood for a minute. I reached out with my special senses long enough to determine that Jack and Sybil were lustily rutting away in the room.

“How do you wanta do this?” the man said.

I took a small digital camera out of my pants pocket, turned it on, and held a finger to my lips. Then I lowered my voice and said, “Just unlock the door and step quickly to one side.”

He did as instructed, and the minute the door hit the chain, I gave it a good kick. The chain pulled out of the doorframe, and the door slammed back against the wall. I stepped into the room, found the light switch, flipped it on, and was able to snap half a dozen pictures before the couple on the bed managed to untangle themselves from one another and the sheets. Luckily for me, they stood facing the door for a full minute before reacting any further, and I got several full-frontal shots of them.

The yelling and screaming began in earnest then, but by the time they were dressed enough to give chase, I was back in my car driving slowly down the side street. Another day, another dollar, I thought.

Instead of driving back up US-301, I took SR-16, which carried me east to Camp Blanding, a military reservation that was the headquarters of the Florida National Guard and the site of their summer training sessions. I’d often wondered what those ‘summer-vacation soldiers’ did, cooped up in a barracks for two weeks without access to their women. One of these days, I’m gonna get curious enough to drive down there one evening, park on the side of the road, and do a little mental sleuthing to find out. From SR-16, I took a shortcut to Blanding Boulevard, then followed it all the way home.

I pulled into my garage, locked the car, and carried my bag into the house. Then I went to my office, where I spent thirty minutes dumping the pictures into my computer and printing them out. Because of the nature of my work, I’d invested in a decent-quality photo printer. Job completed, I went home, set the alarm for six thirty, and crawled in bed.

Jacksonville, FL

Saturday morning—early

WHEN MY CLIENT called at seven fifteen, I was already at my desk writing a report for him.

“You told me to call,” he said.

“Yes, Sir, and if you aren’t too tired to stop by on your way home, I’ve got everything you need.”

“I’ll be there shortly.”

He was as good as his word and rang my doorbell less than thirty minutes later. I unlocked the front door and said, “Come on in.”

I led him back to my desk and offered him a seat.

He sat, looked at me expectantly, and said, “Well?”

I handed him a dozen color photos and sat quietly while he digested their contents. “Son of a b***h,” he said. “Son of a f*****g bitch.”

“Did you go to the bank yesterday?”

“You bet I did. I moved the savings money into an account in my name only. Then I withdrew all but three hundred dollars from the checking account. I also did something else.”

“What was that?”

“I called my mother and asked her to go visit her sister for the weekend and take the kids with her.”

“Where does her sister live?”

“When she and her husband retired, they bought a house on a lake down near the Ocala National Forest. As far as I know, Sybil doesn’t know where it is.”

“Mr. Hancock, I have a couple of suggestions for you.”

“What?”

“First, take a close look at the photos. I actually caught them in the middle of having s*x, and as you can see, the guy in the photo is still tumescent, and he isn’t wearing a condom.”

“So?”

“Maybe you ought to go by the health department and have some blood drawn just in case. Tell them it’s for STDs and it won’t cost you anything.”

“Yeah. What else?”

“Your youngest child is less than a year old, right?”

“Yes.”

“Was she a surprise?”

“Yeah, you can say that again. Sybil was supposed to be on the pill.”

“Are you absolutely certain that you’re her father?”

“Oh, s**t! I never even thought of that.”

“If the affair has been going on for a long time, it’s possible that she isn’t yours. Be sure you ask your lawyer to demand a DNA test to prove paternity—if she isn’t yours, then you hold all the cards, plus a couple of jokers.”

“Yeah.”

“You still have that moral high ground I mentioned yesterday, provided you don’t do anything stupid—remember our conversation in McDonald’s. You need to get these pictures and my report into the hands of your lawyer, and do exactly what he tells you to do.”

“Yeah, that makes sense.”

“Do you know a lawyer?”

“Yeah. We were friends all through high school. After that, he went off to college and I went to work. He moved back home a few years ago and set up his office in downtown Starke.”

I handed him a sheet of paper and a check, and he said, “What’s this?”

“My report, along with an itemized bill for two days’ services plus expenses, and a refund check for the balance of the retainer.”

He scanned the report; then he glanced at the check and tore it in half. “Keep the refund; you’ve damn well earned it.”

“Thanks. If your lawyer will send me an e-mail, I’ll send him digital images of the photos.”

We were both yawning, and he said, “I need go to home and get to bed. I feel every one of those sixteen hours that I worked.”

“I understand. I had kind of a late night myself, and I’m gonna go home and take a nap after a bit.”

He thanked me again, and I walked to the door with him. When his car was out of sight, I hung the ‘Closed’ sign in the door, locked it securely, set the alarm, and went home and to bed for a couple of hours.

When I got up, I felt more or less recovered from the late night/early morning. In fact, I was so energized that I gathered up my dirty clothes and took them down to my laundry room and started a load of clothes in the washer. Then I carefully packed my overnight bag so I was once again ready to haul ass on a moment’s notice.

While waiting for the washer to do its job, I returned to the office and settled down at my desk to catch up on my record keeping, which carried me through the morning until my clothes were both clean and dry. All that busy housekeeping type stuff left me feeling so virtuous that I decided that a nice lunch had been earned, so I drove over to The Loop to indulge myself in the best grilled-chicken sandwich in town.

The restaurant has several locations around town, but the nearest one, and my absolute favorite, was located on Fishweir Creek, where St. Johns Avenue intersected with Herschel Street. I took my sandwich and iced tea out onto the deck and sat, watching the seabirds. The tide was out, leaving the little tidal estuary nothing more than a series of mudflats and an occasional pool of water, and the seabirds were busily scavenging for fish that the retreating tide had left trapped in the little pools and eddies. My reverie was interrupted by a familiar voice.

“I told you I recognized that pony car.”

I looked up and smiled at the speaker.

“Hey, Q,” Mike Foster said. “Mind if we join you?”

“Not at all.”

Mike and his partner, George Martin, set their trays on the table and took their seats. “Where’s Robbie?” I said.

“He’s over at Kevin and David’s house,” George said. “He and Anthony are best buddies, and they sleep over a lot—sometimes with us and other times at their house.” Robbie was an orphan whom George and Mike had adopted a year earlier, and Anthony was Kevin’s nephew, whom he and David had adopted.

“How’s the detective business?” George said.

“Great,” I said. “I just spent a couple of days in Starke on a divorce case. I actually caught my client’s wife in bed with another guy.”

“Really?” George said.

“Some money changed hands, and a friendly motel owner opened the door of their room for me.”

“Sounds like fun.”

“Oh, yeah, surprising people in the middle of s*x is always fun.”

“What if the guy’d had a gun?”

“He was too busy scrambling for his clothes. Even if he’d had a gun, I was long gone before he could have used it.”

“I don’t suppose killing time in a place like Starke was much fun,” George said.

“What in the world would a gay male find to do in Starke, other than working at a boring job?” Mike added.

“Well, now that you mention it, there was this nineteen-year-old waiter at Sonny’s BBQ with a bubble-butt.”

“You didn’t?” Mike said.

“I invited him over to my room after he got off work and had a great time. Two great times, actually.”

“Oh, the single life.”

“Yeah,” George said, “that sounds like someone I know—back before we became a couple.”

“Guilty as charged,” Mike said.

The conversation switched to other topics, we finished our lunch, and went our separate ways. I stopped by the Lake Shore branch of the post office and emptied my post office box. Then I headed back to my office, where I sat down at my desk and went through the mail. I spent an hour catching up on bills and e-mail and completed my weekly computer maintenance. I was truly proud of the fact that I’d actually managed to create a more or less paperless office. All of my many documents, files, and images were scanned into the computer and from there were automatically backed up every night to a secure off-site storage facility. The nightly backup consisted only of files that had been added or changed since the last full backup, and I did a full backup every weekend without fail. When I had to go out of town over a weekend, I did the backup as soon as I got home. Secure in the knowledge that the building could burn down that night and no irreplaceable records would be lost, I went back home to take a brief nap. I was awakened some time later by the ringing of my cell phone.

Jacksonville, FL

Saturday afternoon

“HELLO,” I SAID.

“Hi, Quentin.”

“Jethro?”

“Yeah.”

“Where are you?”

“We’re at the Orange Park Mall. Can we come by?”

“Sure. Do you need directions?”

“Thanks, but I printed them out on MapQuest.”

“See you in a few.”

“Yeah, bye.”

When I answered the door twenty minutes later, Jethro and Donny were standing on my small front stoop, so I said, “Come in, guys.”

Donny was everything that Jethro wasn’t—stocky instead of skinny; tall rather than average; his face was free of freckles; and his dark hair was as organized as Jethro’s red hair was unruly.

“Have you guys already been to the movies?” I said.

“We decided to come see you instead,” Jethro said.

“What if somebody asks about the film?”

“Lots of websites have spoilers for any movie you can think of.”

“Got it all figured out, don’t you?” I said.

“When you live in a place like Starke, you have to be careful,” Donny said.

“No argument there.”

“Where’s your bedroom?” Jethro said. “I’m ready to try that king-size bed you talked about.”

The next two hours were as much fun as they were exhausting—nothing like a pair of horny teenagers to wear you out. At one point, while Jethro used the bathroom, I tuned in on Donny’s thoughts and almost wished that I hadn’t. His mind wasn’t nearly as focused on important things as was Jethro’s, and I learned a couple of things that put me in a moral dilemma. Much later, when I walked to the door with them, I asked Jethro to linger for a moment, and when Donny was out of sight—and earshot—I said, “Jethro, when you get home and are alone, give me a call.”

“Why?”

“There’s something I need to tell you.”

“You can’t tell me now?”

“Not with Donny waiting outside—it sort of involves him. Just call me when you’re home and by yourself, okay?”

“Sure.”

He gave me a quick kiss and left.

I secured the house; then I took a long hot shower, followed by a short nap, which lasted until the ringing of my cell phone woke me sometime later.

“Quentin?”

“You got me.”

“This is Jethro.”

“I know.”

“You’ve got my curiosity up. What was it you wanted to tell me?”

“Are you alone?”

“Yeah.”

“How long have you known Donny?”

“Ever since I started going to Santa Fe Community College—about a year and a half ago, why?”

“I don’t know how to say this, Jethro, but Donny isn’t really your friend.”

“What do you mean?”

“Have you told anybody what you and Donny do with each other in your spare time?”

“Of course not—other than you, that is. Why?”

“Donny has told several people.”

“I don’t believe you. Who?”

“Frank, Beth, and Darcy, to name a few.”

“How the heck do you know that?”

“Jethro, I’m a detective, and I spent two days in Starke, snooping around, detecting things. People talk, and I listen.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“Okay, kiddo, don’t believe it, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“s**t. Now you’ve got me confused.”

“Sorry about that, Jethro. Trust me on this, I like you, and I’m looking out for you by giving you this information. Be careful what you tell Donny, because he doesn’t have your best interests at heart.”

“Shit.”

“That about sums it up… sorry.”

“Can I see you again?”

“Next time you come to town, as long as I’m not out on a case. Give me a call.”

“Okay, bye.”

I looked at the clock and realized that I needed to change clothes, because I had a prospective client due in the office in half an hour. I don’t usually make appointments for Saturdays at all, let alone Saturday evenings, but I’m never too proud to turn down any prospective business.