Read Escape Route (Murder Off-Screen Book 1) Online
Authors: GA VanDruff
Escape Route (Murder Off-Screen Book 1) (16 page)
“You didn’t press charges against Francine Cuthbart?”
I pictured Esteban, back in LA, at his desk, with stacks of thick folders at each elbow, and a coffee cup on top of each stack. “No. No, I did not.” I kept talking over the incredulous silence booming at me from the west coast. “It’s over, Stubby—thanks to you and Sergeant Kilroy. Doofus is safe. That’s all I ever wanted, Doofus safe. Plus, I got a new hairdo in time for the cast off. Day after tomorrow, Puerto Rico, here we come.” At the moment, I’m taking the kids on a road trip.”
Stubby let the disapproving silence hang between us for several seconds, then he said, “Kids?”
“Doofus, José and one hitchhiker.”
“Doofus—as in King—aka the deceased Labrador? Who is José?”
Doofus had inaugurated two-thirds of the trees on the pet side of the rest stop, while José supervised from my pocket. “José is his best friend.” A pair of crows had been eyeballing the little guy as brunch, so I had peeled him off the dog’s forehead and tucked him safely away.
“Jaqie. Hitchhiker? You know better.”
“Aw, it’s okay. I’m bigger than he is. Any word from Trooper Kilroy?”
“He’s crazy about your—Gertie. Did I get it right?”
“Everybody’s crazy about Gertie.”
“Do you want the legalese version, or the plain English version?”
“Plain, please. Bring me up to speed.”
“Dog poop. Francine Pelley Cuthbart is anti-dog poop. To the extreme. But you already knew that.”
Uncle Frank had been right that night at the restaurant. All of this because of Francine’s geraniums.
“Your pal, Geoff, was not aware any of this was going on. I spoke to his personal attorney, Mark Kingsford. Cuthbart still believes King’s ashes were the ones he tossed off some bridge out there. His attorney let it slip—on purpose—that Cuthbart’s divorcing his wife, taking the kids and moving to Palm Springs.
“This Mark seemed genuinely impressed by you. Anything I should know?”
“Lawyers. Make a case out of everything.” I’d been meaning to throw that business card away. “Who’s in trouble at the end of all this?”
“Nobody but Carl. He’s going back in. Aggravated assault, attempted kidnapping—”
“Styling without a license.”
Stubby snorted and coughed. “Not while I’m drinking coffee, kiddo. Anyway, Carl won’t be coming back out. Ever. Never gave up Francine Cuthbart, though. She must’ve taken real good care of him.
“The two so-called hit men from Pennsylvania were sent packing. They weren’t talking, and Mrs. Cuthbart claimed to not know them. We found a few pieces of evidence on the one guy’s cell, but nothing solid enough to hold them.”
“What about Joe?”
“Joe Packard had no charges to press. Swears he found a stray dog, had it for an hour or so, and then it ran off. Got mugged when he wandered into a dangerous neighborhood, chasing after it.” At last, Stubby lightened up and laughed at the other end of the line. “You never told me Oakley Beach had a dangerous neighborhood.”
“The duck pond does get slick in January. So, Detective, where does all this leave me?”
“Where do you want to be, kiddo?”
“On my way to Puerto Rico. I need a vacation from my vacation. Palm trees, the Caribbean. I’ve got the brochures.”
“Go with God, my child. If Kilroy needs you, he’s going to go through Gertie. She must be some kinda gal.”
“She is that. Hey, can I send you a postcard when we arrive?”
“You’d better. And, Jaqie, you know I’m still on the case, right?”
“Jeep? Yes, Stubby, I know you are.”
“See ya on the red carpet, kiddo.”
I put the phone, the dog and the gecko in my rented van.
A big crate for Doofus. A smaller one for our hitchhiker, Rex Junior, Lenore’s last yellow puppy, with a jaunty blue ribbon tied around his neck, on the way to his Forever Home.
I checked that Cuthbart’s big, fat envelope was still safe under my front seat. It was. I’d written on it—
For the Care and Upkeep of one Rex, Jr.
I slipped it back in place, then eased onto 70W, headed to the mountains of Pennsylvania.
To Jimmy Packard’s house.
<<<>>>
by
GA VanDruff
CHAPTER 1
The weird thing about the ghost who stood watching the seagulls eat the corpse’s nose was that the corpse wasn’t his.
The body, just shy of high tide, lay spread-eagled on its back in a finely tailored suit.
The ghost, on the other hand, was dressed for the beach, slender, clean-shaven and transparent. I mean, you couldn’t see his liver, or anything unsettling like that, but you could definitely watch the sunrise through where his liver probably was—or had been.
I’d left my pocketbook back on my boat, hanging on a hook in the galley. It was stuffed with brochures promising me a Caribbean paradise. Typical turquoise waters, tropical breezes, palm fronds kind of fare. Birds brunching on a middle-aged, white male stretched out surfside had not been among the images promoted by Puerto Rico’s Board of Tourism. Guaranteed.
I eased the outboard’s throttle and backed up ever so slowly. We puttered beyond the folds of whitecaps and ducked behind a lone, house-sized rock tossed down by an ancient glacier two or three eons before I blundered onto this beach. I shut off the engine. Doofus wanted to swim. Labradors always want to swim, but I shook my head no, so he sighed and stared off in the opposite direction. I had to pull myself together.
I creased a mental sheet of paper and made two columns. PLAUSIBLE and GET OUT OF DODGE.
Ten minutes later, the only item under PLAUSIBLE was a man in a suit dead on the beach. The suit was unusual but I’m sure business men enjoyed a stroll along the shifting sands like anybody else. He must be dead because he had made no attempt to shoo the seagulls off his face.
The ghost had assumed that responsibility.
Acknowledging the activities of a ghost, checked the first box in the DODGE column. If I am watching ghost activity, there must be a ghost. And the ghost reminded me of Jeep McBain.
Box number two. Check.
The way he danced around flapping at the gulls—Jeep made those moves at the clubs in LA. But considering that for the past year,
everything
reminded me of my best friend and roommate did not make that a startling comparison.
The night Jeep won the Oscar for best screenplay—he had taken me as his Plus One—he vanished without a word. I’d not stopped searching for him at every turn. Around every glacial rock.
The last six weeks spent sailing to Puerto Rico had given me other things to think about—pirates, sharks, sinking—but Jeep was always at the periphery. Like a ghost.
Like this ghost.
The water pulsed off the rock and kept kicking us seaward so I set the oars and pulled long, silent strokes toward the beach until the gentle surf carried us to shore. I fanned myself with my straw hat, wiped the sweat from my eyes, grabbed the bow line and stepped off into the cool Caribbean up to my knees.
Like they say, the first step to recovery is admitting there was a problem. And Jeep McBain was a big problem. If I was hallucinating, I’d call the Hot Line in the morning. If this ghost
was
Jeep, who would I call about that? Jeep would say
Ghostbusters
and roll around on the sand laughing.
I turned to wrestle the dinghy further up on the beach. My ninety-pound dog acting as ballast did not make the job any easier. “Doofus, out!” He jumped overboard and headed out to sea.
“Hey! Get back here!” Men. At least this one came back when I called.
I dug my heels into the sand and hauled the dinghy far enough out of the water to stay put without the outboard’s prop getting banged out of shape. I looped the bow line twice around a piece of driftwood. In the event I had not hallucinated a dead body and a ghost, I for sure did not want my only means of escape floating toward the equator.
I slipped my shirt on over my bikini top. A lump in the pocket shifted. José, my gecko, getting situated. The little fella signed on at the dock back home in Maryland as my eco-friendly bug zapper. Puerto Rican bugs the size of pup tents ate my food and hid my stuff so José’s long-term employment status was secure.
I lifted my sunhat, fluffed my sensibly short hair, replaced the hat, scrunched the brim, smoothed the creases of my shorts and inhaled an exhilarating breath of sea air. No worries. None of what I had just seen was real. No corpse bobbing along the shoreline in a five-thousand dollar Bianchi suit, no Hitchcock seagulls, and because ghosts do not exist, no ghost. Simply too much sun, too little screen.
When I turn around it will all be sand and surf, palm trees. Nothing more.
When that didn’t work out, I debated waving at the ghost. I hadn’t waved at anyone since I stepped off the bus in Los Angeles three years back. Waving at strangers in LA is sign language for
please run at me with a knife and steal my purse
. Ghosts? I didn’t know a thing about ghost protocol. Who knew what a wave might signify in the netherworld? A firm handshake seemed improbable. But it might attract his attention and I could get a better look at his face.
Mr. Ghost thrashed around in the receding tide chasing the gulls off his companion and didn’t wave back. I made a grab for Doofus, but my slippery dog trotted into the thick of the fracas. These Caribbean gulls were pros, not easily put off a free lunch by some lummox of a yellow dog. However, they did scuttle away a yard or two, swearing at my Lab, but then waddled back for seconds.
José bolted out of my pocket, climbed to my collar and clutched on with his knobby gray toes for a better view. He puffed out the red flap of skin under his chin and waved it around as a warning, pretending to be brave. It’s a gecko thing.
Apparently, no
body
meant no body
odor
because Doofus paid no attention to the ghost. The other guy, though, was ripe. Doofus snarfled the dead man’s armpits, and nibbled at the sand crabs scrabbling across the mostly bald head. It occurred to me to call my stupid dog, but the sight of a semi-dead guy playing scarecrow over a
totally
dead guy deactivated whichever lobe in my brain controlled speech.
Not to worry. The ghost stepped up to the plate. “Jaqie Shanahan. Is that you? Get over here and give me a hand before I lose Dan to the currents.”
At the sound of my name, I sputtered and said something like
mcphorpherwhat
. I recognized that voice.
I chalked up the Joe Cocker quality of it to his being dead. He did resemble Jeep but the sun cut in and out of the clouds, casting shadows, distorting the image. Before I could make a positive ID, José skydived down to my foot, and I lost the connection. The clutch of tiny gecko toes on mine snapped me out of my metaphysical daze. It was time to snatch my dog, my lizard and leave this version of reality behind.
“Come here, boy.” I clapped and whistled. The ghost looked around at me, confused. “Not you,” I said. “The dog. Come here, Doofus.” They both decided to come. Doofus tore across the beach, but the ghost took his good old time, stepping carefully around shells and driftwood, maybe afraid of stubbing a toe. I didn’t think stubbing things an issue for the undead, but I wouldn’t bet my life on it.
Doofus skidded to a stop and nosed the lizard off my foot. José was out of his element. His was a simple life—eat bugs, play with dog. The lizard shinnied up Doofus’s leg and hid most of himself under the dog’s left ear.
The hobgoblin, phantom, whatever, stepped into my comfort zone and planted himself directly in front of me, shimmering like heat off blacktop. “Jaqie Shanahan, my favorite dark-haired, Irish girl. Still cute as a button, I see. Great hat. Wassup?”
“Not much.” I hedged a step back. “How about you?”
My diaphanous friend smiled a beige smile. All of him was beige, French vanilla, old parchment. He was a tea stain against the horizon.
“You don’t recognize me?” He swiveled and gave me a profile shot.
“Maybe ...”
He thumped his chest. To no avail. “Jeep! Your roommate!”
End of Chapter One
ESCAPE CLAUSE
Want to find out what happens next? Please visit Amazon.com to read more of
Escape Clause
by GA VanDruff.
