Gone at Zero Hundred 00:00 (6 page)

Unfortunately, in my little-girl mentality, I kept sneaking
out because something was missing in my life, and I was trying to find it. I
assumed the thing that was missing, was my dad. When I saw the movie
What a
Girl Wants
, with
Amanda Bynes
, - for like the hundredth time - I came
up with the hare-brained idea to do the same thing. Look for my father. I knew
it was just a movie. But don’t things like that happen in real life? They had
to, because this is my life, and it
is
real.

A few days later, I left home with my backpack and twenty
dollars I took from my mom’s drawer. Hey, don’t wig out, I left her an I.O.U.

Unlike Amanda Bynes in the movie, I didn’t know where my dad
was. All I knew was that he was in the military when he met my mom, only I
didn’t know with a hundred-percent accuracy, that he still was, in the
military, that is. I was going on instinct. I mean, it made sense. I was the
product of two people, two gene pools. Up until I was ten, my mom was a stable
fixture, with a normal job. She didn’t yearn for big adventures. She wore
skirts, makeup and looked like a girl should. I definitely didn’t take after
her. She carried a gun because she
had
to, not because she
liked
them.

As for me, I was always on the move, could care less about
looks, and was more comfortable rolling around in the mud in a paintball war
with my buddies, and role-playing an action flick. I had an entire collection
of guns. Okay, they weren’t the real thing, but I
loved
them. In my
ten-year-old thought process, I concluded: The person whose genes I stemmed
from also must have been suffering from
adventure-itus
.

The military travels the world, so…

Since we lived in Sutter Beach my entire life, I decided my
dad must have come from one of the military bases. I came up with the plan to
sneak onto the naval base to find out. Guess what happens when you attempt to
sneak onto a military base? They call the cops, and if they deem you to be a
terror threat, NCIS. The fact that I was carrying a paintball pistol made me
questionable. If it had been NCIS, I was sure some scary-looking guy would have
shown up to interrogate me, and it wouldn’t have been
Gibbs
or
DiNozzo
.
Gibbs
would have given me a head slap for sure. Lucky for me, it was
Carter who showed up, again.

He strolled into the sterile interrogation room - where I was
sitting on a metal chair, alone and scared, shook his head and smiled.

“Hey kid,” he said without even one-iota of anger or
disappointment in his voice. “Want to blow this joint and get ourselves a
chocolate-mint Frappe?”

I couldn’t help myself. I ran over to him, and wrapped my
arms around him and held on tight. He didn’t hesitate to hug me back.

As you might have guessed, I developed a relationship with
Carter through the years. He has always been there during my unusual escapades
- and I’ve only told you about a few of them. Carter and my mom would warn me
of the dangers of the streets. He played the role of the concerned father.
Then, he would leave, because he wasn’t really my father. My mother would do
her thing, and I would go to my room and immerse myself in the life of
Huckleberry Finn, which meant, inevitably, plotting my next adventure.

I DROPPED Cody off so he could begin editing the footage;
then get the teaser up on a new site and forward a copy to the insurance
company. Hopefully, they would like our initiative, and decide to give us a
chance. Then, I drove to Walmart to pick up some large Rubbermaid containers
and headed back to the firehouse. I sat down at my mother’s desk and looked
around. Today was the day I had to face the mess. Manila folders were yanked
from the filing cabinets, strewn around the room and piled high on the floor

I carried a container over to the
stack on the floor. There were dozens of folders with client names listed on
the labels. Most of them were stamped with ‘case closed’ on front. I put those
folders in the container. They could be put off to the side. I found a couple
of files the task force missed. I glanced through them to see if there was
anything important, but the paperwork was way over my head, so I put those off
to the side to give to Carter later.

Then, I came across a folder with the
name Tamara Marquez on front. It wasn’t stamped so the case was still open. I
walked back over to the desk to sit down. The file indicated she was eighteen-years-old.
That surprised me. I couldn’t help but wonder why someone my age would need an
investigator. Could her life have been changed by events that were out of her
control—just like mine? My mom had a hand-written note inside indicating the
information was stored in the files on her computer. I opened the laptop and
turned it on, and was just about to search through her private files, just as a
young woman walked through the firehouse door.

“Can I help you?” I said, surprised.
People don’t usually come to the firehouse unannounced. I stashed the file and
laptop in my backpack for the time being.

I pegged her to be early twenties -
not too much older than me. She had a Kim Kardashian look, with long, dark hair
and violet eyes that looked like they could have been contact lenses. She wore
a designer skirt and a pair of Manolo Blahnik leather boots with
three-inch-heels. The shoes, alone, were probably worth more than my entire
wardrobe. I could tell she was rich by the size of the rock on her necklace.

“I was looking for McSwain &
Beck,” she said as her eyes roamed the office with an obvious look of
disapproval. I guess she didn’t like our choice of firehouse decor.

“I’m McSwain,” I said. “Beck is not
in at the moment.

She glanced at the various
photographs on the wall. Some of them were of my mom and me. Others were of
Jaden, Cody and I doing some of the things we enjoyed: kickboxing,
four-wheeling on the beach, or getting down to business in the Tactical
Paintball Shooting competition. She walked up to get a close-up of one of the
photos. My mom was standing in front of a packed room of high school teenagers
giving them a speech on personal safety. I could have sworn she smirked while
looking at the photo, but it had to be my imagination. Why would she do that?

She approached me at the desk, and
offered her card. “My name is Summer Klein. I need help with a personal
matter.”

I looked at the card. It indicated
she was a model.

“Cop a squat,” I said.

She gave me an odd look. “Cop a
squat?”

“Sorry. I meant, have a seat.” I
pointed at a chair opposite the desk. I forget girls don’t always speak the
same lingo as I do. That’s from hanging around Cody and Jaden most of my life.

She sat down, and put the expensive
handbag she was carrying on her lap. “I need someone to investigate my
step-brother. I’m afraid he might be involved with some bad characters. All he
does is party lately, and I think he has been stealing from me.”

“Your step-brother…?” I said, somewhat
surprised. “Why do you think he has been stealing?”

“Because money keeps disappearing
from my bank accounts,” she said, and she looked at me like I was somewhat
naïve. She reached into the handbag, retrieved a letter-size envelope and
handed it to me. “The phone bill from our house is inside the envelope. I
circled the numbers I’m not familiar with. Maybe they would be useful.”

“Your step-brother lives with you?”

“Yes. My father married his mother a
few years ago. They died in an auto accident the same year, and he has been
living with me in the home ever since.”

I glanced at the bill. They were all
local numbers. “You already seem to know, what would you like me to do?” I
know, stupid thing to say considering I need to make money.

She shrugged. “Follow him. I want to
know who he is associating with, and what he is spending my money on.”

“That could mean hours of
surveillance…”

She sighed with exasperation. “Do you
want the job, or not?”

“Well, yeah, sure. We require a
retainer,” I said. This was the first time I have asked a potential client for
money. It wasn’t as hard as I thought. I mean, she was asking me to provide a
service, right? My mom made mucho bucks. Novices like me and Cody have to
charge a lower rate. Still those time-consuming stake-outs can add up, right?

Without hesitating, she pulled out
her checkbook and wrote out a check. “Three days should be enough, right?”

I glanced at the check. It was
written on her personal account in the sum of four-hundred dollars. I nodded,
but tried to keep my look of surprise in check. “I’ll keep you updated.”

She handed me a few other items.
“Here is a picture of my brother and his work address. He is a process server
for a law firm. His name is David.”

In the photograph David was lounging
on a private yacht docked at the Sutter Beach Marina. He looked a little
younger than her. He was dressed in a polo shirt with a sweater draped across
his shoulders and white deck shoes, a yuppie.

Summer said, “I have a modeling gig,
so if this is enough to get you started…”

“I need the make and model of his
car.”

She smirked. “He drives a red
convertible Porsche Boxster Spyder—license plate is H-O-T-B-O-D-Y.”

It was pretty clear she didn’t like
her step-brother. “We’ll start right away.”

“Thank you,” she said, and she got up
and started toward the door. Then she stopped and looked back at me. “You have
no idea how hard this is for me. We’ve never been close, but … well, we just
chose different paths, I guess.”

“I understand.” Being an only child,
I really didn’t, but it was the polite thing to say.

As she walked out the door, I
couldn’t help but wonder how she heard about McSwain & Beck. Cody didn’t
have time to get the website up and running, yet. Oh well, I shouldn’t
complain. I texted Cody right away: “
We have a paying client
!”

A few seconds later, he texted me
back using his favorite slang word: “
Suuu-weet
!”

SO, NOW you know how Cody and I ended up in this
line of work. I have a license - having aced the test after putting in the time
required when I was working for my mom. The State of California required three
years of working under a licensed investigator. I have been working two days a
week with my mom since I was ten. You, do the math. Our goal was to help those
that were in unfortunate situations, and willing to pay a couple of
eighteen-year-olds to look into it.

Oh, and the State of California said I could have a permit to
carry a gun—my mom’s Smith & Wesson—but they preferred I abide by the law
and wait until I turned twenty-one. I don’t know what the big deal was. I’ve
been shooting guns since I was a kid. Okay, so I started with paintball guns—I
have a huge collection—but still. Since a gun was the weapon used to take my
mom from me, I was okay with keeping it locked up for now. Logically, I knew it
took a human to pull the trigger, but I still needed time.

Cody didn’t carry a gun, either. He carried a laptop, various
USB cords, a portable printer, and a Canon EOS Rebel T3i Digital Camera. Along
with being a wisenheimer and flirt, he was also a wannabe filmmaker. But, I
think I told you that, already. No matter where he was he could fire up the
laptop, do some computer hacking, or film a cool scene and edit it when he was
done.

Before my mom died, she tried to convince me to stay out of
this line of work. Even though she was good at it, she wanted me to find
another path, something that would keep me from dealing with the scumbags of
the world. Those were her words. She said it wasn’t as glamorous as they
portrayed it on TV. She gave me and Cody a lot of the grunt work, because she
was trying to show us it wasn’t such a fun job. But honestly, we didn’t think
it was so bad. It beat pouring coffee, or sitting behind a desk answering
phones all day long.

Summer gave me her phone bill and circled the numbers she
didn’t recognize. Cody was the computer buff so we agreed he would handle most
of that, but this seemed simple enough. I opened the laptop and did a Google
search for the reverse phone directory. It could provide information attached
to the numbers. Two of the numbers circled came up as unlisted, but the prefix
indicated they were local numbers in Sutter Beach. You needed connections to
get info on unlisted numbers, or someone like Cody who relished in invading
people’s privacy, but it was too early to get involved in computer hacking.

The last number was listed to a place called The Devil’s Door
with no address listed. It sounded like the name of a nightclub, but what do I
know? I picked up my cell phone and punched in the number. After two rings, a
female picked up the phone, “The Devil’s Door”.

I said, “Who am I speaking with?”

There was an exasperated sigh on the other end. “My name is
Tracy,” the female replied.

“Tracy, what kind of business is The Devil’s Door? The number
is on my phone bill, but I can’t remember why I called.”