Licensed for Trouble (14 page)

“Is Boone in?” PJ asked, swinging her car keys around her finger.

“
Detective
Buckam is in his office. I'll let him know you're here.” Rosie picked up the phone.

PJ waited, remembering her night—or should she say nights?—spent in the holding cells downstairs. She folded her arms, bulwarking herself.

“Hey, PJ, what do you need?” All business, just short of frigid. Nice.

She never really got used to this Boone, in a tweed suit coat, wearing a shoulder holster, as if he'd always been on the right side of the law, with his close-cut bronze hair, a no-games look in his blue eyes. A twinge of old pain went through her, as memory swept her up into his arms. She sighed, disentangling herself.

“I'm looking for information on my new handyman. A missing person named Max Smith.”

Something sparked in Boone's eyes a second before he touched her elbow. “Come into my office.” He glanced at Rosie when he said it. “I'll fill you in.”

He closed the door behind her, grabbed a straight-backed chair from against the wall, and set it opposite him as he leaned on the desk.

PJ thumped her bag into it. “My instincts are saying you've heard of him. Who's Max Smith?”

Boone gave a huff, tailing it with a chilly smile. “I thought you were this colossal private investigator. Why come to me?”

“Do you or do you not know him?

Boone held up his hands as if the answer should be obvious. “Okay, yes. I know Max. I looked into his case a while back.”

“And you know, then, about his amnesia.”

“I know he hasn't shown up on any missing person reports, so if you want to call it amnesia . . .”

“Are you saying it isn't?”

“I'm saying he's got a good reputation around town, and he's never given me trouble. And
you
need help if you want to keep that monstrosity.”

“We call it the mushroom house, with affection in our voices. And don't think for a second that I can't see right through you. You're evading.”

“Good grief, PJ. You said you wanted to be a PI, so be a PI.”

Oh. His taking her seriously had her at a loss for words.

“Fine. Give me a push off. What do you know?”

He stood, considered her for a moment, then crossed around his desk to sit down. “He came here four years ago, and yes, I tried to help him. But nothing has popped on the radar about this guy.” He lifted a shoulder. “He might be telling the truth. We found him washed up on the shore, nearly dead, and not a speck of evidence linking him to a living soul. The Minneapolis police gave it a try, but it's just not a priority. And we haven't a clue where to start looking.”

“Did you run an ad in the newspaper?”

“No, but I ran his picture through our database a few dozen times.”

“Not one hit?”

“Not even a blip.”

“Do you have a report on him I could read? The night he washed up onshore, maybe?”

Boone folded his hands, leaning forward on his desk. She sensed the slightest thaw as one side of his mouth hinted at a smile. “I might.”

Uh-oh. “What's that supposed to mean?”

“I think it's going to cost you.” There appeared the old, familiar, dangerous twinkle in his blue eyes.

“Boone, do you want me to be a PI or not?”

“Is this an essay question?”

Perfect. And his smirk didn't help because, yes, it made her smile.

Finally he opened his hands on the desk. “As far as the Kellogg police are concerned, it's a cold case.”

“But if I find something, shouldn't you reopen it?”

He narrowed his eyes at her just enough to suggest she might know more than she should. “You'd have to convince me.”

I could do
that
nearly made it out past her lips. But she held it in. Because, well, maybe she couldn't, and even didn't want to, anymore.

“Okay, what's it going to cost me?”

“Dinner. With me.”

Dinner. Except dinner with Boone was never just dinner. It was a full-out sprint down memory lane, with her trying to shove her heels into the ground, only to be swept up by his lethal charm. There was no guaranteeing that they wouldn't end the evening strolling the leaf-strewn beach under the full scrutiny of the moon, Boone reeling her back into his heart.

She sighed. But she needed her own PI license, her own
life
, if she ever wanted to sort out her feelings about any of the men in it. Including Boone. “When?”

“Tonight. After I get off my shift. I'll pick you up.”

Oh, that would be swell. With any luck, Jeremy would be on-site to wish them happy trails.

“I'll meet you. When and where?”

He seemed to be considering her words, and she could nearly see the Jeremy-Boone showdown playing in his eyes. She was wondering who would win, when he nodded. “Sunsets, 7 p.m.”

“Done.” She paused for a moment, turning over her next request in her mind. Maybe she shouldn't have agreed so quickly. . . .

“What else do you want?”

Oh, shoot. She had to work on her PI poker face. Especially with Boone.

“Could you bring the cold case file on Joy Kellogg, too?”

He opened his mouth, then closed it in a grim line. “You're not going to find anything.”

“Please, Boone. I don't expect to
solve
the crime.” She gave a laugh, maybe a bit too high. “Really—I just want to read the file.
Please?
” She gave him a warm, let's-be-friends smile.

He held up a hand. “Don't do that.”

“Don't do what?”

“Don't. I'll bring the file.”

“Two files. Don't forget.”

“Trust me, I won't forget.”

* * *

PJ usually loved a hardworking man. But this one was slimed in mud, from knee to work boots, grime flicked into his short brown hair, along his chin, even ground into his elbows. She wasn't too keen on the smell emanating from said hardworking man, either—an algae pond odor mixed with a trace of sewer? “Please don't tell me that's my basement slathered all over you.”

Max peered over his shoulder at her from where he sat on the descending steps off the kitchen. Dog lay in the middle of the linoleum floor, finishing off a piece of driftwood he'd hauled in from the shore. Soggy wood chips soaked in puddles of drool around him. On her way in, PJ had given him a nudge with her foot and tried out Barney. Not a wink of recognition.

“I found the leak,” Max said.

“You did? Did you have to dive for it?” She laughed at her own joke.

He didn't. She noticed he was wiping his hands on one of the new rags she'd purchased to dust with. Nice.

“Nope. Sorry.” He stood. “If you want, I'll show you.”

“Does it involve descending to my creepy, rat-infested, slime-smelling, ghost-ridden basement?”

“Maybe.” He gave the word a singsong lilt and grinned. Oh, she'd forgotten about the dimples. She should have mentioned that in her advertisements—definite memory joggers.

“I'll pass. You can describe it to me. Feel free to use adjectives and any other descriptions that will make you feel better.”

“How about if I start with a price?”

PJ made a face. “Let's not. How about starting with . . . location? or a time frame?”

Max rolled his eyes and moved past her. She gave him plenty of berth.

He tracked through the kitchen, out along the main room, past the fireplace, and stopped at a place that she calculated fell right beneath the locked bedroom where Agatha Kellogg had breathed her last.

He tapped a wall. What should have been a sharp rap against a hard surface sounded more like a soft, forgiving thud.

“Please don't tell me these walls are soggy.”

Max took her hand and placed it on the wall. “Like half-baked bread. Frankly I'm surprised it hasn't come down on you yet.”

Now he sounded like Boone, Mr. Doom and Gloom. She ran her hand along the wall, found where the water had saturated it. It seemed like a good ten-foot-wide panel. “So the leak is here?”

“I think it's upstairs in the bathroom. Must have flooded, or a pipe burst, and it flowed down this wall and then into the basement.”

“That's a lot of water.”

“It wouldn't take much to do this kind of damage. But the amount of leakage in the basement—yes, that's quite a bit of runoff. Do you want my theory?”

“Please.”

“I think old lady Kellogg ran herself a bath one night and then snoozed off. The bath overflowed and killed the walls, turned the basement to mud.”

“What if that's when she died? She went to take a bath . . . and ended up in heaven?”

He raised an eyebrow. “That's deep and profoundly theological.”

“What are you talking about?”

“The idea of cleansing one's soul before departing.”

The conversation felt too solemn suddenly. And Max's expression had grown dark, even troubled, as the words settled around them.

PJ resisted the urge to reach out to him, touch his arm. Still, she put kindness in her voice. “We'll figure out who you are, Max Smith. And I doubt you'll have any soul-cleansing to do.”

He sighed. “Oh, I think we all have some soul-cleansing to do, but I have to admit, I don't think I could take it if I turned out to be an arsonist or something.”

“Arsonist?”

He held up his hands.

She smiled. “I pegged you for a fireman.”

“I'll take that.” Max met her eyes, gratitude in his. “Now—I hate to ask, but can I use your bathroom to clean up? I have a change of clothes in the car. I don't want to leave a permanent smell in the old Cutlass.”

Again the urge to ask him where he lived tipped her lips, but she simply nodded, driven to silence by her own transient addresses.

Twenty minutes later, PJ was finishing off a slice of cold pizza, listening to Max sing “Bye Bye Love” in the shower. She could probably cross off lounge singer from the list of possible identities.

Meanwhile, she paged through a sheaf of papers from Jeremy while she checked her cell phone messages. Twice. Nothing from the boss.

This morning, when she'd stopped by the office, she found that he'd left her a sticky note on a folder, which contained a list of all the forms and continuing classes she'd have to complete before he'd submit her application to the licensing board. Including a first-aid and CPR-training class; Tactics: Baton, ASR, and Handcuffs; a continuing education class on the basics of civil process; and one that she wasn't sure how to understand: Sudden In-Custody Death Syndrome.

Just how sudden?

“What are you looking at?” Max came out of her bedroom, rubbing his wet head with a towel.

Without a shirt.

His clean jeans hung low on his waist, and she knew she shouldn't be looking, but her gaze flitted over his torso and arrested on a mean-looking scar that curled the width of his muscled stomach.

Her gaze then moved to the red tattoo on his upper arm. She noticed it as he draped the towel around his neck, gripping both ends. “You have a tattoo,” she said dumbly.

He glanced at it. “Yep. No idea where that came from.”

She went over to him and studied it. “I've never seen anything like this. It looks like a phoenix holding two arrows.”

“Are you a tattoo specialist?”

“No, but I have a friend who knows her tats inside and out.” She looked at him. “You have no memory at all how you got this?”

“Nothing.”

She stepped away from him. “Put your shirt on, Max. We're going on a little field trip.”

* * *

Stacey Dale, tattoo artist extraordinaire and proprietor of Happy Tats, worked out of a small shop in Uptown, banked on one side by a hair salon called the Scissor Shack. PJ stopped in at the salon and waved to her friend and former client Dally Morrison, who was elbow-deep in lather, her raven black hair now shorn close to her head, dressed in a short-sleeved black shirt and a pair of jeans with a row of horizontal rips held together with safety pins. She nodded toward PJ. “Hey, Me, you still solving crimes?”

PJ grinned. “Hey, Me—yep, I'm still on the job.”

Max caught her eye, frowning.

She explained, “I spent two long, hot weeks in August as Dally, while Jeremy kept her under wraps, in close protection.”

“Not too close,” Dally said. Her gaze lingered a second on Max, then back to PJ, a question in her eyes.

“He's a client.”

Dally made a round O with her mouth, then wrapped her customer's head in a towel and propped her up. She directed her attention to Max. “You're in good hands. She's why I'm alive today.”

Max glanced at her with a look that made PJ warm. “Okay—not entirely true. Is Stacey over at Happy Tats?”

“All true. And I think so.”

PJ stepped next door and found Stacey seated on a stool next to a padded chair that looked like something out of a dentist's office. A client's arm extended across a winged pad, and she bent over it with a tattoo iron, grinding a tribal symbol into his arm. He looked about eighteen, fresh out of school, with a pimply face and not much facial hair. Probably the tat acted as some sort of rite of passage.

Stacey wiped away a gathering of blood with her purple-gloved hand and looked at PJ. “Hey, Sherlock, what's up?” Stacey had helped complete PJ's transformation into Dally's look-alike by painting on Dally's various tattoos. In washable ink.

“I see you're working on dreds,” PJ said, noting Stacey's longer, red, now-tangled hair.

“No more softball. It's time for my winter look.” Indeed, instead of the usual skull-and-crossbones tanks and low-cut jeans, Stacey wore a pair of paint-stained overalls and an orange tee. She'd gotten another piercing in her eyebrow, too. “But what happened to you? You move to the suburbs, turn into a soccer mom?”