Hotshot P.i.. B.J. Daniels
Sixteen
Prologue
Clancy didn’t know what had awakened her. She blinked, confused by the moonlight streaming across the third-story balcony, even more confused to find herself standing at the narrow log railing, staring down at Flathead Lake.
Waves lapped at the dock in the small bay below the island lodge. Clancy’s heart rate accelerated along with her growing apprehension as she realized what was so terribly wrong.
The view. She shouldn’t have been able to see the bay from this angle on her bedroom balcony. Behind her, the door to her family’s lake lodge stood open. Past it, furniture huddled under sheets like ghosts. A corner of one sheet flapped softly in the night breeze. Clancy stared at the room, frantically trying to orient herself in a place haunted with childhood memories. The garret on the third floor—a room that hadn’t been used in years for anything more than storage.
The early June breeze stirred the sheets and ran like a chill across her skin. She looked down, surprised to find she wore nothing but her nightgown. Her feet were bare—except for the sand. It was happening all over again! Fear raced ahead of her thoughts. Where had she been? What had she done this time? With growing panic, Clancy became aware of something heavy clutched in the fingers of her left hand.
A bronze sculpture of a cowboy, one of the first she’d ever made. It had been on the mantel downstairs. She shuddered as she realized how she and it must have gotten up here.
She hadn’t sleepwalked in years. But the terror of waking up not knowing where she was or where she’d been wasn’t something she’d forgotten from her childhood. She remembered with horror the last time she’d walked in her sleep. The night of the fire.
Clancy turned, wanting only to get back to her bedroom on the other side of the lodge, and realized she wasn’t alone. Her heart slammed against her ribs. She fought back a scream as the moonlight spilled across the garret. Someone was on the couch. Sprawled, legs out at an odd angle. She stepped into the room, flipping the light switch. And stopped.
The bronze slipped from her fingers, hitting the hardwood floor with a thud, as she recognized the boots. Bright red cowboy boots. With wet sand on them. Just like her feet. Her heart thumped like a drum, filling the silence of the room.
Dex Westfall lay on the couch. His dark hair, normally coiffed to perfection, was now matted to the side of his head. Blood, once the color of his boots, stained the sheet covering the couch. His eyes stared, vacant, empty.
Clancy stumbled back, suddenly aware of the stickiness on her fingers. She stared at her left hand, her terror accelerating. How had she gotten blood on her? Her gaze leaped to the cowboy sculpture lying on the floor. Her heart rate rocketed, her pulse now a deafening roar in her ears. She didn’t need anyone to tell her that the dark stain on the bronze was Dex’s blood or that her former boyfriend was dead.
It was happening again. Only this time, her worst nightmare had come true. She’d killed someone in her sleep.
Chapter One
Ignoring the overdressed stranger on the dock, Jake Hawkins loaded the cooler full of groceries into his twenty-five-foot fishing boat, then reached for his tackle box and new rod and reel resting at the woman’s high-heeled feet. He noted with no small amount of satisfaction that she’d finally gotten the message. Beneath the huge hat, she pursed her thin, lipstick-red lips and stripped off the large designer sunglasses to give him the full effect of her icy baby blues. The look she gave him shot off more sparks than all the diamonds weighing down her body.
He smiled to himself. From the moment he’d found her waiting for him on the dock beside his boat, there hadn’t been anything about Mrs. Randolph L. Conners that he liked—from her wealthy smugness to her condescending certainty that he was about to go to work for her. And he especially didn’t appreciate being bothered on his day off. It was Monday and he was going fishing for a few days. And nothing was going to keep that from happening.
“Like I said, I don’t baby-sit heiresses,” he repeated as he turned away from the Galveston skyline to take a whiff of the gulf breeze. “Especially heiresses who have just murdered their boyfriends.” The gulf shimmered in the morning sun, beckoning him. He couldn’t wait to hear his twin 150-horsepower engines rumbling as he crossed the water, the wind in his face.
“I don’t think you understand, Mr. Hawkins,” Mrs. Conners said, enunciating each word carefully. “I’m not hiring you to baby-sit. I’m hiring you to see that my niece is exonerated.”
Jake pushed back his Houston Astros cap and laughed. She wasn’t hiring him at all. He didn’t have the time or the inclination. Not even the money could entice him right now. Not when he had a well-deserved fishing trip planned. “You need a good lawyer, not a private investigator. But I can give you a few names—”
“I already have the best lawyers money can buy,” she said, sounding pained that she had to explain everything to him. “I need someone with your…talents.”
He prided himself on what he called his hunches, and right now one was riding up his spine like a centipede wearing spiked heels. While his hunches were seldom wrong, he hoped this one was; he had a bad feeling that somehow he was going to end up working for this woman.
“My talents?” he repeated, also hoping he was wrong about where she was headed. He shook his head as if he didn’t get it.
Exasperation gave her a pinched look that reminded him of one of those mean little hairless dogs. “I want you to prove my niece’s innocence, Mr. Hawkins. Whatever you have to do. Whatever it costs. My niece will not be convicted of murder.”
Jake jumped from the boat to the dock with a thud. “If you think you can hire me to tamper with evidence…” He found himself looming over her, his blood pressure up and running.
She tilted her head back ever so slightly until he could see her eyes shaded beneath the hat. If she felt even a little bit intimidated, it didn’t show; her gaze glittered with brittle-hard certainty. “You misunderstood my intentions.”
“Like hell I misunderstood,” Jake said, locking his gaze on the woman. “If your niece is guilty, then she deserves to do time. And from what you’ve told me—”
“You are wrong, Mr. Hawkins,” she said, her voice as hard and gritty as gravel. “My niece is a Talbott. A Talbott does not go to prison.”
Talbott? He felt a jolt of recognition shoot through him. He squinted at her, telling himself Talbott was a fairly common name. Not that it mattered, he reminded himself; he wasn’t going to take this case. But still he couldn’t shake off the rotten feeling tap-dancing at the back of his head.
“Do you understand what I’m saying, Mr. Hawkins?”
He understood perfectly. The niece was an embarrassment and too good for prison. He couldn’t believe the gall of this woman. And now she wanted someone to go in and clean up the mess. At any price. Well, she’d picked the wrong man. “Like I said, I can’t help you. It’s my day off and I’m going fishing.”