Marjorie Thelen - Designer Detective

“No kidding?” Jake laughed. “I did, too. In the library, on the couch where you were sleeping.”

“Dear me Horny bunch. Who did you interrupt?”

“The flashy blond and I think the nephew you were dancing with.”

“My, he works fast.” My ego deflated another ten notches. Look what I had missed. I picked up the thread of inquiry again. “I think Albert was a spy.”

Jake nodded like he was interested. “Find any evidence of that?”

“Well, no.”

“I don't think you should consider private investigation as a career.”

Jake pulled into the parking space beside my car at the church parking lot.

“Here we are party girl.”

“Hey, wait a minute. We were going to exchange notes. What did you find out?”

Jake stared out the window, looking none the worse for wear save for puffy eyes.

“I agree that it wasn't family, and it wasn't you.”

“Thanks.”

“I don't think it was an accidental overdose of his blood pressure mediation. I think it was planted.”

“The nephew who humped the blond said Albert was a philanderer, he liked them young and Viagra probably did him in. What do you think of that?”

Jake nodded his head. “Albert had a reputation.”

“For married women evidently. A husband could have fixed him.”

Jake shook his head. “I doubt it. He was careful. None of the married women in question, to my knowledge, had spiteful husbands. The husbands probably had girlfriends on the side. Remember this is the rich and powerful crowd. No, I don't think it was domestic.”

“What? Foreign? He’s a spy. I just know it.”

Jake shifted in his seat and turned to look at me, putting his arm over the back of my seat.

“Fiona, I need you to do something for me.”

“Uh-oh.”

“I need you to start work on the library as soon as you can and in the process, I need you to look for clues, like anything out of the ordinary. You know, like look through books, through drawers, under things.”

“Under things? What do you mean? Why can't you do it?”

“I have. I made a thorough search of the library, but I didn't find anything. I know you can be more thorough than I can.”

Flattery goes a long way. But I was more than miffed that he was not sharing clues with me.

“What are you going to be doing while I’m hard at work?”

“I’m taking a little trip.”

“To?”

“Africa, leaving this afternoon.”

“What? You’re leaving right in the middle of our big investigation?”

He looked around like we could be overhead. He was definitely a nervous guy. But there wasn’t anyone else in the church parking lot except a couple of trees struggling to grow in asphalt. The sun was high overhead, and I was beginning to come down off a party high. I needed a nap bad, and I know I looked like I had spent the night on a couch. But Jake had more explaining to do. He wasn’t answering me.

“Jake?” I asked.

“I guess you aren’t buying that.”

“No, and there’s some other stuff I’m not buying. I don’t think you are a private investigator. I think you’re a family friend who’s trying to help Opal out and not doing a very good job of it. Do you know there is an online Professional Private Investigators Directory, and you are not on the list?”

Jake laid his head back on the headrest and closed his eyes. “I could fall asleep right here.”

“Jake Manyhorses, if that is your real name, you come clean.”

“Oh, boy,” he said, scrubbing his face. Then he turned his head and looked at me with bleary eyes. “You’re pretty good, Fiona, and I’m really not good at this at all. I’m really not good about lying.”

“You’ve got yourself mixed up in a dysfunctional family.”

“You don’t know the half of it.”

“You aren’t really going to Africa, are you?”

“No,” he sighed. “I just said that. I want to get away from this crazy family. I want to just disappear. I owe Opal a favor, and I’m trying hard to figure out what happened to Albert, but the more I dig the dirtier it gets. I want to go back to Oregon, get on a horse and disappear into the sagebrush.”

“This is a tangle all right. I need to go home and decompress. Maybe we can talk later after we’ve had a chance to recover, and this time compare real notes.” I put my hand on the door handle.

“I still need you to search the library.”

I looked at him. “It seems strange they want the library redesigned. You can appreciate that I don’t want to continue if I’m not going to get paid. Doesn’t sound like there’s going to be any money left over for anything.”

Jake coughed like he had swallowed something pungent, like a habanera pepper. “I know you aren’t going to believe me but Albert isn’t in financial difficulty. Opal has been spreading rumors faster than a Ford 350 diesel in overdrive. I’m not sure what she’s doing but there’s some internal politics that I can’t figure out. She gives me a different story every day.”

“Maybe you should involve the police.”

“Opal does not want the police involved. Definitely not.”

“What’s she got you on the hook for?”

“You mean, why do I keep doing this?”

I nodded.

He sighed. “Opal got me off the reservation. She gave me a job when I really needed one and a purpose in life when I had none. I owe her everything. She literally turned my life around. This is the least I could do for her.”

“How did you get from Oklahoma to Oregon?”

He blew out a breath. “She advertised for cow hands in a regional magazine. I did ranch work when I was in my late teens when I wasn’t sleeping off a drunk in the local jail. The social worker assigned to me got me to apply for the job. Opal has a reputation for taking in stray ranch hands and making something of them. I guess you might say it is her mission in life.”

This guy had some history. Don’t we all? “How’d you get from Oregon to here?”

“I ride bronco in county fairs. Some buddies and I came east to rodeo here.”

“Rodeo in Washington, DC?”

“Virginia, Maryland, West Virginia.”

“You mean there’s more than one of you?”

“Yup.”

I shook my head and checked my watch. “This is making my head hurt. I got to go.” I looked at him. “I’ll go back tomorrow and see what I can find in the library.”

“Thanks,” said Jake. His blood shot eyes glowed. “You’re a real pal.”

Ridiculous as it may seem I still had a key to the Lodge residence. About eleven the following morning I was back on the job ostensibly to work on the library but in fact to continue my sleuthing. I was feeling up to it. Sixteen hours of sleep helped a lot.

I rang the bell instead of barging in, as the driveway was littered with cars. Hudson answered.

“Miss Marlowe, do come in,” he said and stood back to allow me to pass through the open door. He was all smiles. I was glad to see him so chipper.

“Thank you, Hudson.”

He bowed. “Most of the guests are up and about. Might I offer you tea?”

“Yes, thank you. I could use a bracing cup of tea. May I take it in the library? I don’t want to disturb anyone.”

“Yes, of course. I do believe Cody is in the library.”

I raised my eyebrows. Perfect. I could catch up on family gossip. “It will be good to see him.”

“I’ll bring tea for two.”

I waltzed into the library weighted down with purse, brief case and laptop. I had to have the props to do a proper job of sleuthing. I was planning to dig through the endless volumes of books. Decorators like to have matching book jackets in the library. Believe it or not, there were booksellers who specialized in color coordinated books for decorators. I could make a show of going through all the books looking for the ones with spines that matched my turquoise and burnt orange accessory color scheme, pulling out the ones that didn’t.

The library was tidy. No signs of a party. Cody looked up from the newspaper he was reading at his uncle’s desk. He looked different in ranch attire. He wore a plaid long sleeve western cut shirt and snug blue jeans. When he stood, I noticed the cowboy boots.

“Hello, Cody, planning to ride the range today?”

He laughed and held out his hand. “Good to see you, Fiona.”

His hand was warm and calloused. I guess that was from roping and riding.

“I hope I’m not disturbing you. I have work to do, but I’ll be very quiet.”

“No, be my guest. I was making a half-hearted attempt to read the Washington Post, but they have nothing about the price of alfalfa or yearlings. You rescued me from boredom. May I help you?”

An assistant wasn’t on my agenda. What if I found something important in the books, and Cody saw it before Jake and I had a chance to evaluate? I was at loss for words, not something that usually happened to me.

Cody cocked his head. “You don’t want help.”

“You see,” I said, “what I’m doing isn’t very manly, and it would probably be as boring as the Washington Post. Are you returning to Oregon soon?” Notice my clever change of subject.

“In a few days. I’m waiting for Opal. She likes someone to travel with her. As soon as the family leaves, we’ll wrap things up and head back.”

“What will you be wrapping up? What will happen to Hudson? I hope Albert left him something in the will. Did everything go to charity?” I couldn’t resist probing about the will. I was dying to hear what had transpired.

Cody’s eyes gleamed like the devil himself. “He didn’t leave anything to charity. As it turns out, Albert changed his will the week before he died. Opal knew nothing of the change.”