Marjorie Thelen - Designer Detective

Jake and Cody both looked at me with what I thought was new respect. I felt vindicated.

“Good process of deduction,” said Jake “Now let’s go. I’ve got work to do.”

“What time is the appointment with the lawyer, Cody?” I asked.

“Two o’clock, I believe.”

“Are you going?”

“Yes, I’m chauffeur and general all around gofer.”

“Good luck.”

“Well,” I said to Jake on the drive back in his truck, “I guess that ends that. He left the money to charity except that after all the debts are paid off there’s no money.”

“Still a lot of motive out there. No one knew the contents of the will.”

“I don't think it was family.”

“No? Why do you say that?”

“I didn't hear any compelling motive from the family last night in my information gathering, except for Roger who seems to be in a bit of financial trouble. Did you?”

“What did you hear?”

“Lots of conversation about what's in the will. I interrupted one couple humping in the solarium.”

“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.