Baited

BAITED

Lori Armstrong

Published by LJLA, LLC

Copyright 2014, LJLA LLC
 

Cover by: The Cover Collection

Edited by: Valerie Gray/EditABook
 

ISBN: 978-0-9888235-3-2

This ebook is for your personal enjoyment and may not be re-sold or shared with others. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. All characters and situations in this book are fictional and products of the author’s imagination.
 

Chapter One ~
setting the bait

My father never took me fishing as a child. Neither did he teach me to throw a ball or ride a bike. He occasionally showed me his backhand, though. So any resentment I have about missing those rites of adolescence remained trapped on the tip of my bloodied tongue.
 

Fishing expertise would have come in handy that morning. A guy I dubbed “Matchstick” strolled into the offices of Wells and Collins Investigations just as I was indulging in my third smoke break in thirty minutes. I’d had nothing to look forward to that day besides filing, and filing made me cranky.

“Can I help you?” I asked, eyeing the snappy slogan on his T-shirt—
It’s not the size of the rod or how deep you fish, it’s all in the way you wiggle the worm.
 

“Uh, yeah.” He frowned at the mess distinguishing my office from the reception area; folders heaped on the desk, fashion magazines strewn on the floor, the anodized ashtray overflowing with crimson tipped cigarette butts. “I’m looking for Kevin Wells.”

“Sorry. Kevin is on assignment today. But I’d be happy to help you.”

The man’s questioning glance zoomed past my insubstantial breasts, traveled over the pinkish scars marring my throat and lingered on my mouth. Most men are spellbound by full lips like mine—they look as if they’d lost a round with a killer bee.
 

He blinked away whatever oral fantasy he’d fallen into and managed, “You his secretary then?”

“He wishes. I’m his partner, Julie Collins. And you are?”

“Rich Barber.” He thrust a freckled, skeletal hand across my desk, which I took without pause, my manners intact. “Jimmer sent me. Said Kevin might be able to help me out. But if he’s not available…”

“And Jimmer forgot to mention little ol’ me?” I tsk-tsked. “Gender bias. That boy is in so much trouble next time I see him.”

“Whoa.” He backed up. “The last thing I need is a pissed off Jimmer Cheadle hot on my tail.”
 

“Relax. I was kidding.” My estimation of Mr. Barber jumped a notch if he was leery of my six-foot-six, ex-commando pal, Jimmer. “Have a seat.” I pointed to the chair opposite my desk. “Tell me how you think I can help you.”
 

Rich was wound so tight he bounced when his bony butt connected with the buffalo skin cushion. Without preamble he said, “My friend, JC, is missing and I think his wife killed him.”

I let that sink in for a minute. I slowly ground out my cigarette. “Don’t know what Jimmer told you, or what detective novels you read, but we don’t investigate homicides. Contact Detective Mitch Jones at the Rapid City PD. In fact, I’ll call him right now.” I reached for the phone.

But Rich’s cool, strong hand covered mine. “They know he’s missing. His wife is the one who filed the report.” His single red unibrow wrinkled above his flat nose. “Don’t you read the paper? They did an article on his disappearance a couple of weeks ago.”

I prefer to get my news from TV. Actually, I haven’t read a newspaper since Ann Landers kicked the bucket and they’d discontinued her column. I’ve always taken perverse pleasure in knowing there are people out there with lives more screwed up than mine. “I must have missed that. If the police know he’s MIA, why aren’t you talking to them?”

His face turned the mottled reddish orange of a prairie sunset. “I tried. They umm...laughed.”

That struck me as odd. Cops never discount any theory on a case, no matter how outrageous. “They laughed? Why?”

He squirmed. “Because I told them that JC’s psycho wife, Cindy Jo Cracken, probably wrapped an anchor around his neck and took him fishing.”

I could imagine my friend Jimmer right now, standing in the hallway, holding his stomach in silent mirth, waiting to see how his latest practical joke had panned out. Last week he sent me an eighty-year old woman who demanded I find her lost libido. The thought of powdered wrinkles covered in sweat slapping against another body of sagging skin...Yuck. I couldn’t have sex for two days.
 

Rich sighed. “Go ahead and laugh.”

“So this
is
some kind of joke?”

He shook his head.

“Then you’d better start at the beginning.” I unearthed a legal pad and waited, Bic pen poised, picture of PI efficiency.
 

“Four weeks ago my friend, JC Bettleyoun, disappeared. His wife claims he got in his truck and drove to Kansas City. No one has heard from him since.”

“Why was he going to Kansas City?”

“Supposedly he was attending the regional American Bass Anglers Association meeting and he had an appointment with a potential sponsor.”

“Bass?” I repeated inanely. “As in fish?”

“Yeah. JC was gonna try his luck as a professional bass fisherman.”

Now I
knew
Jimmer had to be busting a gut someplace close. “Look—”
 

“You don’t believe me either.” Rich jumped up off the chair. “Never mind.”

“Rich, sit down.” He flopped back into the chair, his breath coming as fast and shallow as an air-starved goldfish. “I’m just surprised, is all. People
really
get paid to fish?”

The peculiar look on his face read; clueless female. “There’s huge money in professional fishing. JC entered a couple of bass tournaments down south a year ago last summer when he and Cindy Jo were on vacation. Shocked the hell out of everyone when he actually won a few.” He leaned forward over his spindly thighs, confiding, “See, JC is a pretty big talker, but he
never
follows through with anything. Know the kind of guy I mean?”

I nodded. That pretty much described most of the men I’d dated. With one exception. “Does he have a job?”
 

“The most successful thing JC ever did was marry Cindy Jo. Once they hooked up, he’s never had to hold a regular job. He knows she’ll haul out the checkbook whenever he runs short.”

A sugar momma. How novel. “Was he proud of that?”

“At times.” His cheeks bloomed when he realized he’d been trash-talking his buddy, but he pressed on. “I thought bein’ at her beck and call was a high price to pay for the limited funds she doled out. Anyway, she made fun of him when he told her his plans to go pro. Said fishing was a hobby, not a job. That might’ve been the end of it, but JC has a mean streak a mile wide and the temper to match. So, during the sports show, this winter, he bought a brand new fishing boat.”

Hardly grounds for murder, but I kept listening. “What did Cindy Jo do?” 
“Hit the roof. Told him he’d better take it back to the dealership ’cause she wasn’t paying for it.”

“Where does Cindy Jo get her money?”

“She owns that nail salon off of Jackson—Hot Tips. Pretty successful place, I guess. She bought thirty acres outside of Hermosa and put a brand new double wide on it just last year.”

“They have any children?”

“Not the normal kind.” I lifted a brow and he rushed to explain, “Cindy Jo’s twenty years older than JC. Never could have kids, but she does have them yippy damn dogs she calls her babies. Drove JC nuts, the way she pampered and fussed at them.” His thin lips made a girlish moue of distaste. “When one vanished a few months back, I thought he’d have to admit her to the psych ward, the way she carried on.”

“Still, the fact he bought a new fishing boat wasn’t exactly reason to kill him.” I relied on the old standby in our business: marital infidelity. “Was JC screwing around?”

Rich opened his mouth as if to laugh, but thought better of it. “No. JC was a jerk, and smart women avoided him. Truth is, he could’ve screwed any chick and Cindy Jo wouldn’t have cared.”

My skepticism must’ve showed. 
 
“Sounds strange, but she was jealous of the time he spent fishing. She whined he paid more attention to his rods and reels than he did to her.”

“And did he?”

“Well, yeah, especially after he bought the boat.” A gusty sigh, like one might expect after a satisfying bout of sweaty sex, filled the room. “It is a sweet machine, with top of the line digital fish finder—”

“Which is all interesting,” I interrupted his almost orgasmic reverie, “but where’s Cindy Jo’s motive?”

Rich scratched the red stubble on his chin. “That’s what made Cindy Jo crazy. He didn’t use
her
money to buy it. I don’t know where JC scrounged up that kind of cash, but I have my suspicions. He figured since he’d paid for the boat, he didn’t have to answer to Cindy Jo ’bout how much time he spent fishing. And, JC wouldn’t even let her set foot on it.”

“How’d that go over?”

“Guess she was mad enough to spit nails.” He chortled at his own humor.

I bit back a smile. “So he up and went to Kansas City to prove he could be a pro fisherman without her blessing? Did you know he’d hooked a potential sponsor?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t even know he had a sponsor. He would’ve shared the news with me, or asked me to ride along, but I knew nothing about it. I heard it all from Cindy Jo.”

Something didn’t fit. “Would JC have asked you to come with him if he’d been doing something illegal on his way to Kansas City?”

Rich blanched but didn’t answer, which in itself was the answer I needed.

“Could he be ‘running errands’?” ‘Running errands’ is slang for drug trafficking on I-90—the interstate that bisects South Dakota. I had it on good authority that the highway patrol zeros in on out-of-state license plates, leaving local drug runners somewhat safe. Especially when the locals are willing to rat out a competitor from another state. The SDHP gets a big drug bust and the locals get to carry on, business as usual. “JC was into something bad, wasn’t he?”

His morose nod made me feel as if I’d kicked a puppy, but I soldiered on. “Think about this. If he was running drugs, and if he double-crossed his new employers, his body may be moldering in the middle of a cornfield. And if that’s the case, I doubt anyone will find him until threshing time.”
 

His congenial tone disappeared and his eyes snapped with resentment. “That’s a possibility, but Cindy Jo is involved somehow, I just know it. She killed him. Even if she is a little bitty thing, she’s as mean as rattlesnake.”