Bubblegum Blonde (6 page)

I didn't see any movement inside, so I slid my maxed-out credit card (thanks to my need for a house with food and running water) from my back pocket, just in case I needed to do a little lock-jimmy, but when I gripped the door handle and pulled, the door slid open easily on a set of well-greased tracks.

I released the breath I'd been holding. No alarms blared, which honestly surprised the business out of me. A murder had occurred in the residence only two weeks ago. I kind of thought the house would have a little better security, but apparently I was wrong.

Either Hatchett wasn't worried about a repeat performance because he was the killer, he hired the killer, or he just had no idea how lax his household staff was with security when he was away, because I could clearly see an alarm panel beside the main entry door.

I took a tentative step inside and slid the door shut behind me, thankful my shoes didn't squeak on the waxed-tile floor. I stood frozen in place and listened for any sign that I wasn't the only one in the house. When nothing but silence greeted me, I made my way across the state-of-the-art kitchen and into what appeared to be a formal dining room. From there, I tiptoed into a massive living area. The house was so quiet it gave me the heebie-jeebies, but I squashed the feeling, hiked up my big-girl panties, and located the staircase that led up to the second floor.

I figured it would be easier to search the upstairs portion of the house starting with the crime scene and work my way back downstairs. I learned in my training days that most people kept their safes in either the bedroom, home office, or study. I figured that if Hatchett owned a gun, he'd be smart enough to keep it in a safe.

Finding that safe, if it even existed, was my number one priority.

I quickly ascended the stairs and made my way down a long, wide hallway.

Most of the doors along the hallway stood open, so it was easy to see that the rooms were mostly guest bedrooms and bathrooms. When I came to the end of the corridor, the last door was shut tight.

I took another quick glance behind me, then leaned my ear against the door and listened.

Nothing.

I grasped the doorknob and twisted. Locked.

I grabbed my trusty old maxed-out credit card in between the door and the doorframe and began to wiggle it back and forth. What felt like a century later, I heard the telltale click of the lock disengaging.

With a sigh of relief, I cautiously stuck my head inside and peeked around.

Yeah, I knew this entire idea was a crazy move. I knew better than to be sneaking into the house of someone as powerful as Robert Hatchett where his wife had been murdered weeks earlier—and in broad daylight, no less—but what other choice did I have?

All right, so I had a few other options, but I wanted to get the case over and done with as quickly as possible, and the only way that was going to happen was if I put on my big-girl boots and took some outrageous chances.

It was my job as a PI to do the insane things no one else wanted to do in order to get the proof needed to clear my client.

I shoved the small trickle of fear of being caught back into its little box in the back of my mind, slipped inside the room, and locked the door behind me.

I glanced around the room and discovered that I was in the master bedroom. The room where Lydia had been murdered.

I stood still for a moment and took in my surroundings. The freaking room was as big as my tiny house.

The spacious area held a massive television, large four-poster bed, two nightstands, several bookcases holding everything ranging from books to DVDs, family pictures, and Fabergé eggs.

I'd always hated those ghastly eggs.

I spotted a door further along the room, most likely to a bathroom, and to my right I found another door that I assumed led to a closet. I hurried across the room and twisted the knob closest to me. Sure enough, it was a walk-in.

Boy was it a closet.

There wasn't an inch of free space. The racks were bursting with both men's and women's clothing, shoes, bags, accessories, hats, and much more.

This closet made mine look like the storage room in a Goodwill store. I was perfectly happy with broken-in jeans, vintage T-shirts, Converse tennis shoes, and a few dressy outfits for those occasions and undercover jobs that I couldn't get out of.

I stepped inside and did a slow spin in the center of the room. Strangely enough, I noticed that there were no boxes to rummage through. The drawer fronts were glass, and even I cringed at their tackiness. What kind of idiot would hide evidence of a murder in a glass-front anything? I felt around in the drawers anyway, just in case I was wrong. When I felt nothing but silky clothing and socks, I closed the drawers and stepped back out into the bedroom.

The room was so clean and orderly that one would never suspect a murder had taken place. No bloodstains on the carpet and no bullet holes riddled the walls. Not that I expected to walk in and see a chalk outline on the floor and crime-scene tape everywhere. It had been weeks since Lydia Hatchett was murdered, but I had to admit that I was a little let down. This being my first murder investigation, I suppose I was hoping for a little more, I don't know, excitement maybe?

The sound of my footsteps was absorbed by the plush wall-to-wall carpet as I found my way to the nightstand closest to the entrance.

I knew the chances of finding anything in the nightstands that would aid in my investigation would be slim to none, but I had to try. Sometimes the police missed things or passed them over thinking they were unimportant and had nothing to do with the case. I'm not saying cops are completely incompetent baboons. I mean, some are, but sometimes the smallest of items are overlooked and end up having the biggest impact on a case.

I pulled open the nightstand drawer and frowned. From the contents of the nightstand I was obviously on Robert's side of the bed. There was an old pair of reading glasses, one of his business cards, a roll of Tums, two expired condoms, lotion, a travel pack of tissues, and a DVD copy of
Busty MILF's IV

I slid the drawer closed and quelled a shudder as an image of what Hatchett did with the drawer's contents crawled unwelcome through my mind. I shook away the gag-inducing image and made my way to the other side of the bed.

I knelt down in front of the second nightstand and pulled out the drawer. I was surprised to see little to nothing in this one as well. There was a tube of hand cream, a sleep mask, and a copy of
Reader's Digest
. I'd already decided that if there was a copy of
Burly DILF's IV
in this drawer, I was going to die.

I removed the items and shook out the magazine to make sure there weren't any notes tucked away inside, but nothing fell out.

I tossed the tube of hand cream back into the drawer and then paused when a hollow
bong
sounded. I picked up the tube again, dropped it into the drawer, and was once again met with the same hollow sound.

I snatched the cream from the drawer, tossed it onto the floor, and knocked against the bottom of the drawer in a straight line with the knuckle of my middle finger. Sure enough, when I reached the center of the drawer, the thumping became hollow. I slid my hand along the bottom until I reached the middle. I felt a faint line beneath my fingertips. With a little pressure, I pushed down. The panel popped out to reveal a shallow hidden cubby.

I tried to contain my excitement as I pulled the panel back. In the bottom of the hidden cubby were some small papers. As I pulled them out I realized they were slips from an ATM machine and a few receipts from a motel in Trinity Grove. Trinity Grove was a small summer town less than an hour outside the city. The amounts of the ATM receipts and the motel receipts were always the same.

I scrunched my brow. It looked like Lydia was fooling around, but with whom? Was Jason lying? I knew from experience that Jason lying wasn't a big leap, and I already suspected him of sleeping with her from the fingerprints in her bedroom. But I could only wonder, if his prints were in her bedroom, why would they be sneaking out to Trinity Grove to rent a motel room?

The receipts were a gold mine of evidence if I could figure out whom exactly Lydia was seeing at the motel. She was obviously doing something she wasn't supposed to be doing, and I was going to get to the bottom of what that something was. If she was seeing another man, it was entirely possible that he could be the killer.

I was busy shoving the receipts into the front pocket of my jeans to go over later when a black business card slid out from between two of the slips of paper and landed on the floor against my knee.

When I picked it up, my chin dropped.

It was Jason's business card, but what really held me in a stranglehold was the writing on the back.

In his bold script the message read:

I can't wait.

8:00 p.m.

Be ready.

Breath caught in my lungs. Jason
was
sleeping with her. The son of a beyotch had lied to me again. It was one thing for me to suspect him of lying, but it always burned me when I discovered that he actually was.

Would I never learn? I shoved the card and the receipts into my pocket, snapped the panel back into place, tossed the drawer's contents back inside, and slid the drawer back into the nightstand.

I stood and went in search of the gun safe. I looked under the bed and behind every painting but didn't have any luck locating the safe I assumed Hatchett had. Once I'd searched every inch of the bedroom and gotten all of the evidence out of the room that I was going to get, I decided that it was time to take a look around downstairs.

I'd just grabbed the doorknob when the faint sound of a door closing downstairs caught my attention.

I sent up a silent prayer that the door wouldn't squeak and twisted the knob. The door opened silently, and I tiptoed out into the hallway. Once outside the room, I pressed my back against the wall and slinked down the hallway until I could see over the railing to the lower floor.

As I leaned out to take a look at the entryway, I spotted a portly Hispanic woman waddling her way across the main entry with her arms full of brown paper grocery bags. She was headed straight for the kitchen, which just so happened to be my only exit.

If I made a break for the front door, I risked the chance of the maid catching me as I ran through the house, and there was no way I could make it out the way I came in, through the sliding glass door, without passing her in the kitchen and, again, being caught.

My investigation of the house was done for the day. I hadn't been able to check the downstairs for a gun safe, or hidden gun, and it was only a matter of minutes before I was found. This mission was over.

I doubled back to the master bedroom as quietly as I could and slipped back inside. I closed the door behind me and twisted the lock back into place. I scanned the room. How in the hell was I going to get out of this house?

Then I saw it.

Two long curtains covered what I originally thought to be another set of bay windows but was in fact a set of French doors. I rushed over and looked out. The doors led out to a balcony that overlooked the back yard.

I pushed through the curtains, opened the doors, and stepped out onto the balcony. Fortunately for me, the yard remained empty. Unfortunately, the balcony didn't have stairs leading down to the patio. It was a long drop, but if I could somehow distract the maid long enough, I could jump down to the patio and make a break for the fence. It would be quite a little drop to reach the ground below, but I had no other choice.

The only thing I needed to figure out now was how to distract the maid so I could make my big break. My mind raced. I pictured the layout of what I'd seen of the house in my mind, and an idea began to take shape. It was thin, and I doubted it would work, but I was out of choices.

I grabbed my cell phone from my back pocket and hit the speed dial for the office. Kelly answered on the third ring.

"How'd it go?" she asked.

"I'm trapped in the house," I said quickly. "One of the maids came in while I was in the bedroom, and now she's in the kitchen. I only have one way out of here. I need you to get the house number from Mandy and call. The maid will leave the kitchen to answer the phone, and then I can get the hell out of here."

"Got it," she said. "Give me one minute then haul tail."

The phone went dead. Moments later I heard the house phone ring. Three rings later it stopped. I assumed the maid had answered and took that as my cue to move it.

I slung one leg over the balcony rail, said a silent prayer to anyone who night be listening that I didn't break a leg on the landing, and leaped down to the patio.

Once my feet hit solid ground I took off at a dead run. I didn't spare a look behind me. I didn't have to know that I'd been spotted. The woman shrieking in angry Spanish was all the proof I needed. I reached the fence and started hoisting myself up between the iron spikes when someone grabbed my ankle.

I looked down and spotted the maid.

Who knew she could run that fast? I sure as hell didn't. She was barely five feet tall and shaped like a beach ball. I turned my head toward the street in an attempt to keep her from being able to identify my face should she be asked what I looked like by the cops she would undoubtedly call and at the same time tried to pull my foot free of her amazingly firm grasp without hurting her.

It wasn't until she started wailing on me with a frozen chicken that I let the whole don't-hurt-your-elders-or-innocents crap fly out of the window.

She'd nailed me again, this time in the shoulder, and pain radiated through my entire arm.

I pulled my knee as close to my chest as I possibly could with the plump woman dangling from my ankle and then kicked it back out. The force surprised my would-be captor, and she released my foot, tumbled to the ground, and rolled a few times. I would've celebrated shaking off Robo-Maid, but I didn't count on the force of the kick throwing me off balance as well.