Popped Off

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Authors: Jeffrey Allen

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WORLD’S GREATEST

DETECTIVE

I spent the rest of the morning and afternoon doing my dad chores—laundry, dishes, cleaning, paying bills and yardwork. Even though our friends liked to kid me about how easy I had it, I was pretty good at managing the household. Julianne would even admit it, if she had to. I didn’t just lie around the house, eating ice cream and napping. I didn’t want Julianne coming home and feeling like she had more to do in the evenings, so I made sure the house was in shape when she got home.

Unless I’d needed a nap.

But as I was working my way through my to-do list, I couldn’t get my mind off Moises Huber and the money. He was accused of stealing nearly six hundred thousand dollars. That wasn’t twenty bucks out of someone’s wallet. That was the kind of money that got you sent to prison. And no matter how sneaky he thought he might’ve been, there was no way for that amount of money to go missing and people not to take notice. He had to know it wouldn’t take long for people to connect him to it, particularly when he had access to it.

It made no sense. If he was dumb, he never would’ve been in the positions he’d been in to manage the money in the first place. So I didn’t buy the idea that he was just stupid. If you were going to blatantly steal money from right under someone’s nose, there was usually one big reason.

Desperation.

More Stay at Home Dad Mysteries

by Jeffrey Allen

STAY AT HOME DEAD

POPPED OFF

FATHER KNOWS DEATH

(coming soon)

Published by Kensington Publishing Corp.

Popped Off

Jeffrey Allen

KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.
http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

Table of Contents

WORLD’S GREATEST
DETECTIVE
Title Page
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
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10
11
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36
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42
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44
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60
Teaser chapter
Copyright Page

“The King of Soccer is missing,” Julianne said into my ear.

I was standing on the sideline, sweating, concentrating on the swarm of tiny girls chasing after a soccer ball. As the head coach of my daughter’s soccer team, the Mighty, Fightin’, Tiny Mermaids, it was my sworn duty to scream myself silly on Saturday afternoons, hoping they might play a little soccer rather than chase butterflies and roll around in the grass. As usual, I was failing.

I gave my wife a quick glance. “What?”

“The King of Soccer is missing,” she repeated.

Before I could respond, my five-year-old daughter, Carly, sprinted toward me from the center of the field, ponytail and tiny cleats flying all around her.

“Daddy,” she said, huffing and puffing. “How am I doing?”

I held my hand out for a high five. “Awesome, dude.”

She nodded as if she already knew. “Good. Hey, are we almost done?”

“About ten more minutes.”

She thought about that for a moment, shrugged, and said, “Oh. Okay.” Then she turned and sprinted back to the mass of girls surrounding the ball.

Except for the ones holding hands and skipping around the mass of girls surrounding the ball.

I took a deep breath, swallowed the urge to yell something soccer-ish, and turned back to Julianne. “What?”

She was attempting to smother a smile and failing. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to interrupt the strategy session, Coach.”

“Whatever.”

She put her hand on my arm. “I was trying to warn you. Moises Huber is missing.”

Moises Huber, aka the King of Soccer, was the president of the Rose Petal Youth Soccer Association. He oversaw approximately two hundred teams across all age groups, close to two thousand kids, five hundred volunteers, and about a billion obnoxious parents.

He was also a bit of a jerk.

“Missing?”

“Hasn’t been seen in three days, and Belinda wants to talk to you about it.”

I shifted my attention back to the game. Carly broke free from the pack with the ball and loped toward the open goal. My heart jumped, and I moved down the sideline with her. “Go! Keep going!”

Several of the girls trailed behind her, laughing and giggling, not terribly concerned that they were about to be scored upon.

Carly approached the goal, settled the ball in front of herself, shuffled her feet, and took a mighty swing at the ball.

It glanced off the side of her foot and rolled wide of the goal and over the touchline.

My heart sank, and the gaggle of parents behind me in the bleachers groaned.

Carly turned in my direction, grinned, and gave me a thumbs-up. I smiled back at her through the pain and returned the thumbs-up.

She sprinted back toward her teammates.

Maybe we needed to practice a little more.

I walked back up the sideline to Julianne. “Why does she want to talk to me about it?”

“I think it has to do with you being a superb private eye and all,” Julianne said.

“I’m not a private eye.”

“Those fancy cards you and Victor hand out beg to differ, Coach.”

After successfully proving my innocence in the murder of an old high school rival, I’d reluctantly joined forces with Victor Anthony Doolittle in his investigation business. On a very, very, very limited basis. We were still trying to figure out if we could coexist, and the jury was still deliberating.

I frowned. “What does
missing
mean? Like he’s not here today?”

Julianne shrugged. “Dunno. But you can ask her yourself.” She tilted her chin in the direction of the sideline. “She’s coming your way, Coach.” She kissed me on the cheek. “And don’t forget. We have a date tonight.”

“A date?” I asked.

“Well, a date sounds classier than using you for sex,” she said, slipping her sunglasses over her eyes. “But call it what you like. Coach.” She gave a small wave and walked away.

I started to say something about being objectified—and how I was in favor of it—but Belinda Stansfield’s gargantuan body ate up the space Julianne had just vacated.

“Deuce,” Belinda said in between huffs and puffs. “Need your help.”

Her crimson cheeks were drenched in sweat, and her gray T-shirt was ringed with perspiration. Actually, it appeared as if all 350 pounds of Belinda were ringed in perspiration.

She ran a meaty hand over her wet forehead and smoothed her coarse brown hair away from her face. She took another huff—or maybe it was a puff—and set her hands on her expansive hips.

“Middle of a game here, Belinda,” I said, moving my gaze back to the field, which I found far more pleasant. “Can’t it wait?”

“No can do, Deuce,” she said. “This is serious business.”

Carly tackled one of the opposing girls, literally threw her arms around her and took her to the grass. They dissolved into a pile of laughter as the ball squirted by them.

“Um, so is this, Belinda.”

“Oh, please, honey,” she said, shading her eyes from the sun. “These little girls care more about what’s in the cooler after the game than the score. And these parents don’t know a goal from a goose. You are a babysitter with a whistle. Get over yourself.”

Couldn’t have put it better myself.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“Moe’s done and gone and disappeared.”

“Like, from the fields?”

“Like, from Rose Petal.”

Tara Little started crying and ran past me to her parents. We were now down a Fightin’ Mermaid.

“Since when?”

“Today’s Saturday,” she said, swiping again at the sweat covering her face. “Last anyone saw him was Wednesday.”

“Maybe he went on vacation,” I said.

“Nope.”

“Maybe he’s taking a long nap.”

“Deuce. I am not kidding.”

The pimple-faced referee blew his whistle, and the girls ran faster than they’d run the entire game. They sprinted past me to the bleachers, where a cooler full of drinks and something made entirely of sugar awaited them. Serious soccer players, these little girls.

I took a deep breath, tired from yelling and baking in the sun, and adjusted the visor on my head. “Okay. So he’s missing.”

She nodded, oceans of sweat cascading down her chubby face. “And there’s something else you should know.”

I watched the girls, red-faced and exhausted, sitting next to each other on the metal bleachers, sucking down juice boxes, munching on cookies, and swinging their legs back and forth.

There were worse ways to spend a Saturday.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Seventy-three thousand bucks,” Belinda said.

“What? What are you talking about?”

She shifted her enormous body from one tree stump of a leg to the other.

“Moe’s missing,” Belinda said. “And he took seventy-three thousand dollars with him.”