Ready to Fumble (The Worst Detective Ever Book 1) Read online

  Good going, Joey. That news wouldn’t help her recovery. I frowned and softened my voice. “I’m sorry, Lily. I thought the detective had told you.”

  “No, he showed me a picture of a woman and asked if I knew her. Is that the woman he was cheating with?”

  “We don’t have any answers yet. Did you recognize the woman in the picture?”

  She shook her head, fanning her face with her hand again. “No, though I will say she looked vaguely familiar.”

  I shifted my weight to my other leg, trying to remain professional and focused, two things I had a lot of trouble with. “What do you remember last, Lily?”

  She stared off in the distance, and her lips trembled ever so slightly. Were the memories so bad they caused her entire body to quake? I knew what that was like.

  “I went down to Friskies to burn some time until I heard from you again,” Lily started. “I got back to my rental around midnight. When I got out of my car, a man was there. He forced me into the house, forced me to drink alcohol, and that’s the last thing I remember until now.”

  “You didn’t see the man?”

  “No, I didn’t. I wish I did. I didn’t even recognize his voice.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He kept asking me what I saw. I told him I didn’t see anything anywhere. But he didn’t believe me.”

  I bit down. That was disappointing. I’d so badly hoped that she could provide some answers. “Was there anything else strange you remembered from that night? Anything at all?”

  Her gaze fastened on to mine, something akin to desperation lingering in the depths of her eyes. “There was one thing, Rave—I mean, Joey. There was a man at Friskies. I felt like he was watching me.”

  “Do you remember what he looked like?”

  “He was tall and painfully thin with angular features.”

  I sucked in a breath. I knew whom she was talking about.

  Leonard Shepherd. Leonard Shepherd had been watching her.

  “I need to drop you back at your place and then get to the station,” Jackson said when I emerged from Lily’s room. We’d dropped my car at my place since it was on the way to the hospital, and Jackson had left Ripley with Phoebe at Oh Buoy. Then I’d ridden with Jackson to the hospital.

  I hardly heard him. I was still feeling shell shocked. Leonard. What exactly was his role in this?

  As we walked toward the exit, I told Jackson what Lily had told me. He deserved to know that much.

  “I looked up Leonard Shepherd, Joey,” Jackson said, his steps slowing.

  “And?”

  “And he has a record for assault and for breaking and entering. He’s spent time in jail. He’s not right in the head. And the fact that you think he’s in this area isn’t comforting. I’ve told the officers here to be on the lookout for him.”

  “But even if you find him, we can’t prove he’s done anything wrong.”

  “That’s correct.” He scowled. “He didn’t leave any evidence at the station. Someone spray-painted the security cameras even.”

  My gut clenched harder. Would we ever catch a break?

  “I encourage you to proceed with extreme caution, Joey. My guys have been patrolling past your house every hour, but I worry it’s not enough.”

  “What am I supposed to do? Leave town?”

  “It’s not a bad idea . . . but I have no confidence that this guy won’t follow you.”

  “Me neither. I just wish I knew what he wanted.”

  “Guys like that don’t have to have a reason. As long as they can justify what they’re doing in their own minds, they’re content.”

  Jackson took my elbow to guide me when we reached the parking lot. His gaze scanned the area in front of us, and his stiff muscles showed he was on guard.

  He seriously should consider bodyguarding. He’d be great at it, and it probably paid four times as much as he made now. Jackson had a steady presence that somehow comforted me.

  Which was weird, considering he didn’t like me.

  But sometimes life surprised you. Maybe this was one of those times.

  As we rounded a row of cars, I froze.

  “What is it?” Jackson asked.

  I pointed to a man in the distance. “That’s my stalker.”

  Jackson darted after him.

  Twenty

  Leonard was wiry and fast, but Jackson was faster. Jackson tackled him to the ground, lifted him back to his feet, and then shoved him against a car.

  I lagged behind, watching with trepidation to see what would happen next. My heart pounded in my ears, my throat ached, and I had to remind myself to breathe as flashbacks of being shoved into that closet hit me.

  This man wasn’t sane. He was dangerous. He may have gone as far as to threaten Eric.

  Not that I cared about Eric. But I didn’t want to have anything to do with Eric’s demise. He was doing a great job of that himself.

  “Why are you following us?” Jackson demanded.

  Leonard smiled, his angular features reminding me of an exaggerated portrayal of Satan himself. “Who said I was following anyone?”

  “You lured Joey into the police station, didn’t you?” Jackson growled.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” But the satisfaction in his voice said otherwise. He knew we had no evidence to prove it.

  Jackson bristled. “I’m taking you down to the station.”

  “On what grounds?”

  “Breaking your restraining order.”

  “I wasn’t within one hundred feet.”

  “I think you were.”

  “You can’t prove anything. Besides, it expired. You have nothing to hold me on, and you know it.”

  Jackson shoved him and let him go, but the detective’s heated gaze remained on the man. “If I see you again, I’ll make sure I have a reason to arrest you. Do you understand?”

  Leonard rolled his shoulders and straightened his eighties-style windbreaker. “We’ll see about that.”

  He nodded at me. “Hi, Joey.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “You look nice today.”

  I remained quiet.

  “I can’t believe I ran into you here of all places. One of my favorite vacation spots ever.”

  “You need to leave,” Jackson growled.

  Leonard smiled at me again, his eyes making it clear that I would see him again. Then he walked away, climbed into a maroon sedan, and left.

  Jackson turned to me. “You doing okay?”

  Was I doing okay? I wasn’t totally sure. My hands shook in ways I wished they wouldn’t. “I don’t know.”

  “He’s not dumb. And that bothers me. He knows he didn’t leave behind any evidence of anything he’s done. And he wasn’t quite one hundred feet from you. He knew I had nothing to hold him on.” Jackson scowled.

  “He’s been threatening my ex. I think.”

  “Your ex?”

  I wrapped my arms across my chest and nodded. “Back in California. Eric texted me and said I should call off my guard dogs. Someone told Eric that if he . . . hurt me anymore . . . that they’d hurt him.”

  I hadn’t wanted to tell Jackson that. It seemed so personal. The only person who knew everything that Eric had done was Starla, and I’d made her promise silence. Some things were meant to be private.

  Jackson’s gaze felt so heavy on me that I looked away, afraid he’d somehow see the truth.

  “Hurt you anymore?” he questioned.

  I shrugged, not wanting to go there. “That’s what people in relationships do, right? They hurt each other.”

  “No, they don’t. They might make mistakes. But healthy relationships bring out the best in people.”

  My cheeks heated. I liked his viewpoint more than I liked my own. But this was Jackson. Honorable Jackson who’d come here with his dying wife. He was that type of guy. But those types of guys were only one in a million.

  “We should probably get back,” I finally said.
>
  He nodded and led me toward his truck. “Let’s go.”

  “Thank you for going along with me,” I told Jackson as he put his truck into park at my place.

  “I have to admit: you’re a puzzle to me, Joey.”

  Aha! I knew it. That’s why he always gave me that look. “If you’re trying to figure me out, good luck.”

  He smiled. It wasn’t a wide, carefree smile like Zane’s. Jackson had a soft, subtle smile filled with mystery. “Let me walk you to the door,” he said.

  Before I could object, he hopped out, waited for me at the front of the truck, and then walked me up the stairs. Just as he turned to me, about to say goodbye, Zane’s door opened.

  “You’re back! I was beginning to think you stood me up.”

  “Stood you up?” I repeated.

  He held up a four pack of Izze, my favorite sparkling fruit juice beverage, and some hummus. “We’re supposed to watch the game, remember?”

  That was right! He had texted me about that earlier today, and I’d already forgotten.

  Jackson stepped back, his smile gone. “Have fun, you two.”

  Strange emotions clashed inside me. I was sad to see Jackson go. For a brief second, I’d thought about inviting him inside. Yet there was Zane, and I always had a good time with him—unless he was posting my picture on social media.

  I told Jackson goodbye and turned to Zane. “Let’s go watch the game.”

  “Great, because I found out something that you’ll want to know.”

  I stepped inside, out of the cold, and closed the door. Zane walked right toward my kitchen, obviously feeling at home. He set everything on the counter and began pulling the food out of the bags. Celery. Crackers. Carrots.

  He wore his typical Baja poncho with ragged jeans and flip-flops. His hair was curly and messy, and his skin remained sun kissed, even in the middle of winter.

  And he’d found out something I wanted to know.

  “Spill it.” I crossed my arms and leaned against the counter.

  “The house where that Simon dude was staying? Guess who owns it?”

  I had no idea. “Who?”

  “Mr. Corbina.”

  Twenty-One

  “Okay, I really need to think this through.” I paced my living room, ignoring the football game in the distance.

  “Go right ahead. You’ve got an audience in me.”

  “Okay. So lawyer Simon Philips flees Atlanta, and he comes to the Outer Banks. His girlfriend, Lily Livingston, tracks him on his phone and realizes he’s here. Shortly after, that lead goes dead. The phone is turned off.”

  “Sounds right so far.”

  I paced some more. “Simon meets with a woman in witness protection. Supposedly they’re having an affair. Simon and this woman—Giselle—meet in a cheap hotel. He’s found dead. It looks like suicide. It’s not. The crime scene has been staged to look like an episode from my show.”

  “This is so twisted. Go ahead.” He threw a cracker in the air and caught it in his mouth.

  “Lily has rented a house. The neighbor sees a man forcing her inside that night. The police find her nearly dead at the pier a few hours later. Meanwhile, we find Simon’s house. The US marshals find us. And a strange man insists to me that the killer is still in the area.”

  “So bizarre. One of your screenwriters needs to get a hold of this.”

  As if I had screenwriters freely at my disposal. But that was neither here nor there. “So what if Lily discovered Simon was having an affair and killed him and then tried to kill herself?”

  “It’s a theory.”

  I paused near the window, wishing it wasn’t dark outside, so I could see the waves. They always made me feel more at peace somehow. “And we don’t know anything about this woman who’s in witness protection or why she’s here in the area. How does that tie in? Maybe the bad guys found her, and Simon got wrapped up in it.”

  “We may never know.” Zane took a long sip of his Izze before diving into the hummus.

  “Exactly. But if Leonard is correct, the killer is still hanging around for some reason. I have no idea why. Maybe Simon and Lily were never his real targets—they could have just been collateral damage. Maybe the killer is looking for Giselle.”

  “This whole conversation? It rocks. For real. Normal people don’t talk like this.”

  “I’m not normal.”

  “Exactly. I’ve never really been fond of normal people.” He handed me a drink and patted the couch beside him.

  I lowered myself there and took a long sip of my Sparkling Clementine.

  “Maybe your best option is to let your mind go for a minute and watch the game,” Zane suggested, shoving some hummus my way. “I’ve heard that works.”

  I grabbed a piece of celery and took a bite. My gaze went to the TV, but my thoughts were on anything but who was scoring a touchdown.

  “Can I ask you something?” Zane asked, an unusual sincerity to his voice.

  “Sure thing.” I wish I could say I was an open book, but I wasn’t. I leaned back and prepared myself for his question. When people asked if they could ask something, that usually meant it was loaded. In my experience, at least.

  “Why do you live here?” He glanced at me before shoving some more hummus into his mouth.

  “What do you mean?” It wasn’t the question I was expecting.

  He leaned back with one arm stretched across the back of the couch. He had an ankle resting on his knee, and he looked totally laid back. “I mean, you had a hit series. You’re famous. You’ve won People’s Choice Awards, been in tabloids, Good Morning America, done voice-overs on Disney cartoons, and you have a movie coming out with Jessica Alba. Yet you’re living in a rental and doing hair. I’ve been trying to figure it out, but I can’t.”

  I let out a mental sigh. I wanted to say “It’s a long story” and then move on. But part of restoring myself to how I used to be required being real. It meant dropping facades and not letting people think more highly of me than they should. It would be an everyday struggle.

  “You want the truth?” I started, licking my dry lips. It was so much easier to pretend to be someone else. So much safer.

  “Is Elvis the king of rock and roll?”

  “When my show hit it big, I was bringing in more cash than I thought was possible. Two hundred thousand per episode. It’s small change compared to some actresses who are on the Big Five networks, but for me, the daughter of a railroad worker, it was like it was raining gold around me.”

  “That’s understandable.”

  “I’m not blaming all of this on my ex. But I will say that I was naïve and way too trusting. I thought he could do no wrong. He insisted we buy this huge house. It was a status symbol, he said. And then we bought cars and took vacations and hired maids. It was . . . out of control. Soon enough, our bills exceeded my income. Eric convinced me that we needed to file for bankruptcy before our house went into foreclosure. The lawyer we met with said it was better if I signed over my assets to Eric, put the debts in my name, and I was the one declaring bankruptcy. Something about not losing everything that way.”

  “Uh-oh. I think I know where this is going.”

  “Yeah. So that’s what we did. I filed bankruptcy. In the middle of all of that, I learned that Eric hadn’t been paying our taxes. Again, I know I was too trusting. I should have double-checked behind him. But hindsight is twenty-twenty, as they say.”

  “So you have no money now?”

  “I have only a little money now. The IRS is garnishing most of my wages that I’m getting from DVD sales and syndication. I’m just making enough to pay my rent, basically. I have to work in order to pay my debts, as well as for groceries and gas and everything else.”

  “Bummer.”

  “Yeah, tell me about it. I still have a long way to go. I pretty much hit rock bottom, and getting a role in a new movie isn’t going to save me. In fact, it might just ruin me at this point.”

  “Well, I think it�
�s really cool that you’re here, Joey. I hope you’re around long enough that I can teach you to surf and maybe even kiteboard.”

  I smiled. “Thanks, Zane.”

  Twenty-Two

  I still couldn’t concentrate on the game. Maybe it was because I didn’t love football. Maybe it was because there were so many other pressing matters. But doing this just seemed so pointless.

  ”Maybe we should go talk to Mr. Corbina,” I announced.

  “And say what? Did you kill Simon Philips?” Zane asked.

  “No, that would be too obvious.”

  “For realsies.”

  I nibbled on my fingernail a moment, my thoughts still churning. “I just don’t understand why he has another house that’s not connected to his business.”

  “I don’t know either.”

  “Maybe I should do a little research on him.” I stood. “I’m going to grab my computer.”

  “Do your thing, girl. I think it’s awesome, and I support you 100 percent.”

  First, I needed to find out some background on the man. I typed in his name, and pages upon pages of articles appeared. The man was sixty-four. He’d been on the cover of at least four magazines. He’d been married three times. Had six kids.

  I rubbed my eyes and looked away from the screen for a moment.

  “Anything?” Zane asked.

  I shook my head. “Not really. I don’t know what I think I’ll find out.”

  “Tell me what you learned. Maybe I can help.”

  I told him the basic stats I’d come across. Then I scanned more articles. “He was the CEO of Zenith Tech. That’s where he made most of his money. It was some kind of computer-security company. I haven’t heard of it before. You?”

  Zane shook his head. “Can’t say I have.”

  “Apparently they were bought out by Kilgore, a North Carolina company.” I closed my computer. “This isn’t getting us anywhere, is it?”

  “What would Raven say?”

  “That this is a dead end?”

  “Maybe it will all make sense in the morning. In the meantime—touchdown!”