For more information on upcoming works by Brian B. Borcky, including Detective Clarke Meets the Reaper - the novel-length return of R.D. and Jerry Clarke, pay a visit to http://www.detectiveclarke.com
Want to know how you could have gotten this eBook for free? Want to get sneak previews before anyone else, more free or discounted eBooks and other exclusive content? Sign up for Brian P. Borcky’s E-Mail Newsletter at http://www.detectiveclarke.com/newsletter.html
Destined for Death: A Clarke Quickie
a novella by Brian P. Borcky
Copyright 2011 by Brian P. Borcky
Published via Smashwords
Also by the author:
I’m Detective Clarke: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/78784
Smashwords Edition: License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Chapter One
I turned the air conditioner on full blast, fuel conservation be damned -- this was where the ‘plus expenses’ in the term ‘fifty bucks an hour, plus expenses’ comes into play.
It was so hot outside you could fry an egg, but it wasn’t breakfast time anymore, so it’d make more sense to fry up something else. I always found that saying to be stupid.
The target I was assigned to tail – Annie was her name, I think -- was walking down a street toward a park with a male companion not too far behind her. I suspected they’d be hanging around the park for a while, which was good for me – it gave me a chance to sit in my cool, comfortable car on a day when the heat index would be approaching triple digits. If the target of my tail would have walked around the neighborhood a bit, forcing me to follow on foot, I would have considered telling my client I got pulled over by the police and lost the target in the process. Don’t laugh – it actually happened to me before.
I’m R.D. Clarke, apprentice private eye. The ‘apprentice’ in my title gives me a certain license to screw up, I’m only learning after all. The master detective I’m studying under – my father, the legendary Jerry Clarke – is supposed to be overseeing my work, but often leaves me to my own devices. He’ll get away with slacking off on his mentor duties, too: he’s made more connections in his career than eHarmony, so he gets levels of carte blanche most police chiefs would envy.
Annie and her male companion strolled into the park, oblivious to my existence. She met up with a group of her peers, mingled a bit, then went off with her male companion to be alone for a moment. She wound up settling under a tree, where she squatted and took a big dump.
I did mention the target I was tailing was a dog, didn’t I?
In my bid to become a big time hotshot detective, I wound up having to act like a second rate Ace Ventura, albeit a good fifteen years or better after that would have been considered remotely cool.
I did my duty and watched her doody (wow… that was bad even by my standards) and made sure the male companion – y’know, the one holding her leash – obeyed the law and scooped up the refuse. After fulfilling his civic responsibility, the walker guided Annie back toward the other dogs.
Proper poop scooping was the least of my worries. My client was William Grant, a wealthy man who inherited a bunch of car dealerships from his father and parlayed a decent chunk of his profits into developing one of the biggest collections of prize winning show dogs in the nation. Annie was one of the crown jewels of the group, with more best in shows to her credit than any other dog in her breed this year. She should be good: from the records I got a look at, Grant spent more money training and educating Annie than my parents spent on me in eighteen years.
Not that I should be jealous or anything. At least I never dropped a deuce ‘round the old oak tree. At least not that I remember, the year I spent in college is kind of a blur.
Grant noticed a change in Annie in the past week or so. She wasn’t eating like she used to, he claimed in the introductory interview. Grant also listed skittishness, barking, and the occasional lapse in housebrokenness as symptoms. I was kind of skeptical – all dogs barked as far as I knew, and housebrokenness isn’t even a word.
If Annie was anything shy of the showiest of show dogs, I didn’t catch a whiff of it (pardon the pun). She trotted around the park like she was light enough to float along the air above the ground and never so much as looked at the other dogs unless specifically instructed to do so. I’ve seen kids who were louder and more skittish than this.
A lot of them needed to be housebroken too.
Annie and the walker left the park. I tracked them as they made their way back to their car – a small coupe with a trailer attached to the back. Yes, this dog had her own trailer.
Nothing of consequence happened for the rest of the ride, which started in an affluent neighborhood and wound up in a filthy rich neighborhood. One of the bigger houses in the filthy rich neighborhood belonged to Grant: a large, modern looking sterling white palace with big, intricate windows that sat atop a winding driveway blocked at the mouth by an iron gate. The entire property was surrounded by a marble, ivy covered wall that probably cost more to construct than my apartment building.
My trip ended there. I watched the car pass through the gates and wind up the drive. I kept cruising down the road, pulling out my phone so I could report to William Grant that there was nothing to report — such are the joys of the private eye business: a profession mostly predicated on sitting around and waiting for something to happen.
Beats dual entry bookkeeping and answering phones though, that’s for sure.
Chapter Two
I was about halfway back to a more familiar, less affluent section of the county when I got a call from a number I didn’t recognize. I thought about blowing it off but wound up answering right before it dumped to voice mail.
“Sup?” I answered.
“Who is this?” the voice on the other end said, seemingly put off by my overly casual greeting. It was a man, by the sounds of it an older man, a man who was used to people listening when he talked.
“This is R.D.”
“Mr. Clarke?”
It was around this time that I started to suspect I was acting like my client was one of my buddies from down the block. I cleared my throat and put on my best professional voice. “Yeah, yes sir. This is Mr. Clarke, uh, um Detective Mr. Clarke”
‘Way to go, very smooth R.D.’ I thought to myself. I was glad my dad didn’t hear it or else I’d have a placard on my desk the next day reading “Detective Mr. Clarke.
“Hello? Detective Clarke?” the man on the other end said, his voice seeping into the abyss of a phone conversation that had been sucked into the black hole that is my mush mouth.
“Yes, sir” I said, pulling myself back into the world of people who know how to speak, “I am Detective Robert Clarke. This is Mr. Grant, I presume?” There. A complete, coherent sentence – was that so hard? For me? Yes.
For a three year old with a history of severe brain injury who was raised by wolves? Not really a problem.
“Mr. Clarke, I understand you did some reconnaissance work with Annie today?” ‘Reconnaissance’ was a very fancy word to describe being paid a hundred and twenty bucks plus expenses to watch a dog poop.
“Yes sir. Everything appears to be on the up and up with your dog. I didn’t see the walker do anything I wouldn’t want someone to do with my pet.”
“Then why did Annie just urinate all over a fifteen thousand dollar Persian rug?”
I almost drove off the road, totally flabbergasted by the information just brought to my attention.
There were rugs that cost fifteen grand?
“Mr. Clarke,” Grant boomed, talking down to me like he probably talked down to all of his employees, “I’d like you to come by and consult with me face to face, are you available at this moment?”
I may be a lowly apprentice private detective, and very inexperienced for an apprentice at that, but I knew an opportunity to rack up easy billable hours when the opportunity struck.
“I’ll be right over Mr. Grant.”
“Good. Very good,” Grant said, “I’m at 3503…”
“I know where you live,” I said coolly, hanging up the phone before he could respond. It takes me a little while to get warmed up, but I can pull off the Private Dick with swagger to spare when I set my mind to it. It’s just that I usually put my foot in my mouth a couple dozen times beforehand, that’s what gets me in trouble and contributes to my profound, crippling lack of self-esteem.
I pulled a U-Turn and went back to the higher income section of the Philadelphia suburbs – the Main Line, as it was called locally. I weaved through the area navigating a maze of man-made lakes and hidden driveways before returning to the Grant estate.
I buzzed the intercom at the gates.
“Clarke?”
I recognized the voice as William Grant. This must be serious, he was answering the buzzer himself.
“Yes sir, it’s Clarke.”
The gates swung open and I navigated my ancient sports car up to the house – well, one of the houses -- there appeared to be three. I picked the biggest of the group and hoped Grant was there.
I parked my car and slid out, checking myself out in the mirror to make sure I looked fairly decent. If I knew I was going to be hanging out with company this exclusive I would have shaved today. I also would have worn something other than black cargo shorts and a T-Shirt that prominently displayed the logo of my favorite soda, but there’s nothing I can do about that now.
I made sure my peasant’s rags were as clean and pressed as possible, wiping my hands up and down the front of me in lieu of ironing, I walked up the immaculate staircase and came face to face to a solid oak door lined in gold that could be sold at auction for enough money to put a kid through medical school.
I knocked and a tall, solidly built man with neatly trimmed mostly gray hair answered. He was wearing a marble golf shirt and perfectly pressed khakis – I presumed this was William Grant, our initial consultation was done over the phone.
“Mr. Grant?” I asked.
“Clarke?” He responded. I nodded.
“You said there was a problem with Annie?”
“I have two problems, Mr. Clarke, my first problem is Annie, yes. My second problem is I’m spending good money on a detective who says everything is fine with my dog and then she does this!”
Mr. Grant pointed at a rug in the next room, continuing his yelling about the condition of his precious rug, but it was white noise to me by now. Still, he was all over me so fast I couldn’t take the extravagance of his home in completely, but rest assured the stuff adorning the walls of one room – any room -- was worth more than I’ll make in ten years.
The crown jewel of his sitting area appeared to be the rug he was pointing at, a soft looking masterpiece with intricate designs that momentarily hypnotized me, my trance being broken when Grant slapped me on the back and pushed me forward. It was only then I noticed a sizeable dark patch a little to the left of the center of the rug.
“Look at that! Go on, look at it! Does that look like something a dog would do if they weren’t under stress!”
I moved forward and took a closer look. I was afraid Grant would smack me with a rolled up newspaper and rub my nose in the stain if I didn’t.
“No, no sir it doesn’t.” I said in a tone reminiscent of a child who got his hand caught in the proverbial cookie jar.
“You’re damn right it doesn’t Clarke!” he chided.
I turned to face Mr. Grant. I didn’t like confrontation, but I had my limits. “With all due respect, sir, I can only report on what I see, and from what I saw, Annie was fine the whole time. Maybe this is a job for a veterinarian, not a detective.”
Grant gave me a look of disbelief in return. “Do you think you were the first person I called about this problem?”
I stood back silently. “Do you?” He asked again, much louder this time. I felt like a kid in history class who said that John F. Kennedy freed the slaves.
“No sir, no I don’t,” came my delayed, meek reply.
“That’s the first correct statement you’ve made all day Clarke! I took her to vets, the best vets in the world! She’s the picture of health. I even went to one of those dog psychologist nut jobs, he said she was fine too. Something or someone is doing this to Annie, and you need to find out what it is.”
“Is it all right if I take a look around.”
“Do whatever you need to do, Clarke, just fix my dog.”
I know it’s a sure sign of my immaturity that ‘damn, and I left my spaying tools in my other shorts’ was the first thought that crossed my mind. I didn’t go for the joke -- Grant came off as the humorless sort even when he wasn’t ticked off.
“Where is Annie now?”
“The kennels are in the building to the left of this one. You can talk to Nicholas there, he’s the one who tends to them on a regular basis.”
I showed myself to the door and legged it to the building where the dogs were housed. Just looking at the exterior of the building -- which was a few hundred square feet bigger than the two bedroom house I grew up in -- made me curse my lot in life: I should have been born a show dog.
I knocked on the door, which was almost immediately opened by a short, skinny man with a ghastly complexion and long sandy blonde hair. I recognized him as the man who was walking Annie earlier.
“Hi, I’m Apprentice Detective R.D. Clarke,” I announced, a full disclosure statement my father insisted I make to everyone I announce my presence to. “I’m here because you’ve been having some problems with Annie.” I noticed Annie walking around freely behind him, she didn’t look like she was having any problems. No visible pee stains either, though in fairness, she had already gone, so that may have been more of a testament to her empty bladder than anything.
The man, Nicholas I presumed, shook his head vigorously. “Mr. Grant says there is a problem, but when she is with me, I see no problems.” I placed his accent as French, but I didn’t know for sure, most of what I knew of Europe came from exchange students in teen sex comedies.
“He has a piss stained rug in the main house that says different.”
Nicholas frowned, “I have been working with Annie for almost two years, I have never seen her relieve herself when it is not appropriate.”
I nodded. “I followed you today, looked to me like you were doing everything right, Annie seemed like the perfect…”
“You were following me?” He said incredulously. Oops, probably shouldn’t have mentioned that: telling the target of a stakeout that you followed them is a serious faux pas, even for a dimwitted apprentice detective.
“Mr. Grant wanted to make sure everything was going well with Annie. I wasn’t following you, sir, I was following her.” This didn’t seem to matter to Nicholas, who stormed out of the kennel.
Damage control mode fully engaged, I followed him to the main house, where Nicholas was screaming before he even got up the stairs.
“I didn’t do anything to your dog!” he screamed repeatedly. William Grant came out before long, stomping down the stairs. I was watching this scene unfold when I felt Annie, the Chesapeake Bay Retriever at the center of this mess, brush by me. I looked at her and she came to me and sat perfectly still by my side. The raised voices and flaring tempers didn’t seem to faze her much.
“How dare you have me followed?” Nicholas screamed, “You are invading my privacy!”
“You work for me!” Grant snapped back, his nostrils flaring, “When you’re on my payroll, I reserve the right to supervise you as you’re performing your duties.”
The screaming match continued for a while, broken up by a girl exiting the home. She was pretty – tall and fit with tired, soulful brown eyes. She wore a long black dress with a purple pattern coming up from the bottom. The look on her face was kind of hard to explain, sort of a ‘lights are on, but no one’s home’ deal.
“What’s going on out here? She asked.
“Rebecca, not now,” Grant shouted without looking back.
The argument continued with both of the men involved ignoring Rebecca, who stood by and watched, just as I did.
Annie, however, did acknowledge Rebecca’s presence. She whimpered and began to bark, her antics culminating when she turned her head and bit me on the ankle. I yelped out in pain, embellishing a bit to draw attention to what had happened.
“She bit me!” I yelled, over the top as I could possibly be.
“See?” Grant screamed, getting in Nicholas’s face, “This is supposed to be conduct appropriate for a champion show dog? If this was a mangy mutt from the pound I’d send her back!”
“You’re making her like this with your screaming!” Nicholas screamed. I assumed he was unaware of the irony.
“Actually,” I said, stepping forward. “I think she is making her go nuts.” I pointed to the girl William Grant identified as Rebecca.
“Me?” She said.
I nodded. “Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think you’re doing it on purpose, but she was sitting by my side fine before you came out.” I looked back and saw Annie digging a hole in the immaculately manicured lawn.
William Grant and Nicholas stared at each other, then the dog.
“Annie, halt!” Nicholas shouted. Annie stopped digging, looked up, and growled.
“I’m sorry miss… Rebecca, is it?” I asked the girl. She nodded to confirm her name. “Rebecca, could you please go inside for a few minutes?”
She said nothing to me, but turned around and moped inside. I felt bad for her, and couldn’t quite put my finger on why.
“Annie, halt!” I said, trying to impersonate Nicholas as best as I could. The dog stopped damaging the grass, walked over to me and sat.
“See?”
Grant took a look at the dog, puzzled.
“She’s fine,” he observed.
“I don’t understand.” Nicholas mused.”
“Mr. Grant, if it’s all right with you, I’d like to have a word with Rebecca.”
Looking past me and at the freshly dug hole in the ground a few feet away from me, Mr. Grant grit his teeth. “Do whatever you have to do, I already told you that once.” All business, that Grant. Shaking off his hostility I returned to the main house to find Rebecca waiting in the foyer where I had my previous discussion with William Grant.
“Rebecca?”
She looked at me as if she was mystified that someone would be talking to her.
“What?” she finally asked.
“It’s Rebecca Grant -- Mr. Grant’s daughter, right?”
She nodded and frowned. It was the frown that I was more interested in. She had a pretty face that remained childlike as she blossomed into womanhood, I pegged her for late teens, but with an aura that suggested her soul was much older.
“Rebecca,” I said, launching right into my spiel, “I’ve noticed that Annie’s behavior takes a sharp turn for the worse when you’re around. Is there a reason for this?”
“Ask my dad,” she said with a pout, “he spends more time with her than he does with his real children.”
With such resentment so apparent, I naturally drew the conclusion that Rebecca could possibly be doing something horrible. A dog cowering and misbehaving in the presence of an abusive human was a logical connection to make. I figured I’d go for the jugular and went totally blunt.
“So, you’re not too fond of Annie. Ever hurt her?”
She slapped me. I wasn’t expecting that, she must have inherited her father’s bluntness.
“I never touched that dog!”
I rubbed at my face, more for dramatic effect than because of any actual pain, though my cheek was stinging quite a bit. “Is there any reason you can think of that the dog would act like that around you?”
Rebecca stopped and studied me for a while. I felt like a lab rat.
“You enjoy working for a dog?”
“I work for your father,” I shot back. She smirked.
“Fine. You work for my father. And my dog.”
I didn’t feel like arguing with her. “Fine, I work for a dog,” I conceded, “I’m going to get paid in heartworm pills and Kibble, you happy?”
She snickered. I counted it as a win for me.
“Now that we’ve established that, why does my boss go nuts when you’re around?”
“Because someone’s going to kill me, and the dog can sense it.”
I snickered. I got slapped again.
“What was that for?” I asked, having half a mind to ask her father for hazard pay.
“I’m going to be dead any day now Mr. Detective,” Rebecca said without a hint of irony in her voice, “I don’t think it’s right to laugh about that.”
Her response made this situation far more serious than when I was assigned with finding the deep rooted psychological motivations behind a puddle of dog pee, I decided to go into professional detective mode. “Has someone threatened your life?” I asked.
Rebecca nodded.
“Who?”
Rebecca shrugged, seemed like a pretty nonchalant way to blow off a death threat.
“All right then, let’s think this out. Someone’s threatening your life and you don’t know who. How did they threaten you – phone call, Internet, stalker?
“None of those things. It’s just my destiny.”