Chapter One
Was someone pranking him?
For the first four minutes of his interview with prospective client Alton Beacher, Zach couldn’t quite decide.
It was the kind of elaborate joke Ben would find funny, but Ben was not about to invest energy (or money) in making Zach look foolish given that he already thought Zach looked like a fool for struggling to keep his dad’s PI business afloat. Ben was probably right. Tactless, as usual, but probably right.
Nobody knew the dire financial situation of Davies Detective Agency better than Zachariah Davies, former accountant turned lead investigator.
Turned only investigator.
In the midst of these bleak reflections, Alton Beacher’s light, slightly affected voice trailed off. The silence that followed was punctuated only by a faint chatter of Davies’s receptionist (and Zach’s kid sister) Brooke, coming from behind the office door. Judging by the giggles, Brooke was not speaking with another client.
Not least because they didn’t have any other clients.
He’d spent the last month making new contacts in Monterey County, paying visits to insurance companies, lawyers, the risk-management directors of local municipalities, and anybody else he could think of who might need the services of a private investigator. Eventually, some of that footwork was bound to pay off, but so far nada.
Beacher’s pale brows drew together in a frown as he waited for some sign of life from Zach.
Zach pulled himself together. He lifted his coffee mug, took a stalling-for-time swallow, said finally, “Let me get this straight. You’re hiring me to pose as your boyfriend while I investigate a series of death threats you’ve received over the past couple of weeks?”
If he sounded skeptical—well, who wouldn’t sound skeptical? For one thing, Beacher was wearing a gold wedding band. For another, well, this was as far-fetched as anything in those goofy PI novels Zach used to devour as a kid.
No, actually, it was more like something out of a screwball comedy movie from the 1940s. This could not be a serious job proposal.
Could it?
Beacher’s “Correct,” sounded stiff and a little defensive.
“Really?”
“Surely, you’ve run into this kind of situation before? You’ve been in business twenty years.”
Right. Did Beacher actually think Zach had been working as a PI when he was ten years old? Cracking the case of Ms. Gordon’s missing Wall Street Journal in between Little League practice and mastering common factors and multiples?
In fairness, Davies Detection Agency had been around for twenty years. Zach tried to imagine his bluff, gruff ex-cop dad being asked to pose as someone’s boyfriend and nearly choked on his coffee.
No question Pop would have said hard pass to the Beacher case. Though less politely.
“What made you choose us?”
What Zach really meant was why pick a little indie operation rather than a large security firm with all the bells, whistles, and resources someone as rich as Alton Beacher would presumably expect. But Zach already knew the answer. A big, classy company would laugh Beacher right out of their expensively appointed lobby.
For one fleeting instant, Beacher looked uncomfortable. “To be honest, I was going to try that place at the other end of the shopping center.”
Zach set his coffee cup down very carefully. “Carey Confidential?”
Beacher nodded curtly. “But I didn’t like the look of the man. Those beady eyes. That sarcastic smile. No.”
Oh my God. Zach would have given anything, ANYTHING, to see Alton Beacher ask Flint Carey to be his pretend boyfriend. And the beady-eyes comment? That was pure gold.
But Beacher was right about the sarcastic smile. Flint did have—could have—an unpleasant smile when he thought you were being a bigger ass than usual. His eyes weren’t beady, though. They were hazel, that elusive combination of brown-green-gold, and disarmingly long-lashed. Maybe a little narrow, especially when he laughed, which admittedly, was rarely.
Zach said gravely, “He’s a tough customer, that guy,” ignoring the feeling that somewhere, somehow Pop was shaking his head at him.
“Then I saw your sign, and it seemed like a…a…”
“Sign?” Zach offered.
Beacher smiled. “Well, yes.”
“The thing of it is, we don’t really offer the kind of services you seem to req—”
As if to head him off, Beacher reached into the chest pocket of his abstract squares Patrick James sports shirt and pulled out a money order. He pulled out a second money order and laid it on top of the first. Then a third, a fourth, a fifth…a total of twelve money orders, which he slid across the desk.
Zach adjusted his glasses, glanced down at the amount of the top money order, and then could not look away. It was as if his eyes were magnetized by the figures written in that precise, angular hand.
$1,000.
Twelve money orders for one thousand dollars each.
Twelve. Thousand. Dollars.
He found his voice. “Now I’m worried.”
Beacher laughed. “Why so? I did my homework. The going rate for a good PI in California is about two hundred dollars an hour. Five hundred if special skills are involved, and I think we can both agree special skills are required for this job. So, for two-plus days’ work…I’m sure you can do the math.”
Oh yes. If there was one thing Zach was good at, it was doing the math.
“Just to be sure we’re on the same page. I’m not a bodyguard.”
“I already have a bodyguard.”
Really? Where? But Zach wasn’t going to argue. “That’s probably a good idea.”
“I need someone to figure out where these threats are coming from as soon as possible. I don’t want to jump to the wrong conclusion.”
“I’m flattered you think I can figure out who’s behind this in two days, but—”
“I don’t think that for a moment. This is simply an advance to cover the weekend at Pebble Beach.”
“Right,” Zach said blankly. It was possible he’d missed a few details during the initial minutes of their interview, but he was damn sure he hadn’t missed that detail.
But it was true what they said, money did change everything, and it was with renewed attention that he studied his client, sitting unblinking in the blinding glare of California’s autumn sun streaming through the tinted office windows.
From the oversize rubber soles of his Alexander McQueen leather sneakers to the snipped tips of his blond classic side sweep, Alton Beacher, the handsome, aggressively Nordic-looking fortysomething owner and CEO of the Beacher Toy Company, exuded money and privilege.
Which was exactly what Zach needed right now.
Money, that is.
Even with the sky-high prices of Ensenada del Sello’s commercial real estate, the short stack of money orders lying on his desk would cover their lease for the next three months and the tuition of Brooke’s junior year of college. It wasn’t the answer to all Zach’s problems, but it was the answer to the most pressing.
If it seemed too good to be true, it probably was.
Still. That money.
Zach picked up the Cross-Townsend pen he’d bought Pop last Christmas, drew the yellow legal pad his way. “Okay, Mr. Beacher. Let’s start with the threats.”