No Brainer ( The Darcy Walker Series #2) Read online

  Before bedtime, Dylan had been pensive, deep in thought, like he tried to deflate something that had been expanding and brewing for a while. It wasn’t just Howie, either. My guess was Kyd lay at the root. Dylan had somewhat dialed-down his anger … the key word being “somewhat.” All I knew was when Kyd knocked on the door to check on me—Seriously, did he not know who I was?—Dylan was silhouetted in the hallway like a wild animal, lying in wait.

  “I can’t let you sleep on the floor,” he murmured adamantly. “Take my bed, and I’ll sleep elsewhere.”

  “Why can’t I sleep in here if Zander’s on the recliner?” I said, squinting toward the corner chair. “That is Zander, right?”

  Heck, it could’ve been a life-sized figure of King Kong for all I knew.

  Dylan glanced over to the nook, nodding with a slight laugh. “Sounds like him.”

  “Please?” I begged. “I’ll even sleep by the door. It’ll be like a slumber party.”

  Dylan scratched the back of his neck, debating the chances of discovery. “You’re breaking my heart. I hate it when you beg, Darc, but we can’t. I know it’s odd, but it just is.”

  I hated “odd” right now, and I wanted to kick “is’s” can.

  “Pretty please,” I pleaded again.

  Dylan outstretched both arms, dragging me into an embrace. Cupping one hand around my head, he let the other hang leisurely at my hip. I tiptoed up, clasping both arms around his neck, and briefly shut my eyes into the curve under his chin. “I’m just so tired,” I mumbled, “and I need to feel close to you.”

  That’ll do the trick, I smiled to myself. Just stroke, stroke, stroke that whopping ego.

  “I love you, too,” he whispered into my hair. I’m not sure how long we stood there. I could’ve stayed like that for a million years and never complained. It felt peaceful, perfect, and unusually pleasurable … especially when Dylan hummed a lullaby. Dylan could sing like an angel, but when he hummed, it unveiled a supernatural elixir. I yo-yoed in and out of consciousness realizing the last thing either of us wanted was to break contact. “What’s wrong with your room, sweetheart?” he finally voiced.

  It was too far away from him, that’s what. I bunked on the opposite end of the hall with Sydney. She talked/fought/made-up all night on the telephone. I didn’t mind; but proximity-wise, it felt like a country away from the Big Man.

  “Nothing. I prefer the couch, but Lincoln’s in the kitchen with paperwork sprawled out all over the floor.”

  You’d think my curiosity would be killing me, but actually, it wasn’t. Whatever was going on in Lincoln’s world remained his business. Turkey Cardoza could kiss my Chergerbritishscotch keister, and unless he came to Orlando, I was done with him.

  “Grandpa’s up?” Dylan shrieked. “If Dad won’t go for it, I can promise Lincoln will spit nails.”

  I don’t know how it happened. Maybe it was paternal instinct on overdrive, or maybe it’s because he worked as LA vice. But the moment my arms clasped tighter around Dylan’s neck, he stiffened and gasped toward the door like a clairvoyant episode goosed him in the butt.

  “Good morning, Grandpa,” he murmured.

  I circled my hand in the air in a smiley-faced wave. I couldn’t see crap, but I didn’t need to. As Lincoln thundered forward, no doubt he appraised our lack of clothing and calculated exactly what had gone down between these four walls.

  Nothing, I sighed to myself. Abso-freakin-lutely nothing.

  “What’s going on, son?” he questioned at a rolling boil. He paced another few steps until his jaw hung parallel to Dylan’s.

  Dylan exhaled a breath. “I was having a nice dream about a nice girl saying nice things, Grandpa. Obviously, it wasn’t Darcy.”

  “It wasn’t?” I laughed.

  “Not even close.”

  “Darcy, you’re not supposed to be in here,” Lincoln bit out.

  “I’m not?” He gave me a heck-no look. “I thought you were an equal opportunity grandpa,” I frowned. “Zander’s in the recliner, and now you’re saying Darcy Walker doesn’t have rights. Well, I’m the Susan B. Anthony of slumber parties, and I’m taking what I’ve been denied.”

  I stomped the floor for emphasis.

  “Darc,” Dylan whispered nervously. “Not the time.”

  Glancing over to a still snoring Zander, Lincoln’s voice barked angrier, “You don’t have rights!”

  I opted for the truth, giving him a flippant answer. “If you must know, I asked Dylan if I could sleep with him.” I laughed like a naughty truck driver, smacking Dylan’s rear end so hard, he fell forward. Both his hands mauled my chest, breaking his fall—OMG moment … neither of us knew what to do. “See,” I giggled, “he can’t keep his hands off of me.”

  “Oh God,” Dylan muttered, gasping for breath. “You’ve just sealed my fate.” Running a hand through his hair, he scrubbed it down his jaw, stupefied.

  Lincoln sounded homicidal. “Good grief, child, you can’t sleep with a boy!” Even exhausted, my mind worked it from every conceivable angle.

  “We do in Cincinnati,” I shrugged.

  Dylan snapped to attention, something frightening filling his voice. “Darcy Walker! We do not have that type of relationship!”

  True, but I really didn’t know what we had, and the joke was too good to pass up. Dylan occasionally kissed my forehead, we hugged longer and deeper than most, I sat on his lap like a girlfriend, and the exact words that commitment-phobes choked on—I love you—we’d been saying since we were six. Sneaking into his bedroom and talking to him in the wee hours seemed as normal as anything else in our relationship.

  Trouble was, our normal was abnormal to the rest of the world.

  “My father warned me about boys like him, Lincoln,” I motor-mouthed on. “The love ’em and leave ’em kind. I just pray our unborn baby doesn’t make the same mistakes that I have.”

  All at once, everyone (but me) started cursing.

  Bad words.

  Filthy words.

  File that under Uh-oh.

  Lincoln clutched Dylan ferociously by the wrist. “Is this true, son? Answer me, boy!” Dylan pointed at my face; his eyes demanding a retraction, but a flicker in his smile insinuated he might actually be enjoying the drama.

  When my grin grew wider, he finally released a tired sigh. “No, Grandpa,” he murmured. “This is just Darcy being Darcy.” He turned to me in his party’s-over voice. “I’m tired, sweetheart. You know I love you, but I don’t want to do this at 2AM.”

  “But we’re best friends,” I complained, sticking my lower lip out in a pout. “If I can’t sleep, then the Best Friend Rule says you’re not supposed to sleep, either.”

  Dylan rubbed both eyes with his palms. “No one’s ever told me that.” Poor Dylan, I laughed to myself. He truly was the walking dead, and a few more minutes of my guilt trip would have him apologizing and tucking me into bed.

  I sniffed, “Well, now you know, and it wasn’t like I saw your happies anyway.”

  Happies was Darcyspeak for testicles. One deep grunt from Lincoln, and I opted against a definition. Dylan giggled, tweaked my nose, and rubbed his knuckles over my scalp like one of the boys. Yeah, true love … soak it all in.

  Lincoln stretched both hands high and rapidly plunged them through his hair. I’m not sure if he was worrying or debating yanking it all out. He notoriously pulled all-nighters when consumed with a case then never looked tired during the daytime hours. Turkey Cardoza—coupled with me, I laughed to myself—had left him emotionally drained. “I need some coffee. Follow me, dear,” he paused, motioning over his shoulder. “You’re not sleeping in my grandson’s bed.”

  Not what I wanted to hear. “Can I at least sleep on the floor?”

  Lincoln stopped to mull over my request. These were the situations that grandparents struggled over. Number one, you’d raised your kids. You were tired, and it was easier to give in and let the grandchildren have their way. Number two, you’d also screwed up your k
ids. So you were operating under a lot of guilt and woulda, coulda, shouldas.

  “No,” he muttered, deciding to take the conservative route. “If you can’t sleep, then come to the kitchen, and I’ll make us both a sandwich and a pot of coffee.”

  Good. Coffee usually relaxed me. For most, that was a contradiction. Coffee was like mainlining steroids.

  Lincoln’s fuzzy silhouette left the room, mumbling he didn’t understand teenagers today, let alone our relationship. When I went in for one last hug, he bellowed, “Hands off, you two! I don’t get it. I swear to God, I don’t get it.”

  I obeyed, metaphorically kicking and screaming the entire way.

  Since Saturday evening, it had been a nightly routine for Lincoln and his partner, Paddy O’Leary, to pore over the case of Ronald “Turkey” Cardoza. Why they thought I was trustworthy was unfathomable, but they didn’t seem to mind that I’d crashed their nightly business meeting. Minutes earlier, I’d sworn off Turkey altogether, but Lincoln seemed so ensconced in his life, it piqued my interest again … ugh, I am a messed-up person.

  I played it cool, acting only partly interested—or even asleep—but secretly I tried to piece it together myself. Turkey had been in and out of juvenile detention starting at age nine. His petty thievery and vandalism grew into money laundering and cooking books for the mob. Somewhere along the way, Turkey established legitimate businesses: a chain of laundromats, used car lots, two restaurants, but rumblings placed his person at the scene of three murders. One would think that someone who brokered deals between two competing mob families would be above being the triggerman, though.

  There’s always the option that Turkey had a facet of his personality that simply liked to kill. Lincoln felt Turkey crawled up from the lowest level of Hell but unfortunately couldn’t place him definitively at the crime scenes other than by word of mouth. Therefore, there wasn’t enough proof to stick. My feelings with the Cisco Medina case were exactly the same. Something was twisted in Cisco’s world that now included Gertrude and a headless Howie—but I didn’t have a name yet of the person hiding behind the curtain.

  Lincoln had been on the telephone for fifteen minutes listening to Paddy’s fast-talking Irish ways. Half the time, Lincoln left him on speaker while he shined his shoes or made a sandwich. Instead of sandwiches, we ordered Chinese take-out and were eating on our respective couches. I didn’t know you could get Chinese take-out at this late hour, but maybe that’s merely when they cleared their freezers of all the dead cats.

  Sliding my glasses on my nose—I found them in the kitchen trashcan—I shoveled Kung Pao chicken in my mouth, concentrating on Paddy’s words.

  “But how in the world,” he said frustrated, “is the guy always on camera where the crime isn’t when we have witnesses that swear he blew somebody’s brains out across town?”

  Lincoln took a generous bite of Mongolian Beef. “Just another braid in an unwanted emotional entanglement. Our only prayer is that he gets lazy.”

  As he ambled to the kitchen to grab a drink, that left me alone with Paddy. Paddy expelled a few Irish epithets I didn’t understand. “And the biggest jaw-dropper of all,” he grumbled, “is that Turkey’s six kids are all good. Private schools, church on Sunday, not even a detention slip from best we can tell. Shouldn’t some of that crime have passed down, Linc? I mean, really. It’s almost like they’re squeaky clean.”

  That got me to thinking. Does where you come from really matter in life? My ultimate opinion was “no.” My father put the bookie life behind him, so it could be done, but it depended on how deep your influences were and whom you considered your lifeline. Not to mention, which part of your personality you wanted to win in the end.

  I snuggled deeper under my white fleece blanket, chewing some rice. I asked Paddy, “Did you ever think that there might be two wild Turkeys?”

  Paddy didn’t respond, and you could almost hear the dun dun du-dunnn.

  I didn’t know what time it was … only that it was late—or early—however, you wanted to term insomnia. Lincoln slept soundly across from me, but my brain wouldn’t blackout. Pulling Colton’s laptop out of its leather satchel, I tapped it “on,” hoping Troy was still all hey-let’s-work-together or at least wanting to flirt. My fingers rapped on top of the keyboard as I waited for Jester’s account to load. My hands were still empty of information—at least damning information—but I’d typed a message this afternoon to see what he knew about the PI firms. A quick scan of the yellow pages gave me nothing, which caused me to doubt Herbie’s recall even more.

  What would I do if Troy hadn’t returned my email? Better yet, what would I do if he had? I waited for a heavenly epiphany to show the next course of action, but Heaven wasn’t speaking. My guess was it kicked me off the walk-thru tour.

  As my email program loaded, my eyes hung on the inbox like a commode-hugging drunk.

  Then I saw it ... and dropped a jaw!

  DATE: August 13, 03:00AM

  TO: Jester from Jesterville

  FROM: Troyoncrime, The Orlando Sentinel

  RE: Private Investigators

  Hi Jester,

  Fix It, Inc. is the name. Anything on Lola???

  Troy Brown

  Better Known As: the Man of your Dreams

  The man of my dreams, I snorted. Flirting aside, the information threw me. Herbie had said, Find It, not Fix it, but I should’ve figured as much. That came from a man who thought Cisco currently had dinner with the aliens. The time stamp marked the message at 3:00AM. Troy was obviously a fellow insomniac, so I decided to type up a response. I wasn’t risking anything—perhaps the familiar feeling of failure—but unfortunately, my feet walked that tightrope and fell into the abyss regularly.

  DATE: August 13, 03:05AM

  TO: Troyoncrime, The Orlando Sentinel

  FROM: Jester from Jesterville

  RE: Private Investigators

  Dear Man of My Dreams,

  I promise to deliver on Lola. Where is Fit It located?

  Jester

  The Woman Who’s Been Waiting a Long Time

  I struck the enter key then prayed he was in the buying mood.

  DATE: August 13, 03:08AM

  TO: Jester from Jesterville

  FROM: Troyoncrime, The Orlando Sentinel

  RE: Private Investigators

  Dear Woman Who’s Been Waiting a Long Time,

  Fix It, Inc. is the company name of a group of private investigators. Elmer Herschel set up the trust, so he would know more. According to my source at the police station, this group is ex-military and rumored to be mercenaries-for-hire. All I know is the police department hasn’t worked with them since the beginning.

  Troy Brown

  Better Known As: The Man Worth the Wait

  Peculiar. Wouldn’t the police routinely share information? Mercenaries or not? My guess was Troy had already heard about the tragedy of Howie, but if I played my hand too soon, then he might send it on to press. Going to press early—without irrefutable evidence—could make the guilty jump the country.

  DATE: August 13, 03:13AM

  TO: Troyoncrime, The Orlando Sentinel

  FROM: Jester from Jesterville

  RE: Private Investigators

  Dear Man Worth the Wait,

  What about Livingston & Associates? They’re supposed to be working the case, too.

  Jester

  The Woman Worth Waiting For

  I nearly hurled when I keyboarded that byline, but if the boy wanted to flirt, then far be it from me to rebuff his advances. My inbox beeped.

  DATE: August 13, 03:18AM

  TO: Jester from Jesterville

  FROM: Troyoncrime, The Orlando Sentinel

  RE: Private Investigators

  Dear Woman Worth Waiting For,

  Never heard of them. I’ll check them out.

  Troy Brown

  Better Known as the Man Dying for a Face-to-Face

  (Who am I kidding ... I need a big break.)

&
nbsp; Finally, a language I understood.

  DATE: August 13, 03:23AM

  TO: Troyoncrime, The Orlando Sentinel

  FROM: Jester from Jesterville

  RE: Private Investigators

  Dear Better Known as the Man Dying for a Face-to-Face,

  Find out where that company is headquartered.

  Jester

  Your Big Break

  I’m not sure why I typed that. Call it a supernatural gimme, or call it the ebb and flow of my early morning grasp of reality. Either way, it was a sad state of affairs when Darcy Walker was someone’s lifeline. I slurped the last of my coffee and considered my options. Door number one: do nothing, and then always wonder. Door number two: do something with the small amount of information I’d acquired. Door number three: flip a coin. Leave it to the universe.

  13. WAKE-UP CALL

  WAKING ME REQUIRES YELLING THROUGH a bullhorn, but for some reason, I can always hear a text. Dylan had provided that rise-and-shine service for years. Here in Florida, however, I didn’t need additional assistance. The bloody sun rose to attention before 7AM.

  Freaking sun, I despised it. Made me think it hated the people near the equator.