Our Little Secret (Jake Hancock Private Investigator Mystery series Book 5) Read online

  In my apartment on Hollywood Boulevard—the outrageously expensive end, as opposed to the just ridiculously expensive end—I’m hosting a party, to find out if there’s some substance to what she says—or doesn’t say. Worse still, I’m hosting a fancy dress party. The theme? Pulp Fiction.

  I’m looking around at my guests as I stand in the corner of my living area, Belgian beer in hand, feeling like a stranger in my own home. I could go to my shrink an infinite number of times and have that same goofy friendship discussion, and not once have her reply—in response to my “For what?” question—“So that your fake friends could all turn up dressed up as either Jules Winnfield or Vincent Vega.”

  Who am I dressed as? You guessed it. Vincent Vega. Minus the ponytail. I tossed that in the trash a couples minutes ago. It was right before I skulked into this corner and started surveying the crowd, confirming my suspicion that everyone actually is dressed as either Jules or Vincent.

  Some guy’s just stopped my jazz record, and I have a sneaking suspicion the CD he’s holding in his hand is the Pulp Fiction original motion picture soundtrack. Not exactly consistent with the ambience I, as the host, had in mind. Now’s a good a time as any to address my guests about where they’ve gone wrong.

  I put two fingers underneath my tongue and blow a pretty impressive whistle. All the Vincents and Juleses turn to me.

  Some drunk Jules in the back raises his glass and says, “Jack’s going to make a speech! Woohoo!” Or some other equally annoying interjection.

  I hold my hand up, quietening him. Then say, “It’s Jake. And I’m not going to make a speech. But thanks for blurting that out, Jules.”

  He and his buddy look at each other. Then his buddy says, “He’s come as Vincent.” He looks at Speech Guy, noting his shade of skin color. Then turns back to me, “Nice one, you racist.”

  Well this is awkward. “It’s not because of that. Guy doesn’t have a ponytail.”

  Speech Guy turns around, showing me his ponytail.

  I say, “I did not see that. Anyway, that’s kinda my point. When I invited everyone, I wasn’t expecting everyone to either come as Jules or Vincent. I was hoping for at least a couple Mia Wallaces, definitely a Butch. A Gimp would’ve been a long shot, but you see where I’m going with this.”

  They stare at me dumbly. Maybe they haven’t.

  I continue, “It’s not much of a Pulp Fiction party if we’ve all come dressed as the same two characters.” I notice something. “And you over there drinking what suspiciously looks like one of the good beers, I specifically requested that you guys drink the macro beer I bought for you.”

  A Vincent asks, “Macro?”

  “The Budweisers.”

  The guy holding the CD chimes in, “Wow, this is quite the party, Jack.” He looks around. “It’s a sausage fest, and what’s with the goofy jazz music.” He raises his glass, addressing the whole crowd. “What says everyone to ‘Son Of A Preacher Man’?”

  They all raise their glasses and say, “Aye!”

  “What says everyone?” and “Aye!” I give up. So I say, “Fuck it. Put on whatever music you want and feel free to help yourselves to my stash of Belgian beer hidden in the utilities room.”

  They cheer, drowning out my saying, “And thanks, everyone, for coming.”

  The dude who stopped the jazz music puts on his original motion picture soundtrack, and my guests go back to ignoring me as they enjoy my apartment and each other, despite it being a “sausage fest.”

  So this sucks.

  Not only will I have to pay my Mexican cleaner double next time she visits, but I’ve also been accused of being a racist, and I’m pretty sure someone made it into my apartment wearing shoes with the type of sole that leaves scuff marks on wooden floors, despite my casual inspection of all the shoes as the guests came in.

  After sulking a second, I decide to make the best of it and go and grab a bowl of Cheeze Doodles and an extra-strong beer, to enjoy my own company as I sit on the sofa.

  It’s been an hour since the last guest arrived, so, ten minutes later, when the intercom buzzes, I’m surprised to see that there’s a Mia Wallace standing outside my apartment building.

  I’m even more surprised when she looks up at the camera and tells me who she is.

  2.

  “MEGAN BOOKS! WHAT the hell are you doing here?” I say.

  Nine months ago, I was working as a private investigator, and Megan was a client of mine. I’ve since given up the profession. But I’ll get on to the complexities of the circumstances surrounding my retirement later.

  “Jake Hancock. I expected a warmer welcome,” she says.

  “Jesus, sorry. I just didn’t expect you. How did you find out about my party?”

  “Can we discuss that inside? Someone just walked past who was either a bum, a prostitute or both.”

  “Sure.”

  I buzz her in.

  Two minutes later I greet her at the door.

  We take a second to examine each other’s appearance. Maybe there is something to what my shrink’s been suggesting. That I need more friends. It sure is good to see Megan.

  “You look so…different,” I say.

  She raises an eyebrow. Says, “You do know it’s a wig, right? And stop smiling like that. It’s creeping me out.” But she smiles back.

  “I know it’s a wig.”

  The difference I referred to is revealed by her having not buttoned up the third-from-the-top button on her shirt. Let’s just say something’s been augmented further since last time I saw her.

  We hug. And we got close enough while she was a client that my breathing in her perfume is totally cool with her.

  “If anyone else breathed in my perfume like the top notes contained a coded message for the meaning of life, I’d be totally creeped out by now. But seeing as it’s you, Jake Hancock, I’ll let you off.” She playfully punches me on the arm. “Who have you dressed up as, Mr. Pink?”

  “Vincent Vega, minus the ponytail. But you knew that.”

  “Are you going to invite me in?”

  “Jesus, sorry.” I step aside. Seeing Megan, who I didn’t expect to see for another three months, when we planned to meet up in her hometown of Rodeo, Texas, has me all out of sorts. I’m usually smoother than this, and better with the ladies. Megan knows this, which totally explains why, after she’s surveyed my crowd of guests, she says, “I expected a party hosted by Jake Hancock to have a larger female contingent.” She looks around again. “Or at least some females present.”

  “No females answered my ad on Craigslist.”

  “Apart from me. Do you want me to take my shoes off?”

  So that answers the question of how she found out about my party. But it raises some other questions. I’ll get on to those after the pleasantries.

  I look down at her feet and see stiletto heels. Then say, “Nah. I’m totally cool with whatever they’ll do to my floor.”

  She raises an eyebrow again. “Still the same terrible liar.”

  I take the wine bottle she brought with her, and tell her to wait in a safe corner for me. As I go through to the kitchen, she goes through to the living area, and the crowd of Juleses and Vincents cheers when they see her. I pour her a glass in double time, and rush over to her before someone has the chance to ask her if she’d like to twist.

  I slow my walk as I approach her. She takes the glass from me and smiles. “You gave me a drinking vessel made of glass. I feel so special.”

  Everyone else is drinking from plastic cups I bought in especially.

  I say, “Drinking vessel? Contingent? I do hope you left your thesaurus at the door. And you’re worth it. You know that, Megan.”

  “Clearly. You haven’t phoned or written to me, stranger. What gives?”

  She hasn’t been in contact with me either, but I know better than to remind her that communication is a two-way street. My mom raised a more sophisticated man than that.

  I make small talk instead, ch
anging the subject. “So, when did you get the second boob job?”

  “Are they that obvious? I thought they looked quite natural.”

  I ignore the fact that I don’t consider a woman in her early twenties going up two cup sizes to be natural, and look at them again, turning my head to the side. “Don’t tell me. Dr. Hampton? No, wait, Dr. Morris.”

  She puts her hands on her hips. “How the hell did you know that?”

  “He’s a fine plastic surgeon. I’m familiar with his work. So you got them done in town. Does this mean you’re officially a Hollywoodsman?”

  “Hollywoodsman?”

  “I could have said waitress.”

  When Megan was my client, she’d just completed a TV commercial gig, hocking a brand of toothpaste I can’t remember. I was just fucking with her by adding that “waitstaff” comment; Megan’s too good to be waiting tables.

  It isn’t routine for me to stay in touch with ex-clients. But Megan and I really hit it off when we worked together, so we planned on staying in touch. She became like a little sister to me, in a totally non-creepy way. As I said, we promised to meet up exactly a year after I’d spent the weekend with her, when I posed as her much-older boyfriend to investigate the mystery of who her biological father is. Did I think it would happen? I wasn’t optimistic.

  So I’m suspicious about her turning up like this. As I said, Megan hasn’t been in contact with me for nine months.

  “Ouch. Do I get to announce any news before you work it out?” she asks.

  I lean in, smelling her neck. “You’re also wearing a new brand of perfume. And you can go ahead and tell me you’re trying to make it as an actress in Tinsletown.”

  She smiles, then sarcastically says, “I am trying to make it as an actress in Tinsletown. Am I that obvious?”

  I shrug. “You were an aspiring actress nine months ago, and with you moving here, to the film industry hub, well, I kinda just connected the dots. I’m good like that.”

  “And what about you? How are things with you, Jake?”

  I take a sip of beer. “What do you want to know?”

  “How’s your wife?”

  “We’re divorced and she lives in the Caribbean with her new husband.”

  “I’m a little hazy on the stuff with your wife. That’s a good thing, right?”

  “You can congratulate me, but it turned out to be quite amicable in the end.”

  “And work? How’s the investigating?”

  “There’s a vacant position for Hollywood’s premier private investigator, if you have any friends who would be interested.”

  “That’s a bummer.”

  I get the impression, as Megan looks around, avoiding my eye contact, that it is a bummer, and we weren’t just making small talk.

  So I say, “I admit, I’m a little disappointed there wasn’t more lighthearted conversation before you told me what it is you’re really here for.”

  She turns to me. “Jake, it really is good to see you. And I was planning on coming to see you anyway…”

  “But?”

  “But I do have an agenda for tonight that goes beyond just looking up a semi-old friend.”

  “Let me guess, you have a new boyfriend, and it’s getting kinda serious, and you want me to find out if he has any skeletons in his closet before you let yourself get carried away and start deciding whether he’s husband material?”

  Her eyes bug out. “Jesus, you’re on a roll tonight.”

  I look around the crowd of Juleses and Vincents, finishing up with Mia Wallace here, and then say, “What can I say, I’m on a roll.”

  3.

  SO THERE I was thinking that this disastrous fancy dress party was looking up.

  Megan says, “Now I feel bad.”

  I shrug. Then say, “Forget about it. You needed a P.I., and you thought of me. I’m honored.”

  She puts a hand on my shoulder, says, “Jake? Did I hurt your feelings?” Then she looks at me with her puppy dog eyes.

  “No, don’t be silly. And I believe you that you would’ve come to see me anyway.”

  “Good. Because it’s true.”

  I notice a guy over Megan’s shoulder has brought a beer bong with him. Old-looking college kids. It makes me wonder what other people might’ve come along for the party.

  Then I say to Megan, “I’ll help you out, as long as you do one thing for me.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Help me get rid of all these people.”

  She smiles. “Deal.”

  They’re stubborn at first, until I tell them there’s a titty bar a mile east that has a stripper with three breasts. Three giant breasts. Quite the tourist spot.

  We figure that some of them will come back (after finding out such things only exist in Russian porn movies), and will probably harass me through my intercom. So I suggest that Megan and I make a date of her visit, hit a bar, go to some restaurant, and all the while she can tell me all about this guy she’s dating and ask me to convince her that she’s not a bad person.

  We’re sitting in the bar, only on our first drink, and she’s already popped her “Am I a bad person for doing this?” cherry.

  “Probably,” I reply.

  She punches me on the arm, which you’ve probably noticed is her way of dealing with my sarcasm. Only this time I’m not being sarcastic.

  She says, “That’s not the right answer. You’re supposed to tell me that I’m just being practical, and that it doesn’t mean that I don’t love him. It’s just…” Her voice trails off.

  “Just what?”

  “This is going to sound silly.”

  I wait for her to continue.

  “He went away one weekend, with his college buddies. And, well, he came back with—”

  “Scratches on his back?”

  “No—”

  “A hickey on his neck?”

  “No—”

  “Questionable marks on his genitals?”

  “Ew, gross, Jake! None of those things. He came back with a gift for me. Quite an expensive gift.”

  “You’re right. That does sound silly.”

  “I haven’t finished yet. He said he’d gone to Vegas with his buddies. But I found a receipt for the gift, purchased from a mall in Hickston.”

  “Never heard of the place. Why’s it a big deal?”

  She raises an eyebrow. “How would you travel to Vegas, Jake?”

  “I’d take a plane from LAX.”

  “And if you drove?”

  “I don’t see where you’re going with this.”

  She rolls her eyes. “Looks like your hot streak’s over. Hickston’s north of Hollywood, and Vegas is—”

  “East,” I interrupt.

  “Exactly. And Hickston’s north-east.”

  “So he had no reason to be driving through Hickston.” I think a second. “Unless the gift he purchased was something special he had to pick up from there?”

  “He traveled to Vegas and he couldn’t find an expensive but tacky-looking piece of jewelry?”

  “Okay, I can see why you’re suspicious. It could be worse. He could’ve come back with venereal disease. Or a dead hooker in his trunk.”

  “You’re not helping.”

  “As much as it pains me to say it, it’s probably innocent.”

  “I don’t know…”

  She looks around the bar, looking all pensive. She looks sexy when she’s pensive, so I let her stew for thirty seconds or so before I offer some benign scenarios for his having traveled to Hickston to buy some shit piece of jewelry. “In his mind the jewelry might not be tacky. That jeweler in some shit-splat town might’ve sold the one single piece of jewelry he thought perfect for the love of his life. The worst thing he could be guilty of is having terrible taste in expensive gifts.”

  She turns to me. “That doesn’t fit. When he presented the gift to me, he didn’t seem to know anything about it. He seemed unaware, when I, accepting the gift with feigned excitement, started p
ointing out its features.”

  “So the guy doesn’t know anything about jewelry. Am I to assume this man has testicles between his legs?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then those testicles are consistent with his cluelessness in regards to jewelry. Relax, you’ve found a perfectly functioning male as your mate.”

  “But it undermines your theory for his having traveled to that specific place to get the jewelry.”

  “True. But I have others.”

  “Like?”

  I think a second. “He could have friends or relatives there, and wanted to kill two birds with one stone.”

  I can’t believe that on a Friday night I’m defending a guy to his girlfriend, who’s received a Dr. Morris boob job, probably in time for the incisions to have healed. I’ve really grown as a person. I make a mental note to mention this to my shrink.

  Megan says, “Then why would he say he traveled to Vegas?”

  “Good point. Maybe he wanted it to be a surprise, so he made up the first clichéd excuse that came into his unimaginative mind.”

  “And be gone all weekend.”

  “You’re right. The timescale doesn’t fit. Look, there could be a million reasons why he lied about going to Vegas when he actually drove north-east.”

  “And is it your professional opinion that I’m worrying over something insignificant?”

  Guy goes away for the weekend, lies about having traveled to Vegas, and returns with some uninspired piece of jewelry, to what? Feel less guilty about whatever it is he’s done?

  “I’m sure it’s nothing.”

  “But you’ll look into it? Just to make sure?”

  She looks pensive again, and her Dr. Morris work of art is momentarily exposed by her loose-fitting white shirt having opened slightly. Plus, Megan’s a good friend.

  So I say, “I’ll find out for you. But you have to promise me one thing.”

  “Thanks. And what do you want me to promise?”