Double Iniquity, Reed Ferguson Private Investigator Mysteries: Book 17

Sample Chapter

CHAPTER ONE

“You’re killing me!”

I stopped running and sucked in a tortured breath. My wife, Willie, glanced over her shoulder at me. Then she slowed down, turned, and jogged in place.

“Reed, you said you wanted to go for a run with me, so stop complaining.”

“I can see I’m not going to get much sympathy from you,” I said through gasps. I put a hand to my side and rubbed where an angry stitch was letting me know I hadn’t been exercising enough lately. “I don’t jog as much as you do.”

Willie – real name Wilhelmina – was about twenty feet ahead of me. We’d jogged north and west from our condo in Uptown toward the City of Cuernavaca Park – only a couple of miles, but I was dying. She, on the other hand, was sailing along, looking sexy in running tights and a light gray insulated exercise jacket, with barely a drop of sweat on her pretty face.

“Come on.” She spun around and ran off, then called out, “We need to hurry before it gets too dark.”

It was just after five on an early December evening, and a dusky gloom was settling in. Behind us, the lights of the buildings in downtown Denver winked on. Traffic whizzed by on Twentieth Street, oblivious to us.

Willie was far ahead as I started after her. What had I been thinking? I was not in shape and she was. But, I thought as I managed a hapless sigh, it was good for me.

Willie turned off Twentieth Street and into the City of Cuernavaca Park, a small green space by the Platte River that was popular with urbanites who lived nearby. When I reached the park, Willie was jogging onto the concrete path by the river. I followed her, and noticed the temperature drop near the water. I peered ahead, but Willie was nowhere in sight.

“Willie?” I yelled as I hurried down the path.

Then, in the shadows, I saw a figure in a gray jacket sprawled in the underbrush near the trail. Willie. I raced up to her.

“Are you okay?” I said as I bent down to check on her.

She nodded, and I helped her to her feet. Once I knew she was okay, I couldn’t resist teasing her.

“What were you doing off the trail? Were you going to hide, then leap out and scare me when I went by?”

She shook her head. “I thought I heard someone yelling, maybe for help.” She gestured toward a bridge that spanned the river. The water gurgled below us, and the hum of traffic was all around. “Maybe I was mistaken. Regardless, as I stepped off the path, I tripped.”

I put my hands on my hips. “Are you kidding? At this time of night, you shouldn’t be wandering off the trail. You don’t know who might be lurking around the bridge, or anywhere else around here.”

She held up a hand. “I know, I’m always careful. But I thought I heard someone.”

“Then call for help, or wait for me,” I chided her. I looked around and strained to hear over the sounds of the river. “Is someone there?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. But there’s that.” She pointed at the ground, where a small black duffel bag sat near the underbrush.

“Who does that belong to?” I asked.

“Search me.”

I grinned. “Tempting.”

We both contemplated the bag for a moment, then turned toward the river.

“Hello?” I called into the dusk. “Anyone around?”

A lone jogger passed by on the trail, her ponytail bobbing as she ran.

“Did you see anyone near the trail?” Willie called out to her. The woman shook her head, but didn’t stop. Willie frowned. “That wasn’t very helpful.”

“I doubt she was nearby when you tripped,” I said.

I took a few steps toward the bag, then bent down. It had a white zipper and an Adidas logo.

“Be careful.” It was her turn to chide me. “What if there’s a bomb in there?”

“Unlikely.”

I prodded the bag, then noticed the zipper was undone, so I opened it. We both looked inside.

“It’s paper,” Willie murmured.

“Money.” I stared into the bag. “Lots of it.” I glanced up and down the river bank. “Do you see anyone?”

She shook her head. “Just us.”

I stuck a hand in and rifled around.

“Don’t you dare pretend like something bit your hand to scare me,” Willie warned me.

I glanced at her. “Or what?”

“Reed.”

I chuckled as I continued to search the bag.

“There’s nothing in here but stacks of bills,” I announced. “Lots of twenties, and some fifties and hundreds.” I tried to count it, but lost track. It was a lot.

“Drug money?”

“That’s a good guess.”

Willie whistled. “What do we do with it?”

I sat back on my haunches. “I can’t find a label or anything to tell us who this belongs to.”

I stood up and moved toward the river and looked around.

“Where are you going?” she asked. “If you don’t want me wandering around in the dark, you shouldn’t either.”

I took a few more steps and stopped. “Fair enough.” I peered into the gloom. “Are you sure you heard someone?”

She shook her head. “Not positive.”

I returned to the bag and picked it up.

“What are you going to do?” she asked.

I waved a hand around. “We can’t just leave it here.”

“Just because you’re a detective, doesn’t mean you need to investigate this situation.”

“A private investigator,” I said, sounding a lot like Tom Selleck’s character Magnum. He hated being called a detective. I really wished I sounded more like my hero, Humphrey Bogart. He made everything look cool, and I aspired to be a cool private investigator like Sam Spade, who Bogie played perfectly.

“You sound miffed, like your mother sometimes does.”

My jaw dropped. “Oh, that’s cold.”

I love my mother, but she does miffed better than anyone I know. They say you become your parents, but good Lord, was I turning into my mother? The horror …

Willie smiled, then grew serious. “Shouldn’t we call the police?”

I frowned. “We could, but I’m sure they’d tell us to wait for them.”

“For how long?”

“Hm. Hard to say. This isn’t an emergency, so they’re not going to race here with lights blazing. And if they’re tied up with other calls, it could be quite a while before they get here.”

We contemplated the bag for a moment. Then she rubbed her arms and shivered.

“This can’t be anything good.  Do you think the person who left it here – or maybe whoever’s supposed to pick it up – is watching us right now?”

I did a one-eighty, staring into the darkness. Was someone out there? Would that person try to harm us in order to get the bag back?

“I don’t feel safe here, Reed,” she whispered.

I nodded. I thought for just a second longer. “Yeah, me neither. But I also don’t feel okay just leaving the bag behind. It’s getting cold. ​Let’s get out of here. ​We’ll take it home, and I’ll call Spillman.”

Detective Sarah Spillman is a homicide detective with the Denver Police Department. Over the course of many of my investigations, our paths had crossed, and she and I had become friends. Although it may have been unorthodox to turn over the money to a homicide detective, I preferred that over a random call to the department. I was sure there would be a lot of questions about us finding the bag, and having the department know I was friends with Spillman seemed a good thing.

I pointed toward the riverbank. “If for some reason the police want to know where we found the money, I’ll come back here and show them.”

“That sounds like a good plan.” Willie shivered again. “Better than you getting involved in this.”

“In what?” I laughed. “We’re just turning over this bag to the police. No big deal.”

“I’ll bet they’ll have questions.”

I nodded. “It’s no big deal,” I repeated.

How many times had I thought that before? And how many times had I been wrong?

Too many to count.

 

Pawlish has the ability to recreate the noir feeling of Bogart films in 21st century settings. ~Reader review