Death on the Bella Constance (A Jesse Watson Mystery Series Book 6)
Read Death on the Bella Constance (A Jesse Watson Mystery Series Book 6) Online
Authors: Ann Mullen
by
Ann Mullen
This book is a work of fiction. Any characters
portrayed, living or dead are imaginary. Any resemblance to actual persons is
completely coincidental. Any places, business establishments, locales, events,
or incidents in this book are the product of the author’s imagination, or used
fictitiously.
ALL
RIGHTS RESERVED
This book, or parts thereof,
may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
So many things happen in a person’s life
,
it makes one wonder what would happen
if they had chosen a different path along the way. As for me, my life changed
completely when I moved to the mountains of
Virginia
.
I was thirty-one years old and had a boring existence. When I
thought my life couldn’t get much worse, my parents informed me they were
moving away. I would be alone, no family close by, living a life that was going
nowhere. So I made the choice to move with them when they offered, and we
settled in a little town called Stanardsville. On a sadder note, my dad died
unexpectedly shortly thereafter, but we managed to pull ourselves together and
go on. Piece by piece, my ho-hum life improved immensely. Things just kept
getting better and better.
I dated Cole, a
Greene
County
deputy (who later dated my sister
for three seconds to get back at me), got a job working for Billy
Blackhawk—Cherokee Indian, Private Investigator—and then I married him. Take
note that Billy and Cole have been childhood friends, so when I came into the
picture, their relationship took a serious beating. Tension was definitely in
the air for a while. But true friends never stay mad forever, so they sucked it
up and went back to being the buddies they had always been, to some degree. A
lot has happened since those days, but that’s a few stories ago. Not going
there is best for everyone.
Billy and I celebrated our first glorious year of marriage
this past December, and as a Christmas gift/anniversary present, he gave me a
diamond bracelet. That was a shocker because he knew I’ve never been one to
care a lot about expensive jewelry or fancy clothes, but I quickly rebounded
when he opened his card and two plane tickets fell out. I slid the bracelet on
my wrist and said, “This bracelet will look lovely on my wrist when we dine at
the captain’s table on our cruise to
Alaska
.”
He held the tickets up and said, “My thoughts exactly!”
The tickets weren’t real tickets, they were just facsimiles
of ones, but they got the point across. We were going on a cruise to
Alaska
! And that just goes to show you what
kind of man Billy is. He’s so intuitive. He got the message. The tickets might
not have been real, but my desire to take a vacation was. I didn’t even put a
date on them when I printed them off the computer.
Billy always knows what I want and need. He would take me on
my cruise. He’s the man I’ve waited my whole life for, even though he does have
a few years on me, sixteen to be exact. But what does age matter when you find
your soul mate?
Billy and I run a private investigation business (with a new
name since we got married and became partners in the full sense),
Blackhawk
& Blackhawk Detective Agency,
and since my mother Minnie is so much a
part of our life, whether she’s staying at her house or ours, she has
inadvertently slipped into our little circle of crazies, sickos, and all the
other kinds of criminal elements we come in contact with out there. Sometimes,
we actually have cases that aren’t so life-threatening, but not too often.
There have been many times when our lives have been put on the line. She knows
that firsthand.
Not so long ago, Mom was almost killed by a man who was
mentally disturbed, and then she was kidnapped by a woman with an ax to grind
against the mother of that man. Even after all that, I know she still enjoys
the intrigue and mystery part of our job; it’s just the other times that make
her uneasy. But nothing could keep her away from Maisy and Ethan, our two
children. They’re still quite young and need lots of attention from their
grandmother.
Mom is going to remarry. She met a fine man named Eddie a
while back and decided that my father would want her to move on with her life.
So, she’s taking the plunge again, but no one knows when. She says she’s in no
hurry, but we all know she’s too busy being involved in the snoop business to
commit to a date.
My sister, Claire, is going to marry Randy Morgan, a man who
has been crazy about her since the first day they met. She finally divorced
Carl the jerk, and that’s when Randy stepped up to the plate as a romantic
interest. Claire has two children: Benny and Carrie, and recently announced
that there was another one on the way. Let’s just hope the marriage comes
before the new baby for Mom’s sake—she’s still a bit old-fashioned when it
comes to stuff like that.
Billy’s brother, Jonathan, is getting married to Lu Ann
Knotts, a woman he let slip away a little while back. Jonathan is a bounty
hunter, and when an arsonist burned down his house and his brother Daniel died
as a result, he called her in to investigate. They share a past. Lu Ann is a
profiler. She examines crimes scenes, among other things, and then works up a
profile on the culprit. As soon as the two of them started working together
again, sparks flew and love was once again in the air. They haven’t set a date
yet, but I’m sure it won’t be long. Lu Ann said she has waited long enough.
Billy and I have two dogs and a cat: Athena, Thor, and Spice
Cat. We also just recently hired a nanny, who happens to be a relative on
Billy’s side. Helene Sullivan makes our life easier—especially since she loves
to cook and I don’t. And the list goes on and on.
Hello. My name is Jesse Watson Blackhawk. Welcome to my
world. The private eye business is a 24/7 job, so it wasn’t a surprise to me
when we had to put our vacation cruise on hold because of a job that came up.
After Christmas we had decided that we would take our cruise in April and until
then we would take on a few simple cases such as catching thieves and roughing
up stalkers… nothing too time consuming.
In early March, Billy and I were sitting in the den with Mom,
Helene and our two children, Maisy (our one year old adopted daughter—another
long story) and Ethan (our infant son), working up final plans for our trip to
Alaska
when we got a call from a woman
named Penny Johanson.
Penny Johanson had just discovered that her husband of four years
was having an affair, and she wanted proof. She said that at first she was
angry, but after she got over the initial shock, she wanted out of the
marriage. They didn’t have any children, but there was one major concern: her
husband, Arnold, was a high profile lawyer in
Charlottesville
, and getting a divorce was not going to be easy. He had an
image he insisted upon maintaining, and he was adamant about keeping his slate
squeaky clean even though behind the scene he had an ugly side to himself. His
controlling behavior would be a problem. She wanted the job done
discreetly—with an emphasis on the word discreet—and she was willing to pay
high-dollar for us to do it.
Billy explained to her that we were in the process of going
on a well-deserved vacation, and she, in turn, doubled her original offer. She
was desperate. She probably would’ve offered even more money if Billy had still
refused. Needless to say, Billy and I both agreed that there wouldn’t be any
harm in putting off our trip for a couple of weeks, especially with that kind
of money at stake. My diamond bracelet could rest in its case for a little
longer.
In a worst case scenario, we figured it would take about two
weeks to get the dirt on Arnold Johanson. Most of these kinds of cases have
taken far less time. Billy’s very good at what he does, and I’m learning the
tricks of the trade from him. So, between the two of us, this job should have
been a breeze. Dirt is dirt. Little did we know that a job so simple would turn
out to be a dangerous ordeal with such dire consequences. A tragedy was in the
making.
We took the job and did what we do best—sneak around and
follow people. The first week we kept hitting a dead end. Arnold Johanson was
either not really having an affair, or he was extremely good at hiding it. But
low and behold, on Friday the second week, we caught him hooking up with a
woman.
Arnold Johanson owned a cabin in the woods set back in a
well-secluded area in
Albemarle
County
.
He bought it when he first moved to the area, and lived in it until the money
started coming in. He named his home
Haven
. Penny later told us, before
the tragedy, that he had considered it his quiet place away from the rat race
of every day life.
After he married Penny, he took her there for a weekend, and
she hated it; not the cabin, but the insects and wildlife that came with it.
Even the deer scared her, so that was their one and only trip there together.
He kept the place and hired a caretaker to check on it, cut the grass, and do
whatever repairs were needed. She had almost forgotten about the cabin.
On that Friday afternoon,
Arnold
drove to his cabin while we followed him at an inconspicuous distance. By the
time we had crept through the woods to his place, we discovered a fancy little
blue Mazda parked next to his BMW. As we snuck around with our trusty camera
taking pictures, we could tell that she was, indeed, his lover. They had sex in
every room that we could get a view of, and then the weirdest thing happened:
after their sexual escapades, they sat down at a computer and he appeared to be
teaching her how to use it.
Billy and I looked at each other and snickered, wondering
what the deal was. We chalked it up to people just doing their own thing, so we
went about doing ours. We took plenty of pictures that proved he was having an
affair, and even stayed there until they left. We presented the photos to his
wife the next day. Her reaction was explosive. She went off on a tirade. She
cursed, yelled and cried, and then swore that she’d kill him.
Her behavior was unexpected. Billy and I had discussed her at
length and had decided that she appeared to be a woman in control of herself.
But this was a real surprise. Billy and I looked at each other when her rant
was over, and I’m sure we both thought the same thing: Penny Johanson could be
unpredictable and possibly dangerous.
It wasn’t so long ago that Billy had told a client her
husband was having an affair with a man. The woman was so distraught that she
went home and put a bullet in her husband’s head as he took a shower. That was
an ugly mess. Later, she claimed that Billy told her to do it, and Billy almost
got burned over it. Sometimes it just doesn’t pay to get out of bed.
We tried to calm Penny down and figure out what to do next.
She wanted her husband dead, and we wanted out of the job.
A day later, while Penny was still trying to figure out what
to do about her cheating husband, we were ready to call it quits. The job had
dragged on way too long. She already had what she needed, but it seemed she
wanted more. She said she wanted a load of evidence to throw in her husband’s
face.
“Just finish out this one last week, please,” she begged.
We thought it was a waste of time, plus Penny’s bizarre
behavior had sent up a red flag. What was the deal with her? Billy and I agreed
to stay on until Friday to take more photos of which were sure to be
Arnold
’s last date with his mistress, Rona
Early. At the same time, we were going to keep an eye on Penny. Something
wasn’t right about her obsessive need to prolong the inevitable. After that, we
were finished.
We should’ve walked away then...
As we figured, come Friday,
Arnold
met his lady friend for their Friday afternoon romp, but
things didn’t go as planned. Trouble was waiting for him as soon as he walked
in the front door. Two of Rona’s buddies were waiting for them when they
arrived, and forced
Arnold
to sit down at the computer. From
everything we had found out about Arnold Johanson, Billy and I knew what was
happening. This band of thieves was going to steal all of
Arnold
’s money if they could, and if they
couldn’t, they’d probably kill him. Billy whispered to me that they were
probably going to force
Arnold
to transfer his money to an account
they had already set up. That’s how criminals like them operate.
But things didn’t go quite as they had expected.
Arnold
refused to cooperate. He kept
shaking his head and getting up from the computer. Then the guy would shove him
back down.
I looked at Billy and whispered, “Someone’s going to die here
tonight.” The words were barely out of my mouth when the same guy pulled out a
gun, stuck it to
Arnold
’s head and yelled, “Do it, or I’ll
blow your brains out all over that screen!”
And then… Penny barged in through the front door.
How she got past us without our knowledge is still a mystery.
Normally, nothing gets by Billy. He’s an American Indian. His incredible sense
of hearing is just one of his many talents. It’s uncanny. If a bird flaps its
wings in the woods Billy hears it. No lie.
Her intrusion not only startled us, but also startled the guy
with the gun. He turned to look in her direction and the gun went off. The
bullet hit her square in the head. She was dead when she hit the floor.
For Billy, the shock of it all wore off much more quickly
than it did for me. I was still in a daze when he grabbed me by the arm and
said, “Come on. We can’t let those killers get away! We have to stop them!”