Jennifer Apodaca - Samantha Shaw 04 - Batteries Required (10 page)

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Authors: Jennifer Apodaca

Tags: #Mystery: Cozy - Dating Service - California

BOOK: Jennifer Apodaca - Samantha Shaw 04 - Batteries Required
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“Never hurts to just look,” he said, then hung up.
I groaned and turned off my phone.
Angel took the trash and the rags to the kitchen, then returned and asked, “What’s that about the blue velvet box? Do you mean the sex-toy kit Mitch St. Claire gave me?”
“Yep. I caught Grandpa and his friends getting ready to break it open. I put it in my bag to come over here but—” I shrugged my shoulders and noticed that my neck was tight.
“Barney pick pocketed it back from you,” Angel finished for me.
I nodded, then rolled my neck and shoulders. Nothing like a struggle with a man who has a gun to tighten up my muscles. I was beginning to think that Gabe was right: I should get some serious training.
Or was that jealousy because he was training another woman?
Damn right.
I picked up my phone and started dialing. “I’ll call Gabe and the three of us will figure out what to do next.” After hitting send, I put the phone to my ear.
A female voice said, “Pulizzi Investigations. How can I help you?”
Huh? I had dialed Gabe’s cell; why was a woman answering? I finally managed, “I’d like to speak to Gabe.”
“Mr. Pulizzi is in the field right now. If you’ll leave a message, I’ll see that he gets it.”
Swear to God, I could feel steam coming out of my ears, just like in cartoons. “What are you doing answering Gabe’s cell phone? Does he know you are answering? Just put him on the phone!”
“I’m sorry, but Mr. Pulizzi is in the field. You’ll need to leave a message.”
Breathe. Yoga breathe, then kill the bitch. “This is Samantha Shaw, Mr. Pulizzi’s—” What? Girlfriend? And what if the bitch on the phone happened to be naked with Mr. Pulizzi? Calling myself his girlfriend would be humiliating. God.
“I know who you are. I will tell Mr. Pulizzi that you called.” Click.
“Die, bitch.” I slammed the phone down on the couch and leaned my head back against the headrest.
“Sam?” Angel sank down next to me.
“Is your gun still in the entertainment center?” Nothing was going right. But Gabe was not doing the naked Italian dance with his assistant. I trusted him.
I just didn’t trust his assistant.
Angel reached over to touch my arm. “Tell me what’s going on.”
I looked over at her and felt a wave of guilt. Angel had been attacked in her own house and here I was thinking about myself. “Gabe’s new assistant is screening his calls. I don’t think he can help us right now.” Pushing away the sick feeling that that produced, I looked over at Angel. “It’s not safe here. You have to stay at my house.”
Angel didn’t move. “What new assistant?”
“The one he just hired. They are supposed to be chasing a cheater at some motel.” I fought to keep away visions of Gabe naked in front of another woman. What did she look like? Who was she? Why was she still alive when I wanted her dead?
“What motel?”
I closed my eyes. “I don’t think Gabe told me.” What with all the sex, who had time for questions? My stomach burned.
“What did he tell you?”
“Her name is Dee. She’s answering phones, doing paperwork, and training to get her PI license.”
Angel lifted her eyebrows. “To replace you?”
“Only if she wants to die.” I would not slip back into being the woman I’d been for most of my marriage. I’d told myself the story of my life that I wanted to believe, instead of facing the truth about my husband, my marriage, and myself.
Those days were over.
“Besides,” I added, “Gabe gave me the key to his house.” That had to mean something, right?
Angel perked up. “Why?”
“He said in case you needed a place to stay. I don’t think he ever bought the theory that Hugh trashed your house.” Which meant Gabe was right. Again.
“So we could take a run over to Gabe’s house and see if we can find out which motel Gabe and the skank are doing their cheater chasing at?”
“Angel!” Laughing, I knew I was in trouble now. I handled stress by ruining clothes. Which was better than in the old days, when I used to bake something chocolate and eat it—although if the stress got bad enough, I still did that. Angel, however, handled stress by stalking. Usually, it was Hugh she spied on. But I’d just offered her a fresh victim—and a challenging one at that.
Stupid!
“Too risky. Gabe might show up at any time. He . . . uh . . . kind of suggested that he had plans to handcuff me to his bed.” Probably he didn’t think I’d share that detail with my best friend. Men were really naive.
“Cool. Hey, when I add sex toys to my line, you and Gabe can be my first customers.”
I laughed, glad that I’d distracted her from the idea of snooping around Gabe’s house. “The first thing we are going to do is get you out of here. It’s not safe. Then we will figure out what’s going on. Like you said, investigate.”
Some of the sparkle slid back into her gaze. “And maybe show a certain PI that you are good at investigating? Prove his new assistant unnecessary?”
I lifted my chin, trying for a confident look. “I’ve already proved myself to Gabe.” Just as long as he didn’t see me right now, all splattered in soda and wine.
Angel stood up. “All right, I’ll pack some clothes and we’ll get out of here. I think I’ll take Gabe up on his offer to stay at his house.”
 
 
I had to follow Angel to Gabe’s house to show her the alarm code and setup.
That was my story. The truth was that I was going to Gabe’s to snoop. Gabe hadn’t called me back. Why had Dee answered Gabe’s cell phone? He always took his phone with him when he went “into the field.” Sure, he set it to vibrate or left it in his truck if he didn’t want the ring to give him away. And what was that comment, “I know who you are?” How did she know? What had Gabe said? What the hell were he and his assistant doing? Maybe I’d get a clue from his office which motel they had gone to. But then, if I found the name of the motel, what was I going to do?
We pulled up to Gabe’s house. Angel parked on the street and I parked in the driveway.
Going up to his house, I took out the key Gabe had given me and stood under the pool of amber from the porch light. Stalling, I said, “I should have gone home and changed first.” My shirt was stiff and stinky.
Angel stood right behind me. “You just called his house phone from your cell and there was no answer.”
“Right. Here goes.” I stuck the key into the dead bolt lock and turned.
The bolt slid back. OK. Then I reached down, pushed the thumb thingie on the doorknob, and leaned into the door.
It opened.
“We’re in!” Angel announced.
I stepped into the tiled entryway. Gabe’s house felt empty and ominous. I hit a wall switch by the door that turned on an overhead light. Then I went to the alarm panel set into the wall behind the door. It blinked a red warning light. All I had to do was hit the correct number sequence and the alarm would deactivate.
I reached out to the keypad to put in the code and went blank. “Oh God! I can’t remember! It’s seven, no five—” I banged my head against the wall.
“Sam!” Angel hissed.
Lifting my head off the wall, I stared at little red light blinking the warning. I had only seconds left! I knew the code. Gabe had given it to me a while back.
Come on, don’t think, just do it!
I reached out and hit seven—suddenly the code came back to me. I punched it in.
The nasty blinking red light died. The alarm was deactivated. I turned around, leaned against the wall, crossed my arms over my stomach, and tried not to throw up.
Guilt. And disgust. A grown woman does not snoop on her boyfriend. I saw that on Oprah—it was supposed to be a sign of an unhealthy relationship or something.
Angel asked, “What would have happened if you hadn’t coded the alarm in time?”
I straightened up. “I don’t know; I never asked. Chances are that Gabe would know, though. Somehow. And he’d rush back here and shoot me, then ask questions.”
“Cool.”
“Not cool! Almost getting shot once is enough for me tonight. Maybe we should leave. You can stay at my house.”
Angel looked around. “I’m staying here.” Her mood improved with each illegal/stalking/snooping step we took. “Let’s get started looking to see if we can get any information on Mr. Pulizzi’s new assistant.”
“This is a bad idea.” I said, then realized Angel was gone. “Angel! Where did you go?”
She came back with two bottles of cold beer. “Would it be a better idea with beer?”
I took one. Hell, I’d already gotten into Gabe’s house. How much more of a crime could drinking his beer be? I didn’t think he’d care about my coming into his house or drinking his beer, since he had given me the key.
I wasn’t so sure he’d be as understanding about my snooping through his office. I twisted off the beer cap and drank a long swig.
Liquid courage. Just like my fake boobs, I often had the need of fake courage. Trying to sound brave, I said, “All right, let’s do it.”
Gabe had a one-story, four-bedroom house. It was a pretty standard, southern California layout. From the front door, a living room and dining room opened on the right. The fourth bedroom-turned-office was on the left. Past that was an archway that led into a kitchen/ family-room combo and a hallway that opened to a bathroom and the three remaining bedrooms. Berber carpet and white tile covered the floors, the walls were white, and the furniture was standard.
But every time I came into Gabe’s house, I felt another root sink into the floor, anchoring me to him and his life. Cripes, I was overwrought. I turned and went into Gabe’s office, heading around the massive desk to his big leather chair, and I turned on the fancy green lamp.
Soft light filled the room. The wall across from Gabe’s desk held framed portraits of him as a uniformed cop getting accolades, shaking hands with the mayor of Los Angeles and other VIPs. There were more recent photos of Gabe with a few TV stars.
Gabe did a little consulting on scripts that had private investigators, bounty hunters, or cops in them. It was a sideline of his PI work. Truthfully, Gabe did need an assistant.
I felt a germ of guilt wiggling in my gut. I smothered that sucker with a drink of beer.
If Dee hadn’t been rude to me on the phone, maybe I wouldn’t have been compelled to snoop.
I looked down at the surface of his desk while Angel headed first for the door to the walk-in closet on the far wall. She put her hand on the doorknob, but a single twist proved it locked. Then she moved to the filing cabinet in the far corner of the room. “Locked. I think I can open both of them.”
I glanced over at her.
She started digging around in her purse.
Uh-oh. The last thing I needed was to have Angel breaking the locks on the closet and the filing cabinet. I wouldn’t be able to explain that. Besides, Gabe’s cases were private, just like my clients’. Well, Gabe saw all my clients’ information because he ran the security check.
Enough. I was making myself more crazy than usual.
“Angel, leave the filing cabinet and closet. Come here and help me.”
She put a bobby pin back in her purse and came around the mahogany desk. “Nice computer. Let me see if I can boot that up while you look for papers and stuff.”
Before I could answer, Angel found the hard drive and turned the computer on. I got up out of the chair and let Angel sit there. The computer would keep her busy and out of trouble. I turned my attention to the stacked horizontal set of files on the right of Gabe’s desk. I started there. The first shelf had bills and stuff. Boring.
I went to the second shelf and pulled a stack of papers down. A fax from Blaine of the permission sheet from Fireman Bob to do a background check. A few other pending items that meant nothing to me. I put those back.
The third shelf had a large envelope. A note on the outside said, “Mr. Pulizzi, please find the lease agreement inside. Thanks.” What lease agreement? Stunned, I turned over the envelope and looked at the flap.
Sealed.
Damn.
What now?
I couldn’t open it without Gabe’s knowing. What lease agreement? This wasn’t about Dee. Was Gabe looking to open an office for his PI business? He hadn’t said anything to me.
At least not since I had been avoiding giving him an answer about working with him. God.
“Gabe’s computer is locked up tight.”
Taking my attention from the envelope in my hand, I turned to look at the computer screen and read Enter Password. “Bet Grandpa could crack it.”
Angel sat up in the chair. “Want me to call him?”
“No.” I shook my head. “Angel, we can’t break into Gabe’s computer. He’s running a business that might have sensitive information. Let’s just look for information on Dee.” I dropped my gaze back to the envelope in my hand.

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