Hotshot P.i.

You want to see bad behavior, he thought to himself, wait until I get my hands on Clancy. A couple of women stayed to give him grief. He ignored them, waiting for the stalls to empty out. As he glanced around the room, he assessed the situation. There was only one door. Clancy hadn’t had time to come back out.

Jake waited for the last woman to exit. As she stomped past, he noticed that the summer breeze coming through the open window at the end of the room smelled sweet with the scent of freshly mown grass. Jake could hear the sound of a lawnmower buzzing just outside at ground level. In front of the window, someone had upended a trash can.

Jake cursed himself and his stupidity as he pushed open each stall door on his way to the window. All the stalls were now empty, just as he knew they would be. And on the corner of the metal window frame was a small scrap of navy blue material that perfectly matched the shirt Clancy had been wearing.

Damn her hide, she’d given him the slip.

Chapter Five

Clancy caught the first flight out of Kalispell. She thought she’d feel safe once the plane was in the air. Instead, she couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was after her. And not just Jake Hawkins.

She glanced around at the other passengers but saw no one she knew. No one even appeared remotely interested in her. As the plane banked to the east, she looked out the window and told herself she had to calm down and think clearly. Her life depended on it. And yet she’d never felt more afraid, more alone.

Except for one other time in her life. The night of the resort fire. The night Lola Strickland was murdered. Clancy closed her eyes and tried to fight back the painful memories. But the memories came, edged with one penetrating truth: she’d walked in her sleep that night, just as she had the night Dex Westfall died.

It had been late that night ten years ago when she’d come down the stairs, awakened by the sound of her parents arguing. Her parents never argued. Until that moment, she’d led an idyllic life on the island. The only dark spot in her whole childhood had been her required yearly visits back East to see Aunt Kiki and get a little culture so she didn’t grow up a wild heathen. Clancy had hated the visits, the stiff, prissy dresses, the long, boring lessons in social graces, her aunt’s endless lectures on the value of money and the Talbott name.

But it was her aunt’s low opinion of Clancy’s father that made her call Kiki the Wicked Witch of the East. Kiki had always thought her sister had married beneath the family name when she’d married Clarence Jones. Clancy idolized her father.

Clancy had stopped on the stairs when she heard her father’s voice saying that he couldn’t go to the police, wouldn’t go to the police. Warren was his best friend.

But her mother had argued that Warren was stealing from the businesses and had been for some time. Clancy felt a sick, sinking feeling, knowing that their lives had suddenly changed and would never be the same again.

When her father left by boat to meet Warren at the resort, Clancy followed by land, afraid for her father for reasons she couldn’t explain then or now.

But when she reached the resort office, she could hear her father and Warren inside and decided to wait in one of the boats tied at the dock. She’d fallen asleep.

Later, she’d woken only to find that she’d walked in her sleep. To this day,’ she had no idea where she’d been or what she might have seen. All she remembered was waking to find herself standing outside the office.

Her father’s boat was gone. Inside the office she could hear voices raised in anger. From the shadows, she watched in horror as Warren Hawkins struggled with Lola Strickland. Lola stumbled backward into an adjoining room. Both figures disappeared for a few moments, then Warren emerged at a run. Behind him the office burst into flame, and within seconds the fire consumed the building.

Just thinking about that night brought back the incredible regret. Lola’s death and Warren Hawkins’s arrest ended the life she and Jake had known on Hawk Island. Jake and his mother left Flathead; Jake left hating Clancy. Clancy’s parents had moved to Alaska to start over. They’d lost everything. Kiki purchased the lodge at Clancy’s pleading. Clancy had foolishly hoped her family would some day be reunited there. Two years later her parents were killed in a small plane crash outside of Fairbanks.

Clancy didn’t come back to the boarded-up lodge for years and then only occasionally. At first the bad memories were just too painful. Then the good memories started to surface again.

She opened her eyes and looked out the plane window. She’d had such hopes when she’d returned. Had she made a mistake coming back? Was there a curse on the island and her? Some debt not yet paid?

She felt a chill as she thought of Jake. He’d believed his father’s version of what happened that night. Warren Hawkins testified during the trial that he knew nothing about the missing money. After Clarence Jones left, he’d gotten out the books to go over them. Warren was in charge of that part of the businesses in the partnership with Clarence, but he’d turned a lot of the responsibility over to Lola, he’d said.

Warren said he’d heard someone in the adjoining office. When he’d gone to check, he saw two suitcases outside the door and found Lola cleaning out the safe.

He’d tried to stop her. Lola had poured gasoline around the office, obviously planning to cover her tracks. In their struggle, she must have lit the gas. The room burst into flames. That’s when Warren swears he saw someone move in the shadows; someone else was in the office by the back door. When he ran out, Lola was still alive. He thought she was right behind him.

Warren said the other person in the office that night must have taken the money from the safe, because it wasn’t found in the debris from the fire and Lola certainly didn’t get away with it. That person must have also murdered Lola. In the autopsy it was found that Lola had died from a head wound—not from the fire. That made Warren look all the more guilty.

In the end, the jury didn’t believe there was another person in the office that night. Nor did they believe Lola set the fire. It looked too much like Warren had embezzled money from the businesses and tried to cover his misdeeds with the fire. Lola, who was leaving the island, just happened along at the wrong time. All of the joint businesses’ books were destroyed in the fire. Warren couldn’t prove his innocence. Nor could the police prove his guilt.

Clancy’s testimony had clinched it. Warren was convicted of embezzlement, arson and deliberate homicide. He got sixty years at the state prison at Deer Lodge.

And because of Clancy’s testimony, Jake had walked out of her life without a word. The hurt from that still made her heart ache. And now—Now he’d come back. For revenge.

Just what she needed, Clancy thought as the plane descended into Gallatin Field outside of Bozeman. An old boyfriend with a grudge on top of all her other troubles.

At the airport, Clancy rented a car and drove the eight miles into Bozeman to Dex’s condo. She felt as if time were running out. Jake wouldn’t be far behind her, she knew that. And he’d be furious. Boy, was that putting it mildly.

But she hoped that by the time he tracked her to the airport, discovered she’d flown to Bozeman and rented a car, it would be too late for him to stop her. By then she’d have searched Dex’s place and hopefully found something that would help her case. Though she couldn’t imagine what.

There was also the possibility that Jake would go straight to the county attorney. By the time she reached Bozeman, the police could be looking for her, as well.

Either way, she needed to get this over with as quickly as possible.

Dex owned a condo on the southside of town, set back against a hill overlooking Sourdough Creek. Clancy parked and sat in the car for a moment, watching the quiet street. No other vehicles cruised by. She told herself she was just being paranoid. No one was after her. Except Jake. And maybe the entire Bozeman police. And possibly the person who’d tried to drown her last night.

She picked up her purse from the seat and got out, closing the car door behind her. As she walked toward the front door of the condo, she searched the street. A florist’s van passed by; the driver never even looked her way. She could only hope the spare key was where it had been the last time Dex locked himself out. Carefully, she slid the large flowerpot slightly to one side. Nothing but dust. She pushed it a little farther and was relieved to see the key.

Quickly she scooped it up, slipped it into the lock and turned. The door swung open.

Clancy stepped into the high-dollar condo, wondering whether the police had already been here, whether they’d already searched the place and found something that would further incriminate her. The cluttered condo didn’t surprise her as much as the man who came out of the kitchen.

“Excuse me,” he said, sounding annoyed and a little frightened by her intrusion. He was short, with rumpled dark hair and sunless pale skin, and he was wearing nothing but shorts. “How did you get in here?”

Her first thought was that the condo had been sold. Her second was that Dex had a roommate she hadn’t known about. A roommate who was looking more than a little anxious.

“I’m a friend of Dex Westfall’s,” she said quickly, not sure that was exactly accurate, but it beat the alternative. That she was the woman the police had arrested for Dex’s murder.

“Dex Westfall,” the man said, shaking his head. Had he heard Dex was dead? She felt her heart rate accelerate. Worse yet, had he heard about her arrest? “I suppose he gave you a key.”

She shook her head, wondering how she was going to explain what she was doing here. “I used the one under the flowerpot.”

He swatted the air with the pancake turner in his hand. “Did Dex tell everyone where to find the key to my condo?”

“Your condo?” Clancy thought she must have heard him wrong.

“Dex Westfall was only house-sitting for me for a few months,” he said, his tone increasing in both volume and irritation. “I come home to find he’s run up my phone bill and failed to pay the utility bills, and now the police want to talk to me about God knows wh—” Behind the man, smoke curled out of the kitchen. He spun around and charged out of the room.

Pans clanged into the sink. A kitchen fan came on. A few moments later, he stalked back into the living room.

“Look,” he said, his face flushed. “The guy’s a deadbeat. Just give me the key and tell Dex I don’t want to see him or any more of his girlfriends around here, all right?”

He didn’t know Dex was dead. “The police called you?”

“I got a message on my machine,” the man said. “I haven’t had time to call them back.” He seemed to resent her questions, but also seemed resigned to answer them. No doubt he felt sorry for a woman stupid enough to fall for Dex Westfall. “I just got back yesterday from Australia. I haven’t even had time to unpack yet.” He held out his hand for the key.

Clancy noticed the stack of newspapers by the door. Magazines and junk mail were piled high on a telephone table by the door. “Did Dex leave any personal items here?” she asked as she handed over the key. “He has something that belongs to me.”

The man rolled his eyes. “Dex isn’t completely stupid. He packed up and got out just before I returned home. Did you check his apartment?”

She stared at him. “His apartment?”