Slipknot: A Private Investigator Crime and Suspense Mystery Thriller (California Corwin P. I. Mystery Series Book 3) Read online

  Slipknot

  California Corwin, P.I. Book #3

  By

  D. D. VanDyke

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Epilogue

  © Copyright © 2015. All rights reserved. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, except for brief excerpts for the purpose of review or quotation, without permission in writing from the author.

  Books by D. D. VanDyke

  D. D. VanDyke is the Mysteries pen name for fiction author David VanDyke.

  California Corwin P.I. Mystery Series

  Loose Ends

  In a Bind

  Slipknot

  Off The Leash

  More to come!

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  Chapter 1

  October, 2005

  “All in,” I said, shoving my stack of chips to the center of the table.

  The sharp-faced, dark-haired woman stared at me from across the poker felt, repeatedly shuffling her chips one-handed as she tried to get a read on me.

  If the sound was meant to irritate me, she was off base. I actually found it calming, like a smoker reacting to nicotine.

  I couldn’t get a decent read on her either. Except for the last three hours at the table, she was unknown to me. She did seem to overplay her hands, but she hadn’t paid for it yet.

  This was the beauty of the big play, though, betting all my chips. Now she had to make the decision.

  Call and risk a showdown, or fold and give me a huge pot.

  I resisted the urge to check my pocket jacks again. I knew what I had. The question was, did she?

  Pocket jacks was one of those hands every poker player loves to hate: too weak to be completely confident, too strong to play passively or throw away. Like many things in my ex-cop-turned-P.I. life, they tempted me to get in too deep.

  In this case, though, I had reason to be confident. With a jack and two queens on the board, I had a well-hidden full house. Only two other hands could beat me, and based on my observations of the way she played, I didn’t believe she had either of them.

  I stared at the pot, over six grand, and imagined the chips as mine. In fact, I imagined those chips plus her remaining stack as mine, which would mean eight and a half at least.

  She took a sip from the water bottle she’d been nursing all evening, pulled an envelope out of her purse, removed a stack of cash and placed it on the felt. “Raise.”

  “Table stakes,” the dealer reminded her.

  The rules of table stakes said I didn’t have to risk anything but the chips in front of me. I could refuse – I should refuse – and we’d still play for the money on the table, a pretty nice payday.

  My opponent smirked as she replied, “Unless she wants to accept the bet. I see car keys if she doesn’t have cash.”

  I’d set my key ring in front of me as a convenience. I don’t carry a purse, and the metal had been poking me inside my tight jeans pocket. With only two players in a pot, poker etiquette as well as the legalities of oral contracts said we could make whatever bets we wished on the outcome of the hand, as long as we agreed in front of witnesses.

  “How much is the raise?” I asked.

  “Twenty large.”

  Twenty thousand, plus the eight in the pot. Several month’s operating expenses. No need to accept mind-numbing spouse-surveillance or dangerous skip-tracing cases for a while. Maybe I could even afford to take a vacation. I hadn’t gone anywhere fun in years.

  I drew in a deep breath. I should refuse, but with her pattern of overplay, I thought I had a big chance here. There was a potential flush showing on the board, which was strong, but would still lose to my full house.

  The greedy hope-monkey every player knows seized me by the hair and gibbered in my ear. Okay, maybe greedy wasn’t really the right word. The money would be nice, but it was also about what it represented: a big, satisfying, ego-boosting win. Bragging rights, respect in the card rooms. They’d say, “Hey, Cal, remember when you called that cocky chick’s big bet and took down twenty-eight grand at Sergei’s?”

  Yeah, she must be overplaying that flush, or else bluffing. That’s what the hope-monkey told me.

  “Call.” I took the set of car keys off my master ring and tossed them into the pot. “That’s to the 1968 Mustang in my garage. It blue-books for at least twenty grand.”

  “Done.”

  A bit overeager – I should have made her show first – I rolled my jacks, displaying the full house, jacks over queens.

  She shrugged and turned over a queen and a jack, giving her queens over jacks to beat me with a higher full house.

  My gut seized up and I felt like vomiting. I thought of giving up Madge, the classic California Special my father had customized for me. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Why the hell hadn’t I just stuck with table stakes? Or even bet Molly, my rally car, instead? She was far more replaceable.

  I cursed myself for a sick gambler and stood, picking up the rest of my keys and shoving them in my pocket. Gathering the shreds of my dignity, I muttered “Nice hand,” nodded good night – okay, good morning – to the table and walked like a zombie out of the card room into the bar area of Vyazma.

  Uncle Sergei himself, the owner and an old friend of my parents – therefore of mine – nodded at me as I settled myself on a barstool with a sigh, almost a sob. I reached across to pluck the pack of Marlboros from his pocket and tap one out, lighting up and taking a deep drag. I felt my head swim with the unaccustomed nicotine. Hadn’t had a cigarette in three years – I’d quit the day I’d lost my badge – but today, it seemed natural.

  Sergei opened an MGD and set it in front of me. “How much?”

  How much did I lose? How much did I want to borrow? I was tempted to ask him for a marker – a big one – to try to go win Madge back.

  With agonizing difficulty I beat down the jones that whispered in my ear and shook my head. “Thanks. Nothing.” I tilted the beer, feeling its cold hit my throat and sink toward my stomach, coating my nausea.

  He wasn’t going to let it go. “How much you lose, Cal?” His Russian accent made the word sound like “loose.”

  “Why’re you busting my balls,
dyadya?” I didn’t feel much like the shit he was about to give me, but I loved him too much to walk away. At some level I knew I had it coming. Fair punishment for listening to the craziness lurking in the back of my head.

  “Because, solntse, you been playing too much, and when you play too much, you start making mistakes. I know that look. You make a bad mistake and now you’re beating yourself up for it.”

  What could I say to that? Sergei was the closest thing to a parent I had anymore, what with Dad long gone and Mom stuck in eternal adolescence.

  “So what? I’ll bounce back. Always do.”

  “I know. But one day, you don’t.” He reached out a hand to brush my left cheek with scarred fingers. “You have good detective business. You’re good girl. Time to go back on the wagon for a while.”

  I grabbed his hand and held it for a moment, aching. “Okay. I will. No poker for three months.” Better to set a realistic goal than tell myself some obvious lie, such as that I would quit forever.

  “Six.”

  I made a face. “Okay, six.” That would be penance enough.

  Sergei’s face cracked into a smile, showing tobacco-stained teeth. “Now you’re talking.”

  That made me feel better for about five seconds, until a new wave of psychic pain washed through me as I remembered Madge. I briefly considered ducking the debt, but my ingrained integrity wouldn’t let me. Even if I did, my name would be mud forever in the poker world. Word would get around and even legit rooms would bar me, not to mention the unofficial ones like Sergei’s.

  I could get a loan against the house or my office, though. Yeah, that’s what I’d do. When it came time for the handover, I’d offer her crisp, green cash instead. Portable wealth that she could use to get whatever she wanted.

  That would make the pain go away.

  I felt someone sit next to me. I turned to see the woman. She dangled the keys. “Where and when?”

  I sighed, checking my watch. “How about noon at the Sycamore?” For some reason I didn’t want her to come to my home or office. A public place would be more anonymous. Less embarrassing.

  “The Sycamore what?”

  “Sycamore bar. At Sycamore and Mission.”

  “Where’s that?” She took a sip off her water bottle.

  I rolled my eyes. “Where you from, anyway, chica?”

  “Not here. And I’m not Hispanic.”

  “Could have fooled me.” I thought a moment. “Where you staying?”

  “Vitale, at the terminal.”

  “Ritzy. I’ll see you there at noon.”

  “Parking garage.”

  “Right.” I stared at her.

  She shifted her bottle, held out a hand. “No hard feelings.”

  Well, I sure as hell wasn’t going to show her any. Poker etiquette said you take your losses with a smile and you don’t gloat over your wins. I shook the hand. It felt warm and dry.

  Turning to Sergei, the woman said, “Gun.”

  Interesting, that she carried. I wondered if it were legal or not, and what line of work she was in, but it was bad form to ask.

  Sergei lifted a compact Ruger .380 from beneath the bar and slid it across to her. She dropped it into her purse, and then left with one more smile.

  “Who was that?” I asked Sergei.

  “No idea.” Sergei’s lower lip curled. “Not a cop, though. I always ask.”

  “I wish you’d have sent her packing the moment she walked in,” I grumbled.

  “Cal!” His tone reproached me. “I run a business here. Who am I to turn down action?”

  “Sorry. Not your fault.” I crushed out the cigarette, half-smoked, and finished the beer. “Bedtime.”

  “What was with keys? And why you meeting her at noon?”

  I explained the whole thing, including my intention to pay her off.

  Sergei’s face turned even more hound-doggish. “If the bank don’t loan you, I can front the cash. Like you should have at the table.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Gee, thanks for the reminder.” But Sergei was right. I should have taken a marker from him instead of putting up Madge. That way, I’d only owe him the twenty grand and I’d still have my car.

  He shrugged.

  I relented. “Okay, that was unfair. Thanks for the offer, but I’ll try the bank first.”

  “As you wish. You want Rostislav run you home?” Of course I’d walked to his place earlier, during the daylight. I’d never park in the Tenderloin.

  “Sure.” I held out my hands, and Sergei gave me my Glock and my .38, which I holstered with the ease of long practice.

  “Das vedanya, Cal.”

  “You too, Sergei.”

  I had Sergei’s man drop me at my office to sleep rather than risk an encounter with Mom. She’d spot my agony right away and start prying and lecturing. Funny how even a supposedly laid-back leftover hippie went right down that mother path when it suited her.

  After a few hours in the spare bed of my office’s upstairs, my alarm woke me to the usual autumn drizzle of San Francisco. Eight o’clock on a Wednesday morning, but it felt like five to me. Not a morning person, this girl. I groaned as I slapped the clock radio to silence before putting my stockinged feet on the floor and pulling on my shoes.

  One major plus of my office – a converted townhouse – was the fancy espresso machine in the kitchen. I punched the right buttons and soon had a go-mug full of steaming triple latte. Strolling briskly down the block, I felt almost human by the time I reached Mom’s place, my home too, a classic painted lady.

  For those not into houses, “painted lady” is the common term for a gingerbread Victorian or Edwardian, generally built between the mid-1800s and 1915, traditionally covered in the vibrant hues of the colorist movement of the sixties and seventies. Ours was typical of the breed, mostly blue and white with a few yellow and red accents, a bit muted by three years of no touch-up to the trim.

  I winced as my eyes skimmed over the single-car garage door. Madge the Mustang sat patiently behind it, and I felt the punch in the belly all over again as I contemplated losing her.

  God, I was such a weakling.

  “Hi, Starlight,” I mumbled as I entered, not up to the usual half-serious argument about labels.

  “Morning, California,” came my mother’s subdued voice as I shut the door behind me. “Muffin?”

  “Um, sure,” I said with caution, entering the kitchen where she was just taking a tin of twelve from the oven. “What kind are they?”

  She set the pan on the stovetop to cool with a frown. “Gluten-free high-protein soy wasabi and cherry blossom extract.”

  “Ah…” I briefly lost the power of speech.

  Rooting in the refrigerator, I found the butter Mom tolerated me possessing. The substance being vegetarian rather than vegan meant she still frowned upon it as exploitive of animals, but I didn’t care. I’d bought the grass-fed, no-hormone, hand-churned-in-a-commune-by-free-range-Buddhist-monks organic version, but that was as far as I was willing to go.

  Slathering on a generous dollop of tasty animal fat, I washed down one peculiarly flavored muffin with the rest of my latte. Oddly, it wasn’t half bad.

  “You look like shit,” my mother said, finally turning toward me with an uncharacteristic scowl.

  “Is this the honesty phase of your latest New Age self-help program?”

  “If I can’t be honest with my own daughter, who can I be with…whom…with whom can I be?”

  “Somebody else. I’m really not in the mood.”

  Starlight put her hands on her hips, disapproving. “You’ve been playing underground poker again.”

  “Hooray, Mom. You solved the case.” I held out my hands. “Cuff me and throw me in the pokey.”

  “If the fuzz catch you, how will you do your job?”

  I stared at my mother in shock. “That’s about the most responsible, parent-like thing you’ve ever said to me. Are you finally beginning to grow up? And did you really say ‘fuzz’
?”

  “You prefer ‘pigs’?”

  “What’s up your butt today?” I’d seldom seen her like this.

  She turned to stare pointedly at the calendar, and my stomach, already sick from the impending loss of Madge, did another flip-flop. A big yellow circle was drawn around yesterday. Mom and Dad’s anniversary.

  We always went out together on the date, ever since he died. We’d eat, we'd drink too much wine, we'd reminisce. It was one of the few solid points of connection we had anymore.

  “Shit. Oh, God, Mom, I’m sorry.”

  Her voice rose, taking on a seldom-used and much-hated harpy tone. “You stood me up. I sat there for three hours at Gracias Madre with the waiters pitying me. I told myself you were on an important case, one with a child in danger or a murderer to catch, but no. You were sitting at a fucking card table!”

  I sank into a chair and put my head in my hands. Snowflake rubbed my ankles and talked at me. I scooped him up to bury my face in his thick white fur. “I’m sorry,” I said again. “I’m quitting.”

  “For how long?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “How much did you lose?”

  I didn’t answer that either. Specifics wouldn’t help the situation. You’d think with her past drug use – there was a time she’d snort, drop or shoot anything known to man – she’d have been more sympathetic to an adrenaline junkie, but somehow my particular addiction didn’t compute with her.

  With difficulty I stopped myself from throwing her past in her face. Today, she was right. I’d gone too far, pushed too hard, chased one too many highs, and I’d slid over the cliff. I’d just have to accept my bumps and bruises, brush myself off and get back on the wagon.

  “I have to shower and change.” I reached over to take her hand. “I’m really sorry. I’ll make it up to you.”

  She squeezed it once and let go, clearly not mollified. “I know you’ll try.”

  Ouch.

  I dragged myself up to my room to shower and change. The hot water and the chill air from the open third-floor window combined to revive me, and I felt almost human when I left the house.