Framed: A Jarek Grayson Private Detective Novel (Grayson Investigative Services Book 2) Read online

  Framed

  A Jarek Grayson Private Detective Novel

  Boyd Craven III

  Contents

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  About the Author

  Copyright © 2015 Boyd Craven III

  Framed, A Jarek Grayson Novel

  By Boyd Craven

  Many thanks to friends and family for keeping me writing!

  All rights reserved.

  1

  “Jarek?” Skye called from the crack in my office doorway. “Can I talk to you a minute?”

  I had been trying to make sense of the financials that accounting had sent over. I was decent with numbers, but I was having a hard time believing the differences in income between now and a year ago. We’d had a twenty-four percent increase in overall revenue. That may not sound like much, but when you figure in what I pay myself, Jo, Skye, Annette, and the four or five in-house investigators, it made the difference between being profitable and me considering expanding.

  Not that I wasn’t wealthy already; I’d inherited the business from my father when he died and decided not to sell it off as Burch the lawyer wanted. Instead, I’d hired my childhood friend and protector Johanna Nash and eventually more help for the cyber side of things. Like Skye, the short diminutive lady and tech expert at my door with a rainbow assortment of hair.

  “Sure,” I said, closing the folder and swiveling the chair to meet her gaze.

  “Can I…?” she looked at the chair across the desk from me.

  “Sure, of course?” I was confused.

  “Well, it’s just that nobody but Jo ever comes in here and I don’t…or...I didn’t think…never mind.”

  I smiled. I thought I had a hard time coming to the point or getting my meaning across. I hoped she worked it out and spoke her mind soon.

  “Go on,” I prodded.

  “Well, remember when you offered to let me stay in one of the apartments during the Taylor case?” she asked.

  I nodded. The Taylor case had been a high-profile kidnapping that turned out not to be a kidnapping. Instead, it’d turned into a number of charges against the mayor’s aid, his daughter, and a gambling buddy named Martin Fuller.

  “Well, things aren’t working out at my place.”

  “I suppose it’s probably a guy thing, huh?” I asked her, already picturing it in my head. “A star-crossed lover who won’t take no for an answer? Of course, I told you once that you could have one of the two bedrooms as part of your salary, but you hadn’t quite wanted to break your lease yet. Have things changed?”

  “You could say that.” She gave me a strange look. “And it is sorta a guy thing, but not how you’re thinking.”

  “It’s a guy thing but not what I’m thinking…So you’re thinking that now I’m thinking that it isn’t some star-crossed lover, maybe a stalker? If it’s a stalker, I’d rather get Jo involved personally, or perhaps Susan and Pete?”

  “No it isn’t—”

  Johanna pushed the door open, startling both of us as it bounced off the rubber stopper. Johanna was red in the face and her eyes were almost crossed in anger. I know I upset her often, but I hadn’t seen her much today as I’d been trying to decide on hiring two more employees, maybe one more for IT.

  “Jarek, you’ve got to do something about her!” Johanna demanded.

  “Her? I…Tech Support…er…Skye, what’s going on?” I asked the woman sitting across from me who was trying to wedge herself between the seat cushion and the floor.

  “Not her,” Johanna said, pointing towards the front of the offices. “Her!”

  “Annette? I’m afraid she’s been around forever. My father always said that if she ever quit being such a sore-assed raging bi—”

  “Not Annette,” thundered Johanna. “Sasha!”

  Skye sat up, realizing the anger was directed at me and a former lover of mine. I’d spent a weekend in Aruba after the Taylor case with her. We’d said our goodbyes and hadn’t really talked much since. I stared at Jo blankly.

  “Sasha? She’s here?” I asked.

  She’d never come inside the offices before, just up to my apartment of course.

  “Yeah, and she’s got her resume with her,” Johanna said.

  I raised a questioning eyebrow, a piece of body language I was trying out.

  “That doesn’t work on you. You look like you’ve got a head injury,” Jo snapped, and when Skye snickered, she spun and gave our IT department a death glare.

  “You got something to say?” Johanna asked the silently giggling woman.

  “I heard you really didn’t like her much. Susan said you got all gnarly and prickly when she’s around. I just…I can’t…” She laughed.

  The anxiety was starting to kick in, and something in my features must have shown through. Jo grabbed the spare seat next to Skye. The move was so sudden, and Jo flowed so quickly across the room that it made us both flinch. She pushed the chair in front of me and sat down. I turned to the side of the desk, facing her. I focused on my breathing and felt her soft warm hands on my cheek as I stared at the floor and focused on not passing out.

  “Jarek, I’m sorry. I’m not angry at you. Look at me.”

  It took some gentle prodding, but I dragged my gaze up to look into her eyes. We were so close I could see my own reflection in the pupils of her eyes and smelled the spearmint gum she always had handy. I looked into her eyes, and she took her hand away from my cheek. Anybody else touching me like that may have made things worse, but with Jo it didn’t. Something else my therapist would have a field day with.

  “I’m ok,” I lied as my breathing started to slow, but my heart rate hadn’t as of yet.

  “No, you’re not. I’m sorry, it’s just that…that woman…” Then she made a sound of what had to have been frustration, or she was really, really constipated.

  “Why does she have a resume?” Skye asked, making her presence known once again.

  “She’s insisting on handing it to Jarek. Apparently she’s retired from the Flint Police Department now and wants to keep busy.”

  Jo emphasized the word busy for some reason. Someday when I understand emotions, sarcasm, body language, and a myriad of other things better, I might catch on to what she was implying. As it was…that was going to have to go into the folder of things to ponder when I had time.

  “Well, have Annette take the resume and tell her she can make an appointment,” I told Jo, trying to diffuse the situation.

  “Annette is the one who insisted that you had time and were available,” Jo growled.

  I could feel a tug of amusement, but if I smiled or showed anything but sympathy for her plight, I ran the risk of her wrath, and we’d gotten along so well after the weekend in Aruba. She had brought her guy friend, Carl, along, and he seemed like a nice enough guy, as long as he wasn’t sitting by me. Anywhere near me.

  “What are you asking me to do here?” I asked her, wanting to know what was expected of me as the boss.

  Get rid of Sasha? Fire Annette? Both?

  “I don’t know, I just can’t stand the woman,” Jo said, her anger deflating.

  Now that I was calm and centered again, she stood up and put the chair back to where
it had been next to Skye.

  “Jo, would you tell her that I’ll see her in thirty minutes? I was discussing something with Skye in regards to her compensation package…”

  “Oh Skye…I’m sorry…I—”

  Skye laughed, interrupting Jo. “No, no. I get it. It’s ok.”

  I’m glad she got it. I didn’t.

  “Mind if I send her into the big conference room?” Jo asked.

  “Sure,” I said, wondering if Jo was going to park her there and then go back to her terminal and watch her through the video feed.

  “Ok, and again, sorry Skye, I didn’t mean to barge in.”

  “Girl, if anybody understands, it’s this one,” she said, pointing to herself and giggling.

  Jo gave her a wan smile and waved before heading out the door, closing it softly.

  “So about the apartment…” I said, waiting for Skye to pick back up the thread of our conversation.

  “Oh yeah, a two-bedroom would be perfect. It’s just that I have to get some stuff for it,” she told me.

  “If it’s time sensitive, I think I have a furnished one we keep for executives on short-term assignments down the hall from Johanna? Just until you can get some of your own stuff moved.”

  “Oh, I’ll be buying all new. Thanks for that tablet by the way. Yoshi told me that based off the details you and I have on those, they’re going to go into production. He thinks it’ll kill the iPad. He wanted me to thank you for uh…pushing him to develop yours as a prototype,” Skye told me.

  Her face turned a curious color as she said it. Embarrassment? I doubted it was anger; she didn’t have any of the raised voice cues that I usually got from Jo, who was always angry, so I was mostly right. Most of the time.

  “Hey, no problem, Skye. You’re part of the family now, and we stick together,” I told her, using the same lines my father had used to soothe the egos of agents over the years.

  Her face brightened and she stood up abruptly.

  “What?” I asked her, alarmed.

  She had this habit of random acts of hugging, and for a guy who avoided contact with her, it used to almost send me into a panic attack. I hoped she wasn’t about to this time. I waited half a heartbeat, but instead of hugging, she grabbed a sticky note from a stack and my pen that had been sitting by the folder. She scrawled something out and then handed me the sticky note.

  I.O.U. One hug. Redeemable whenever you need it.

  - Skye

  I looked at that and then to the young woman and smiled. Ok, so the smile was a fake. I had no reason I wanted to hug her, if anything…She was attractive and younger than me by a good decade. I didn’t want or need that kind of distraction, especially when I seem to screw everything up, all the time.

  “Thanks,” I told her, pulling out my wallet and putting the note inside.

  “It’s really hard sometimes,” she said, looking at the desk.

  “The work? I’m sorry, I thought you’d like a challenge here. If it isn’t satisfying enough, maybe I can find something else for you to do, because you’ve become an indispensable part of the team, and I don’t know if we could close the cases as quickly as we do without you running the IT department with me.”

  “Jarek, no. That’s not what I meant,” she said, smiling.

  “What?”

  “It’s really hard being around you. You treat me like family, yet you hardly know me. I have tried so hard not to make you feel uncomfortable—”

  “As have I,” I told her.

  “And I don’t want you to think I’m coming onto you, because I’m not. I don’t think of you that way, but if anything, you’re kinda…more like a big brother or an uncle to me. I don’t understand it and I’m terrified of screwing something up and making you think less of me.”

  I swallowed. Of all the things she was going to say, that one was a doozy. The three of us had been tight, especially the last month or so, taking our meals together, and Skye had even started joining us at the gym on Thursdays to spar with Jo and me as I learned how to defend myself. It didn’t surprise me that Skye was more coordinated and learned faster, but I chalked that up to her being in her twenties and not in her thirties like I was. Still, I now understood why she’d been a little unreadable to me.

  I pulled my wallet back out, and with shaking hands I handed her the IOU. She looked at me in surprise and then wrapped her arms around me. My entire body trembled, and she rested her cheek against my chest over my heart and squeezed me. After a moment, I squeezed back and then broke the hug.

  “You keep it. It’s supposed to be for you, for when you need it,” she said with a sniff.

  “Ok,” I told her. “I’m trying to get better, to be more normal…or at least not put people off. I had a rough time growing up, and the hugging makes me uncomfortable sometimes.” I sat on the edge of my desk. “But if I didn’t trust you, I never would have been able to hug you. I would have locked up or passed out in fright,” I admitted.

  One thing I’d learned from Jo and my therapist, Deborah, is that total honesty goes a long way. Apparently I was brutally honest, more so than most normal people, so I tried not to let my words distract from my meaning.

  “As far as you letting me down, I don’t think that’ll happen. You’ve been a great acquisition to the business, and I must admit, you and Jo get along well. You never would have lasted if you didn’t get along with Jo.”

  “Yeah, I sorta see how you have her running the public side of things, even though you are all Mr. Puppet Master behind the curtain.”

  I shot her a puzzled look, and she laughed.

  “Yeah, you look weird trying that. Don’t do it. You’re like Oz, except you aren’t a circus act.”

  “You’re pretty ok yourself,” I told her, figuring a bland statement like that would be an acceptable remark to what she’d said…which I didn’t understand.

  “So, since Sasha and Jo don’t get along…” She let the words trail off, making me wonder if that was a question or a statement.

  I waited…waited…

  “So she’s probably not got a good chance of getting hired?” Skye finished as soon as she figured out I wasn’t sure what she was saying.

  “Oh no, as fun as spending time with Sasha is, Jo and her would argue and fight all the time. I can’t have that kind of disruption, and it’d distract Johanna from the work she’s already doing for me. As it is, I feel bad that I demand so much of her time already.”

  “It’s like you two are practically married,” Skye said slyly, and I looked at her, trying to divine her meaning.

  “You mean the sex thing? That was only twice, and I promised her I’d never bring it up again. As a matter of fact, I screwed up once and called it the act that shall not be named, and she—”

  “Oh my God…you went there? That’s like calling her vagina Voldemort.” Skye stifled out a choking sound, her face turning even redder.

  “She mentioned Voldemort too…I don’t get the cultural reference. I don’t know what a Voldemort is?”

  “Dude…and no I wasn’t talking about the sex thing, even if it was wild monkey sex.” She cracked up.

  When it was apparent that she wasn’t going to stop laughing, I looked at my watch, trying to see if enough time had passed for Jo to spy on Sasha so I could make my escape and ask the more mature side of the team what it was that I had missed. Skye noticed me looking at the time and gave me a little wave as she headed out of the office, her guffaws still loud with a now closed door between us.

  * * *

  Exactly twenty-nine and a half minutes after Jo left, I walked into the conference room. Sasha was pacing the floor, a single sheet of vellum on the table in front of her. Since she was pacing, I got the side view. Her height was only accentuated by the curves she wore so well. Even more, she was wearing a smart-looking business suit of some sort. It wasn’t a pants suit like Johanna wore. This one was a charcoal-gray skirt, white blouse, and matching jacket. Whatever designer brand it was, it lo
oked fantastic on Sasha, and the smile she gave me made me want to relive the weekend in Aruba.

  “Jarek, I’m sorry for dropping in unannounced like this,” she told me.

  “It’s no problem,” I lied, knowing damn well that Johanna was watching at this point, so I had to keep things on the professional side or I’d face her wrath later on.

  “So…I got my retirement from FPD all set, but I’m not a twenty and out kind of girl,” Sasha said, her lips curving up into a smile.

  “So you’re looking for a life sentence?” I asked her, thinking she was talking jail time.

  She threw her head back and laughed.

  “Only if we’re talking about marriage.”

  “Oh, we’re not. Definitely not marriage. In fact, I can’t even have kids, so I doubt anybody would want to marry me. I mean, can you imagine if I were to have another child like me? As it is, I only get along with people because Johanna has been my best friend since I was a kid, and she tolerates me rather well, so you see, I can’t give you a job because you don’t get along with her, and I need her to run this business in an effective manner.”

  I took a deep breath, watching Sasha’s eyes fly wide open. Oops, I said too much all at once, and probably left context flying out the window.

  “Her? Wait, are you sleeping with her?” Sasha asked.

  “I don’t see how that’s relevant to somebody who’s turning in a resume for consideration at a potential place of business,” I told her in a quick, breathy voice.

  “You and I…we’re more than just passing business acquaintances. If you don’t want to hire me, I’ll drop a resume off somewhere else. There’s a lot of work for a retired cop, you know.” She dropped me a wink as she finished that sentence.

  “So you’re not angry?” I asked her, not believing I slipped the not-hiring-her part in there without her erupting into anger.

  “No. I can see now that you’ve already got your heart set. That’s ok. It was fun, but if you need a hand, make sure to look me up,” Sasha told me, pulling a business card out of her pocket. She handed it to me and picked up the resume.