Chasing Summer Read online

  “You shouldn’t have,” I told her.

  “Had to hide that from Derwit,” she said.

  Derwit, aka Darren Rika, was Tia’s oldest brother. He wore leather jackets and dirty denim and was covered in tattoos that said words like “brotherhood” and “blood”. He was one of nine or ten brothers that Tia had. I’d lost count of them; there were just so many. I sometimes wondered if bunny ran through their whanau’s veins.

  Badass bunny.

  “The stupid pothead came in here complaining of hunger pangs,” she said, wiping down the counter of the Cube. “Right when the cops were stopping by for their donuts.”

  Cops and donuts. Even in Doubtless Bay.

  “Did they arrest him again?” I asked, mouth full of chocolatey goodness.

  “No. They pretty much hightailed it out of here as soon as they saw him.”

  “It’s hard to get good help nowadays.”

  “Talking of good help. Seen the new detective?”

  “Nope.” I swallowed the last of my donut and dusted my hands off on my jeans. “Been avoiding the slammer for obvious reasons.”

  “Obvious reasons?”

  “It’s right next to the realtor’s.”

  “Suzy,” Tia spat.

  “The one and only Floozy,” I offered and accepted the can of Coke Tia gave me.

  “Speaking of the Floozy,” she said, leaning down to rest her elbows on the countertop, displaying a petite and in proportion cleavage. I shifted my gaze to my own and mentally berated it. It could have been the donuts, but I refused to blame them for my Double Ds.

  “What’s she done now?” I asked, giving up on the impossible. I would die before I sacrificed any donuts to the fashion police.

  “Started dating the new detective, that’s what.”

  “And you’re surprised by this?” It’s a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a dick must be in want of Suzy.

  Or so she would have us all believe.

  “He arrived three days ago,” Tia said.

  “Good grief, the man does move fast.”

  “He didn’t stand a chance, really.”

  “Right next door to the realtor’s,” I agreed.

  “It was destined from the moment he drove into Mangonui.”

  “We should pray for his soul.”

  “Send some flowers.”

  “Donuts!” we both said at the same time, grinning.

  “Not if you keep running out, wench,” I said and squashed my empty can, then lofted it into the air toward the rubbish bin.

  Nothing but net.

  “Nice one,” Tia offered.

  I checked my watch. Kiwibank would close in half an hour. I still had time.

  “Gotta dash,” I said.

  “Catch ya on the flip side,” Tia offered, turning to a new customer.

  I crossed the grass, dodging a toddler with sticky fingers, and slipped into my car. With a brush of my hand over the cheque in my pocket, I headed toward the bank. One hundred and eighty dollars might not seem much for a week’s worth of work, but this was Northland, New Zealand. I had to take what I could get.

  I’d been burned a time or two in the past by the locals. Being a Doubtless Bay Daughter, they often thought a bag of apples constituted fair payment. Sometimes it was avocados. But when I inherited my grandmother’s house two years ago and tallied up the amount of work it needed to bring it up to scratch, I decided I’d get real and make clients sign a contract.

  Between what I can earn being the only private investigator in the area and what I made in the peak summer months by renting out my spare bedroom, I managed to get by. Every now and then, I got a boost from the cops. We might seem like a sleepy hollow most of the year, but come summer, we get not only a heat wave but a crime wave, and the boys in blue sometimes get stumped.

  I wasn’t sure how things would go now that Detective Pieters had retired. Who knew what bone the new guy would throw my way. I needed to bank the cheque and start YouTubing “How To Reroof Your Own House” pronto. Or suffer the consequences.

  I parked right in front of the bank. Of course, I did. This is Doubtless Bay. And slipped into the rear of the line. It forked into two at the counter. One side went to the Post Shop, the other to Kiwibank. Gotta love the ingenuity of kiwis. I started humming along to Lorde on the radio.

  With seconds to spare, I was officially one hundred and eighty dollars richer. When the cheque cleared in seven days, of course.

  Deciding I’d eaten enough carbs for the day, I picked up a can of vegetable soup from the Four Square Supermarket and headed home, surreptitiously sniffing my shirt for any hint of what I’d been up to. I had a surfer bedding down in the spare room; I didn’t want to scare him completely. The fact that the closest decent surf beach was a good twenty minutes away at Tokerau, and there were a lot closer places to that surf beach in which he could have been staying, any hint of duck doo-doos could spell a disaster.

  Thankfully, I wasn’t too rank.

  I parked the Micra in the detached garage and sent up a little prayer that tonight was not the night the ceiling fell down on it, and then crossed the front yard and unlocked the door. Heat washed out and greeted me. Most of the year, I left the windows open. Come summer, when it was hot and sticky, and all you wanted to do was laze around on the sand and dip a toe in the water, I closed the place up like Fort Knox.

  Summer meet Crime Rate. Crime Rate meet Summer.

  I stashed my soup du jour on the kitchen bench and then spent a good five minutes opening up every single window, ranch slider, and doorway. Sheer curtains began to sway in the gentle breeze that came up off the ocean. I could have sworn I felt the soft touch of my grandmother’s fingers on the back of my neck in greeting.

  “Hey, Gran,” I said, helping myself to a beer from the fridge. “Got paid today. I might be able to afford new plumbing by winter.”

  The fingers stroked across my sweat-dampened skin and then faded.

  I stepped out onto the back porch and took in the view for a moment.

  Coastal property in Coopers Beach was sought after. Even my rundown little dump would fetch a fine penny. I should know, the land rates were killing me. But I’d never sell. I couldn’t leave. This was my home. The only home I’d known for the past two decades.

  I sat down on the swing seat and watched the sun as it lowered over the Pacific Ocean. Flashy golds and fiery oranges and deep purples. I took a swig of my beer and wondered when the hottie surfer would drag himself in.

  My cell phone ringing broke the fantasy my mind had started to create, and I pulled it from my pocket and stared at the screen.

  Unidentified number.

  Shrugging, I swiped at it with my free hand, and then took a swig of beer from the bottle in my other. Smacking my lips noisily, I said into the phone, “O’Dare & Sons Investigations.”

  “Is Mr O’Dare there?” a male voice said.

  Now, this is where it got complicated. There were no “sons.” Only me. Summer O’Dare; licensed to carry. But tell that to the well-to-do who own holiday houses in Doubtless Bay.

  “This is Summer O’Dare,” I said and added nothing. Silence is my weapon. Hear me roar. Or not.

  “Ms O’Dare,” the male voice said. “This is Detective Danvers, Mangonui Police.” Well, hello there, Detective Douche. That’s what you get for bagging Suzy the Floozy as soon as you hit the beach, I mentally told him. “I’ve been given your card for use in extenuating circumstances. It says, right here, ‘O’Dare & Sons.’” He left the rest of his politically incorrect thoughts hanging.

  I was more of the call-it-like-I-see-it kind of girl.

  “Would you be after the man of the house, by chance?” I asked sweetly, taking another sip of my beer and then holding the neck of the bottle to the microphone.

  Sizzle-pop-fizz that, Douche Boy.

  “Your firm’s services came highly recommended by Detective Pieters.”

  Was that censure I hear
d in his cool voice?

  “I’m the only private investigator here, Detective,” I said, attempting to salvage the conversation. “Do you have a job for me?”

  He was silent. I waited. Then, “Are you in your office?”

  If my office is the back porch of my house overlooking Coopers Beach.

  “I can be,” I said.

  “I’ll meet you there in twenty minutes.”

  “Five,” I said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “You’re at the station. I can hear Maisey Young tapping out a refrain on her keyboard in the background. She times each keystroke to whatever’s playing on the radio and it sounds suspiciously like Robinson’s Nothing To Regret. From Mangonui Police Station to my home address in Kotare Drive, where my office is located, it’ll take you no more than five minutes. Unless you stop for a donut at the Coffee Cube, but I should warn you; they’re all out. Your fellow constables saw to that. I do like Turkish Delights from the Four Square though, so you could bring one of those instead. I won’t hold it against you.”

  Silence again and then, “You’re very strange, you know that?”

  I smiled and took a swig of my beer.

  “Clock’s ticking, Detective.”

  “Fine. Five minutes. Don’t go anywhere.”

  I looked out at the vista before me; the sun was about to kiss the water in the distance, its golden globe shimmering, casting this little part of the world in rays of heavenly heat.

  “Nowhere I’d rather be,” I said into my phone, then swiped the screen.

  Chapter 2

  There Was A Spider

  The universe must have hated me because Detective Douche was a babe. He climbed out of his police-issue four-wheel drive SUV in jeans, a long-sleeved tee and scuffed up boots. He wore dark shades, so I couldn’t immediately see the colour of his eyes, but I was betting on chocolate to go with all that honey-coloured hair and sun-kissed skin and lean six-foot-plus body. He was clean shaven but I pictured a five o’clock shadow there comfortably. His jaw was firm, about as firm as his butt cheeks at a guess.

  The guy could have modelled for Calvin Klein.

  He glanced around the front yard of my property as if he expected to spot something illegal jump out from behind the flame tree. I noticed his gaze skimmed the roofline, either looking for a sniper or picking up on the rust in the guttering.

  I took a sip of my beer and leaned nonchalantly against the front porch railing.

  He stopped at the bottom-most step and reached up to remove his sunglasses.

  Blue. His eyes were blue, and they ruined everything.

  “Ms O’Dare?” he asked in the same deep voice I’d heard over the phone.

  “Detective Danvers,” I offered in reply.

  He tapped a manila folder against his thigh.

  “Thank you for agreeing to see me so late in the day,” he said, confirming my suspicions that he was too nice a guy.

  Suzy would eat him for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The guy would end up a shrivelled husk by the end of summer. If he were lucky, Suzy’s attention might wander before then and save him a long rehabilitation period.

  I almost felt sorry for him.

  “It’s hot,” I said. “Come around back onto the deck.”

  I didn’t wait for a reply, just led the way around the outside of the house, using the wraparound veranda. It was one of the things that set the place apart from its neighbours.

  That and about a hundred thousand in architectural fees. Gran’s place had been here long before the city slickers discovered Doubtless Bay as a suitable playground.

  Danvers’ boots clomped loudly behind me, but I didn’t hold it against the guy. The veranda was a natural burglar alarm. The hollow area beneath the kauri decking made for a fantastic acoustic amplifier.

  The sound of waves crashing against the sand greeted us, as did the last of the sun’s golden rays. I sat down in one of the deck chairs and propped my feet up on the railing. Sipping my beer, I peered up at the new cop.

  He hadn’t taken a seat. He stood staring out at the sea; transfixed by the scenery.

  I decided he was wasted on Suzy, but then Suzy was considered quite a piece of scenery herself by some people.

  A soft touch slid over the back of my neck. I was familiar with many different types of touches and immediately recognised this one.

  Cold. Creepy. Calculated.

  I called it the Three Cees. And it never led to anything good.

  My feet hit the deck. My eyes all for the folder the detective held. The sound of my chair creaking drew his attention, and he spun around.

  “What is it?” he said. As if he knew I’d been spooked or he could feel the Three Cees as well as I could.

  “You have a job for me?” I pressed.

  He moved to take the spare deck chair, placing the folder on the table between us. When I reached for it, he pulled it back; two of his long fingers firmly pressing the folder into the table, well out of snatching distance.

  Clearly, he didn’t understand the nature of a determined woman. I eyed the folder as if it were a triple glazed donut.

  “Detective Pieters swears by your abilities,” he said. “Abilities he was unable to quantify.”

  I glanced up at him. Startlingly bright blue eyes held my gaze expectantly.

  “Do you want a beer?” I asked.

  He blinked at me.

  “I’ve got Export Gold or Export Gold,” I told him. “Personally, I’d go for Gold if I were you. It matches the sunsets.”

  “Huh,” he said and then scrubbed a hand over his face as if to wake himself up. “I’m still on duty.”

  He seemed perplexed. Whether that was due to the fact he considered himself still on the clock or simply due to the fact he’d offered a suitably cognisant reply, I didn’t know.

  I shrugged and took a gulp of my beer. Leaning back in my chair, I purposely didn’t eye the folder as if it were nectar from the gods. Or the answer to my latest electricity bill.

  “Ms O’Dare,” the detective started again.

  “Summer,” I told him.

  “Yes, it is,” he said and smiled.

  I arched a brow at him. As if I hadn’t heard that one before. He cleared his throat.

  “Your qualifications,” he said. “You’re licensed, Grade A. Where did you train?”

  “Where did you train?” I shot back.

  “Porirua.” Where every NZ cop trained.

  “Is that where you climbed the ranks?” I asked him.

  “No,” he said then shook his head. “I’ll ask the questions if you don’t mind.”

  “And if I do?”

  He stared at me.

  “It’s easier just to go with it,” I told him. “Roll with the punches. That sort of thing. If you fight it, you’ll only end up with a headache. Or a gut ache. It depends on your constitution.” I eyed him, making a show of cocking my head and narrowing my eyes thoughtfully. “Head,” I declared. “You’re not the tummy ache sort of guy.”

  He opened his mouth, and then sort of just sat there. After a long drawn out moment, he snapped his teeth together.

  I smiled at him over the rim of my bottle of beer.

  He let out a huff of breath and then slowly, purposefully pushed the folder across the table towards me.

  I tried my best not to snaffle the thing up as if it were full sugar to a carb deprived swimsuit model, flicking it open with a single fingernail.

  Nothing. Not a thing. No touches to speak of. I scowled at the folder, shutting it again and then making a flourish of opening it like a magician pulling a rabbit from a hat.

  Ta-da!

  Zip. Nadda. Not a thing.

  The Three Cees were toying with me.

  “Are you all right?” Detective Douche asked.

  “There was a spider,” I said.

  “Big?”

  “Enormous.”

  “All legs?”

  “Too many.”

  “I understan
d,” he offered, watching me.

  Was that laughter I caught in his eyes?

  I pushed the unwanted yet not entirely unfamiliar sensation of embarrassment aside; sooner or later he’d hear about me from someone like Suzy. In fact, the woman may have already warned him off me. I cringed internally and then brushed the negative thoughts from my mind.

  I needed this commission. Pulling the folder closer, I began to actually read the files inside.

  There were three case sheets for three separate jobs, all within a one week period in February last summer. Summer being the height of our crime wave didn’t surprise me. But the fact the cases were close to a year old did. Detective Pieters never wasted government funds on cold cases.

  I sat back and stared at the new cop sitting opposite me.

  “Before we go any further,” I said. “Are you hiring me?”

  He stared at me out of those too-blue-to-be-believed eyes and said nothing. I arched a brow at him.

  “As much as I’d like to give you a display of my skills pro bono, Detective, I’m a businesswoman, and the NZP doesn’t normally spend money on outside assistance unless the cost is warranted.”

  “You don’t believe the cost warranted?” he asked. “Do those people not deserve justice?”

  “Don’t test my moral compass, Danvers; it’s pointing due north. What’s the budget on this?”

  “That’s classified information.”

  I snorted. Maisey would tell me if I asked.

  “Read the files, Ms O’Dare.”

  He might have looked pretty, but Detective Douche had a rock-solid spine on him. Maybe Suzy wouldn’t chew him up and spit him out completely.

  I huffed and flicked my hair over my shoulder, making a movie worthy Miss Piggy moment of my disgruntlement. Out of the corner of my eyes, I caught the man smirk. Pulling the folder back towards me, I skim read the first case file.

  Stock standard burglary. Other than the fact that close to ten thousand dollars of electronic surveillance equipment had been ripped off. The case was cold and still open.

  The second file reported vandalism at a holiday home in Cable Bay. Someone had squatted and not been particular about leaving evidence of their trespass behind. Again the case was cold and still open.