decided, or for the client to find a new dog, because this dog didn’t hunt for clients who knocked women around.
Duncan snatched his cell phone off the charger, made the call. He was just pissed enough not to give a good damn about the hour.
“Yeah, it’s Duncan, and yeah, I got something. What I’ve got is a county deputy questioning me over a break-in and an attack on a woman at Bluff House tonight.”
He poured himself another shot of vodka, listened a moment. “You don’t want to bullshit me. I don’t work for people who bullshit me. I’ve got no problem doing a dance for the locals, but not when I don’t know the tune. Yeah, they asked who I was working for, and no, I didn’t tell them. This time. But when I’ve got a client who uses me to clear a path to break into the house of the guy I’m paid to investigate, and that client goes after a woman in the house, I’ve got my own questions. What I do from here on depends on the answers. I’m not risking my license. Right now I’ve got information about a crime that includes assaulting a woman, and that makes me an accessory. So you better have some damn good answers or we’re done, and if the cops come back on me, I give them your name. That’s right. Fine.”
Duncan checked the time. What the hell, he thought, he was too pissed to sleep anyway. “I’ll be there.”
He sat at his computer first, typed up detailed notes. He intended to cover every square inch of his ass. And if necessary, he’d take those detailed notes straight to the county sheriff.
The break-in was one thing, and bad enough. But the assault on the woman? That tipped the scales.
But he’d give the client a chance to explain. Sometimes the dumb shits just watched too much TV, got in over their heads, and God knew he’d had dumb shits for clients before this.
So they’d clear the air, and he’d make his position just as clear. No more bullshit. Leave the investigating to the professionals.
Calmer now, Duncan dressed. He gargled away the vodka. Never a good idea to meet a client with alcohol on the breath. He strapped on his 9mm out of habit, then dragged on a warm sweater, topped it with a windbreaker.
He pocketed his keys, his recorder, his wallet, then slipped out of his room by his private entrance.
That little perk had cost him an extra fifteen a day, but it kept his cheerful hostess from knowing his comings and goings.
He considered his car, then opted to walk. The drive to and from Boston, the hours outside the Landon house, he could use the walk.
While he considered himself an avowed urbanite, he liked the quiet of the village, the middle-of-the-night Brigadoon feel to it with everything shut down, closed up, and the sound of waves rumbling nearby.
A few fingers of ground fog crawled in, adding to the otherworldly atmosphere. The storm had passed, but it left the air thick with wet, and the sky too heavy to show the moon.
The flick and flash of the lighthouse on the point added to the out-of-time feel. He headed toward it, using the time to decide just how to handle the situation.
All in all, now that he’d calmed down, it was probably best to call it a day. If you couldn’t trust the client, the work suffered. Added to it, Landon didn’t do a goddamn thing. After several days of surveillance, of interviewing the locals, the most damaging information was wholesale gossip from a chatty gift shop clerk.
Maybe Landon killed his wife—doubtful, but maybe. But Duncan didn’t foresee any major revelations bursting out of the beach town or the house on the bluff.
Maybe he’d be persuaded to stay on the job—if it meant going back to Boston, doing some digging there, taking a look at the reports, the evidence from another angle. Talking the case over with Wolfe.
But question-and-answer time first.
He wanted to know why his client broke into the house. And he wanted to know if it was the first time.
Not that Duncan objected to a little professional B&E. But it was just stupid to think there was something inside that house to tie Landon to the murder of his wife, back in Boston, a year earlier.
And now the local cops would keep closer tabs on the house, on Landon and on the PI hired to snoop.