Trouble in Dixie Read online

  Trouble in Dixie

  Familiar Legacy #2

  Rebecca Barrett

  Copyright © 2017 by Rebecca Barrett

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Cover design by Cissy Hartley

  For Carolyn Ladner, the best travel companion and research assistant and, the kind of best friend everyone should be so lucky to have.

  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

  About the Author

  Trouble in Tallahassee

  Trouble in Tallahassee

  Trouble’s Double Contest Winner

  Chapter One

  I open my eyes wide, then narrow them to mere slits. My ears slant forward and my tail twitches. I rise from the cushion of the window seat and peer out into the shadows, my superior feline senses at full alert. A sound has awakened me from that ephemeral sleep of the born hunter.

  I tense all over in anticipation. Here at last is something to relieve the tedium of my sojourn in sleepy Savannah, Georgia, something to stimulate my intellect and engage my Holmesian sleuthing skills.

  A muffled thud reaches my ears and I’m off the window seat in a flash. The noise is coming from the ground floor, from the office of The Hampton Detective Agency. A burglar is on the prowl.

  I slide across the hardwood floor to a halt at the apartment door. It is closed and probably locked. It is a solid, old door in a solid, old house on Calhoun Square.

  I turn almost before I reach the door and retrace my steps with a couple of springs of my powerful hind legs. The window is open six inches, more than enough room for me to slip through, catwalk the molding, and drop to the portico and then to the ground. But that will do me no good. Those noises came from inside the office below. The gits are in the building.

  In less than ten seconds from the first thump that awakened me, I decide the only course of action is to involve the biped, my current roommate, Julia.

  Without a second thought I spring onto the bed that dominates the room, walk onto Julia’s chest, and sit. I bat at her face with my paw. Stealth is the only weapon we have at the moment before more facts are known.

  Julia rises from her prone position and a deep sleep in one swift move. I slip from her chest.

  “What? What?”

  She isn’t fully awake. I reach my paw up to her lips in an effort to silence her.

  Julia brushes her hair back from her face and reaches for me.

  “Trouble? What’s the matter?” She yawns. “You want to go out?”

  Again I place a paw over her lips then jump from the bed and head for the door. Another muffled thud comes from below.

  Julia sits up straight, suddenly alert. She whispers, “What’s that?” as she eases out of the bed and follows barefoot after me.

  She presses her ear against the heavy apartment door and listens. I bat at the door with my paws and growl low in my throat.

  Julia retrieves a long, heavy-duty flashlight from a drawer in the bombe chest next to the entry. She carefully turns the deadbolt lock so as not to make a sound, then places her finger to her lips. “Ssssshhh.” The door swings open on silent hinges.

  The noise downstairs is louder now. It’s evident someone is going through Julia’s desk and file cabinet. I streak ahead, taking the stairs as silent as a panther stalking his prey. In an instant I’m out of Julia’s sight and have picked my way across the shattered glass from the French doors that open from the foyer and are the entrance into the detective agency’s office.

  Two thugs are hard at it, one going through the files in the file cabinet and dumping folders unceremoniously onto the floor, while the other is at her desk trying to access her computer records.

  I make my way unnoticed under the desk as the crunch of glass beneath Julia’s bare feet and her cry of pain alerts the intruders that they have been discovered. Both men look up and the one at the desk immediately kills the lamp light. I spring at him and catch his trousers’ leg in my claws. By this time both men are headed for the door. Julia thinks to turn on the flashlight just as both of them barrel into her, knocking her to the glass littered floor. I am unable to maintain my grip on the trousers’ leg but I dig my claws into the intruder’s calf. But as they slip out into the night, all I have left is a scrap of fabric.

  Torn between pursuit and the fallen Julia, I reluctantly give up the chase and go to her aid.

  Sargent Gibbons arrived on the scene as Julia picked the last glass shard from her foot. He pushed his hat onto the back of his head and sighed. “Your father isn’t going to like this Julia.”

  “Do you have to tell him?”

  “It wouldn’t be right if I didn’t.”

  Julia bit back the response that was on the tip of her tongue. She hadn’t lived at home since her return to Savannah after college but that hadn’t prevented her father from keeping a watchful eye over her. At twenty-eight she was more than an adult, more than capable of taking care of herself, but she knows she will always, in her father’s eyes, be daddy’s little girl. And all the cops who patrol the historic district of Savannah know it too. Sometimes her father’s social standing and political influence were maddening.

  Julia lifted her hands in a gesture of surrender. “Fine. But don’t make it sound worse than it is.”

  Sargent Gibbons looked about at the mess in her office and the broken pane of glass in the French door. Finally his gaze came to rest on her arm. “But you’re bleeding.”

  “You would be too if you walked barefoot in the dark over broken glass.” She saw the furrows of concern on his forehead deepen. “But it isn’t that bad. Really.”

  “What about your arm? How did that happen?”

  Julia looked away from Sargent Gibbons and surveyed the disaster in her office. “I cut it on the door. It’s just a few scratches.”

  He sighed and glanced down at his notepad. “So there were two of them, both wearing ski masks, about five ten to six feet tall.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you can’t say what they were after?”

  “I can’t say because I don’t know. As far as I can tell they were searching for something in my files. I won’t know until I sort through this mess.”

  He slapped the notebook closed. “So there was nothing distinctive about either of them that you remember?”

  Julia lifted her shoulders in a faint shrug. “I only saw them for less than a minute. When I stepped on the broken glass the one at my desk turned off the lamp.”

  “Well, we’ll dust for prints but I doubt we find any. Crooks these days know how to cover their tracks. Too many cop shows on TV.

  He was about to turn into the office when he spotted Trouble sitting on the third step of the stairs. “I didn’t know you had a cat.”

  “I don’t. I’m cat-sitting for a friend.”

  Trouble raised his hackles and growled low in his throat.

  “Not very friendly, is he?”

  Julia laughed. “Trouble has a superiority complex.”

  With that Trouble turned his back on the two of them and began to groom himself.

  Julia laughed again. “As you can see.”

  After Sargent Gibbons finally left, taking the young pol
iceman who spent more time ogling her than collecting evidence, Julia surveyed the mess in her office. What could the two men have been searching for? Except for a discreet plaque with gold lettering beside the outer door of the building there was no way of knowing this house was any different from all the other mostly residential houses on the square. This wasn’t a random break-in, then. What were they searching for?

  She thought back over the past few weeks and months. All her cases were in the end stages of resolution. The information from her research had been reported to the insurance company that employed her, the conclusions already on file. She had a court hearing in two weeks on one of them and an arbitration hearing scheduled next month on another. A lot of money was at stake in the arbitration case but not so much on the court case. How would her files benefit either of them?

  Well, there was no way to know until she established some sense of order.

  As soon as the policemen left the premises Trouble began a circuitous inspection of the room. He pawed a couple of manila folders on the floor, sniffed the drawer pull on the file cabinet, but quickly moved on. The desk chair peaked his interest. He placed his nose to the seat of the chair and sneezed. Next he inspected several items on the desktop: a stapler, a letter opener, the lamp, and finally the keyboard of the computer. He sat squarely in the middle of the desk blotter and blinked slowly three times.

  Julia looked up from the floor of the room where she was sorting sheets of paper into various piles. She sat back on her heels and watched the cat.

  “What?” she said. “Don’t tell me you sniffed out the perp.” Trouble’s owner, Tammy Lynn, believed the cat had uncanny abilities, that he somehow knew things when there was no logical reason why he should.

  Trouble yawned hugely and continued to sit on the desk. His eyes blinked slowly once again and he said, “Yeow.”

  Julia smiled and returned to sorting receipts, photos, claim forms, and other bits of information. After a couple of minutes she paused and looked up at Trouble. She watched him patiently waiting then she got up from the floor. “All right, Sherlock, let’s see what’s so interesting up here.”

  She pulled the chair up to the desk and sat, moving Trouble to the corner of the desktop as she did. It took a few seconds for the computer to boot up. She scrolled through her documents file, hoping a name would catch her eye. After about ten minutes she sat back and drummed her fingertips on the desk. “I give up. Nothing stands out.”

  She started to return to the mess of files on the floor then decided to check her email. As soon as she opened Outlook, Trouble stood and walked across the keyboard.

  “Trouble!” She lifted him down to the floor and shook her finger at him. “Bad kitty!”

  Trouble arched his back and walked away on stiff legs, disdain radiating throughout his body.

  Julia turned back to the computer screen and discovered the cat, in his prance across the keyboard, had opened an email from Sandra, a long time friend and the receptionist at her new client’s insurance agency. Staring at her from the computer was a handsome man with dark brown eyes and a strong chin.

  “Hello. What’s this?” She clicked on the image and reduced it from full screen. The photo was on a dating site. Single, thirty-two, relatively new to the area, antique car enthusiast.

  She studied the image. There was something familiar about that face. Douglas Heinz. Who was Douglas Heinz and where had she seen him before?

  Mitch Lawson stood in the shadow of the Federal style building. The cone of light from the wrought iron lamppost on the corner created night blindness for anyone who might glance in his direction. He had been standing there for well over two hours, his stance relaxed, unmoving. It was a stance learned from years of surveillance duty and one he could maintain for hours if necessary. The alleyway leading down the side of the Georgian house across the street was lit by low lights on the side of the main building, their design not meant for security but rather for their historical aesthetic.

  His attention was focused on the carriage house at the end of the alley. It, too, was lit by a gas carriage lamp but the illumination was sufficient for him to determine that no one had come or gone from the building since his arrival.

  He glanced down at his watch. It was two o’clock in the morning. He looked up and down the street, alert to any movement. Nothing. He stepped out of the shadows, his head down, the collar of his sports coat turned up, and crossed the street and down the alley, his presence nothing more than another shadow.

  There was only one way in or out of the carriage house. Mitch took a pick from his pocket and soon the lock on the dutch door opened. He slipped into the main living space and stood for a minute, allowing his eyes to adjust to the deeper shades of darkness. There were pinpoints of green light coming from the modem of the computer on a desk to the left of the door. Three blue lights from what was probably the television and stereo set-up were visible at the end of the room, and from the open door of the bedroom, another faint light source, probably a clock of some kind.

  Mitch did a quick reconnoiter of the apartment using a pen light sparingly. The bed had not been disturbed and the bathroom was neat and tidy. He found nothing in the closet out of the ordinary. There were no signs of a meal prepared or eaten in the kitchen. All was spic and span. At the desk he stood and looked out along the alleyway, his eyes searching every shadow. Finally, he hit the power button and booted up the computer.

  He went immediately to the browser history. The Bank of Savannah was the only notable site to show up. Nothing unusual there. Under documents he found three files that had been accessed repeatedly over the past thirty days. The activity had been more pronounced in the past week but when he checked into each file, there was nothing that indicated changes to the documents.

  He sat back in the chair and stared into the darkness, thinking about this. Why monitor these three cases so closely?

  From the inner pocket of his sports coat he took out a notepad and pen. He jotted down the names on the files. He started to close out the files and noticed an annotation at the bottom of two of them. They were both assigned to Peter Ryder, a claims adjustor with The Weatherby Insurance Agency, but he, in turn, had requested the involvement of The Hampton Detective Agency.

  Mitch closed the documents file and turned off the computer. He sat in the dark letting his vision readjust to the night then stood and left as silently and unnoticed as he had come.

  Julia spent another half hour restoring order to her files then gave up. She yawned, turned out the lights, and went upstairs with every intention of going back to bed but by the time she dressed the cuts on her left foot and right arm, it was almost five o’clock in the morning. Her day usually started at six with yoga and copious amounts of coffee. Today she decided to forego the yoga and head straight for the coffee pot.

  The phone rang just as she finished her shower. It was six-fifteen.

  “Hi, Mom. Right on time.”

  “Good morning, Julia. Your father is beside himself as I’m sure you’re aware. He has Gibbons down in the study grilling the poor man like a defense attorney. You’d better tell me what happened so I can calm the waters.”

  “I was hoping he wouldn’t tell Daddy.”

  “You know your father worries.”

  “Yes, Mother, I know. It was nothing really. Someone broke into the office and went through my files.”

  “Sargent Gibbons said they trashed the place.”

  “I prefer to think of it as a very thorough search of my files.”

  Her mother sighed. “Well, you realize Woodrow will insist on that alarm system now.”

  Julia groaned. “Mom.” The word was a drawn out plea.

  “I’m sorry, Julia. I confess this incident makes me have second thoughts about this new scheme of yours.”

  “It’s not a scheme, Mom. It’s a profession.”

  “Snooping into other people’s lives isn’t a profession.”

  Julia chuckled. “No, it’s Aunt
Ethel.”

  “Julia!”

  “Sorry, Mom.”

  “Well, you’d best come to breakfast. Better to go ahead and beard the lion and get it over with. Besides, you left your briefcase here last night.”

  Julia smacked her palm against her forehead. Of all the times to forget her briefcase, this was the worst. She needed it for her meeting with the insurance adjustor later in the morning. All the documents and policy information on a new case with a new client were in it. She would have to face her father at the height of his fright over the break-in.

  The charcoal grey linen sheath struck just the right note. It was cool for the September heat, elegant yet professional enough for a business meeting. Julia struggled over the shoes but since she needed to look as grown-up and capable as possible for her encounter with her father, she chose the sherbert orange sling backs and a black envelope handbag. She put her hair up and the gold orb earrings were just enough with the single strand pearl necklace. She checked her appearance in the mirror. “Okay,” she said, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath. As she slowly let it out, she opened her eyes. She was ready.

  She went in the back of her parent’s home, through the kitchen, and snitched a grape from the fruit bowl. Rosetta gave her a sympathetic look as she headed toward the door to the dining room.

  Woodrow Hampton looked over the top of the newspaper and his reading glasses when she entered the room.

  Julia hoped the flesh tone of the Band-Aids on her right arm would go unnoticed. She rounded the table and kissed his cheek. “Good morning, Daddy.”

  “Good morning? Just what, pray tell, is good about it? Amos Gibbons tells me you could have been killed in your sleep.”