Damaged Goods Read online

  Damaged Goods

  Erica Jensen Mystery #1

  Debbi Mack

  Renegade Press

  Damaged Goods

  Copyright 2020 Debbi Mack

  * * *

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  The End

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  Other books by Debbi Mack

  Connect with me

  This book is dedicated to my husband and family with love and gratitude.

  Prologue

  Afghanistan, November 2011

  Ten minutes. It was only supposed to take ten minutes to reach our ride home.

  Perkins drove. I rode in the vehicle commander’s seat. An electric jolt ran up my spine as our allegedly mine-resistant vehicle bounced down the dusty road. If you could dignify the narrow strip of packed sand as such. The same relentless beige as its surroundings.

  Corporal Perkins spat out an oath behind a keffiyeh tied across his nose and mouth. My face was also half-encased with cloth. The idea was to keep from choking on the cloud of sand and dust that swirled around us. But the grit managed to work its way behind our makeshift filters. My face itched with the stuff. Under the desert sun, I squinted behind the dark Eyepro strapped tight to my head. The goggles reduced the glare and kept the dust from blinding me.

  Perkins’ oath was swallowed up by the roar of the vehicle and the howling wind.

  “Copy that,” I shouted, although he could no better hear me than I could hear him. I gripped my M16A4 rifle a little tighter as I scanned the surroundings.

  Perkins, a red-haired, freckle-faced 20-year-old, said something else. I motioned for a restatement, pointing to my ears and shaking my head. The muffled response was, “Erica, are … okay?”

  Perkins was one of the good guys. He saw and acknowledged that women were a military asset. Women have aided combat troops for years—unofficially, of course—as far back as the American Revolution. Back in ’04 or ’05, the Marines led the way for women to become more officially involved. When I deployed, they assigned me to the Female Engagement Teams or FETs. This was a highly select group of women who performed valuable back-up to the ground troops and intel-gathering duties. The types of jobs men couldn’t perform because of cultural niceties.

  “Erica?” Perkins’ voice pierced my thoughts like a knife.

  He’d been asking after my health. I had sustained a concussion while riding at the tail end of a convoy. My concentration still suffered, even after spending weeks in a hospital. I tried to conjure a response, but the wind seemed to blow thoughts straight out of my head. “I’m fine,” I yelled.

  I checked my watch. Seven minutes to go.

  Perkins was hell-bent on returning to his hometown in Nebraska or Kansas or some other big-ass state full of fields, small towns, and DQs. I think his family raised hogs. Me, I could think of no other place to go except the DC suburbs, where I had lived all 20 years of my life. With the exception of the last two, which I’d spent in Afghanistan.

  Perkins had an advantage over me, in that he had a family he wanted to go home to. My parents thought I was insane to join the Marines. Maybe they were right, but their alternative was for me to go to college and marry well. Not my idea of a life plan.

  I’d miss the people here, my comrades in arms and the ones we’d served. Even men who had greeted the FET as skeptics were eventually won over by our ability to connect with the locals, gather intel, and watch the men’s backs. Despite everything, I actually felt like we were a force for good. When we weren’t being blown to bits.

  I wouldn’t miss the Vietnam War–era equipment the Army had abused and foisted on us, the whipping, grit-filled wind, the inedible food, scorching summer temps, and freezing nights, and especially playing target for madmen.

  I scanned the close-in area for signs of movement as the barren desert wasteland stretched for miles around us. My watch indicated five minutes until we reached our ticket out of here.

  Then, clear as a bell, I heard Perkins say, “First thing I do when I get home is have a cheeseburger. And a bottle of beer.”

  As I opened my mouth to reply, I felt a sudden blast. Day turned into night. Is this death? I thought, before slipping into the void.

  Chapter One

  I jerked awake in my bed, drenched in sweat. Eight years had passed and I still had the dream. I was alive, Perkins wasn’t.

  The room was a dark blur. My head was throbbing, and I blinked rapidly to clear my vision, but that didn’t work. I stared at the bedside clock and forced the numbers into focus. 0430 hours.

  I flopped back on the bed and stared at the ceiling. Was another hour of sleep really worth it? Did I even want to go back to sleep?

  “Oh, what the hell,” I grumbled. I turned off the alarm and threw the covers aside before slowly swinging my feet to the floor. I had an important meeting that morning and didn’t want to be late.

  I peeled off my sleep shirt and trudged into the bathroom for a warm shower, hoping it would relax me and wash off remnants of the dream. After a vigorous towel down, I put on my robe and went to the kitchen to brew some strong coffee. The paper wouldn’t be delivered for another hour. I like reading an actual print newspaper. Yeah, I’m weird that way.

  After filling my coffee mug to the brim, I dry-swallowed two Advil and sipped the hot brew. A poor substitute for the painkillers I was forced to quit, as part of my court-ordered therapy. My aching brain cried out for just one tablet from my hidden stash of leftover Oxy. Excuses and reality bounced back and forth in my head. But it’s an emergency . . . Focus, I thought.

  I puttered around the kitchen, making a simple breakfast of English muffins slathered in butter and Marmite (a salty British condiment you either love or hate). After washing the few dishes and utensils, I did a 10-minute meditation to prep for the day followed by yoga stretches to strengthen my back and get my head right. As I went through my ritual, I steeled myself for a meeting with new client—a multi-millionaire no less.

  I’m not what you’d call a real private eye. My return from Afghanistan was hardly auspicious. I came back a phys
ical and mental wreck, thanks in part to outmoded or inappropriate gear and vehicles. The ill-fitting heavy armor had worn my spine down something fierce. As for the explosions I survived before leaving the country, let’s just say noises as threatening as a slamming door made me as jumpy as a cat in a dogs-only kennel. Back then, scenes from the war played in my head like a movie on a continuous loop. Between that and my aching back, I couldn’t sit still for even ten minutes.

  A few years of physical and occupational therapy helped me manage the worst of the war’s toll on my body. As for the mental aspects, I was still in recovery. Probably for the rest of my days.

  I found office work absolutely unbearable. Office politics aside, my coworkers seemed to bitch nonstop about tiny problems—which drove me nuts.

  I ended up working as a freelance researcher by developing the kind of computer skills needed to track down debtors—deadbeat dads, deadbeat moms, deadbeats of all stripes. I even did a little repo work, such work as I could get. That plus pain pills and therapy—court-ordered and otherwise—kept me afloat.

  The most recent call for my services came right out of the blue—on a Sunday no less. I had been referred to Stuart Blaine by one of my previous clients. All my clients are by referral most of whom are not in a position to pay the freight for a legitimate private eye.

  It’s an unfortunate fact of life that one can’t obtain a private investigator’s license in Maryland if one is addicted to narcotics. According to the VA and the judicial system, I was such an addict. Advil, therapy, and yoga notwithstanding.

  The fact that Blaine made more than enough money as a real estate developer should have raised at least one red flag. But he claimed it was an emergency and wanted to meet me as soon as possible. My calendar wasn’t exactly overflowing with multi-millionaire clients, so we arranged to meet the following morning.

  Before leaving home, I double-checked my appearance. My dark blue suit wasn’t Nordstrom, but it placed well above Goodwill. I tugged at the jacket and fiddled with tights so sheer, they might as well have been pantyhose. I loathed dressing up to impress some big shot, but I needed the money. What a way to start a Monday. Hopefully, a few hours in this getup would be worth the inconvenience.

  ϕϕϕ

  At 0900 sharp, I stood at the doorstep of a small palace in upper Montgomery County, Maryland. Me in my monkey suit, looking the part of a down-and-out relative, outside a mini-manse, totally out of my element. But money is money.

  Stuart Blaine’s assistant answered when I rang the doorbell and asked me to wait in the foyer. I waited. The sound of a hushed discussion drifted down the stairs and made my skin crawl—as if there were ghosts up there. Then footsteps. Blaine appeared, descending the grand staircase curving from the second floor.

  Blaine couldn’t have been taller than four foot ten, a good half-foot shorter than me. In his mid-fifties, he was a stick figure with pasty skin and green eyes made huge by the Coke bottle lenses in his glasses. Even with the wealth of a modern-day Midas, he sported cheap eyewear. Maybe penny-pinching was the secret of his success. He wore jeans and a plaid flannel work shirt that had worked so hard, its sleeves fell off. Blaine’s scrawny upper arms bore an elaborate blue and purple skull-and-flowers tattoo. Here I was, the hired help, dressed to the nines, while Blaine looked like an overage slacker. The vibes from this scene were totally unnerving.

  He extended a hand as he approached. “Thanks for coming to see me, Ms. Jensen.”

  “It’s good to meet you, Mr. Blaine.” As we shook, he held onto my hand, as if for dear life.

  “Please . . . call me Stu.”

  “Yes, sir. Stu. I’m Erica.”

  Blaine led me through an area decorated in classic Ethan Allan. “This is the family room,” he said over his shoulder. “Not my style, but it’ll do until I can update the look.”

  “Here’s the kitchen.” He waved toward the small room. “It needs to be expanded and upgraded.” Blaine’s compulsion to provide these explanations made me wonder if he mistook me for an interior decorator. We took a short hall to a room lined with bookshelves. A sleek Danish modern desk sat near the picture window.

  I quickly scanned the heavy dark wood bookshelves, which held a mix of hardcovers and paperbacks, informal popular titles.

  “This is the library.” Blaine stopped and swept his hand in a sideways arc. No shit.

  “Please have a seat.” He nodded toward a guest chair. Apparently, the house tour was over, so we could get down to business.

  Blaine dropped into his high-backed leather chair, and judging from his not being completely dwarfed by it, I could’ve sworn the tiny man was using a booster seat. He propped his elbows on the desk and gazed at me over steepled fingers. “My daughter is missing,” Blaine said without preamble. “I’m willing to pay whatever you ask to find her.”

  Odd. During our phone call, Blaine had given another reason for hiring me.

  “You told me your former partner may have embezzled from you,” I said. “Now you tell me your daughter is missing. Have you called the cops to report her missing?” He looked confused, so I added, “How old is your daughter?”

  “She’s twenty-two, single, and going to art school in Baltimore. She hangs around with losers who borrow money and party all night.” Blaine raised a hand, palm forward, silencing me. “I also have the problem I mentioned on the phone, but that’s a separate issue.”

  Really? Despite the money I stood to earn, this wasn’t the best start to a potential business relationship.

  “Your daughter isn’t a minor, so she can go where she wants,” I said.

  Blaine glared at me. “Did you not hear me? She’s hanging out with a bad crowd. I haven’t been able to reach her, and that’s unusual. I’m worried.”

  You want to control her life. Tell her who and what to be. Is it any wonder she’s dropped off your radar? Too much like my own parents.

  I took a breath before speaking. “Let’s take things one at a time,” I suggested. “When did you last hear from your daughter?”

  “Thursday night.”

  Four days ago.

  “You can file a missing persons report any time,” I said.

  He frowned. “No cops. That’s why I need you.”

  I could already guess his reasons, but I had to ask. “Why not call the police?”

  He grimaced. “Young lady, do you read the papers? Or do you just surf the Web for funny cat photos and weird celebrity news?”

  I let that condescending remark slide. Blaine seemed like the kind of guy who confuses taunting with being assertive. Besides, even though I had just turned thirty, I’ve been told I look seventeen, which doesn’t help.

  “I know who you are,” I said in an even tone. “I know you were released from prison last year.”

  “Then you should understand why I would rather not have the police involved in my personal business.”

  I nodded. Being a convicted drug dealer must complicate one’s life. Cry me a river.

  “Assuming I agree to find her, any guesses about where your daughter may have gone?”

  “I have no idea.” A vertical line creased the space between his brows. “She could be anywhere.”

  Blaine had no clues about his daughter? Not exactly Father of the Year material. “So . . . she’s never expressed a desire to leave the area?”

  He waved a hand. “She’s mentioned wanting to see the Southwest, but I doubt that she actually went there.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “She’s determined to graduate from the Maryland Institute College of Art and has already wasted a lot of money on classes there.”

  “You don’t pay her educational expenses?”

  “I told her if she insisted on going to art school, it would be on her own dime.” Blaine pursed his lips. “She can’t tap her trust fund, except for emergencies. Art school doesn’t qualify.”

  Asshole, I thought. I resisted the urge to point that out. “How about her friends? Have
you tried talking to them?”

  “I have no contact with the people she hangs with now.” A wistful tone crept into his voice. “Her best friend in high school was Katie Saunders. I don’t know if they’ve stayed in touch.”

  “How about guys? Any special ones in her life?”

  “She sees so many boys I can’t keep track.” The wistfulness was gone and his tone was flat.

  Not helpful. Maybe Katie would know more.

  I pressed on. “What about social media? Is she on Facebook or Twitter?”

  Blaine scowled. “I don’t post or tweet or snaptweet or whatever they’re doing these days. I leave the social media work to my partner.” He waved a hand, as if swatting flies. “My daughter works at a coffee shop near the school. Cafe Latte or some such. I can’t recall her saying anything unusual or dropping any hints that would help you find her.”

  “How do you know she’s missing? Have you been to her home?”

  Blaine’s expression turned stiff, his lips pressed thin. “We usually talk every Friday or Saturday, except for this past weekend.”

  I pondered the non-answer. Was he deliberately evasive or simply obtuse?