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  SMOKING GUN

  Written by C. L. Stone

  With Arcato Publishing

  Published by Arcato Publishing on Smashwords

  Smoking Gun

  Copyright (c) 2012

  By C. L. Stone

  This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.

  PROLOGUE

  Mr. Logan landed hard on the stairs and his head hit the wall. He felt the blood before he felt the pain, knowing it was bad. His frame lurched forward. Hands moved out instinctively for protection, only as he hit the floor, his fingers struck against the hard wood. His smallest finger cracked backward into his hand. The wind rushed out of his lungs, choking out the scream he had sounded from the start of his fall.

  Stunned and dizzy, he flipped over on his back. He seized his chest with his good hand, willing his lungs to work. He knew his hand was broken, his head was bleeding. For some reason his legs weren't working.

  Breathe, he told himself, just breathe. The hospital will be called. Just stay awake.

  He could hear footsteps. The sound was slow, as if the person was unsure how to move. He tried to glance up but from his angle he couldn't make out where he was.

  Call for the police! An ambulance! Hurry! He willed his mouth to open and say this, but only moaning escaped. It was harsh against his dry lips and the syllables were unrecognizable to him.

  He would work with his savior through their terrible financial trouble. It wasn't really anyone's fault. He promised himself over and over again that as soon as he was able, he'd set things right. No one had to know these secrets. If only he had time to say so. If only the words would cross his lips. It seemed so important to say he could forgive.

  A shadowed face came into view. He looked up into familiar eyes.

  Why are you just looking at me? Why won’t you call? Again he willed his tongue to work. He whimpered as loudly as he could.

  Please! Help!

  The face stared back at him. Cold, unmoving.

  Calculating.

  Please no. Don't do this. It isn't worth it. He pleaded with his eyes. He reached outward toward the face. We can change things, he thought. It won't be so bad. No one will know who doesn't have to.

  The face went away and he could hear footsteps moving toward the door. He was going to be left alone! Panic seized him and he emptied his lungs in as loud a sound as he could manage, groaning and crying out. He would die, he knew, if he just left him there.

  Before his own eyes, visions of his daughter swam through. He thought of those pretty green eyes that were just like her mother’s. He couldn’t be here like this for her to find. He couldn’t leave her now. And there were still things she didn’t know.

  The footsteps returned.

  He heard the whistle of the object coming toward him before he felt it strike his skull at the temple.

  He fought to keep breathing, his lungs burning, a wash of red blurred out his vision.

  As the second strike struck at his brain, the red turned black.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Celeste Logan woke with sunlight breaking over the pine trees, streaming into her eyelids. She bolted upright in the driver's seat, gasping in confusion.

  James Bond would have been severely disappointed.

  Celeste lunged for her cell phone, checking the time. Six in the morning. She readjusted her bra where the underwire was cutting into to her breasts and reached to flick on the power to wipe the windshield of winter dew. The brick house of John Sanders was as still as it had been at two in the morning. Tidy curtains remained closed. Red doors with gold plated doorknockers sat motionless. The silver Cadillac, the latest model, was parked in the drive. The windows were covered with dew as well. His wife's car was missing, and she made a mental note to check on her.

  There was something more to her father's death. It wasn't just an accident, as the police thought. John Sanders had it in for him, being his right hand in the company. She just couldn't put her finger on it.

  But she had her finger ready for whenever it showed up.

  Celeste pulled her black jacket around the right way, thrusting her arms into the sleeves. A second later she had the car engine turning and pulled away from the side of the road. It was clear John Sanders wasn't doing anything that warranted watching that morning.

  The car rolled forward. She looked up to see a sign saying this was a dead end street. She had forgotten. It could be blamed on the lack of proper sleep. Pushing the break, she put the car into reverse.

  Bump. She could feel the curb, or what she thought was the curb. Celeste turned around, only to see a big black car stopped right behind her rear bumper.

  The car had pulled into Sanders' driveway.

  Celeste felt her heart dropped into her shoes. She tried replaying the last few seconds in her mind. Did she hit it, or did she hit the curb and just thought it was the car? Her foot itched to step on the gas pedal to drive off, but the car was still facing the wrong way.

  She heard a car door open and then slam. Some expletives were used. She couldn't hear them directly but was pretty sure there was a guess as to her sex and the predictability of her driving skills.

  She froze. What if he knew John? What if it was John? What if when she had fallen asleep, John had left with someone else and now he was there? She rested her head on the steering wheel. Maybe if she closed her eyes and pretended to not be in the car, he wouldn’t see her.

  A rapping sound on the window burst her wish bubble.

  A man was peering through her side window. Locks of brown hair dangled in front of blue eyes. He had dark stubble over his chin, and it looked like his nose had been broken at one point. It didn't look bad at all on him. He must have been tall, because he was hunching over a lot to look at her. He had to be about 30. Definitely not Sanders.

  "Are you okay?" he asked.

  "…What?"

  He leaned on the car, and moved his hand to indicate that she should roll down the window.

  She did.

  "Are you hurt?"

  Hurt? It was just a bump. Still, his question caused a natural reaction to check herself over. No blood. "I don't think so."

  He nodded. "I suppose we should call the police." He pushed a lock of brown away from his face and then reached for the handle on the outside of the car. "Would you like to come out and check this over with me?"

  Not really, she thought. She was afraid she would be recognized. He could be an employee or even a relative of Sanders. He stared as she hesitated. She didn’t have much choice. "Okay."

  He opened the door for her, stepping out of the way. She wobbled a little as she lifted herself out of the car, placing a hand on the roof for support until she could stretch her back. It was hard to be sly about the fact that she had spent the night in her car. Her dark blond hair was matted together in a half pulled out ponytail. Her black t-shirt and matching yoga pants were wrinkled in an unholy mess. Not that she needed to wear black clothes when she was too much of a chicken to go break into Sanders' house. She made a note to herself that if she ever planned to spy on Sanders again, she needed to get out of there before dawn. She also needed to stick to wearing a hat.

  The smell of a lingering wood fire cut through the delicate chill of the January air. They stood together between the two cars. The black car had only a slight scratch. You could barely see it. It was probably there before. Celeste’s blue sedan scored the most damage, a good dent the size of a baseball.

  Stupid plastic cars.

  She pretended to study the damage while trying to think of some excuse to get out of this. She didn’t have insurance. There wasn’t exactly
a lot of extra cash lying around the house these days. She could feel him watching her and waiting. Was she supposed to say something? She had to move on and fast.

  "Well, not much damage,” she said. “How about we exchange information and we can both get out of here?"

  A dark eyebrow lifted. "You in a hurry?"

  "Sort of."

  "You know it is against the law to hit and run in South Carolina?"

  She forced a cool smile. "… Yes?"

  "And you do know the penalty for it?"

  "Not really."

  "Minimum of a year in jail."

  Yikes. “Is there anything I could do? I'll pay for your car. We don't even have to go through insurance. No one really has to know about this.” She looked up and could see movement at the window of John’s house. Sanders' face peered outward toward them. “Please? I’m late. And really, I’ve got the most damage. Yours looks pristine still. Is it new? It’s a nice model. Where’d you get it?”

  He tightened his smile and folded his arms, looking at the scratch on the car. He was tall like she assumed, had to be over six foot. Those big eyes of his made him look like some rock star; and with the black suit and tie he wore, he looked shockingly handsome.

  She blushed.

  He could be in cahoots with Sanders, after all. Why was he here in his driveway?

  "How about this," he said. "You give me your card, I'll give you mine. I'll call you later and we'll talk about it."

  "You won't call the cops when I'm gone?"

  "No. Actually, I'm in a hurry, too."

  She ran for her purse and flipped open a side pocket. She pulled out a card and then stared at it. Celeste Logan. The name was in big block letters across the middle. Anyone associated with Sanders or Logan Enterprises ought to recognize her. She hesitated before handing it over to him, hoping against hope he'd tuck it away without looking at it.

  He did. "And here's mine."

  She put it in a deep pocket in my purse and snapped it shut.

  "I'll get out of the way and let you finish turning around." He smiled and got into the car, pulling out of the driveway and heading down the road out of the neighborhood.

  Maybe he didn’t know Sanders after all. He was just a neighbor, or someone lost, perhaps. She didn’t have time to think. She pulled the car around.

  Sanders was leaving his front door and walking toward her. His lanky body strolled forward, his gray hair immaculate, his dark suit tailored. He called out and waved a hand.

  She jetted out of the neighborhood, crossing her fingers he didn’t see her face. However, her car may give her away. Would he call and ask her why she was there?

  She glanced at the cell phone in the car seat next to her. She could call him and make some excuse as to why she was in his neighborhood. There was no way to tell if Mr. Black Car knew him and no way to know unless he called or she called him. The option to hide in her closet for a month seemed like the best idea ever.

  Celeste drove absentmindedly toward home. The effects of sleeping in a car in the chill was starting to seep in. She couldn’t imagine anything better than her cozy bed and oblivious relief.

  She headed out of Mt. Pleasant and toward Kiawah Island, where the homes were huge and the beach was private. She never liked the house her father bought when she was five. “I’m a real estate mogul. I have to have some advantages,” he'd said. “Big deals need to be made in private.”

  She waved to the security guard as she drove past the security station at the entrance of the private community. Her father’s house sat on the beach alongside similar looking gigantic houses. The house was three stories, the top level the master bedroom and her dad’s home office, her own bedroom and guest bedrooms were on the second floor, and a big kitchen, dining room, TV room and formal parlor and library on the main floor. It was gray with white trim and surrounded by hedge gardens, palmetto trees and ferns. She couldn't get the garage door to work and open like it should, so she parked outside of it and headed toward the wide concrete front porch.

  A couple of notices were taped to the wood door. One was from the water company, with threats to turn off the water, and the other a threat from the community to cut the lawn or she’d have to pay a fine. She crumpled both, shoving the wad deep into her purse, and then unlocked the door.

  She was about to walk inside when a black Mercedes turned into the driveway. The car parked behind hers and out stepped Warren Perrin. When we were in first grade, he informed Celeste that girls couldn’t play four square because they cried when they lost. So she punched him enough so he cried. However, she found a new respect for him when he refused to tell the Principal who beat him up. They had been off and on friends since. Today, he wore an Armani suit, the lawyer edition, with a briefcase in hand and a stack of papers under his arm.

  “Looks like I just caught you,” he said. His voice was deep, and didn't really fit his look, with the even cut of blond hair against his head and the six foot, lanky stature trying to impress importance. She thought one day he'd start to swivel his hips and sing show tunes but he was determined to play straight.

  “You win. Now you go hide and I'll find you.”

  “Funny,” he said, closing the gab and meeting her on the porch. “Have a minute?”

  “No.”

  “Of course,” he put the briefcase down and then dug the paperwork out from under his arm. “I need to get you to read these.” He shoved the paperwork at her.

  “Right now?”

  “If you want to get rid of me, you'll have to.” He picked up his briefcase and started away.

  Celeste read the first line on the top sheet. “What about all the jargon?”

  “Use the dictionary. By the way, the first word is, 'the'.”

  She harrumphed but he was already starting his car before she came up with a rebuttal. Warren was a good person, but sometime back he stopped talking to her like he used to. Now the youngest lawyer accepted at his firm and having worked closely with her father the past few years, he stopped joking and turned serious. She missed their old bantering and wondered what happened to him. Maybe she had said something that was too much, but she couldn’t imagine what it was. She dragged the paperwork inside.

  As much as the outside of the house was modern, antiques and replicas furnished the majority of the house. She made a wide girth around the grand foyer’s main staircase, keeping her eyes on her feet and avoiding looking at the mess. The remnants of the police remained cluttered around; finger print dust on the floral wallpaper, paper coffee cups and scraps of notes and papers on the Louie the XV-style antique side table. At the bottom step of the stairs an antique coat rack was overturned. Coats had been scattered across the floor. She hadn't touched it in months. The cops might have been all over it, but if there was something to connect Sanders to her father’s death, she didn’t want to ruin it.

  The police report said that while it was possible, there was no evidence of him being pushed. He died due to severe head trauma, according to the autopsy. There was a report of alcohol in his blood, and there was a melting glass of ice on his desk upstairs. His head hitting the wall, the stairs and the final drop on the floor probably did the most damage. What had her confused was the fallen coat rack. Try as she might, she couldn’t figure out how he hit his head on it before landing on the floor. It didn’t make sense.

  Unless she envisioned John Sanders being there to help him along.

  She headed through the kitchen and up the back stairs toward her father’s home office on the third floor. It was a man’s office, with an old 20s banker-style desk and furniture, with dark green and mahogany heavily used throughout. There was a side door that connected to his bedroom on the same floor. A large bay window peeked out at the beach. She had a similar view from her bedroom below but his view was bigger and better.

  After dropping the paperwork on the corner of the desk, her stomach rumbled. She trudged down the back stairs again and went into the kitchen. A black and white cat stared
at her from the top of a gray granite counter. He jumped off as she shook a finger at him.

  “Bonehead, you’re lucky I leave the shot gun locked up in the safe.” She didn’t really have a shot gun, but he didn’t know that, and she wasn’t about to let him think otherwise.

  Bonehead brushed against her legs and then padded toward his empty water and food dish. The cat had been living in the fireplace of an abandoned house her father had acquired in his real estate deals. He was going to toss him out but made the mistake of calling Celeste first. Bonehead wasn’t much of a talker, but she liked that the black on his body made him look like he was wearing a Batman cape.

  She refilled his water and picked up the bag of cat food. A few pieces of food fell from a hole in the bottom of the bag. Bonehead had scratched the bag open to feed himself.

  “Why do you bother asking me?” She opened the top of the bag and carefully shook it so most of the food fell out the proper opening. Bonehead stuck his head into the bowl while she was pouring, catching some behind his ears. He kept eating, the bits of food sliding off his head. She rolled her eyes and put the bag back.

  Just as she was reaching for some breakfast cereal, her phone buzzed in her pocket.

  "Where are you?" Mr. Chandler’s voice vibrated the phone, he was that loud.

  "At... on my way to work?" What day was it?

  "You better be here in five minutes. The Smiths from Europe will be here soon. Don’t be late." As part of Logan Enterprises, she was supposed to help when asked by offering to give clients the tour of whatever mansion they wanted to buy. Or aid in new companies wanting to check out their competition in town before buying property. If she could sweet talk them into a sale, she got part of the commissions. She hadn’t had a sale in months. She’d been too distracted.

  She hung up and made a run for her bedroom to change.

  The last thing she needed was having to report to Mr. Sanders about being late.