Dazzled

  Dazzled

  by

  Deany Ray

  Copyright © 2019 Deany Ray

  All rights reserved.

  This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, events and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real names, characters, places, events and incidents is purely coincidental.

  No part of this work may be used or reproduced in any format, by any means, electronic or otherwise without prior consent from the author.

  Just a Little Something…

  Aww…thanks for getting my book. My mom says it’s super good and that she can tell I worked really hard on it. I hope you’ll like it as much as she did!

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  CONTENTS

  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

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  Chapter One

  The gum had lost its flavor, but it didn’t matter; I was just about to blow the biggest bubble ever. I leaned back in my desk chair and stared up at the ceiling.

  Celeste filed a long blue nail and frowned down at her hand. Today, she was a mix of colors that almost hurt my eyes with her blue nails, her pile of bright red hair, and her designer blouse, which was a vibrant yellow. Every now and then, she’d glance at the office phone. The more she glanced down at it, the more it didn’t ring.

  I reached for my jeans jacket thrown across my desk and pulled my phone out of the pocket. No messages or missed calls. I shoved the cell back into the pocket against a tissue wad. I turned my gaze to the front window. Nothing much to see. I watched the wind pick up and blow a chip bag down the sidewalk. I sighed. Then I went back to blowing bubbles while Celeste filed another nail.

  The only sound was some loud birds in a spat just outside our door.

  “Shouldn’t you give Bert a call?” I asked. “Maybe he forgot.”

  Celeste worked harder on her nail. “Do you think I’m the kind of ex-wife that a man forgets?”

  “I guess you’re not,” I said. If she wanted something badly enough, she was a force of nature. It was not a good idea to ever cross Celeste.

  Her ex was, in fact, none other than the chief of police in Springston, Massachusetts—my hometown. She didn’t hesitate to describe in detail every single thing he could do better. Bert listened when she talked, and she had a lot to say—about the way he ran his office, ate too many carbs, and wore a black belt with brown shoes, which, according to Stylish Man About Town, was a big faux pas.

  There was something more as well. Celeste seemed to have some kind of dirt on her former husband, something bad enough that he kept assigning cases to the private investigation firm we ran with our friend Marge. Often enough, to keep the three of us in business, Bert would send a case our way, despite the fact that we didn’t have much experience at all. Nor an official PI license. Nor some sort of professional training.

  The midsized town where I’d grown up—not too far from Boston—had seen its share of crime as the population grew. Our last case had involved a ring of hoodlums hitting up business owners to pay up for “protection” or be sorry. It was, of course, the hoodlums who were sorry in the end. Thanks in part to us.

  “It’s been almost two weeks since we’ve had anything to do,” I said.

  My arms and legs still ached from that last assignment, in which we’d gotten way too close to an exploding hand grenade. I wished Bert would pay me to blow bubbles; I felt safe behind my desk. I had never really been the brave and daring type.

  “And while we’re on the subject of men who never call, you still haven’t heard from Alex?” Celeste shot me a sly smile. “I saw the way that boy looked at you in the diner. That boy is in love.”

  I glanced at the lump in my jacket pocket, which I knew to be my very quiet cell.

  “Well, apparently, he’s not,” I said, “or he has a funny way of showing it.” It had been eleven days since he’d flashed his gorgeous smile at me from across the table at my father’s diner and asked me for a date: dinner and a movie. I hadn’t heard from him since.

  “Didn’t you always say you’d never date him, because he’s a cop?” Celeste asked.

  “Well, you married one. And look. It got us jobs, although the marriage was a bust.” I grinned at her ruefully. “Hey, I know it’s not optimal, with my job and all. But, Celeste, you’ve seen him. I mean, the man is gorgeous.” I thought about the way his hair fell across his eyes; I thought about his muscled arms. I’m kind of famous as the girl who is completely helpless at resisting cakes and cookies, so why should I resist any other bits of scrumptiousness life might spoon out to me?

  It was kind of stupid, really, to make any declarations about who I wouldn’t date. My dates were few and far between, and the ones I did have tended to be disasters.

  “Alex will call,” Celeste said, reassuringly.

  “Bert will call,” I said. I wondered if he would. I thought, not for the first time, that we should diversify, reach out to other sources to get hired, since we’d had some success with our previous cases.

  The three of us had skills. Well, mostly we had luck, but we could blend into a crowd and overhear the perfect little tidbit to wrap up a case. We could look at jumbled clues and create a likely story of how a crime went down. We could beat the real cops to the answer, and that was super fun. Nothing got past us, although I swear we’d almost died on more than one occasion—big drawback to the job.

  I blew a tiny bubble and Celeste filed another nail. The massive stone from her ring on her right hand caught a ray of sun that beamed in from the window. The birds seemed to have settled down.

  “Have you called him?” Celeste asked.

  “I did!” I said, although that attempt had, sadly, gotten me nowhere. At least I can say I tried. Marge and Celeste were always telling me to take more initiative, to go for what I wanted. “I called, and he picked up,” I told Celeste, “but the call lasted for less than ten seconds, really. I caught him just as he was about to bust some bad guy.”

  Celeste frowned. “Which is what we should be doing right now.” She picked up the office phone to check for a dial tone.

  “Have you called Bert this week?” I asked.

  “Five times,” Celeste answered.

  I picked up my phone and logged on to Twitter.

  “Where did you say Marge went?” I asked.

  “She said she needs to run some errands,” Celeste said.

  Errands: Things that people do when they have a life, and those people were not me. At the age of almost thirty, I lived at home with my mom and dad, with not even a tiny apartment to look after—a half-dead plant to water, a sink of dishes to wash up. With the lull that had come over our business that week, I’d offered to buy groceries for the family or pick up the dry cleaning, anything to pass the time. I’d been bored enough that I’d even asked my mother if I could mop the floor!

  My mom had smiled at me sweetly, and then she said—get this—my mother told me no. My mother had a system. She mopped on Mondays, dusted furniture on Thursdays and bought her groceries every Friday when the produce was the freshest. My mother was very picky about whether the forks faced up or down in the kitchen drawers and how plants were rotated every four days so each one go
t its fair share of the morning sun and no plant felt unloved. She thought that Boston ferns had feelings and that forks placed upside down could summon some bad karma, bringing doom upon the house. It was my mother’s house to run, so I hung out in my room or in the yard with my mystery novels or played games on my cell.

  It all really sucked, and here is the worst part: the universe had apparently decreed that I wasn’t likely to be moving out real soon. Since I’d been back in Springston, my few attempts at living on my own had—to put it mildly—not succeeded.

  One of my poor apartment choices had overlooked a lovely field, which turned out to be a hot locale for archery in Springston. Nothing like arrows through the window to send you home to Mom! That is what you get for the kind of apartment obtained on a Charlie Cooper budget.

  The last place that I rented had been blown to smithereens in the explosive grand finale of our most recent case. Some days I longed to have the kind of boring job that we used for a cover: technological repairs and consultation. In reality, all I could do was open documents from my ancient laptop and pray I didn’t delete them somehow.

  That’s how it came to be that I was stuck at home with a couch potato brother, a dad who laughed too loudly at his own bad jokes, and a mother who was always telling me to stand still long enough for her to read my aura (hint: it was probably a loser color). My mom also worked out of our home, leading exercise classes for the elderly. On a regular basis, I woke up at the crack of dawn to vintage rock and roll, being blasted at deafening decibel levels. I longed to get out of there, but my bank account seemed to taunt me. Not now, Charlie. Never!

  I sure wished Bert would call. No cases meant no money.

  The week had been full of lengthy lunches and longer coffee breaks to try to pass the time. Thank goodness for my dad, who always kept us fed at Springston’s favorite diner, which he owned. To try to make the days go by, we’d checked our supplies and read articles on blending into crowds and achieving new personas when you’re undercover. I’d read a piece on how to get the bad guys to open up to you and say things they shouldn’t. My job could be a blend, I’d found, of psychology, theatrics, solving puzzles and—most importantly—ending every workday with all four limbs attached.

  I’d organized the pencils in my coffee cup and scrubbed the break room counter. I’d played a 128-point word in an online game of Scrabble. All in all, it was pretty unsatisfactory.

  I was looking in my purse trying to find more gum when Marge burst in with a big grin on her face. She had on chunky aqua jewelry and a long white top that flowed around her when she moved and covered up her ample hips. Her smile faded when she saw us. “Well, aren’t the two of you a sight? I’m getting all depressed just looking at you two.”

  I shrugged. “Did you not see us yesterday? We looked the same.”

  “Yeah, but today you look even more depressing,” Marge said.

  “The real question is, why do you look so happy?” I asked.

  Marge’s grin came back. She reached into her flowered purse and pulled out an envelope.

  “Ta-da!” she sang out in a dramatic voice as she handed it to me.

  I peeked inside at some papers. “Airline tickets?”

  Marge’s grin got even wider.

  “Are you flying somewhere?” I asked. Marge was good at saving and had worked for many years at my father’s diner before we started our business. Celeste had money too; Celeste was kind of loaded. Just why, I wasn’t sure. Celeste had her secrets.

  I was glad for Marge, I really was. I hoped she was going somewhere fabulous. There was just one part of me that was just a teensy-tiny bit jealous.

  “No, we are,” Marge said.

  “What are you talking about?” I asked.

  Marge did a little dance. “Charlie, pack your bags, hon. We’re all going on a trip, and we’re gonna have a blast.” She frowned. “Well, blast might not be the best word after the way our last case ended. But after all that we went through, I think we deserve…some red-hot nights in Vegas.”

  I almost choked on my gum. “Vegas? As in Las Vegas?”

  “Ya-ha,” Marge said.

  I sat up straighter in my seat. “You remember I’m broke, right?” I was both thrilled and disappointed. There was no way I could go. It stunk to be the poor one, the one who pushed the cheapo burger joints with coupon specials when we went out after work. I knew the others preferred the sixteen-dollar margaritas and upscale tacos fare designed for grownups and not half-broke girls.

  Marge sat on the edge of my dusty desk. “What I do remember is that a certain someone is about to turn a certain age.”

  Mental forehead smack. I planned on keeping my birthday in three days on the down low. Turning thirty while living with your parents, having nothing saved up for a white-picket-fence house and not even a boyfriend to brag about was not something I wanted to celebrate. But apparently, nothing got by my friends.

  I rolled my eyes. “I was hoping to forget about that.”

  Marge and Celeste exchanged a look that meant they were up to something.

  “Aren’t you tired of sitting here, waiting for a little action?” Marge asked.

  “I am,” I sighed. “But I don’t know if I’m up for partying in Las Vegas.”

  Marge put her hands on her hips and stared me down. “You don’t know if you’re up for it?” She glanced at my cell. “How often did you stare at your cell today?”

  I looked at the floor.

  “I thought so,” Marge said.

  “It’s not that. It’s the money. Going to a movie is about the limit to what I can afford—if I go on half-price Tuesdays. I can’t pay for Vegas!”

  Marge and Celeste exchanged that look again.

  “Well, I don’t see the problem,” Celeste said in an even tone, as if we were talking about something as ordinary as restocking legal pads. “There are three tickets in that envelope, and we have a hotel already—on the Vegas strip. Those things are already paid for, so you have nothing to worry about. What more is there to buy? The food, yes, it won’t be cheap, but we’ll do the best we can. Heck, we might even have some good luck at a slot machine and come home millionaires.”

  Marge clasped her hands together, dollar signs in her eyes.

  You had to love them. I couldn’t ask for greater friends than the two women right in front of me.

  “You guys are way too nice,” I said. I was truly touched. “But I don’t want to go if I can’t pay my own way.”

  “It’s a gift, Charlie!” Marge said. “Because of the birthday and all. You’re turning thirty, for crying out loud, not ninety. And even if you were, you should not be sitting at home. You should be celebrating big time.”

  I sat back and thought about it. I could pay them back one day. Surely business would pick up; we were good at what we did, and Bert had seen results every single time he brought us in to help. Surely there would come a day when other chiefs in other cities, other clients, would want to take advantage of the way we always seemed to get the answers that eluded the police.

  I had to admit, Vegas was a place I’d always dreamed of going. My friends knew me too well. Everything inside me said, Do it, Charlie. Go!

  Hmm. The day was getting better.

  Celeste lit a cigarette. “Here’s the way I see it. With that last case we worked, we could have easily been killed. If it weren’t for us, business owners in this town might still be getting hit up for all kinds of payments that could make their stores go under. So how should we reward ourselves?”

  Marge grinned. “Vegas, baby! Vegas!”

  “Good answer!” Celeste said and they both high fived.

  The police had been onto the mastermind of the extortion scheme, but they didn’t have the proof until we came in to save the day.

  “The weather’s great in Vegas,” Celeste said with a grin. “Plus, it’s just once in a lifetime that a girl turns thirty, and hopefully, it’s just once in a lifetime that a girl almost gets blown up but fights
the thugs and survives to live another day.” Celeste thought for a second. “Except for the time that van blew up right next to us and sent us to the hospital. Either occasion, I say, calls for a nice trip.”

  She was absolutely right. After our last adventure, we deserved a treat. I’d never been to Vegas—or much of anywhere.

  “Yeah, and your phone will ring in Vegas the same way it will ring at home,” Marge said, “whenever slowpoke Alex gets off his butt and decides to call.”

  I did want to go to Vegas. Plus, they already had the tickets. How pitiful to celebrate my upcoming milestone birthday by falling asleep in the same bedroom where I’d memorized state capitals and cried over being pushed around by a fourth-grade bully. And Marge was right. Here I was, waiting around for a guy to call and looking at my phone every two minutes. How cliché is that? If Alex is too busy to call, then fine by me. I can be busy too.

  I reached for my jacket, whose pocket was still heavy with my phone.

  “Hon, you put that phone down right this very minute.” Marge raised an eyebrow at me. “You do not waste one more second waiting for that man to call. That is no behavior for a fine catch like yourself, who runs her own business here in town, kicks ass at catching felons, and also…has cute hair.”

  “Nope! Waiting for a man to call is not how we roll.” Celeste paused. “Rolling—that reminds me. I’m not bad with the dice if I do say so myself.”

  “Roll’em, baby, roll’em!” Marge looked at me and winked. “I’ve had my luck with the dice, but it’s the slot machines that always seem to call my name, and I’m due to win some bucks.”

  “I wasn’t reaching for my cell,” I said, grinning. “It was the jacket that I wanted.” I looked at the office landline, which still wasn’t ringing. “I don’t think I’m needed here,” I said to my best friends, “and what am I waiting for? I’ve got a bag to pack.”

  Chapter Two

  Things moved quickly after that. Fast forward not even twenty-four hours. We had quickly organized ourselves and packed, and now made it to Logan International Airport in Boston and gotten through security with some time to spare.