Death on the Bella Constance (A Jesse Watson Mystery Series Book 6) Read online

  Death on the Bella Constance

  by Ann Mullen

  http://www.aftonridge.com

  Copyright © 2009 by Ann Mullen

  ISBN 13: 978-0-9828776-6-1

  This book is a work of fiction. Any characters portrayed, living or dead are imaginary. Any resemblance to actual persons is completely coincidental. Any places, business establishments, locales, events, or incidents in this book are the product of the author’s imagination, or used fictitiously.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

  Table of Content

  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

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Epilogue

  The Irony of it All

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  So many things happen in a person’s life, it makes one wonder what would happen if they had chosen a different path along the way. As for me, my life changed completely when I moved to the mountains of Virginia.

  I was thirty-one years old and had a boring existence. When I thought my life couldn’t get much worse, my parents informed me they were moving away. I would be alone, no family close by, living a life that was going nowhere. So I made the choice to move with them when they offered, and we settled in a little town called Stanardsville. On a sadder note, my dad died unexpectedly shortly thereafter, but we managed to pull ourselves together and go on. Piece by piece, my ho-hum life improved immensely. Things just kept getting better and better.

  I dated Cole, a Greene County deputy (who later dated my sister for three seconds to get back at me), got a job working for Billy Blackhawk—Cherokee Indian, Private Investigator—and then I married him. Take note that Billy and Cole have been childhood friends, so when I came into the picture, their relationship took a serious beating. Tension was definitely in the air for a while. But true friends never stay mad forever, so they sucked it up and went back to being the buddies they had always been, to some degree. A lot has happened since those days, but that’s a few stories ago. Not going there is best for everyone.

  Billy and I celebrated our first glorious year of marriage this past December, and as a Christmas gift/anniversary present, he gave me a diamond bracelet. That was a shocker because he knew I’ve never been one to care a lot about expensive jewelry or fancy clothes, but I quickly rebounded when he opened his card and two plane tickets fell out. I slid the bracelet on my wrist and said, “This bracelet will look lovely on my wrist when we dine at the captain’s table on our cruise to Alaska.”

  He held the tickets up and said, “My thoughts exactly!”

  The tickets weren’t real tickets, they were just facsimiles of ones, but they got the point across. We were going on a cruise to Alaska! And that just goes to show you what kind of man Billy is. He’s so intuitive. He got the message. The tickets might not have been real, but my desire to take a vacation was. I didn’t even put a date on them when I printed them off the computer.

  Billy always knows what I want and need. He would take me on my cruise. He’s the man I’ve waited my whole life for, even though he does have a few years on me, sixteen to be exact. But what does age matter when you find your soul mate?

  Billy and I run a private investigation business (with a new name since we got married and became partners in the full sense), Blackhawk & Blackhawk Detective Agency, and since my mother Minnie is so much a part of our life, whether she’s staying at her house or ours, she has inadvertently slipped into our little circle of crazies, sickos, and all the other kinds of criminal elements we come in contact with out there. Sometimes, we actually have cases that aren’t so life-threatening, but not too often. There have been many times when our lives have been put on the line. She knows that firsthand.

  Not so long ago, Mom was almost killed by a man who was mentally disturbed, and then she was kidnapped by a woman with an ax to grind against the mother of that man. Even after all that, I know she still enjoys the intrigue and mystery part of our job; it’s just the other times that make her uneasy. But nothing could keep her away from Maisy and Ethan, our two children. They’re still quite young and need lots of attention from their grandmother.

  Mom is going to remarry. She met a fine man named Eddie a while back and decided that my father would want her to move on with her life. So, she’s taking the plunge again, but no one knows when. She says she’s in no hurry, but we all know she’s too busy being involved in the snoop business to commit to a date.

  My sister, Claire, is going to marry Randy Morgan, a man who has been crazy about her since the first day they met. She finally divorced Carl the jerk, and that’s when Randy stepped up to the plate as a romantic interest. Claire has two children: Benny and Carrie, and recently announced that there was another one on the way. Let’s just hope the marriage comes before the new baby for Mom’s sake—she’s still a bit old-fashioned when it comes to stuff like that.

  Billy’s brother, Jonathan, is getting married to Lu Ann Knotts, a woman he let slip away a little while back. Jonathan is a bounty hunter, and when an arsonist burned down his house and his brother Daniel died as a result, he called her in to investigate. They share a past. Lu Ann is a profiler. She examines crimes scenes, among other things, and then works up a profile on the culprit. As soon as the two of them started working together again, sparks flew and love was once again in the air. They haven’t set a date yet, but I’m sure it won’t be long. Lu Ann said she has waited long enough.

  Billy and I have two dogs and a cat: Athena, Thor, and Spice Cat. We also just recently hired a nanny, who happens to be a relative on Billy’s side. Helene Sullivan makes our life easier—especially since she loves to cook and I don’t. And the list goes on and on.

  Hello. My name is Jesse Watson Blackhawk. Welcome to my world. The private eye business is a 24/7 job, so it wasn’t a surprise to me when we had to put our vacation cruise on hold because of a job that came up. After Christmas we had decided that we would take our cruise in April and until then we would take on a few simple cases such as catching thieves and roughing up stalkers… nothing too time consuming.

  In early March, Billy and I were sitting in the den with Mom, Helene and our two children, Maisy (our one year old adopted daughter—another long story) and Ethan (our infant son), working up final plans for our trip to Alaska when we got a call from a woman named Penny Johanson.

  Penny Johanson had just discovered that her husband of four years was having an affair, and she wanted proof. She said that at first she was angry, but after she got over the initial shock, she wanted out of the marriage. They didn’t have any children, but there was one major concern: her husband, Arnold, was a high profile lawyer in Charlottesville, and getting a divorce was not going to be easy. He had an image he insisted upon maintaining, and he was adamant about keeping his slate squeaky clean even though behind the scene he had an ugly side to himself. His controlling behavior would be a prob
lem. She wanted the job done discreetly—with an emphasis on the word discreet—and she was willing to pay high-dollar for us to do it.

  Billy explained to her that we were in the process of going on a well-deserved vacation, and she, in turn, doubled her original offer. She was desperate. She probably would’ve offered even more money if Billy had still refused. Needless to say, Billy and I both agreed that there wouldn’t be any harm in putting off our trip for a couple of weeks, especially with that kind of money at stake. My diamond bracelet could rest in its case for a little longer.

  In a worst case scenario, we figured it would take about two weeks to get the dirt on Arnold Johanson. Most of these kinds of cases have taken far less time. Billy’s very good at what he does, and I’m learning the tricks of the trade from him. So, between the two of us, this job should have been a breeze. Dirt is dirt. Little did we know that a job so simple would turn out to be a dangerous ordeal with such dire consequences. A tragedy was in the making.

  We took the job and did what we do best—sneak around and follow people. The first week we kept hitting a dead end. Arnold Johanson was either not really having an affair, or he was extremely good at hiding it. But low and behold, on Friday the second week, we caught him hooking up with a woman.

  Arnold Johanson owned a cabin in the woods set back in a well-secluded area in Albemarle County. He bought it when he first moved to the area, and lived in it until the money started coming in. He named his home Haven. Penny later told us, before the tragedy, that he had considered it his quiet place away from the rat race of every day life.

  After he married Penny, he took her there for a weekend, and she hated it; not the cabin, but the insects and wildlife that came with it. Even the deer scared her, so that was their one and only trip there together. He kept the place and hired a caretaker to check on it, cut the grass, and do whatever repairs were needed. She had almost forgotten about the cabin.

  On that Friday afternoon, Arnold drove to his cabin while we followed him at an inconspicuous distance. By the time we had crept through the woods to his place, we discovered a fancy little blue Mazda parked next to his BMW. As we snuck around with our trusty camera taking pictures, we could tell that she was, indeed, his lover. They had sex in every room that we could get a view of, and then the weirdest thing happened: after their sexual escapades, they sat down at a computer and he appeared to be teaching her how to use it.

  Billy and I looked at each other and snickered, wondering what the deal was. We chalked it up to people just doing their own thing, so we went about doing ours. We took plenty of pictures that proved he was having an affair, and even stayed there until they left. We presented the photos to his wife the next day. Her reaction was explosive. She went off on a tirade. She cursed, yelled and cried, and then swore that she’d kill him.

  Her behavior was unexpected. Billy and I had discussed her at length and had decided that she appeared to be a woman in control of herself. But this was a real surprise. Billy and I looked at each other when her rant was over, and I’m sure we both thought the same thing: Penny Johanson could be unpredictable and possibly dangerous.

  It wasn’t so long ago that Billy had told a client her husband was having an affair with a man. The woman was so distraught that she went home and put a bullet in her husband’s head as he took a shower. That was an ugly mess. Later, she claimed that Billy told her to do it, and Billy almost got burned over it. Sometimes it just doesn’t pay to get out of bed.

  We tried to calm Penny down and figure out what to do next. She wanted her husband dead, and we wanted out of the job.

  A day later, while Penny was still trying to figure out what to do about her cheating husband, we were ready to call it quits. The job had dragged on way too long. She already had what she needed, but it seemed she wanted more. She said she wanted a load of evidence to throw in her husband’s face.

  “Just finish out this one last week, please,” she begged.

  We thought it was a waste of time, plus Penny’s bizarre behavior had sent up a red flag. What was the deal with her? Billy and I agreed to stay on until Friday to take more photos of which were sure to be Arnold’s last date with his mistress, Rona Early. At the same time, we were going to keep an eye on Penny. Something wasn’t right about her obsessive need to prolong the inevitable. After that, we were finished.

  We should’ve walked away then...

  As we figured, come Friday, Arnold met his lady friend for their Friday afternoon romp, but things didn’t go as planned. Trouble was waiting for him as soon as he walked in the front door. Two of Rona’s buddies were waiting for them when they arrived, and forced Arnold to sit down at the computer. From everything we had found out about Arnold Johanson, Billy and I knew what was happening. This band of thieves was going to steal all of Arnold’s money if they could, and if they couldn’t, they’d probably kill him. Billy whispered to me that they were probably going to force Arnold to transfer his money to an account they had already set up. That’s how criminals like them operate.

  But things didn’t go quite as they had expected. Arnold refused to cooperate. He kept shaking his head and getting up from the computer. Then the guy would shove him back down.

  I looked at Billy and whispered, “Someone’s going to die here tonight.” The words were barely out of my mouth when the same guy pulled out a gun, stuck it to Arnold’s head and yelled, “Do it, or I’ll blow your brains out all over that screen!”

  And then… Penny barged in through the front door.

  How she got past us without our knowledge is still a mystery. Normally, nothing gets by Billy. He’s an American Indian. His incredible sense of hearing is just one of his many talents. It’s uncanny. If a bird flaps its wings in the woods Billy hears it. No lie.

  Her intrusion not only startled us, but also startled the guy with the gun. He turned to look in her direction and the gun went off. The bullet hit her square in the head. She was dead when she hit the floor.

  For Billy, the shock of it all wore off much more quickly than it did for me. I was still in a daze when he grabbed me by the arm and said, “Come on. We can’t let those killers get away! We have to stop them!”

  Before we could get up out of our hiding place, the man turned to Arnold and shot him in the head. Blood splattered all over the computer screen just like he had promised.

  We didn’t move. It was too late for us to do anything for Penny and Arnold, except take pictures of the killer and his accomplices, and call the police.

  The guy wiped the gun clean with a hand towel, and then put it in Arnold’s hand. He tried to wrap the dead man’s fingers around the weapon to make it look like a murder-suicide. While he was busy setting up the crime scene, Rona and his other accomplice frantically wiped down the place, yelling at each other the whole time.

  Twenty minutes later, as they were walking out the door, a yard full of Albemarle County Police, geared up for the arrest, turned on their lights. One officer yelled, “Stop, or we’ll shoot!”

  Of course, Rona and her partners in crime took off running, but they couldn’t dodge the bullets. They were taken down before they ever made it out into the woods.

  Rona was the only one to survive. Before she lapsed into a coma, the police managed to get partial answers to their questions—enough to piece together what went down. She’s now hooked up to a ventilator at Martha Jefferson Hospital in Charlottesville, and her prognosis is grim.

  Billy’s brother, Daniel, died just before Christmas. His death tore out our hearts and souls. We had been trying to pick up the pieces and just live a normal life for a few months, and then we were going to take a breather. A vacation was on the agenda, but then Penny Johanson came along. That tragedy was the straw that broke the camel’s back. We’d had enough!

  The very next day, Billy and I booked a cruise to Bermuda. That’s right! A trip to a warm place with white sandy beaches and little umbrellas in the drinks! Alaska was out. I’d had enough. The winter here had been
frigid, with snow from November to February. I had a chill in my body and a chill in my heart. I needed a break. I wanted to relax and mellow out, bask in the sunshine on a warm beach, and maybe smoke a few cigarettes.

  A cruise to Bermuda! Billy and I were so excited when we pulled out of the driveway the next day, heading for Norfolk, Virginia to board the Bella Constance. It was early April. Daffodils were in full bloom, and the forsythia bushes were bursting with their yellow flowers. What a beautiful sight! Life is grand! Fun, relaxation, and nights of dining and dancing were on the agenda… and lots of romantic evenings with my husband!

  Newport News is only a hop, skip, and a jump away from Norfolk, so when we got on Interstate 64, I told Billy I wanted to stop by and see my old duplex and Mom and Dad’s old house. We had the time. I could show him some of my past. He thought it was a good idea, and when we reached the Fort Eustis exit, we took a ride down memory lane—at least it was for me. I had a pang of sadness when I saw my folks’ home and thought about my father.

  “I really miss him,” I said as we rode passed.

  “You always will, `ge ya.”

  `Ge ya is the name Billy calls me occasionally. It’s Cherokee for—woman.

  I smiled up at him through my tears and said, “Finally, we can get away from all the drama and chaos for a while. Being a P.I. is a real scary business sometimes. It takes a lot out of a person.”

  “Tell me about it. I’ve been doing this all my life. No wonder Ruth left me.” He stopped short. “I didn’t mean…”

  “I know what you meant. If she wanted to work with you like I do, we wouldn’t be together. I’m the lucky one. I know I’m the only `ge ya for you.”

  Billy chuckled as he pulled out onto Denbigh Boulevard heading back toward the interstate. An hour and forty-five minutes later, after leaving the 4Runner in the parking lot for the week, we embarked on the cruise ship, Bella Constance. We were ready for some fun in the sun!

  “This is going to be the absolute best week!” I said, looking up at Billy. “I’m so excited!”