Shitake Happens: (A Shitake Mystery Series Prequel)

  It Keeps Getting Shitakier

  Oncoming headlights flashed in Mo's eyes, causing her to shield her face with one hand as she hunched over the car's steering wheel. Fortunately, her Mini Cooper was in park and the brief moment of blindness didn't cause an accident, only a spike in her already splitting headache.

  The approaching car passed by and continued down the suburban street, not even hesitating in front of the home of her private investigation target: one Dewly Hawkins. She'd seen Hawkins enter the cookie-cutter, one-story ranch an hour ago. If the pattern of the last three nights continued, his wife would be home at any moment from her shift as a nurse at the local hospital. Being spotted by Mrs. Hawkins could compromise the stakeout.

  The taillights of the passing car had just disappeared when the Mini's passenger door opened, causing the dome light to switch on.

  "Hurry up," she ordered.

  Clarence climbed in, plopped onto the seat and slammed the door shut. Almost simultaneously, a red blob appeared and began to blossom into a stain just over her right breast. A French fry from the pack in Clarence's hand had popped out, hit her chest and now lay in her lap.

  "Shitake mushroom," she swore, jerking back. "Can't you keep that food on your side of the car?"

  Giving up obscenities really limited a girl's options for appropriate outrage, she thought as she tossed the fry out the window. At one time, multiple F bombs would have tumbled from her mouth. But then Harry, her boss, had insisted the clients of the PI agency expected more gentility. After all, Savannah, Georgia, was in the old South where manners were important. Since Mo needed this job until she could afford to go back to culinary school, she'd had to figure out a way to satisfy Harry. Abandoning her beloved swear words had been difficult at first, but now the food substitutes were automatic.

  "Sorry, Imogene," Clarence said, shifting in the passenger seat before stuffing a glop laden fry into his mouth. He chewed and then reached for the seat belt over his shoulder.

  "Call me Mo. And you're dead if you get that ketchup on my new car interior." She tapped the purse wedged between them, next to the long-lens camera. "Remember, I'm carrying."

  Her Kel-Tec .380 pistol was in the trunk, but he didn't need to know that.

  Clarence swallowed in a gulp, hesitated, and then reached inside the white paper fast-food sack on his lap. Pulling out a napkin, he eyed her with an uneasy gaze as he wiped his hands before reaching toward the belt again.

  "Why are you buckling up?" she asked. "We're on a stakeout. We're sitting still."

  "Oh yeah, right," he mumbled, letting go of the buckle, leaving it to snap back into place.

  Shaking her head, Mo wished for the umpteenth time she hadn't agreed to let him come tonight. But Harry had insisted they start training the receptionist for field operations so he could do double duty. Harry wanted maximum value out of every employee.

  Mo suspected Harry wouldn't be nearly as interested in Clarence if he weren't an ultra-cute, slightly geeky, twenty-two year old. Mo at thirty wasn't old enough to be his mother but she felt like it sometimes. Since watching a suspected insurance fraud was low-risk, boring duty, Harry had thought it would be a perfect opportunity to give Clarence a chance as an operative.

  Yeah. Low risk except to Mo's wardrobe...and her patience.

  They'd been parked here since 7 p.m. and in the last three hours Clarence had made a run to the nearby gas station for a bathroom break, a run to the store for a magazine, and a run to McDonalds for food. His singular goal seemed to be to irritate Mo. As if to emphasize the point, her hapless companion stuffed another handful of fries into his face and began chewing with his mouth half open.

  She glanced down at her chest with a meaningful arch to one brow and then pinned him with a glare.

  "Whaaaa?" he asked mid-chew.

  "Can I have a napkin?" She resisted an eye roll and failed.

  He fumbled in the white bag for a moment and then came out empty handed. "Sorry, I must've used 'em all." He offered up one of his ketchup covered, crinkled hunks of paper. "Take mine."

  Mo's lip curled in disgust. "No thanks."

  "Why do we have to sit here all night, anyway?" Clarence asked.

  "I already told you." She opened her purse and searched inside for a tissue. If she could wipe off the majority of the mess, she could work at the stain with a remover stick. "The neighbors said this Hawkins guy carries heavy looking bags of stuff out of his house, but only at night."

  Since Hawkins—mid-forties, balding with a heavy beer gut weighing down the belt holding his baggy jeans—alleged a back injury he'd suffered at work caused him excruciating pain and required him to walk with a cane, the insurance company wanted him watched. Photos of Hawkins carrying something heavy would definitely prove him a liar.

  "I thought this would be more fun," Clarence complained between bites of a hamburger.

  "Why would you think that?"

  "'Cause you're...You know..." He looked her up and down. "You're cute."

  Mo snorted. "Just keep your food and yourself on that side of the car, buddy."

  The flash of headlights alerted her to another oncoming car.

  "Duck," she said, crouching and pushing Clarence's head face-first into the package of fries on his lap.

  The car pulled into the Hawkins driveway and Mo recognized Mrs. Hawkins' silver Hyundai. The car sat running for a moment before the garage door slowly rose, revealing Mr. Hawkins' pickup in one stall. A lawn mower, tools, boxes and other assorted clutter filled the second stall.

  The Hyundai's engine switched off and the brake lights went dark. Then the driver's side door swung open and Mrs. Reva Hawkins—a Dolly Parton look-alike—climbed out. With a stiff-legged stomp, she marched through the garage entrance to the house and went inside.

  "Sheesh, Mo," Clarence complained as he lifted his head, facing her with a mouth and nose as red as a clown's. "I didn't deliberately get ketchup on you. Ya didn't have—"

  "For frittata's sake shut up," Mo said as she grabbed up her camera. "Someone's coming back out."

  Reva Hawkins stepped into the garage and dragged Mr. Hawkins behind her. Mo leaned the camera lens atop the half-open car window, pointing it toward the action.

  "I told you to clean up this stinkin' garage," Reva shouted. "I'm sick of never being able to park in here."

  Through the camera lens, Mo observed Hawkins glance around the garage and then out into the street. He placed a hand on his wife's arm and said something inaudible.

  Reva shook off his touch. "I don't care," she screamed. "I work hard all day while you lounge on your ass. No more excuses. Just get this place cleaned up."

  Hawkins grasped his wife by the shoulders and pulled her to him. For a moment it looked as if the two were about to kiss, but then Reva shoved her husband and he fell against the truck's side panel.

  "You're not sweetening me up with lovin' this time, mister." Her shout carried out to Mo as she strode back into the house.

  Hawkins nipped at Reva's heels. "Honey bunny! Please. Just let me—" His plea cut off as he entered the house. Before disappearing totally, Hawkins stuck a hand out and pressed a button. The overhead garage door began to close.

  "Crêpe Suzette!" Mo lowered the camera into her lap. "I thought he might give us something that time."

  "I have to pee again," Clarence announced.

  Mo rounded on him with narrowed eyes and lips pursed. "For a young guy, you've got the prostate of an eighty year-old."

  "I wish Harry had let me go with Gary to the strip club job to watch that cheating husband," Clarence grumbled. "He'd have let me pee."

&nb
sp; "Just go behind the bush by that abandoned house over there," Mo said, waving a hand in the general vicinity of the area to the left. "Or how about the empty Coke bottle in the backseat?"

  "Gary would've let me use an actual toilet at the strip club."

  "I'll be right back," Mo said as she swept her long brown hair into a ponytail. She picked up her camera and opened the car door. When she stepped out, her foot sank ankle deep into a puddle.

  Could tonight get any shitakier?

  She glanced around and, seeing no one, ran across the street toward the hedges under the drape-covered picture window of the Hawkins' house. Alternating squishes sounded in time with the clammy water squeezing between her toes as she moved.

  When she got within ten feet of the house, Mo heard a muffled, high-pitched scream followed by a loud thud from inside. Her breath hitched in fear and her step faltered briefly before she continued on to wedge herself between the bushes and the house. Crouching beneath the sill, Mo inched her head up and zeroed in on a slight part at the center of the drapes to peek inside.

  She observed Dewly Hawkins crossing the living room and then passing into the dining room to the kitchen beyond. Reva wasn't anywhere to be seen. But Mo did see a shotgun propped against the coffee table.

  A minute later, Hawkins returned carrying several items: scissors, duct tape and what looked like plastic baggies full of ice. Near the center of the living room, he kneeled and began working on something.

  Twisting this way and that, Mo still couldn't see what was on the floor. A big-screen television, apparently sitting on a console in front of the window, blocked her view of a large portion of the room. Mo decided to go around to the side of the house. She might get a better vantage point there since the side window was positioned at a greater height and the curtains were open.

  After creeping around the corner, Mo edged under the window. Its lower edge was just over her head and there was no way to see inside even when stretched on tiptoes. Fortunately, the home's AC compressor unit was located on the ground beneath the window, just a few inches to the side. Mo put the strap of the camera around her neck and climbed onto the metal casing. Her weight caused the metal to warp inward with a whap sound.

  Mo cringed.

  That noise had been loud enough to bring Mr. Hawkins to attention. Was he even now at the window about to stare back at her when she peeked in? Worse, she hadn't thought to get her gun from the car trunk.

  Stupid Mo.

  With most of the population of Georgia armed, she should've thought to get what she needed to defend herself. If Dewly Hawkins shot her where she stood at this moment, he'd probably get off on a claim of self-defense.

  With shaking legs, Mo straightened and stood as close to the edge of the AC casing as she dared. She gripped the windowsill for stability and leaned to the left the six inches she needed to see inside.

  When Hawkins wasn't, in fact, staring back from the other side, a sigh of relief escaped her. Instead, he was crawling on the floor rolling up an area rug. From the way it bulged, Mo suspected that rug roll contained something. And Reva Hawkins was that something.

  Once he'd finished his task, Hawkins wrapped a ring of duct tape about a third of the way from the rug roll's top and a then another ring about a third of the way from the bottom. He sat back on his heels and stared ahead. After a few seconds, he used the coffee table to lever himself to his feet. He stretched and arched to the right and then to the left as if limbering up before bending to reach for the rug bundle. Hawkins then grasped it around the middle and began lifting it into his arms.

  Releasing her hold on the sill, Mo raised the camera and clicked off a few frames of Hawkins hoisting the rug up and over his shoulder. Mo teetered at the edge, her balance faltering, before she fell against the window. She had a quick impression of Hawkins' head jerking upward as she tumbled to the ground.

  She had just plastered herself as close as possible to the vinyl siding, when she heard a whoosh that signaled the opening of the window above her head. Mo inhaled and didn't breathe as Hawkins stuck his head out, giving her a direct view of the bristly, unshaven underside of his double chin.

  His head turned right, left, right.

  Please don't let him look down, Mo silently pleaded with the universe.

  Hawkins' head continued to swivel side to side. As the seconds ticked on, she tried to remember how long she'd been able to hold her breath the last time she'd gone swimming. Mo's chest burned. If a balloon could feel, this would be what it was like at the bursting point, just before the latex could no longer contain all the air.

  Finally, Hawkins ducked back into the house. The moment she heard the hiss of the window sealing, Mo let the breath rush out and leapt to her feet. She dashed toward the Mini. Glancing over her shoulder as she ran, she half expected Hawkins to emerge with his shotgun.

  After long seconds, and with breath chugging in and out, Mo reached the hatchback trunk of her car and tugged on the latch. It didn't budge.

  Son of a biscuit. It shouldn't be locked.

  Abandoning the idea of getting her gun, Mo rounded the back bumper and tried the driver's door. Locked too. The car windows had been rolled up and Clarence was inside, but he looked to be snoozing.

  Mo knocked at the glass with three quick raps. Clarence jumped as if shot. Goggle-eyed, his head whipped toward the sound. When he saw her, his face relaxed into a smile.

  He wouldn't be smiling when she got a hold of him.

  "Unlock it," she mouthed.

  Drawn by a metallic whir, her eyes darted to Hawkins house. The overhead garage doors began to lift inch-by-inch.

  Mo pulled impatiently at the car handle. Finally, Clarence flipped the interior switch and the locks released with a click. She got her door open and slipped inside the Mini just as the garage door cleared the back bumper of the pickup truck.

  "What were you thinking?" Mo demanded. "Locking the doors?"

  "This neighborhood scares me," Clarence said.

  "Do it again and I'll put your sausage in a vice," Mo warned through gritted teeth.

  "Okay, okay. I'm sorry." Clarence shook his head.

  Once the garage door stood fully open, the truck peeled backward into the street. Then it squealed forward and Mo saw the taillights racing away as she fired the Mini's engine to accelerate after it.

  "Call 911," she ordered Clarence.

  "What? Why?" he asked. "It's not a crime to be scamming insurance, is it? And it's definitely not an emergency."

  "For gouda's sake, call the police. I think Dewly Hawkins just killed his wife and she's in a rug burrito."

  Clarence fumbled around, came up with his phone, and punched in three numbers as Mo struggled to keep the truck in sight. Hawkins seemed to be heading into Savannah's downtown.

  "The dispatcher wants to know if you actually saw him kill her." Clarence gripped the dash, as Mo turned left without braking.

  "Well...no."

  Hawkins' truck turned right onto a street heading for the river.

  "Did you see a body?"

  "Aghhhhhhhhhhhh," Mo screamed.

  "It's not me." Clarence threw his hands into the air. "The dispatcher wants to know."

  "No. No. I didn't see a body."

  The truck made another turn and Mo realized they were heading over the bridge from Georgia into South Carolina.

  "Tell them he's fleeing the state."

  Clarence repeated the information into the phone before hitting his touch screen. "She said that's out of their jurisdiction and hung up."

  "Bacon Bits!"

  "I don't think we should follow," Clarence said. "You've got photos of him lifting something. That's all we were hired to do. Let's go back to the agency."

  "What if he really did kill her?" Mo replied. "He could get rid of the body in the marsh. Nothing would ever be found once the alligators got a hold of her."

  But Hawkins didn't go for the marsh. He turned onto a dirt path and drove into the woods.

&
nbsp; Shutting off her car lights, Mo followed. When she saw the truck pull to a stop, she stopped too, parking to the side and a good thirty yards away.

  Hawkins left his headlights blazing as he got out of the truck, shotgun in hand. He came around to the back, unlatched the gate and pulled it down. The rug roll and a shovel lay in the truck bed.

  "We should just wait until he buries it," Clarence urged tapping the dash nervously. "After he leaves, we can get the police and bring them out here."

  That suggestion kind of made sense until the bump in the rug moved.

  "Did you see that?" she asked.

  "Huh?"

  "She might be alive in there."

  Clarence gaped at her.

  "That means we can't let him bury her. I'm getting my gun out of the trunk," Mo said, easing her door open. "Don't lock the car. I might have to get back in. Fast."

  Clarence's eyes were wide with panic, but he nodded. His hands shook as he picked up her camera. "I'll take photos."

  "I'm sure that'll help," Mo grumbled. "If he kills me too, you'll have the proof."

  "Right," he said, perking up as if she'd been serious and not sarcastic.

  Mo exited the car and pushed the door closed with just the slightest of clicks. Hawkins didn't seem to take notice of the tiny sound. He was too busy lifting the rug off the truck and placing it on the dirt. He'd set the shotgun in the truck bed and out of his reach. As she was removing her gun from the trunk, he cut open the duct tape wrapping the rug and began unrolling it.

  At the end of the roll, Reva Hawkins lay still with baggies of ice packed around her. Her hands were bound and a strip of the same gray tape covered her mouth.

  What were those baggies about? Trying to lower the body's temperature so the police wouldn't know when Mrs. Hawkins had died? But that didn't really make sense since he'd brought her out here to bury her.

  Hawkins picked up the shovel as Mo crept closer. Was he going to dig a hole or bash his wife's skull in?

  "Stop," she yelled, leveling the gun sight of her pistol as she held it in a two-handed grip. "Move away from her."

  Hawkins reeled around to face her. "What? Who the hell are you?"