Shitake Happens: (A Shitake Mystery Series Prequel) Read online

  "Never mind that." Mo continued closer. "Just move away from her."

  Hawkins' gaze darted to the shotgun in the truck bed and then back to Mo as if he were gauging whether he could reach his weapon before she fired.

  "Clarence," Mo called. "Get over here and see about Mrs. Hawkins."

  Genuine fear contorted Hawkins' face and he raised his hands in surrender. "Please. You can have my money. My wallet is in the truck. Just don't hurt us."

  Us?

  Clarence scurried forward to kneel beside Mrs. Hawkins. Out of the corner of her eye, Mo saw Reva move. Her eyes were open and blazing with rage. Clarence peeled the duct tape away from her mouth.

  "Aghhhhhhhh," Reva shouted. "Get out of here. Don't you hurt my husband."

  What the fajita?

  Mo was so surprised, she forgot to keep focus on Hawkins. The next thing she knew, he hit her in a body slam. She went down. As Mo's back hit the dirt, the breath left her body in a rush and the gun flew from her hands. Hawkins landed on top of her.

  With no way to get out from beneath the Sumo wrestler-type, Mo grabbed his meatballs and squeezed. Hawkins screamed and rolled to the side.

  Releasing her hold on him, Mo scrambled to her feet. She spotted the gun a few feet away and ran to pick it up. Her breath came in pants. She hoped Hawkins hadn't broken one of her ribs.

  Clarence hadn't moved during the action. He still stood stupidly gawping. But Mrs. Hawkins had managed to get herself free of the duct tape, and she rushed to her husband's side, kneeling next to him in the dirt. Mr. and Mrs. Hawkins stared up at Mo with frightened expressions. Hawkins' fright was tinged with pain as he still clutched his nether regions.

  "I'm a private investigator," Mo explained, lowering the gun. "I was watching your house for the insurance company and saw you kill your wife. Or I thought I did."

  At the word insurance, husband and wife frowned, and then pleading fright turned to anger.

  "You bitch," Reva screeched.

  "He wasn't trying to kill you?" Mo asked.

  "Of course not," Reva huffed, getting to her feet and helping her husband to rise. "We were just role playing. Trying to spice things up sexually speaking."

  "It's harmless fun," Hawkins said with an embarrassed smile. "I just like to pretend—you know—to be a serial killer."

  "And I like to be the corpse," Reva added.

  "You have a necrophilia fetish?" Mo's lip curled in disgust. She'd seen worse in the course of her job but still...Yuck. Picturing these two in anything involving sex produced a gag reflex.

  "It's just make believe," Hawkins insisted.

  "At least you won't be collecting insurance to subsidize your little sexual hobby. I've got photos of you lifting your wife's body."

  "How dare you follow us around," Reva said. "And how dare you take photos of us without permission."

  "How dare you two try to scam the insurance company," Mo replied.

  "Ummm, Mo." Clarence tapped her on the shoulder.

  She'd almost forgotten the receptionist.

  "What is it?" she asked.

  "I think something happened to the camera's digital memory card," Clarence replied. "When I was using the camera I might have...ummm."

  No. He couldn't be saying what she thought he was saying. She wheeled around and faced him.

  "Give me that." Mo grabbed the camera from Clarence and clicked through the history. "What happened to the photos I took?"

  Clarence stared at the ground and mumbled, "I think I erased them by mistake."

  Reva laughed. "Now it's just your word against ours."

  "Shitake!"

  # # #

  When the Shitake Hits the Fan

  Pen strokes on the legal pad in front of Imogene "Mo" Tuttle took on a resemblance to a bunch of bananas. With a few more squiggles and a couple of vertical lines, they morphed into trees. Soon she had a forest of banana trees.

  "What's going on in Savannah?" Harriet Hudson shouted as she entered Mo's office and collapsed into the chair opposite her desk. "Did some root doctor cast a spell and suddenly give everybody a happy marriage?"

  "It's a theory." Mo stopped doodling and glanced up at her boss.

  Harry didn't crack a smile, which was unusual for the fifty-something southern belle. "The Incredible Love agency needs some clients soon or we're gonna be outa business."

  "We still get calls mistaking us for an escort service at least five times a day. You could always pimp me out," Mo joked.

  "This is no laughing matter, honey," Harry said, shaking her head. "This here engine is running on the fumes of the fumes."

  Just then the landline phone rang...and rang again...and again.

  "Focaccia!" Mo swore in the only way she allowed herself to swear anymore—with food words. "Where is Clarence?" The agency's receptionist never seemed to be on time and it irritated the jalapeno pepper out of her.

  Mo grabbed the receiver but before she could get out a greeting, Clarence spoke from the other end. "It's me."

  "Nice hearing from you. It'd be even nicer if you were actually here. Why are you calling?"

  "I'm bringing in a new client, Mo. I just wanted to make sure you were in the office this morning."

  "I'm not the one who's perennially late," she grumbled. "When will you be here?"

  "We're just parking now." With that he hung up.

  Mo relayed the information to Harry.

  The boss jumped out of the chair and did a little hip wiggle. "I knew it! I knew that Clarence wasn't just a pretty face. He's also a real go-getter."

  "Yeah. He's even dragging the clients in off the street now," Mo said.

  Harry must have arranged some sort of finder's fee percentage with Clarence for the receptionist to be so hot on rainmaking. And trust him to go to any lengths to get the money. The guy was so squirrely Mo suspected he had a desk drawer full of acorns.

  At that moment, Clarence scrambled in and then held open the door. "Here we are." He stepped aside, still holding the door and gave a flourishing wave. "This is Tracy Houston."

  A young woman inched forward and took a tentative step over the threshold. The tall blonde—who couldn't have been more than twenty-five years old—had two prominent features: big blue eyes and size D breasts. Tracy, clutching a magazine to her chest, glanced in either direction as if expecting to be hit by a sudden approaching bus. Then her furtive glance flittered between Mo and Harry.

  "Don't be nervous, honey," Harry said as she moved to take Tracy by the arm. The boss led Tracy into her office and helped her to a seat as if she were an invalid.

  Mo and Clarence followed them. After they'd all been introduced to one another, Mo took the second chair opposite Harry's desk. Clarence lurked in the corner of the office, chewing his fingernails.

  "What can we do for you?" Mo asked.

  Tracy glanced over her shoulder at the receptionist. "Clarence and I are in the same filmmaking class at the college. He said you might be able to ease my mind. I'm worried about my fiancé. We're supposed to get married next month and I..."

  "She's worried he might cheat on her," Clarence inserted.

  Tracy nodded and held out the magazine she'd been clutching. "My fiancé is very handsome. Before we got engaged he was even featured in Southern Today magazine."

  Mo paged through until she came upon the article entitled "The South's most eligible bachelors" and scanned until she found Savannah's entry: Meteorologist Wallace Williams who had just moved to Savannah from California to work for a local station. A handsome man in his thirties with tanned skin, white teeth and sun bleached hair, smiled up at Mo from the photograph. Even though attractive, he seemed a bit too plastic for Mo's personal taste—almost like a Malibu Ken doll.

  Tracy stared at her expectantly as if waiting for Mo to compliment her fiancé.

  "Wallace Williams." Mo nodded. "Cool name. Sort of inverse of Braveheart."

  Tracy's brows converged into a confused vee as she cocked her head.

&n
bsp; "You know?" Mo continued. "William Wallace? Mel Gibson played...Never mind."

  "I don't have to worry about you going after my fiancé, do I?" Tracy asked, shooting Mo a narrow-eyed gaze.

  "Just because I said he has a cool name?" Mo resisted the urge to roll her eyes. "No. This assignment will be strictly business."

  After a few seconds of considering Mo in silence, Tracy turned back to Harry. "The way Wallace and I met was so wonderfully romantic. He saved my life."

  "Really?" Harry asked. "That's amazing."

  "A sudden storm whipped up while I was driving. The flooding was worse than I thought. And when I got to a section of road that dipped under an overpass, my car stalled. The water started rising and rising until it was halfway up the car window. And...I started to panic. I knew I was about to die. But Wallace saw my car. He waded through the murky water, broke the window out and pulled me to safety."

  "I see that here in the magazine," Mo said, glancing at the article and then read aloud. "'Wallace is a real life hero, having saved a woman from drowning in a flash flood.'"

  "It's like we were destined to be together." Tracy's head bobbed vigorously. "And Wallace tells me every day that he loves me but...I want to be sure before the wedding."

  "Do you think he's having an affair?" Harry asked.

  "No. I'm just afraid he might in the future," Tracy replied. "And since Wallace thinks I'll be out of town for the weekend, this is the perfect time to test him."

  "You want someone to try to bait him into cheating on you...A honey trap?" Mo asked.

  "Yes," Clarence said. "That's it exactly. See, I told you Mo would know what to do."

  Tracy examined Mo up and down. "Miss Tuttle isn't really his type. Wallace likes girls that look like me."

  Clarence made a pffft sound and brushed aside the comment with a wave of his hand. "We can take care of that."

  "I'm not dying my hair." Mo crossed her arms over her chest and pursed her lips.

  Clarence pulled her out of the chair and into the corner. "Ixnay on the airhay."

  "What?" Mo asked.

  Harry sprang up and joined them in the corner and whispered, "Clarence means that you're the only female operative we have right now. Don't scare the client away by telling her you aren't right for the part."

  "Yes. That's what I meant." Clarence nodded.

  "I don't like this one bit," Mo grumbled.

  "So?" Harry pinned Mo with a glare. "I love you like a sister, honey. But when has something minor, like your feelings, ever mattered to my business?"

  You need this job, Mo thought. What will you and Leo do for money if you're fired? Mo's brother had broken his leg and was out of work on an unpaid disability leave. Two people with no income just wouldn't cut it.

  "Oh. All right. I'll do it." Mo knew, somehow, she'd regret those words as soon as they left her mouth.

  "Good," Harry said and then returned to her desk chair.

  "I can wear a wig," Mo said turning back to the client.

  "He also likes bigger...um...cleavage," Tracy said, staring at Mo's B-cup breasts.

  "We can take care of that too," Clarence said. "Leave it to me. I've taken a make-up and costuming class."

  * * * * *

  “This isn’t going to work. I feel like Dolly Parton.” Mo inspected her transformed self in the floor-length mirror of her bedroom as Clarence stood behind her.

  The long, blonde hair she wore was courtesy of a wig that made Mo's scalp feel like a racetrack for fire ants. The acrylic French manicure on her nails created talons so long she hadn’t yet figured out how she was going to do anything. A slinky, black mini-dress hugged her curves so tightly she could hardly breathe and she didn’t even want to think about bending over. The pores of her face cried for mercy under more make-up than she’d worn in her entire thirty years combined. All this stuff was intended to make her look more like the type of woman Wallace Williams apparently preferred.

  Clarence appraised her. "What if you get rid of the boobs?"

  Mo took the fleshy-toned falsies out of her bra and tossed them onto the floor. "That only helps get rid of Dolly. I was hoping for something like Grace Kelly. I look more like Emmett Kelly."

  "Is that a client?"

  “No. You know...Emmett Kelly, the clown?”

  “What are you sixty?" Clarence asked. "Where do you get these antiquated references?”

  “Jeeze. The point is I feel like I'm dressed to be in a circus.” Mo flopped down onto the bed. She pressed her index fingers to throbbing temples. “How am I supposed to pretend to be a tall, blonde to seduce Wallace Williams when I’m a five-five brunette?”

  Clarence snapped his fingers. “I knew I forgot something.”

  “What?”

  Without answering, Clarence ran out of the bedroom. Within moments, he rushed back carrying a shoebox in front of him as if he were carrying an award on an imaginary platter. “These will do the trick.”

  Opening the lid, he revealed strappy black sandals with a stiletto heel of at least six inches. The shoes bore a ridiculously expensive designer name. To Mo they looked like a high altitude death trap.

  “Thanks, but three inches is my limit. I don’t think I can walk in these.”

  “You can learn,” Clarence said, his blue eyes glowing with pride.

  “Yes, but we don’t have a year.”

  “Shush it,” Clarence drew a quelling finger across his lips. “Just put them on.”

  “Okay, okay. Just a minute. I can’t take this anymore.” Mo stood, reaching for her head and tried to scratch. Between the nails and the wig, she got no relief. Snatching the wig off her head, she threw it down. “I can't wear that hideous thing.”

  “Of course you can’t.”

  “You agree with me?” Mo was shocked.

  “Yes. We'll dye your hair."

  "I told you, I'm not dying my hair," Mo shouted. "Even if I did dye my hair, this wouldn't work. We don't have a plan for me to even meet this guy."

  Clarence’s eyes lit up. “I thought of that.” He took a paper from his back pocket. “Look at this. I did some research and found a Facebook photo of Wallace Williams. When he was a boy he had a Corgi dog named Bonaparte."

  “So a boy had a dog. How’s that going to help us now?”

  "Just a sec." Clarence smiled and then dashed to a chair in the corner to retrieve the magazine Tracy had left with them. He opened it and pointed to a photograph of Wallace posed next to a fountain.

  “Hey," Mo said, nodding. "I recognize that fountain's spitting swan. That's in a park not too far away from here.”

  “Yeah, Forsyth Park. And the article says Williams enjoys an early morning jog."

  “Okay. But I’m still not understanding the plan,” Mo said.

  Clarence sighed. “Wallace Williams must run at Forsyth Park. So, you're going to walk a Corgi named Bonaparte around there until he jogs into you.”

  “I'm going to walk a dog? I'm a cat person.”

  "You can become a dog person for a couple days," Clarence replied with a huff.

  "Just where are we going to get a Corgi named Bonaparte?”

  “I’m going to rent the Corgi. He doesn’t have to actually be named Bonaparte. You'll just call him Bonaparte. Wallace can’t help but stop and talk when he sees the Corgi. Men love dogs like kitties love tuna. And think how interested Williams will be when the dog has the same name as his childhood pet.”

  “I don’t know. It sounds far-fetched to me. Is there even a dog rental place around here…or around anywhere? And Corgis are a pretty rare breed of dog, aren’t they?”

  Clarence cast her a narrow-eyed glare. “Why are you pooh-poohing on my parade here?”

  “I think the cliché you want is 'raining on your parade'. But I’m not poohing or raining. I’m just being logical and realistic here." Mo snapped her fingers in front of his face. "Wake up, man. Your plan is full of maybes. Maybe he’ll go to the park to jog. Maybe I’ll be there at just the right moment.
Maybe he’ll notice the dog. Maybe he’ll stop to talk to me. Maybe, maybe, maybe.”

  "I'm sure it'll work," Clarence insisted. "You just need a different name. Imogene Tuttle sounds like a granny and Mo sounds like a man with an ugly bowl haircut—No offense."

  "Oh no. Every girl loves to have her looks compared to one of the Three Stooges," she grumbled. Why was she even listening to this...this...receptionist? Mo was an experienced operative. She knew how to operate a honey trap. Besides, she'd been planning to use a pseudonym so Wallace Williams couldn't check and find out she was a private eye. She just hadn't settled on the exact one to use yet.

  "What name do you suggest?" Mo asked.

  "Something exotic. Something like Angelina Jolie."

  Mo rolled her eyes. "So your plan is for me to walk a dog while looking like Dolly Parton. And when Wallace Williams talks to me I'm supposed to tell him my name is Angelina Jolie?"

  Clarence pointed at Mo. "Yes. Exactly."

  "Why don't I just put the guy under surveillance and see if he hits on anyone while Tracy is supposedly out of town?" Mo asked.

  "Too risky. What if he never sees any bait? You have to be the bait."

  “You think it’s more likely that he’s going to fall in lust at first sight with someone wearing a ridiculous get-up that makes her look like a transvestite?”

  “You do not look like a transvestite.”

  Mo quirked a doubtful eyebrow.

  Clarence smirked. “Okay, maybe just a little vestite, but definitely not trans."

  "I'm taking the rest of this stuff off," Mo said. "I'll work on a better costume and you work on a better plan."

  * * * * *

  The next morning, Mo decided to stake out Forsyth Park as a sort of dry run of the accidental-meeting plan. Did Wallace Williams really jog or was that just something he told the magazine to enhance his profile? When asked, Tracy said she thought he jogged but she'd never actually seen him running.

  Since a stakeout could potentially be lengthy, and she didn't want to be arrested for loitering, Mo needed an excuse to hang around. That had been the idea, anyway, when she brought Talley out for a walk and took up a position mid-way down the wide path that divided the twenty-acre park. Mo soon found, however, that a cat on a leash wasn't exactly inconspicuous.