A Change of Needs by Nate Allen Read Free Book Online

and more regularly as he became available in the fall and winter months. While he wasn’t a licensed Private Investigator, he could work under the purview of an attorney’s guidance, and the similarities between the two, and their fondness for each other, strengthened both their relationships. He had found that as he had gotten older, the respective road of his life had narrowed to the point that he could only maintain a few close friendships, and Rhonda represented fifty percent of the population whose opinion he genuinely respected and whom he trusted. The other half of that equation was his longtime friend Harvey, or “Chunk” as he called him.
    Harvey Childers was a chunk of a man, at 5ft 8” and 240 lbs he was almost unshaped, like a “chunk” and they had known each other for more than two decades. He had about ten different nicknames for Jake, randomly evoked irrespective of the situation as if he couldn’t remember his best friend’s name at times, and he could have hollered any one of them out at any place, at any time, and Jake, with the keenness of a Plott Hound would have recognized the origin and author often with accompanying chagrin. Chunk had been there to pick Jake’s ass up off the ground, literally and figuratively, on numerous occasions, and Jake had regrettably once knocked Chunk on his. They had not always been best friends, but through a process of elimination called life, seemed to have merely outlasted the other contestants in that regard and as time went on they would come to have each other’s back and keep each other’s secrets.
    It was called the Corner Bar, but ironically resided nowhere near a corner on an isolated patch of two-lane country road. The owner thought it gave it a neighborhood establishment type of feel, but truth was, she could have named it Hades and it would have had the same degree of success and clientele. He didn’t frequent it often, it had an atmosphere of sadness, and was also unfairly popular with the Sheriff and State Troopers. Not as patrons of course, but as a source of revenue since there was only the one road, and it only ran two ways, it offered easy pickings. And with depressing regularity someone leaving the establishment was routinely found in the local biweekly newspaper police blotter. But Chunk and he were looking for a place to have a few cold ones, and the Corner was close, or close by “country” standards that is, which roughly translated to only 7-8 miles away.
    There were all of about fifteen customers in the place, which meant it was about half full, but lo’ and behold, one of them was Iris Vaughn, or Ivey as he knew her. She was the daughter of a county High School principal, and had babysat his son before, during, and after the divorce. He knew her family casually, had done some work for them planting some perennials and cut-leaf Japanese maples some time ago, and they were good people. He hadn’t seen her in five or six years, she had to be at least mid-twenties now he thought, and she recognized him as soon as he came through the door, rushed over and gave him a hug and a peck like an old friend. She was cute, had been a High School cheerleader, but he had always known there was more to her than the “goody two shoes” outward appearance her parents demanded. He had found the occasional empty wine cooler and Salem Light menthols buried in his trash after her stints, but he also remembered babysitting with his sixteen year-old girlfriend once-upon-a-time, and there was never more than one or two on any occasion, so he hadn’t made an issue of it, and she knew it.
    Ivey had graduated High School and attended an all women’s college in Raleigh, with the intention of becoming a teacher. Warm and nurturing, she seemed well suited for it, but after two years she quit school and changed course and began a pseudo-bohemian lifestyle by Raleigh standards for a couple of years, and even, unknown to her parents, had worked as an “exotic