Double Trouble (Dev Haskell - Private Investigator Book 10) by Mike Faricy Read Free Book Online Page B

disheveled while sitting in the passenger seat of a fairly trendy car. If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say it was her thug pal, Tony behind the wheel, but he was out of focus and partially cut off so it was tough to tell.
    Based on all the vehicles in the background, the photo looked to have been taken in a parking ramp of some sort. I made a mental note to ask both Ashley and Royal if the image had been posted recently. I was thinking it could have even been taken yesterday at The Mall.
    I looked at sites for a half dozen other women, all equally beautiful, the women that is. None of them had anything like Ashley’s amateur car image which suggested she, specifically, was being targeted for some reason.
    “Haskell Investigations,” I said tearing myself away from a half dozen images of a redheaded beauty in a bubble bath.
    “Please hold for Mr. Baker,” a no-nonsense voice replied.
    “Happy to do that, Marilynn,” I said, but she’d already put me on hold.
    “Royal Baker.”
    “Hi, Royal, it’s Dev Haskell. I met with Ashley yesterday.”
    “How did that go?”
    “I suppose okay, amazingly she didn’t want to come home with me.” I waited a few moments, but didn’t get a response from Royal so I pushed ahead. “Based on what she told me, I think some old fashioned monitoring with another pair of eyes might be in order. Let me ask you something. I just checked out her photos on your site, and….”
    “Which site?”
    “It’s Compatibles,” I said looking at the address bar on my screen.
    “Let me get it up here in a moment. There we go, and you’re in her photo album?”
    “Yeah, there’s fifteen studio shots then this one that.…”
    “Oh, damn it. God, how in the hell are they doing this? You’re talking about this image where she’s in the car and looks like she just pulled an all-nighter?”
    “Yeah, I mean it’s not so bad. It’s just obviously not in line with the other studio shots she has, very nice by the way. I’m guessing it was taken on the fly, looks like a parking ramp of some sort.”
    “Yeah. Hell, it looks like she’s working out of the back seat of a car.”
    “I met her out at The Mall of America yesterday afternoon. It could have been taken right after we met.”
    “Or before.”
    “To tell the truth, she was pretty well put together when we met. She looks like she’s been through the mill in this shot. Any idea how long this has been up there, hours, days?”
    “We’re doing sweeps of her site twice a day, every day. So, this had to have been posted just in the past hour or so. Damn, that suggests whoever is doing this is aware of our schedule.”
    “So, you think they posted it sometime after ten?”
    “Yeah, late morning to early afternoon are busy booking hours for evening appointments, we’ve been doing our sweeps just before that. Did you mention this to Ashley?”
    “No, I’m waiting for her to call me.”
    “Dev, I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t say anything. I’d certainly make it worth your while. She can be somewhat temperamental, we’re all at our wits end over this, and having Ashley fly off the handle again would only serve to satisfy whoever is behind this.”
    “No need to do anything, Royal. I won’t mention it, but there’s a good possibility she may have already seen it.”
    “Well, I haven’t received one of her screaming phone calls, thankfully. I’m emailing someone as we speak, he’ll have this removed within the next few minutes, barely eleven o’clock so there’s a pretty good chance she’s still asleep.”
    I wanted to ask Royal about Ashley’s butthead friend, Tony. I wanted to ask Royal about his business. I wanted to ask what his wife thought. In the end I settled for, “Okay, Royal, I’m going to see about lining up some surveillance time around Ashley, I plan to coordinate with her, she said she’d call me, anything develops I’ll let you know.”
    “Stay in touch,” he said and hung up.
     
     
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