Ron Base - Sanibel Sunset Detective 01 - The Sanibel Sunset Detective by Ron Base Read Free Book Online Page B

buckshot. You folks are around Saturday, come on over to Ding Darling’s. We’ll be giving demonstrations, aiming it at targets we got set up. It’s something to see, I promise you.”
    An excited murmur was followed by assurances from his eager audience that they would be there. Rex pumped hands and slapped backs before making his way over to where Tree was finishing his coffee.
    “You should go over and have a look at that gun, Tree.”
    “I will, Rex.”
    “It’s something else.”
    They stood looking at one another.
    “What, Rex?”
    “That woman.”
    “What woman?”
    “The one upstairs in your office.”
    “There’s a woman in my office?”
    “Wasn’t sure you knew.”
    “Rex, for God’s sake. You should have said something before now.”
    “Didn’t know what to think of some babe who wasn’t Freddie in your office.”
    “Babe?”
    “She’s a bit of a babe, yeah.”
    “You might think she was a client, Rex. That might have crossed your mind. I am a detective, after all.”
    Rex looked at him as though he was crazy.
    Tree hurried up the stairs. The woman sat in the visitor’s chair. As soon as he saw her, he knew who she was. He’d seen her photograph in the papers often enough. She wore a white dress with a scooped neckline and a flared skirt that showed off long tanned legs.
    “The door was open so I walked in,” she said in a throaty voice. Exactly the voice Tree would have imagined.
    He squeezed past her to his desk.
    In the detective fiction he read as a kid, the femme fatale appeared at the detective’s office in chapter one. She kept crossing and uncrossing long legs. The thought of female legs crossing gave Tree a frisson of adolescent lust. This wasn’t exactly the first chapter of Tree’s life. Nothing about his life, or anyone else’s, ever fell into anything as neat as a chapter. He was no longer certain of lustful frissons either, or whether there were such things as femmes fatale, only stupid men. But if there were, the woman seated in front of him certainly would qualify.
    She said, “I wasn’t sure if I had the right address. I always thought this was the Chamber of Commerce Visitors Center.”
    “It is,” he said. “But they let me have an office here.”
    The woman glanced around. “The Sanibel Sunset Detective Agency?”
    “I’m the Sanibel Sunset detective.”
    “There’s only one of you?” Surprise marred the perfect symmetry of her face.
    “I bring in associates when needed,” Tree lied.
    “I was driving by. Well, I drive by here a good deal. I’m up at Captiva.” She spoke in a flat, slightly accented drawl, mid-Atlantic. A voice that had spent more time in Europe than it had “up at Captiva.”
    “I saw your ad in the local paper.” She shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve never hired a private detective before. I’m not at all sure how it’s done.”
    “Why don’t you tell me what the problem is, and then we can take it from there,” Tree said in his most reassuring voice. It went nicely with his sympathetic face.
    “Now it sounds as though I’m seeing a therapist.” The hint of a smile. Tree smiled back.
    “I should probably tell you my name. That would help.”
    “It would,” Tree agreed.
    She took a deep breath. “My name is Elizabeth Traven.” She looked at him expectantly. “Traven. Does that name mean anything to you?”
    “You’re Brand Traven’s wife. The media mogul.”
    “Media mogul,” she repeated. “Sounds funny, like a comic book hero. Media Mogul.”
    “Media Mogul is in jail.”
    “A federal prison,” Elizabeth Traven corrected. “The Coleman Federal Correctional Complex.”
    “That’s a maximum security facility, isn’t it?”
    “There’s a minimum security wing where Brand is housed. I mean it’s prison. Maximum. Minimum. Whatever. It’s still prison.”
    “A fraud conviction.”
    “They accused him of defrauding his company. But they actually convicted him on a single charge. Obstruction of