Townsehd Investigations

It was my last case that made the decision for me, but I'd been contemplating it for the last two years. I was thirty-three and had worked for Jansen, Fogle, and Meyers since I graduated from law school. JFM is a major Chicago legal firm and they specialize in the criminal and civil defense of people who can afford their services.

The first year was kind of boring because what I was, was a highly educated legal clerk. Every day, I was stuck in my office with a bookcase full of law books trying to find a precedent or another similar case or a case where a judge had ruled some type of evidence as inadmissible or some quirk in the language of some law. I was looking for a way to convince a judge and jury that our client should go free.

The next two years, I got actual cases of my own. They were small cases, but they were cases where I planned the defense of my client and represented him or her in court. It was during those two years that I figured out I was a damned good lawyer. One might think that means most of my clients got off scot-free, but that's not the case.

Most people who are arrested and charged with a crime did indeed commit the crime they're charged with committing. Police departments and prosecuting attorneys have enough to do without charging people for crimes they didn't commit. Most grand juries and judges would see through that anyway. No, most people who get arrested and charged are truly guilty of breaking the law they're charged with breaking.

A defense lawyer's usual job is to prove enough of the testimony or evidence was not obtained legally or was corrupted or biased in some way. That's usually enough to cause reasonable doubt in a jury and will result in either an acquittal or a hung jury.

That's the way the legal system works. It's basically a debate between prosecutors and defense attorneys in an attempt to convince the jury who's telling the truth. The lawyers do their debating through witness testimony by asking the right questions, questions they've prepared to help their case, and by presenting evidence that does the same. When and how they ask the question and present or refute the evidence is how they actually control the debate. The judge is there to make sure both sides follow the rules and to pass sentence if the defendant is found guilty.

Most prosecutors are damned good at what they do, so it's rare that evidence gets thrown out of court. They usually have their ducks in a row and have figured out the best way to present the case to a jury. As a result, acquittals aren't as common as the TV shows might indicate.

That's when the other part of a defense attorney's job comes into play. If it looks like he can't get an acquittal, he'll try to work with the prosecutor to allow the client to plead guilty to a lesser charge. This helps the prosecutor because it saves the cost and time of a trial, and it helps the defendant spend less time in prison. The defense attorney explains the plea deal to the client and tries to convince the client that the plea deal is the best route to take.

I knew all that going into law school because my uncle was a lawyer. I didn't have a problem with it either. Yes, I might get some criminal set free if I was good enough, but mostly, I'd be serving the community by still putting those criminals in prison, just with a shorter sentence, and hopefully they'd see the error of their ways and change. I'd get paid whichever way it went and the vast majority of our cases at JFM weren't violent crimes. They were things like embezzlement and fraud committed by people who had enough money to afford us. The real criminals had to rely on public defenders.

The last two years caused me to re-examine what I was doing. Before that, I was concentrating on paying back the money I'd borrowed to get me through law school and dreaming of the life I'd be living once I was debt free. I kept telling myself that's why I was working seventy hour weeks and having a few drinks every night so I could forget my job and go to sleep.

Once I'd paid off my student debt, I thought I could relax a little, but if anything, it got worse. I'd proven myself enough by then I was getting some high profile cases, and those cases required more work, more time in a court room, and triple-checking everything so there was almost no chance of failure. That's what had made me wonder if being a lawyer was right for me. I know, anybody smart enough to be a lawyer shouldn't have taken that many years to figure that out, but I did.

I didn't have as many cases once I started getting the high profile cases, but the stress level was higher because the crimes were more complex and the clients more demanding. About all I could do in most of the cases was advise the client about what I thought would keep them in prison for the least amount of time and then negotiate with the prosecutor.

I did take a couple of murder cases to trial and batted fifty-fifty. One was a woman who poisoned her husband with ant poison because he'd beat her up about once a week, and the DA had enough evidence to convict her twice. I tried to get her to plea to manslaughter, but she wanted to fight it so I did the best I could. I got some of the evidence thrown out, but not enough. She's in prison now doing twenty to life.

I did win the other murder case. It was a guy who ran his four-wheel drive pickup over a kid running across the street. He didn't deny he'd hit the kid. His claim was it was an accident because he never saw the kid. With some video from inside the cab of the truck in the same place, I was able to prove to the jury that the guy couldn't have seen the kid. The truck was too high and the kid was too short.

Like I said, it was the next case that made the decision for me and it was for two reasons.

The twenty-year-old man was charged with first degree murder for hacking an eighteen-year-old kid to death with a machete. The DA had six witnesses who identified him as the killer because they'd witnessed the murder. They had his DNA on the handle of a machete that also had DNA from the victim on the blade.

When I talked to him, he didn't deny it. In fact, he seemed proud of the fact. He just smiled and said, "He didn't do what I told him to do and I won't have that in my crew. He learned that after I chopped off his hands and feet. I let him think about that for about an hour and then chopped off his head. I haven't had any more problems since then."

His attitude was the first thing that made me not want this case. If he took that same attitude in the courtroom, there was no way a jury would acquit him. If the death penalty had been legal in Illinois, they'd probably have recommended that as his punishment.

The second was his demand that I give a certain acquaintance of his the list of the witnesses. When I asked him why this acquaintance needed the list, he smiled again.

"All you need to know is I want Perez to have the list and I'm paying you to give it to him. Like I told you before, people who don't do what I tell them to do are always sorry."

I finished the consultation, went back to my boss' office, walked in and closed the door.

"Jim, I can't defend Mr. Rangel. No, it's more than that. I won't defend him. Give it to someone else."

Jim put down his book.

"Oh, and why is that?"

I was so pissed I couldn't sit down. Instead I paced back and forth in front of Jim's desk.

"The guy isn't just a murderer. He admitted to me that he hacked the kid to pieces because the kid disobeyed him and that he tortured him first. The second reason is he wants the list of witnesses against him. You and I both know what he's going to do with that list. He also said he wants to know the names of the jurors after they're selected. He essentially threatened to kill me if I didn't give them to him."

Jim leaned back in his chair and put the fingertips of one hand against the fingertips of his other hand.

"Well, that'll make your job easier then, won't it? No witnesses means all you have to do is find another explanation for his DNA on the machete. That shouldn't be too hard to do."

I started to object, but Jim shut me off.

"Just hold on a minute Troy. Do you know how much Mr. Rangel is paying this firm to defend him?"

I said I thought probably the same as everybody else, but Jim smiled.

"No, Troy, you're in the big leagues now. Mr. Rangel is... well, let's just say in his line of business, he doesn't have to worry about money. His accountant made a bank transfer to our bank this morning for a quarter of a million as a retainer. If we can get Mr. Rangel acquitted, he'll pay us another quarter of a million."

He gave me a patronizing smile then.

"Troy, I know you young guys have high ideals, but after you've tried a thousand or so cases like I have, you'll realize the system doesn't work like you were taught in law school. The way it really works is people without money have to take a plea deal and get convicted and then they go to prison. People with money can hire better lawyers than the DA's office, like us, and they're paying us to do what's required to get them acquitted or at least get their sentence minimized.

"If Mr. Rangel goes to prison, the only thing that will change is the firm will lose a quarter of a million, and some of that quarter million would have been yours. If he goes to prison, some other asshole will just take his place and that asshole will be just as bad or worse. One of these days, Rangel will fuck up bad enough to get himself killed and the problem will fix itself. Until then, well, I know you want to buy a house. What say your cut of the second quarter million is about thirty percent? Eighty grand would put a sizeable down payment on one hell of a house.

"Now, you can't legally give the witness list to anyone else, but you have to tell Mr. Rangel who the witnesses are. It's his right to know that information. The jury list is something he absolutely can't have, but you can argue in court that there's no reason to sequester the jury. If you win the argument, he'll just have someone follow them home and he'll find out who they are anyway. You won't legally be at fault if something happens to the witnesses or to the jury."

I went back to my desk, put all my personal stuff in my briefcase, and then emailed my resignation to Jim. I didn't go into a lot of details or rant about the case. I just said I wanted to explore other job opportunities in the legal field. He would know why I was resigning. I doubted he would care.

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The Rangel case was the final straw. Defending a woman who killed her abusive husband was one thing. I could at least understand why she'd done it even though I thought she should have just gone to a shelter and then divorced him. I thought I could talk to a jury and maybe convince them that what the woman did was really self-defense or at least a temporary loss of mental functionality.

Rangel was a different story. He was a butcher who didn't care about anything except absolute control over the members of his street gang. After talking with him, I had the feeling he'd have killed his own mother if she got in his way. The guy he chopped up was no different than a fly to him. I didn't figure I'd be any different if I refused his request.

If I'd given him the witness list, at least one of the witnesses would have ended up dead before the trial and those still alive would have suffered severe memory loss. It would have been relatively easy to find half a dozen of those same witnesses who'd testify that they hadn't actually seen Rangel kill the guy, but they'd seen Rangel pick up the machete once, but had then given it to another person who was wearing gloves. Of course, none of them would have any idea who that other person was.

It would also be pretty easy to find an expert who would testify that if the other person had worn gloves he wouldn't have left his DNA on the machete. If Rangel found out even a few juror's names, he'd have threatened them, their families, and everyone they knew until they would never vote to convict him.

The result would be a hung jury and another trial, probably at least a year later. In the meantime, Rangel would be out on bail and running his business like usual. I'd have basically been aiding and abetting his illegal operations and any other murders he caused. I wouldn't have done anything legally wrong, but I would have been morally wrong, and I could never live with that.

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I thought for a while about applying for a job with another law firm. It would have to be somewhere besides Chicago though. Jim wouldn't care that I'd resigned, but he wouldn't want me to find another job doing the same thing. Law firms compete for business, but the partners all belong to the same country clubs and play golf together on Wednesday afternoon. I was sure Jim would make sure every law firm in Chicago and the surrounding area knew I didn't want to play their game.

Leaving Chicago wasn't a problem. I didn't own a house I'd have to sell. All I had to do was pack up and move. The only questions were where to and to what kind of job.

As far as what kind of job, I could probably find work as a prosecutor or defense attorney, but I'd have to give some references and my only reference would be from Jansen, Fogle, and Meyers. I'd probably get a reference that sounded great. That same reference would also probably be written in words designed to appear to laud my performance, but in reality would alert any potential employer to the fact that I didn't play by their rules. I could imagine how my recommendation would read because I'd seen a couple before. Mine would probably read something like this.

"Troy Roberts is an up and coming attorney with a very good record at Jansen, Fogle, and Meyers. He is extremely thorough in his case preparation and demonstrates an unwavering idealism relative to the role of the legal profession in today's society."

Now, to most laymen, the words "unwavering idealism" would mean I was probably an example of what they believed a lawyer should be. To any law firm those two words would mean that if I believed my client was guilty I wouldn't exhaust every loophole in the legal system to get him acquitted. To a District Attorney those two words would mean if I thought the offense was justified or minimal in nature, I would set up my prosecution strategy in a manner that would let the jury acquit.

There was another problem with continuing to be a practicing attorney. If I moved out of Illinois, I'd have to take and pass the bar exam for my new state. That probably wouldn't be all that difficult, but I'd still have to take at least one class and then pass the exam before I was employable.

I didn't have to hurry to figure out my future because for the last few years I'd been making six figures but working too many hours to spend much money. I figured I had at least a year before I'd have to have an income again as long as I didn't go overboard with my spending.

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The first question I had to answer was did I want to remain a practicing lawyer. I gave that a lot of thought because I'd spent seven years of my life and a hell of a lot of money to be able to add "JD" to my name.

I'd already resigned from a position most of the people I graduated with would have given anything to get, and the reason was my personal ethics. It was probable that no matter which side of the courtroom I ended up on, there would be other cases where my personal ethics would interfere with the expected performance of my duties. What I decided is that maintaining my personal ethics was worth taking a reduction in income because once you lose your personal ethics, you've basically lost yourself.

The second question I had to answer was where I was going to live.

When I took the job in Chicago I was twenty-four and thought a big city like Chicago would be great because of all the things there were to do and see. Once I got over being overwhelmed, I started to realize that impossible traffic, high living costs, and high crime in some areas sort of dimmed the appeal of all the restaurants, museums, and other places. I'd spent all my free time contending with the bad things because I was working too many hours to enjoy much of the good things. I wouldn't move to a large city again.

Where I was going to live determined in large part what I was going to do for a living. A really small town wouldn't have much business for a lawyer. A medium sized city probably would, but there would already be enough lawyers for the population. I didn't want to put myself into a position of undercharging the going rate in order to draw business from established lawyers. That would just get me investigated by the ABA.

I'd already decided that working for a law firm wasn't something I wanted to do again. I really wanted to be free of any obligations to anyone but my clients. That meant I'd have to be self-employed. It was when I was listing out what services I could offer clients that I realized being a self-employed lawyer probably didn't have much of a future. The reason was the internet.

Before the internet, many lawyers earned a comfortable income and they seldom ever set foot in a courtroom. Their business was reviewing and drawing up the legal paperwork every small business has to have like contracts for jobs, rental agreements, and the paperwork needed to initially establish the business. They also wrote wills, living trusts, estate plans, prenuptial agreements, and other legal documents individuals required. There were some lawyers who would do all the negotiation and then write the final paperwork for a no-fault divorce. All the couple had to do then was take the divorce agreement to a judge.

Now there were internet sites where all a person had to do to start a company was fill in a form describing what they wanted to do along with the other information a lawyer would need, and they'd get a legal document that allowed them to get a business permit. There was no appointment required and while the fees the sites charged were similar to the fees charged by private attorneys, people didn't have to take time off work and drive to the lawyer's office so it was actually a little cheaper.

When I went to a couple of those sites and looked around, I could see that the days of a lawyer sitting in his office and drawing up wills and the like were fast coming to an end. Oh, there would still be people who wanted to look the lawyer in the eye and tell him what they wanted, but they'd probably be older people who didn't trust the internet sites and those people would soon be gone.

I thought about starting my own site, but quickly realized there was no way I could compete. I couldn't afford advertising on television and internet search engines mostly use the number of hits when they list sites. The site with the most hits shows at the top of the search list and the site with the fewest usually doesn't make the first page. That's why every TV commercial lists the phone number in big letters in the commercial. It's easier to call a phone number than to search through page after page of internet search results.

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I was sitting in my apartment one night, sipping a really old scotch and wondering if I'd made a wise decision when I was hit with a realization. That realization was a path to a job that would let me be self-employed and still used my legal training.

What I'd been thinking about is the man I'd gotten acquitted for running over a kid. At the time, I had just the one case so I had some time. I sat down with the guy and asked him to be honest about what happened. What he told me seemed like he was telling me the truth. I decided to test out what he'd told me.

I strapped a small video camera to his forehead and asked him to drive the same route at the posted speed limit and in the same truck. I got out and stood where the kid had been standing. When he got about twenty feet from where according to three witnesses the kid had been hit, I crouched down and duck-walked out into the street. When the truck was about fifteen feet from me, I stood up. The guy screeched his tires and I'd had to back up quickly to avoid him hitting me.

The video was enough to convince the jury that it was truly an accident, and that's what I was thinking about. I was thinking about how JFM lawyers usually investigated a case.

I didn't remember any JFM lawyer actually going to the scene of an alleged crime or doing an audit of the finances of any company. What they did was hire a private investigator to do the actual investigation and then give them a report. If it was a financial case, they'd hire a CPA and have him or her go through the data they'd gotten from the plaintiff and the defendant.

I realized that was really the only way they could manage the cases they had. The DA's office had the police department, Coroner's office, and a whole army of forensic technicians and accountants to gather evidence. A defense attorney had himself unless he hired some help.

I wasn't deluding myself by thinking I could work for JFM again. They already had their handpicked outside contract staff. What I could do though, was offer my investigative services to other defense attorneys, including the public defender's office. I could pick and choose the cases I worked, which meant I wouldn't have to try to find enough contradicting evidence to keep a butcher like Rangel out of prison. I would investigate the case, report my findings, and let the lawyers take it from there. I could also start that career in any state I chose. I'd probably have to take some classes and pass a test, but with my legal education, that would be pretty easy to do.

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After a lot of research, the state I picked was Tennessee. Tennessee had several large and medium size cities, a considerable number of banking and industrial corporations, and also had no state income tax. I'd been giving a significant amount of my income to Illinois over the years, but it didn't hurt as bad there because I was making six figures. I was prepared to have pretty big drop in income as a PI, and I didn't relish giving much of that to the state in which I was working.

The cost of living in Tennessee was at least reasonable compared to Chicago, so that was a plus as well. When my lease expired, I stuffed all my clothes and other stuff in the back seat and trunk of my car and headed to Nashville.

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Nashville seemed like the best place to start because that's where all the state government offices are. I figured I could decide where I was going to live after I scoped out some of the other cities, so I rented a room at one of those places where you pay by the week but can stay for months and where you can cook your own food. They're kind of like a furnished apartment without a lease.

Once I'd moved in, I went to the state website to find out what I'd have to do to get a PI license. I found about what I'd expected. I either had to have significant training in law and some specific training about how Tennessee law impacts the PI profession. I'd also have to take a test to prove I'd learned what I'd been taught. What I hadn't expected was the requirement to spend at least a year as an apprentice to a PI already licensed in Tennessee before I could get a full PI license.

I took the classes required and passed the test, and then started looking up PI agencies in Nashville, Knoxville, Chattanooga and some of the other medium size cities in Tennessee.

Most of the firms that advertised in the Yellow Pages and on the Internet were pretty big firms. A couple were as big as my old legal firm and offered quite a range of capabilities. The problem with them was they had a waiting list for apprentice PI's. I also figured working for one of them would be about like working for JFM. I'd have to do things their way even if I thought that way wasn't right.

I was looking through the Nashville Yellow Pages on the internet for the third time when I came across a small ad I'd missed before. There was no company logo or even much in the way of what the PI company could do. It was just an ad that said, "Townsend Investigations. No job too small." Since I wasn't having any luck with anything else, I called the number.

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The woman who answered the call sounded like she was from the South, but not the stereotypical "hillbilly" South. She was all business, but her voice was soft and really nice to hear.

"Townsend Investigations. How may I help you."

I explained that I'd just gotten my probationary PI license and was looking to apprentice myself to another PI. I asked if they ever made an apprenticeship available.

I was ready for the same, "Give me your number and I'll call you back if we do" that I'd heard before. Instead, I heard a muffled, "Daddy, this guy wants to know if you'll take him as an apprentice."

After that came another muffled voice, a voice that was obviously a man's voice and a voice that was pretty gruff.

"Ask him why he wants to be a PI."

She came back on the line then.

"Sir, why do you want to become a private investigator?"

I didn't give her a complete bio. I just said that I wanted to be my own boss and that becoming a private investigator seemed to be a career where I could do that.

Her reply wasn't what I'd expected. It was a lot softer, like she didn't want anybody but me to hear.

"Sir, my father does need someone to help him, but what you just told me isn't going to get you anywhere with him. Can't you tell me more about yourself?"

I gave her the short version and hoped that would be enough.

"Well, I'm a lawyer, but before you hang up on me, you need to understand why I want to change jobs. I didn't like some of the things I had to do at the law firm where I worked and I decided it was probably going to get worse instead of better. I'd already done some investigations for my cases and thought my knowledge of the law and how courts work and my ability to do an investigation would transfer into a PI job."

It sounded like she was still trying to hide her voice.

"I can tell Daddy what you said and he might like it, but you need to know he can't pay you what a lawyer makes."

I said I already knew that and that I was prepared to make less money.

Her voice was muffled again.

"Daddy, he says he's a lawyer who doesn't want to be a lawyer anymore. He said he had to do things as a lawyer that he didn't want to do."

Again there was a muffled male voice.

"A lawyer, huh? Well, tell him to come to the office."

"What time?"

"About six. I'll be done working by then."

That was my first introduction to Macarthur Townsend, who got really pissed off at about anything and especially if anyone called him anything but Mack, and his daughter Roxy, who never seemed to get pissed off by anything or anyone except Mack.

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I'd never have found the office if I hadn't had a GPS system in my car. Mack's office wasn't really what you'd think of when you hear the word office. It was on the second floor over what had started out as a shoe store in the older part of downtown Nashville before all the big box stores started selling shoes off the rack. The sign painted over the door said that's what it was anyway. The signs painted on the windows that flanked the door read "Jimmy's Bail Bonds" so evidently that's what it was now.

Between the left window and Gold Star Pawn next door was a narrow stair and over that stair was a simple sign that read "Townsend Investigations" with an arrow pointing up. After parking my car at the curb, I checked my suit for lint, straightened my tie, picked up my briefcase, and started up the stairs.

At the top of the stairs was a landing and a door with a glass panel in the upper half. The painted sign on that glass also read, "Townsend Investigations" and another sign hanging inside from a suction cup read "OPEN". I tried the doorknob and it worked, so I opened the door and walked inside.

I already knew I'd be taking a step down when I decided to change careers. I didn't know that step was going to be about as far as the depth of the Grand Canyon.

My office at JFM had real wood bookcases, a real mahogany desk, and a leather chair that adjusted six ways. The floor was carpeted, and I had a window that looked out onto the skyline of Chicago. The offices of the firm's partners were paneled in real wood instead of just painted drywall, and the furniture was even better. Each of those offices had a hidden bar and a private bathroom.

What I walked into that day at Townsend Investigations looked like either resale shop whatever or Walmart modern, that cheap stuff made out of particleboard with fake wood veneer. The floor was carpeted, but that carpet had long since lived out its expected life. The only windows were in the front part of the building, the part I figured had once been the living room of a second floor apartment and they looked out at the buildings just across the street. One of those windows was partially blocked by a window air conditioner that sort of panted and wheezed from time to time.

The walls had been wallpapered with a pattern with an off-white background and red and pink roses. The colors were pretty faded so I figured it was also left over from when the room had been a living room. A few pictures hung on one wall.

The only thing in the room that looked really nice was the redheaded woman sitting behind the cheap desk with a phone and a computer keyboard and monitor on it.

She looked up at me and smiled.

"May I help you?"

I recognized her voice as the woman I'd talked to on the phone.

"I'm Troy Roberts. I called you this morning about an apprenticeship and you said you'd set me up for an interview at six."

She smiled again.

"Daddy's out but he should be back in a few minutes. Have a seat on the couch. There are a few magazines on the coffee table you might find that you like."

She went back to typing on her keyboard and I sat down on the couch. I was a little put out.

When I'd had the interview with JFM, I'd had to wait almost half an hour, so I'd expected that for this interview. The girl at the JFM desk said her name was Beverly and had offered me a cup of coffee or a soda if I wanted one. She'd also told me where the bathroom was in case I needed it.

The little redhead at this desk hadn't done so much as tell me her name, let alone ask if I was thirsty. I decided maybe that was just how this organization treated prospective hires. I'd heard of that being the case before. The person doing the interview would let you sit for half an hour or so to see what you'd do. Part of the job of the girl at the desk was to watch you and make notes about if you seemed confident or if you looked nervous or if you asked for something.

I looked at the redhead and she was staring at her computer screen. I looked at the magazines on the table and decided they'd probably come from a resale shop too. The newest magazine was the May, 2001 issue of Field & Stream. There were a few other magazines there, like Outdoor Life and Guns and Ammo. All were older than 2001. I decided I didn't need to learn how to reload my own ammunition since I didn't own a gun and that I probably wouldn't be doing much fishing for northern pike in Ontario. I just sat there and looked around.

Sitting got pretty boring after the first five minutes, so I stood up and walked around looking at the pictures on the wall. Several were of some guy in US Army battle dress and holding an M-16 rifle. A few others were of that same guy but a little older holding a little redheaded girl on his lap. There were a few of what I figured were the guy's family because there was the same guy, the same little redheaded girl, and a brunette woman who was pretty good looking and appeared to be about the same age as the guy.

I was still looking at the pictures when the inside door to the office opened. The girl at the desk said, "Daddy, you're late for your interview with Mr. Roberts. That's not very polite."

The tone of her voice didn't sound very polite either considering that I was sitting there.

The guy looked about as old as my father, but he was in better shape than my father had ever been. His hair, what there was left of it, was dark brown, but the rest of him looked like he could put up a good fight if required. He had an expensive looking camera hanging from a strap around his neck.

He frowned.

"I couldn't help it, goddammit. I got busy with the Reynold's case. Her boyfriend had her in his back yard and she was taking off her clothes. I couldn't leave until I could take enough pictures to prove to her husband that she was riding somebody besides him. Got enough his lawyer won't have any trouble with her lawyer. Don't know what the boyfriend sees in her though. Already knew she was fat, but naked she looked like the Pillsbury Doughboy."

He walked across the floor to where I stood and offered his hand.

"Troy Roberts? I'm Mack Townsend. Roxy tells me you're looking to apprentice yourself to a licensed PI."

I nodded and then winced a little because Mack's handshake felt like my hand was in a vise.

"Yes, I am. I want to start my own business, but I have to have a year of experience with another private investigator before I can get the license to do that."

Mack smiled.

"Let me give my camera to Roxy to copy the files to a memory stick. Then we'll go in my office and talk."

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Mack's office was about the same as the front area except it didn't look like anyone had dusted or swept anything for a few years. He pointed to a chair in front of his desk and then sat down in the chair on the opposite side. After putting his elbows on the desk, he put the fingers of each hand together and then frowned.

"Roxy said you told her you were a lawyer."

I nodded.

"Yes, I was, but I'm not now."

Mack frowned again.

"Must have cost you a shit pot full of money to get your law degree. How much?"

"About a hundred thousand, give or take."

"You pay it back?"

I nodded.

"Yes. It took me five years, but it's paid."

Mack raised his eyebrows.

"You paid twenty grand a year? How much were you earning?"

I said about eighty thousand when I started and a little over a hundred when I resigned.

Mack frowned again.

"You some kind of goddamned fool? Why would you give up a job that paid a hundred grand a year?"

I told Mack a shortened version of my story about Rangel.

"I was assigned to defend this gangbanger who chopped up a kid with a machete. He didn't try to deny he'd done it. He seemed proud of doing it. He even threatened me if I didn't give him the list of the witnesses against him and the names and addresses of the jury.

"When I told my boss I wouldn't defend him, my boss said I needed to understand how the law works, and that people with money like Rangel expect a lawyer to do what it takes to keep them out of prison.

"I could probably have done that if I'd done what Rangel wanted. I'd have had to give him the list of witnesses because that's how the law reads. He'd have had one or two killed and then the rest would have changed their story. I couldn't give him names of the jury members because that's against the law, but I could have argued and won an argument that the jury didn't need to be sequestered. Rangel would have just had his crew follow each one home. Then, he'd have threatened to kill them if they found him guilty.

"The law books are full of cases where that happened. It always ends in a hung jury and the killer stays on the street for the months or years it takes to set up a new trial.

"I could defend someone for stealing or fraud or even somebody who kills somebody else because they're either not in their right mind or because the killing was more of an accident than planned. I couldn't bring myself to defend Rangel. He had planned to kill the kid and he made him suffer for an hour before he finally did kill him.

"I figured that was going to happen over and over because I was a one of the legal firm's best lawyers. There didn't seem to be any way out except to resign, so that's what I did. After that, I decided if I kept working as a lawyer, I'd keep getting cases where my personal ethics would keep me from doing what I was supposed to do.

"The only thing I could do was go into business for myself and that wouldn't be as a lawyer. I liked doing investigations and I'm pretty good at it, so I figured being a private investigator would work for me."

Mack was still frowning.

"You think I turn down cases because I don't like the client? I'd go broke if I told some woman I wouldn't take her case because I thought her husband was probably cheating on her because she was too fat to fuck. Bail bondsmen are all assholes, but I don't have to like them as long as they pay me to find a skip.

"As far as I'm concerned, most companies are more concerned about their goddamned bottom line than their employees, because they keep asking me to find out if this guy really hurt his back or if he's just trying to collect some easy money from Worker's Comp. I keep finding the bastards or the bitches as the case may be, because that's what pays the bills."

I said it wasn't the same.

"You don't have to try to defend any of those things in court. What you do is find out the facts of a case and give those facts to your client. You don't have to tailor your investigation to reveal or hide those facts depending upon whether you think the person is guilty or not."

Mack didn't say anything except to ask me how much I thought a private investigator earned. I said I'd done some checking and I thought it was around sixty thousand a year.

Mack chuckled.

"You might make that much working for one of the big agencies downtown, but I don't. I gross about eighty, but by the time I pay taxes, I net about sixty-eight. Expenses eat up another twenty or so, so I end up with about forty-five in my pocket. Think you can live on forty-five a year? It's gonna be hard after living on a hundred."

This was getting aggravating for me. I'd spent a lot of time putting together a mental list of things I could do as an apprentice and why those things would make me a good private investigator. Mack hadn't asked any questions about why I thought I could do the job. It seemed like what he was doing was trying to get me to quit before I even got started.

I said I didn't think there was much point in continuing the interview and started to stand up. Mack smiled and told me to sit back down.

"Don't be in such a hurry. A good PI has to have patience because nobody is ever going to show or tell you everything they know. You have to make them not be worried about showing you and wanting to tell you and that takes time. You haven't heard me out yet, so sit your ass back down.

"I do need some help. The whole goddamned country has gone sue-happy because of lawyers, so I have to turn down some cases.

"You dump your hot coffee in your lap and sue the restaurant because they didn't warn you the hot coffee would be hot. You try to lift something and when your back hurts, you sue your employer for making you pick up shit when the employer has already sated that you have to be able to pick up forty pounds.

"You get shit-faced drunk and pour gas from a gas can on a fire. The fire runs up the stream of gas and burns the shit out of you. A lawyer tells you he can get some money for you so you sue the company who made the gas can because there was no bright red and yellow label on the gas can to tell you not to pour gas on a fire.

"It's the fucking lawyers who are behind all those law suits. Their pitch is always, 'We'll sue and if we lose, you don't owe me anything. If we win, you owe me forty percent of the settlement.' It's all just bullshit lawsuits so the lawyers can afford a new sports car and a new set of custom golf clubs every couple years.

"It's hard to find good help too. Kids today want to sit on their asses and play video games and shit. They wouldn't know a good day's work if it bit them on the ass.

"I had a kid helping me last year. Kid was about twenty and just got out of junior college with a certificate in criminal justice. He was like you and wanted to start his own PI business. Seemed to me like he'd do all right, so I hired him as an apprentice.

"I should have asked him the same questions I just asked you. Turned out that he wanted to pick and choose cases based on what he thought of the client. That usually meant the cases he wanted were from some stacked broad he wanted to fuck.

"He also bitched because I started him at fifteen bucks an hour and made him keep a log of what he did every day. When he was logging only about three hours a day, I started paying him for the hours he logged instead of eight. When I finally asked him why he wanted to be a PI in the first place, he said he wanted to be able to spy on naked people and get them into trouble. That's when I fired his sorry ass.

"The PI business isn't about spying on people and getting them into trouble. The PI business is a business that offers a service that people need but don't have the time or the ability to do themselves. It isn't about picking sides. It's about finding out the truth, whatever that truth might be, and then giving that truth to the client. It doesn't matter if the client likes what a PI finds. It only matters that it's the truth.

"Now, I'm sure you have a thousand reasons why you want to be a PI and why you'd be a good PI. I don't want to hear them because I won't believe them anyway. I won't believe them until I see them for myself. What I put my faith in is how a man or a woman impresses me. Not many do, but you've done better than most.

"The only other question I'll ask is do you still want to work for me? I'll pay you a salary of a thousand a month to start. That probably doesn't seem like much, but you can live here with Roxy and me if you want. Jobs tend to not follow standard business hours so having you living here will make it easier on both of us.

"I'll pay more when you show me you're worth more. Expect to fuck up a lot until you learn how the PI business really works, but don't let that get you down. Every PI working today went through the same thing. What do you have to say?"

Well, the difference between Mack and my old boss, Jim, was night and day. Jim was a lawyer through and through and always chose his words carefully to make sure he didn't say anything that could come back to haunt him someday. Often he just talked in circles.

Mack was just Mack saying what he thought in words that were easy to understand. I hadn't really disliked Jim, but I found myself liking Mack. I wasn't sure about the living arrangements, but I figured if that didn't work out, I could always go back to renting week to week.

"Mr. Townsend, I think this is what I've been looking for and the money will be OK."

Mack smiled.

"I open at nine, but be here tomorrow morning by eight. Park in the back beside my Explorer and Roxy's Blazer and come up the back stairs. Roxy will let you in. By the way, don't call me Mr. Townsend. I'm just Mack to anybody except the goddamned government and my bank."

}|{

At five 'til eight the next morning, I drove down the alley and parked beside a red Blazer, then climbed the stairs to the second floor and knocked on the door.

A couple minutes later, Roxy looked through the glass, smiled, and opened the door.

"We're eating breakfast. Would you like some pancakes and a cup of coffee?"

I'd never been in an apartment over a storefront before, so I was really surprised by how much room there was. Roxy led me down a long, wide hallway with three doors in each wall. When we reached the end, I saw a living room with a big TV to my right and the open doorway to a kitchen with a small dining table to my left. Both rooms were bigger than the place I was renting. There was another door that I assumed led to the lobby and Mack's office.

Mack was sitting at the table with a plate of pancakes in front of him and a cup of coffee in his hand. He looked up and pointed to a chair at the end of the table.

"Have a seat. We'll talk while we eat."

I'd already had breakfast so I just had a cup of coffee. I'd taken the first sip when Mack looked at me and frowned.

"You look like a goddamned lawyer and most of the people who use us don't trust lawyers. Take off that jacket and tie and roll up your shirtsleeves. It would be better if you wore blue jeans, but your pants will do for today."

Mack had said I'd screw up. I just didn't think I'd screw up quite as fast as I did. As it turned out, it wasn't the last time I screwed up that day.

Mack said, "Let me see your shoes."

I lifted up one leg and he frowned.

"You got any tennis shoes? Only assholes wear polished black wingtips."

I said I did but they were back in my apartment.

"Well, you spend today moving into our back bedroom. That way you'll have all your clothes here."

Roxy brought her plate of pancakes and sat down.

"Daddy, you don't have to be so mean on Troy's first day. It's not polite."

Mack shrugged.

"If he's gonna be a PI he can't go around looking like some stuffy-assed lawyer. He'll get used to it or he'll quit."

"Daddy, you don't have to say words like that every time you say something. It isn't polite."

Mack looked at me and grinned..

"Gets my point across though, doesn't it Troy?"

I think that was the moment I knew I'd made the right decision.

"Yes it does, Mr., I mean, Mack."

}|{

It didn't take me all day to move into the bedroom because I hadn't taken most of my stuff out of the boxes. By noon, I had everything up the stairs and into the bedroom. After that, I had to go buy some sheets and blankets because the bed in my apartment in Chicago was a queen but the bed in my new bedroom was a twin. I figured Walmart would fit into Mack's idea of where a PI should shop, so that's where I went shopping.

While I was in Walmart, I picked up some different shirts including some T-shirts, four pairs of jeans, and a couple pairs of running shoes. I figured I was all set as far as clothing was concerned.

When I got back to Mack's office, I didn't have anything to do so I went to what I supposed Mack called his lobby. There was nobody there except for Roxy, so I asked her about the pictures on the wall.

"Oh, those are pictures of Daddy when he was in Vietnam and pictures of him and my mother and me."

"I haven't met your mother yet. Does she have another job during the day?"

Roxy frowned.

"No. My mother is dead. She was killed by a young kid speeding down Second Street. Mom had been shopping and when she crossed the street, the guy ran her down and killed her.

"I was only three at the time, so I don't remember much about her. I suppose that made it easier on me to not have a mother. It didn't make Daddy feel anything except to get revenge, so he joined the Nashville Police Department."

I scratched my head.

"He was a police officer? I think he'd make a great police officer. Why did he quit and start a PI business?"

Roxy stopped typing.

"Troy, you need to understand something about Daddy. He was promoted to a Staff Sergeant in Vietnam because he was good at directing men to kill the enemy. It didn't matter to him how they did it, only that they killed a lot more of the enemy than his men lost to them.

"When he became a police officer, he tried to do the same thing, well, not killing every suspect. He never fired his gun at anybody. His problem was they wouldn't let him do what he needed to do in order to get the evidence to arrest the suspect. There were all these rules he had to follow about collecting evidence and arresting a criminal and taking him to jail. Most of the time, Daddy knew the person was guilty, but the district attorney kept telling him he needed more proof. Daddy finally got tired of following rules that didn't make any sense to him and he decided to become a PI and make his own rules."

I shook my head.

"Those rules are there to make sure the police treat a suspect as innocent until they can prove that suspect to be guilty. Otherwise, the police could just drag anybody to the police station and interrogate them until they give up and admit to doing the crime. That used to happen a lot, and sometimes it involved what today would be considered torture. If he doesn't follow the law, he could get himself into big trouble."

Roxy smiled.

"Daddy follows the law, but there are ways around the law for a private investigator. For instance, it's the law that you can't take pictures or video of anyone in a private setting without their consent. The police can't do that. Daddy can, and it's because none of his cases are criminal cases. They're civil cases like divorce or fraud.

"The video he takes through a hotel window of some guy having sex with a woman who's not his wife won't be admissible in even a civil court, but a lawyer can hint that that video might accidentally find its way to the news media. That usually means the person being accused will give up fighting the lawsuit and agree to settle it out of court. Even if it doesn't turn out that way, the pictures or video give Daddy someone or someplace else to investigate.

"Daddy can't use a recorder to record what a person says to another person unless one of them agrees to be recorded, but he can listen in with his parabolic microphone or figure out a way to put a microphone with a transmitter inside a person's house or their car. He can then hear who the person is talking to and what they're saying. He doesn't have to tell anybody how he got that information unless it ends up being used as evidence. Usually it doesn't. He just uses the recording when he talks to someone. If he already knows the right answer to his question, it's easier to get the person to give him the answer he needs.

"The police can't put a tracking device on your car to track where you go without getting a court order. Daddy can, and by knowing where a person goes, he can figure out how to catch them in a way that will stand up in a court. The fact that he got that information because of a tracking device won't be in his report, just what he caught them doing."

I shook my head again.

"I spent several years as a defense attorney. I could get every bit of that evidence thrown out. Threatening to release pictures or video of someone to the media could also let me file a criminal charge of extortion against Mack and the other lawyer."

Roxy grinned.

"Not if you didn't know how Daddy got the evidence, and that wouldn't be in the report he gives the client. The lawyer wouldn't be accused of extortion unless there was positive proof that he made the threat. That would require more than just one person saying they'd been threatened, like a written statement signed by the lawyer or a recorded conversation. The lawyer would never put something like that in writing or say it if he knew he was being recorded.

"As for a recording of the conversation, that would require bugging the place where the people talked or one of them wearing a recorder during the discussion. Bugging anything you don't personally own requires a court order. Taking a recorder to a discussion is legal as long as one of the parties involved agrees to be recorded, but most lawyers are smart enough to not make an actual threat to release the video or recording. They'd just make a hint that they could defend as being just musing about the possibilities, like they might ask the person what they think would happen if that information ever got out to the press.

"Daddy wouldn't be accused because it wasn't Daddy who made the threat. All Daddy does is find out what he's hired to find out and give that to the person who hired him. What they do with that information is up to them.

"Besides, the people who hire Daddy don't really want to go to court. All they want is to show the person they're defending against that it would be better to settle out of court. All private investigators anywhere do the same thing. That's why you never see headlines about most civil cases. They just end before they ever get to court."

}|{

As I was to learn over the next few months, Mack's interpretation of the law was pretty flexible depending on the circumstances. I started getting that education on the first case that Mack let me come along with him.

It was a pretty simple case of a wife stepping out on her husband from time to time, time to time in this case being every Wednesday. Her husband had become suspicious when he came home early from his job as a realtor at four-thirty and his wife wasn't there. She didn't get back home until six-thirty. She told him she'd been grocery shopping and showed him a bag of groceries to prove it.

It didn't look to the husband as if she'd bought enough to have been shopping for two and a half hours, but he didn't say anything because her usually grocery shopping day was Wednesday. Instead, he started driving by their house about four-thirty every day and after a month he saw what he thought was a pattern. At four-thirty every Wednesday, her car was gone from their drive. When he got home at about six, his wife would be in the kitchen and making dinner.

He'd contacted Mack to find out if there was anything going on. Mack took the case but told the husband it would take at least a month since she appeared to only be doing whatever she was doing on Wednesday afternoon.

Mack explained what he done so far.

"I've followed the wife the last two Wednesdays. She leaves her house at about three and drives out to a house in a brand-new subdivision north of Gallatin. She gets there at about three-thirty. It's the only house there so far, but the developer has laid out and paved the streets. Looked like the developer has sectioned it off into lots that look to have about a hundred feet of street frontage and he left some trees at the back of each lot. I wrote down the number on the mailbox when I went by the first time

"When I drove to the end of that street and made a right turn, there was another street with more lots that back up to the first lots that I hadn't seen because of the trees. There were no houses or construction there yet. I drove down that street until I could see the back yard of the guy's house. It was hard to see through the trees, but I was pretty sure I saw the wife and a guy out in the back yard. There was also what looked like a pool, but the trees blocked most of it.

"When I came back home, I went to the County Records website and did some searching. What I found is interesting.

"The house is owned by a Jerry Mayhew. The property has a hundred feet of frontage like I thought and is four hundred and thirty feet from the curb to the back. That's about an acre. The county tax base has the house and property valued at six hundred thousand, and Mayhew has a mortgage with First American Finance for half a million.

"I thought I'd see who owned the lots around the house so I looked at each one. Guess what? Mayhew owns the three lots on each side of the house. Each lot is valued at fifty thousand and there's no mortgage on any of them. Mayhew had bought nine hundred grand of property and apparently paid four hundred grand down. That told me that Mayhew must have some money. He's either planning on building himself a private estate of about seven acres or he's speculating on the other lots and hoping they increase in value.

"I kept looking and found out that the rest of the subdivision is owned by Mayhew Construction and Properties. Their website told me that the president is Jerry Mayhew. There was a company history on that site.

"Jerry Mayhew is the son of Robert Mayhew. Robert started the company right after WWII with one backhoe and one bulldozer. He put in foundations and septic systems for a couple years and then started doing the home construction with his own crew. Once that business was up and running strong, he bought up several hundred acres of farmland on the outskirts of what was just the small town of Gallatin at the time. Since then, most of those acres are now subdivisions and Robert made a ton of money selling the lots and building the houses on them.

"Jerry was the vice president from 2015 when he got his MBA from Vanderbilt. When Robert died in 2021, Jerry became the president of the company and now he's one of the biggest developers in the area.

"So now I know that the wife drove out to see Mayhew every Wednesday for some reason. There could be a lot of reasons, but it was a little suspicious that the wife was going to see a real estate developer when her husband was a real estate agent. If she was looking to buy a house, it would be cheaper for her husband to do the looking and paperwork. He'd also earn a commission on the sale.

"The next Wednesday, I took Roxy's Blazer and followed the wife again. One thing that's important for you to learn is that some people will notice if they see the same looking car behind them more than a day or two. You have to switch cars once in a while.

"Anyway, everything was the same so I drove around to the other road and down to behind the house. It looked like they were in the back yard again.

"I drove down to the end of that street and waited to see when she left. She drove down the street and turned toward Nashville an hour later. I followed her to a Kroger and then home. She got there about five-thirty and her husband got home about six.

"Tomorrow will be the third Wednesday, and we're gonna to see what the wife is up to. We're not gonna follow her this time because I already know where she's going. We're gonna drive out to the lot on the backside of the house and take a walk through the trees. With any luck we'll get some pictures and video."

I'd expected as much because of what Roxy had told me, but I figured this was a good time to see how Mack felt about privacy laws.

"Won't it be illegal to take pictures and video? Tennessee law says if you're on your own property you have what the law calls a reasonable expectation of privacy."

Mack grinned.

"Well, that applies to inside the house and it'd be a little iffy if the back yard was fenced, but the husband didn't ask me to convict her of fucking another man. He hired me to find out what she's been doing. I don't think he'll care how I prove what she's been doing. His lawyer will take care of any legal bullshit.

"Now, you wear jeans and a T-shirt and I'll do the same. I have a couple hard hats and yellow vests in my Explorer. To anybody that might drive by, we'll look like a couple construction guys looking at the property."

}|{

That afternoon at three-fifteen, Mack parked the Explorer in front of the lot on the back side of Mr. Mayhew's house, and handed me a yellow vest, a white hard hat, and spray bottle of insect repellant.

"Ticks in them trees will be thick as fleas on a dog. Spray down your shoes, socks, and half way up the legs of your jeans."

When I handed the can back to Mack, he did the same and then pulled a still camera from a bag in the back seat. After showing me how to turn it on and where the shutter button was, he got a small video camera from another bag and said, "Let's go."

Mack stopped walking about five feet from the last trees on the Mayhew property.

"Looks like I was right about the pool. You watch the back of the house and start taking pictures as soon as they come out. The memory in that camera will hold about seven thousand pictures, so don't be afraid to take a lot. It's the picture you don't take that might give you the proof you're looking for."

My watch read 3:41 when the back door of the house opened and a woman walked out in a bikini followed by a man in Speedo trunks. As I snapped picture after picture, they walked to the pool, but they didn't get in the water. Instead, the woman untied the bikini bra and let it fall to the ground, then untied the strings on the bottoms and let them fall to the ground too.

She walked up to the guy and rubbed his crotch, then knelt down and pulled his trunks down to his ankles. When the guy stepped out of them, she grabbed his cock and jacked it for a few strokes, then opened her mouth and sucked his cock head in. The guy reached down and stroked her nipples, then pinched them with his fingers. Evidently she was pretty vocal when she was having fun. Even as far away as we were, I heard her loud gasp and then moan. I got it all with the camera.

After about ten minutes or so, the woman got up and led the guy over to a padded bench beside a table with an umbrella. He lay down on his back and held out his arms. The woman sort of duck walked over him and then eased down with his cock between her thighs. The guy rolled her nipples while she slipped her hand down and started moving it up and down. A couple minutes later, she raised up a little, moved her hand back, and then started easing down on the guy's cock.

I don't think I took as many pictures after she did that, but I remembered to press the shutter button once in a while. It was obvious that she was riding the guy's cock and just as obvious that they were both enjoying it. She had her head thrown back and she shook like a leaf when he pulled on her nipples. I couldn't see his face, but I was sure he was probably grinning.

It all came to an end after about ten minutes. The woman raised up, gasped, and then dropped down on the guy's cock, but only for about a second. She started bobbing up and down then, and a few seconds later she dropped down because her legs gave out. She was still rocking her hips though, and a couple seconds after that, the guy started ramming his cock in her. He got in maybe four strokes, and then eased back down on the bench. She fell down on top of him.

Mack nudged me then.

"Time to go to Kroger."

}|{

We were sitting in the parking lot of a Kroger when the woman drove into the lot, found a parking place, and went inside. I took pictures of her going in. About fifteen minutes later she pushed a shopping cart out to her car and loaded four plastic grocery bags into her trunk. I got pictures of her doing that as well as several pictures that showed her license plate when she drove out of the lot.

I asked Mack if we were going to follow her home and he shook his head.

"Nah, no need. We got enough this afternoon to make her lawyer start talking about a reasonable settlement."

"Won't he just say that the pictures and video were illegally obtained?"

Mack nodded.

"He might try that, but pictures and video like this have a way of getting out into the public. Her lawyer will know that so he won't say anything. He'll just ask what the husband wants to keep."

"Mack, you wouldn't do something like that, would you, let the pictures get to the press I mean?"

He looked at me and grinned.

"Me? Oh hell no. That would be illegal. I can't say the same for a fucking lawyer though. They're all crooked as a dog's hind leg. The husband's lawyer might use these pictures and video another way though. The husband's lawyer will threaten to show everything to Mayhew and tell him it would probably not be good for his business if he put him on the stand and made him tell the judge what he and the wife have been up to.

"What that's gonna do is make Mayhew have a serious talk with the wife. If he wants to keep her, he'll tell her to settle and he'll make it up to her. If he doesn't, he'll probably tell her his lawyer will make it look like she'd seduced him. Then he'll tell her to get lost. Me, I'd never have fucked her in the first place. Did you see how floppy her tits were and the size of her ass? I guess maybe she does give a good blowjob. Looked that way to me.

"My bet is all three lawyers will look at the pictures and video, and then head out to their country club for a few drinks. They'll agree on a suitable settlement that nets them each a pretty nice fee and then do some negotiating with the husband and wife. In the end the husband will end up worth about half what he's worth now, Mayhew will keep his reputation intact, and the wife will settle for whatever she can get. The three lawyers will all go buy new custom tailored suits. That's how I've seen it work in the past anyway."

I said, "It sounds like you don't like lawyers. If you don't like lawyers, why did you hire me?"

Mack looked over at me and frowned.

"Lawyers are like politicians, which also explains why most politicians are lawyers. They talk a good game, and most try to do what's right for their clients, but in the end, they're making money off of people who can't tackle the court system on their own. It was lawyers who made the court system like it is, and every new law the politicians write is intended to keep it that way.

"You gave up a damned good paying job because of your personal ethics. I figured if you'd do that I could trust you to do the right thing even though you didn't get paid as much. I figured you'd be dumb as a box of rocks, but I can fix dumb. I can't fix greed."

}|{

My first two months working for Mack were a lot like my first two months working for JFM. Mack had me doing internet searches for property deeds, court cases and my least favorite part, searching social media for information about the target or targets of an investigation. During that time, I realized there are a lot of legal ways to find out things about people that are supposedly private. Most people think their personal information is a secret to anybody and that accessing that information requires a court order.

That's not the case. Almost everything a person does is recorded on some public database somewhere and unless that information is really old, most of it is available on-line if you have a name or an address and know where to look.

Property tax records will get you the owner's name, the assessed value of the property, the date the deed transferred, and the mortgage holder. The County Clerk's office will get you things like marriage licenses and birth and death certificates. The genealogy sites will give you a family tree. Most genealogy sites require you to register, but they don't ask for much information other than a credit card number.

The social media accounts are full of private information that people put on those accounts themselves. It just takes some reading and collating the information. A person will say in one post that they live in Tennessee. A month later they'll post a picture of them in front of an easily recognized building with a caption that says something like, "I'm so glad this place is right in my town." Another post might say, "This is me in front of the church just down the block from my house."

Each posting seems innocent to the person doing the posting, but put together can give me a state, city, and even a house address, or at least a block or two of houses I need to look at.

Mack did let me tail along after that, and during those times I learned a lot of ways to get people to tell me something. Some would call those ways tricks, but they're far from being tricks. Tricks are the guy on the corner with three cups and a ball or the magician who pulls a card from the top of the deck and it's the same card you put in the middle when he fanned out the deck.

What they are is a private detective taking advantage of people's innate distrust of anybody in law enforcement or other government agency, their eagerness to help a friend, their desire to have their fifteen minutes of fame, or some other personality quirk.

When Jimmy of Jimmy's Bale Bonds hired Mack to find a skip named Roscoe Mann, Jimmy told Mack that Roscoe had a girlfriend who lived with him. Jimmy gave Mack the address.

Mack typed Roscoe's name and the address on an envelope, stuffed the envelope full of blank paper and then sealed it. Then he told me to put on my business suit.

We drove to the address and Mack said, "You knock on the door and act like a lawyer. That oughta be easy for you. Just use some big legal words. When Julie answers the door, tell her you need to speak to Mr. Roscoe Mann and be sure to use the Mr. and his full name like a lawyer would.

"She's gonna tell you that he's not there. You tell her that the letter you're carrying is paperwork from your law firm stating that his distant uncle has passed away and his will stated that Roscoe would inherit certain property from the estate. Don't tell her anything about that certain property. Tell her you can't discuss that with anybody except Roscoe Mann.

"She'll say she'll take it and give it to Roscoe. That's when you say that Roscoe will have to prove his identity before you'll give him the papers. Say he'll have to sign two copies of the paperwork and you have to sign both copies as a witness that he received them.

"You'll have to wing it depending upon what she says then, but what we need is for her to agree to a date, time, and place where you can meet up with Roscoe. It won't be at the house because he knows he has a warrant on him and the police will be looking for him there. Suggest a decent motel somewhere and tell her the estate will pay for the room. We'll be there and cuff him as soon as he walks in the door."

Well, it worked. After Julie asked if she could just give the letter to Roscoe, I was able to get her to agree to tell Roscoe I'd meet him at the Quality Inn in Gallatin at two the next day. I gave her one of my old business cards and said I'd leave another taped to the door so he could find the room.

I rented a room at the Quality Inn in Gallatin for the day Julie said Roscoe would be there. At noon, Mack and I went to the room. Mack went into the bathroom and shut but didn't latch the bathroom door. I wore a wire so Mack could listen to the conversation.

I sat on the bed and waited until two for Roscoe to knock on the door. When I answered the knock, I asked him to come in and then asked him for some identification.

"Mr. Mann, I'm sure you understand that because of the amount of the estate I am required to verify your identity with some form of official identification."

Roscoe nodded and pulled a wallet out of his pants pocket. I made a show of looking at his Tennessee driver's license and then said, "This looks to be in order. Now, have a seat so I can explain the will to you."

That's when I stepped in front of the door to the room to block it and Mack ran out of the bathroom and tackled Roscoe. He flipped Roscoe on his belly and held his arms while I put the cuffs on him. Then he stood Roscoe up and chuckled.

"Roscoe, Jimmy down at Jimmy's Bail Bonds wants a word with you. I'd imagine he's going to treat you to a free stay down at Metro. I hear the beds suck and so does the food, but your roommates will probably be fun."

After we dropped Roscoe off with Jimmy, I asked Mack why since Roscoe was on the run he didn't suspect something.

Mack just smiled.

"Because there's no law that says that a criminal has to be smart. Most of 'em aren't. Roscoe is just fucking dumb and so is his girlfriend.

"Most people who've been arrested before or know somebody who has can smell a cop a mile away, so she'd have been watching for a cop trying to get her to tell him where Roscoe was hiding. You seemed like a lawyer instead of a cop, and you told her Roscoe had come into some money. You didn't say it was money, but that's what she heard. She was probably thinking that with some money she and Roscoe could leave Nashville and he wouldn't go to jail. She contacted Roscoe as soon as you left and told him when and where. He came because he had dollar signs in his head instead of any sense."

I had another question for Mack.

"Mack, how was it legal for you to arrest Roscoe? I thought only law enforcement could arrest anyone."

Mack grinned.

"Did I tell him I was arresting him? All I was doing was securing him so he couldn't run again. Jimmy won't arrest him either. He'll just call the police station and tell them he has Roscoe in his office. When the cops get there to serve their warrant, they aren't gonna say anything. Jimmy just saved them a bunch of time hunting down Roscoe. His public defender might try to say Roscoe was illegally arrested, but Jimmy's just gonna say we brought Roscoe to his office. The two officers are just gonna say that Jimmy had him cuffed to his desk but Jimmy hadn't arrested him."

I tried to push my point.

"But he was still detained against his will."

Mack frowned at me.

"Would you still think that if Roscoe had killed a little girl or some old man or woman?"

I had to think about that for a second or two.

"Well, I see your point but that's irrelevant. All people are supposed to be treated equally by the law."

Mack smiled then.

"I suppose that's why some gangbanger who shoots a nineteen year old female convenience store attendant gets the weapons charge dropped and the murder charge gets reduced to something less if he confesses."

"Well, at least that gets the guy off the streets."

"Do you suppose the victim's family thinks the victim was treated equally?"

The only answer I had was no.

Mack turned into the parking space behind his office, shut off the Explorer and then turned to face me.

"Troy, that whole thing about equal treatment under the law is a bunch of fucking bull shit. That's why I'm not a cop anymore. I worked with another cop who put down a guy after the guy ran at him with a big ass knife. The review board said the guy with the knife was forty feet away, so there was no reason for the cop to kill him. They fired Brian from the force and ruined his career.

"I know Roxy told you about her mother. You know what that asshole got for killing Marion? He got six years for vehicular manslaughter. Six years for taking away my wife and Roxy's mother for the rest of our lives. Doesn't seem very fucking equal to me.

"Now, tomorrow, we're going to look for an eighteen year old girl who came to Nashville to be a singer. About six months ago, she stopped calling her mother every Sunday so her mother hired us to find her. Get a good nights sleep because we're going to do a lot of walking and talking."

}|{

Over the next few months, I learned a lot about what a private investigator really does and a lot about how Mack did it. I already knew that Mack seemed to think that laws are more guidelines than actual rules. I also found out he had different approaches to his clients and the people he was trying to find something about.

We did end up finding that eighteen-year-old girl. There was no fancy technology involved. There was just Mack and me talking to a person who knew a person who knew a person who knew Angie Davis. We finally tracked her down washing dishes at a diner in downtown Nashville.

Mack didn't cuff her and take her back to her mother. He didn't even say he was going to do anything to make sure she went home. All Mack did was sit down at a table with her and say that her mother was worried about her and wanted to talk to her.

As soon as Mack said the word "mother", the girl started crying.

"I can't go home. Mom said I wouldn't make it, and I haven't."

Mack patted Angie's hand.

"Angie, Honey, you haven't failed. All you've done is find out how hard it is to become a singer in this town. If you still want to sing, I'm sure you can find something else to do that involves singing. I have a sister who started out singing in her church choir. Now she leads it every Sunday. I had an aunt who was a music teacher in Knoxville. She taught the choir and glee club there."

Mack patted Angie's hand again.

"Angie, your mother hired me to find you so I have to tell her I did and that you're OK. I don't have to tell her where you are or what you're doing so I promise I won't. What I think you should do is call your mother and talk this out. I'll give you my business card and if you need a ride back to Adams, I'll take you. All you have to do is call me and ask."

When we started back to the office, I told Mack I didn't know he had a sister and an aunt.

He frowned.

"I don't, but that little girl doesn't know that. What she needed was some way out of her problem. I just gave her something to think about and maybe a way she can get herself out of the situation she's in."

We didn't hear from Angie, but two day's later we did hear from her mother.

"Mr. Townsend, I thought you'd like to know that I picked up Angie yesterday afternoon. On the way home she told me she thought she might like singing in the choir at Austin Pea. She's going to enroll there next semester and study to be an accountant."

That was in stark contrast to how he'd treated Roscoe, and also in stark contrast to how he informed a Mr. Eugene Sims about what his wife was doing.

Mack tried to be gentle... at first. He started out by showing Mr. Sims the pictures we'd taken.

"Mr. Sims, every Monday afternoon at about two she does leave the house just like you said she does. I followed her for two weeks and I know where she goes. If you'll look at these pictures, you'll see that she drives to the YWCA a few blocks from your house. She stays there for about three hours and then goes back home. That's why she's home when you get there at six.

"I looked up their website to see if I could find out what she's doing there and I did. She's teaching after school classes about sex and marriage to teenage girls. That's all she's doing. I staked out your house for the other days of a full week and she just stays home."

Mr. Sims was mad.

"I'm paying you to find out how she's cheating on me. Instead you tell me she's teaching girls not to have sex before they're married. She already told me that's what she was doing and she lied. You didn't fulfill the contract so I'm not paying you one red cent."

Mack just smiled.

"The contract you signed said I was to find out what she's been doing. I did, so you owe me for fifteen hours work at the price I quoted you -- a hundred an hour. All my times are listed on the invoice I gave you."

Mack's voice got a little more stern then.

"Now, if you still think you don't have to pay me, we'll let a judge decide that. I'm sure when your lawyer reads the contract, he'll agree that you owe me for services rendered."

Matt rubbed his chin then.

"On second thought, I might not have to sue you. What do you suppose your wife would think if she knew you'd hired me to follow her around for two weeks? I'd be sure to show her my copy of the contract with your signature. I'd also be sure to tell her about this conversation and that you insisted she'd lied to you.

"If she's like most wives I know she'll probably think you don't trust her. Wives who think that way often wonder why. She might hire me to investigate you especially if I tell her that sometimes a husband wants me to investigate his wife as a way of divorcing her without paying alimony so he can marry the woman he's seeing on the side. I wonder if it's you who's trying to hide something, like maybe a girlfriend.

"You should know that judges almost always side with the wife in a divorce hearing. Might end up costing you a lot more than the fifteen hundred you owe me."

The guy took out his checkbook, but Mack stopped him.

"You know, the last time I took a check, it bounced and I had to sue to get paid. Cash works a lot better for me. I'll give you two days. After that, I think I'll stop by the Y and have a talk with your wife."

Roxy had been listening from her desk, and when the guy left, she walked into Mack's office.

"Daddy, you wouldn't really tell that man's wife that he asked you to follow her would you? That's not a very polite way to treat a customer."

Mack just grinned.

"No, I'd have sued him for the fifteen hundred plus whatever my lawyer thinks his legal fees are going to add up to. I only said that because I hate wasting time in court and the guy was a fucking asshole to do something like that to his wife."

"Daddy, if you keep using words like that, you're going to give Troy the wrong impression and that's not polite."

Mack looked at me and grinned.

"You think the guy understood what I said?"

I nodded.

"As mad as he looked when he walked out, I'm pretty sure he did."

}|{

As the months went by, Mack started sending me out on cases by myself. I'd review what information the client had given me and then come up with a plan for how to solve the case. Mack would listen to my plan, make a few changes he thought would help and then grin and tell me, "Go out there and nail his ass to the wall."

One case was both fun and tested what I'd learned from Mack. A woman had walked into the office one day and asked Roxy if we could check on her mother. Roxy said the investigators were out right then, but she'd take the woman's information and let the investigator's decide if they could help the woman or not.

When Roxy handed her notes to Mack that night, he read them and then tossed them to me.

"Troy, I'm gonna be busy for the next few days. You take this one by yourself."

}|{

I spent an hour after dinner reading Roxy's notes, and then started developing a plan.

Emily Smothers was concerned about her mother, Grace Benson, because her mother seemed to be infatuated by a Charismatic preacher who had a Saturday morning TV show. Emily told Roxy her father had passed away five years before and her mother was pretty sad until she'd found "The Word and Today" TV program. Once she'd started tuning in at eight every Saturday morning, her mother had changed.

She'd started wearing clothes that were in Emily's opinion, too young for a woman who was fifty-six, but Emily was glad her mother seemed as happy as when her father was alive.

Emily's biggest concern was that her mother had gotten a half-million dollar life insurance payout when her husband died, and she was worried that this preacher might be milking her mother for money.

That concern was well founded. I remembered one case when I worked for JFM where a supposed preacher was really a con man and out to bilk his flock for every cent he could get from them. He promised good luck in life and a certain resurrection if the follower gave enough. JFM was defending the preacher and it cost him fifty thousand to be found innocent by a jury. I always wondered where a man of the cloth would come up with fifty grand.

Anyway, the first thing I needed to do was find out who this preacher was, so that Saturday morning, I found Reverend Blake's TV show and watched i.

I thought he was pretty good, good at being a fake preacher. After the first five minutes, I'd decided he was just a very good con man.

He seemed to pray every ten minutes or so for the supposed charities his church was supporting. Those included starving kids in Chile, prostitutes in Bangkok trying to get out of that business, clothing for a primitive forest tribe in Brazil, and money to send missionaries to Nepal. After each prayer, he'd point to a thermometer painted on a board with that particular topic at the top and a goal line for contributions. Then he'd point to the level of contributions and say if people could just see it in their hearts to give even sixty cents a day, he'd reach his goal. If he reached his goal, his church would be able to continue to help those starving kids, prostitutes, naked tribes, and people who really needed his missionaries.

He'd end his spiel by saying that if people gave money to the church, it would show God that they were good Christians and God would look out for them in life and welcome them into the hereafter with open arms.

A couple things convinced me he was just a con man. The show was broadcast from a studio somewhere, and the set was set up to look like a living room. He sat in a chair, and beside him was a couch and a coffee table. On that couch sat a heavily made up blonde woman he said was his wife, Marion, and a couple people who offered up testimonials when he started telling his viewers how God would make their life so wonderful if they just gave money to his church.

One guy said the day after he gave ten dollars to the church, he went shopping and low and behold, he found a parking place right in front of the store where he was going to shop. On top of all that, the parking meter still had half an hour left on it.

The woman sitting there broke into tears when she said she and her husband had tried and tried to have a baby, but the doctors said the problem was her and there was nothing they could do about it. She'd found Reverend Blake's TV show, and after hearing the testimonials from other people, she'd sent him twenty dollars. A month after that, she found out she was pregnant.

People who believed all that horseshit had to have all the working brain cells of a dead carp. I knew of the store where the guy said he'd found a parking place. He might have found a parking place, but it would have been in the parking lot in front of the store. I knew for a fact that there were no parking meters in that lot.

If the woman discovered she was pregnant a month after giving Reverend Blake her money, either it was a miracle conception or she'd been pregnant for at least a month before her donation. I hadn't heard of a miracle conception happening since the Bible was written.

It was also a dead giveaway that all his charities were in places where it would be impossible for almost anyone to verify that he'd actually sent money to those charities.

I was sure the asshole was guilty of fraud, but that wasn't what Emily had contracted us to do. She just wanted us to make sure Reverend Blake wasn't taking everything from her mother that he could get.

Emily had said that her mother always went to Reverend Blake's church on Sunday morning, so the next Sunday morning I drove over to the church at nine. What I found there was just more that convinced me they guy was a crook. The building was a former grocery store, and Reverend Blake wasn't paying much to rent the building. In that part of Nashville rents were cheap because other than Sunday mornings, it wasn't a good idea to be anywhere in that area. It did have a big parking lot though.

I parked across the street at a closed diner and waited for the church members to show up.

The first car into the lot was a 2023 black 4-door Cadillac CT5. When the two people got out, I recognized Reverend Blake and his blonde wife, Marion. They walked up to the door, Reverend Blake used a key to open the door, and they went inside.

Maybe thirty cars were in the lot when I saw Emily's mother drive into the lot in her little bright blue Toyota. I picked up my binoculars to watch her.

The woman who got out of that Toyota didn't look like a woman of fifty-six. That's how old Emily said her mother was. Grace was dressed more like a woman ten years younger. Her top was a frilly white blouse open at the neck enough that her big breasts were showing a bunch of cleavage. Most women would probably think Grace was showing too much for any place other than a pretty dark cocktail lounge, let alone in church on Sunday morning. Her skirt hit her about six inches above the knee. There was no doubt in my mind that she'd dressed that way on purpose. When she walked into the church, she looked like sex getting ready to happen.

I stayed there for an hour before people started coming out of the door. Grace was the last along with Reverend Blake and his wife. Reverend Blake's wife went to the Caddy and got in. Reverend Blake locked the door to the church and then stood there for a while talking to Grace.

I couldn't tell what they were saying to each other, but a couple things didn't look right to me.

Reverend Blake said something and then grinned and squeezed Grace's shoulder. Grace looked at her watch and then looked up at Reverend Blake and nodded. What that looked like to me was they'd agreed on a time to do something. Well, that was just conjecture on my part, but it was a possibility. Like Mack had told me a lot, the thing you don't check might have solved your case. I didn't have anything else to do that day, so I decided to spend the rest of the day following Grace around.

}|{

Grace went to her house, but since I already knew where she lived, I didn't have to follow her that closely. She went inside for about an hour and then came back out wearing a light top and a pair of shorts. It didn't look to me like she was wearing much of a bra because her big breasts swayed from side to side with each step she took.

Grace got in her car, backed out of her drive, and then started down the street. I let her get half a block ahead of me and then started following her. It was touch and go for a while because people were coming back from Sunday lunch and the streets were full. I was thankful that her Toyota was bright blue because it stuck out from the rest of the cars that were the muddy red, blue, and green all cars seem to be these days.

Half an hour later, Grace turned into the parking lot of a marina on Percy Priest Lake. I parked several cars down from her, got the camera from the passenger seat, and got out to see where she went.

Where she went was down one set of docks until she got to about the middle. I stayed with her by acting like I was taking pictures of the boats tied up on either side of the dock, but I was watching her out of the corner of my eye.

When she stopped, she walked down the narrow walkway between a bass boat and a small cabin cruiser about twenty-five feet long. On the deck of that cabin cruiser stood Reverend Blake and he was smiling. I was smiling too. Grace might have been fifty-six, but in her little shorts and top she would still have raised any man's cock unless he was blind or gay.

I took about twenty pictures of Reverend Blake helping Grace from the walkway and into the boat, and then about a dozen of Grace taking off her top and shorts. Once she was wearing just a one-piece swimsuit, she turned all the way around in front of Reverend Blake. He was smiling and so was I. Grace might have been fifty-six, but she was trying and succeeding at being a very sexy fifty-six. The front of her suit was cut low and wide enough the cleavage she'd been showing at the church was now the inner and start of the bottom curves of her big breasts. The back was open from her neck down to the small of her back.

I also got four pictures of Reverend Blake slipping his hand inside Grace's suit and cupping her big left breast and six of him kissing her while he wormed his hand down the open back of her suit and squeezed her ass cheeks.

Grace pushed him away and said something I couldn't hear. Reverend Blake went to the wheel, started the engine, and after Grace pulled in the ropes to the dock, he backed the boat out of the slip and then headed out into the lake. I got four more pictures of the stern of the boat including the name that read, "Mary Magdalene". At least he'd tried to keep his boat name somewhat biblical, though by some accounts Mary Magdalene had been a prostitute.

I couldn't follow them because I didn't have a boat, but I didn't need to follow them to know what was probably going to happen. Percy Priest Lake is full of little coves where a boat can anchor and not be disturbed much. There might be a few people fishing, but they'd be more interested in catching fish than in catching Reverend Blake pumping his cock in and out of Grace.

Looking at everything I knew, that being that Reverend Blake drove a Cadillac CT5 that would have cost somewhere between fifty and seventy thousand new, and owned a boat I figured would cost at least that much, I was pretty convinced that Reverend Blake was a con man. His accounts for the various charities would probably show checks made out to some office in the country where the charity was located, but the money was really going into a bank account with his name on it somewhere.

I was also convinced that he had his eye set on Grace's money. I just couldn't prove anything other than that he was most likely fucking Grace. I went back to the office and explained that to Mack.

}|{

Mack looked at the pictures I'd taken and then said he figured that's about what I'd find.

"I did one of these before and came up with the same problem. The son of a bitch is taking advantage of people who think he'd doing good for the world. What he's really doing is routing the donations through a bunch of shell companies that always end up at an account that only he can access. There's no way we can prove he's taking money from Mrs. Smothers' mother except to get a look at his bank accounts, and we can't do that. All you can do is show Mrs. Smothers the pictures and tell her what you think is going on."

I smiled.

"Well, there might be another way to get Reverend Blake to open up his bank accounts for an audit."

Mack looked at me and grinned.

"It's not illegal, is it?"

"Well, it's probably not very ethical, but it's not exactly illegal either, at least not according to the laws of Tennessee and most other states. What I've been thinking about is what do you suppose would happen if several prominent people in Reverend Blake's congregation were to get some of these pictures in the mail?"

Mack grinned even an even bigger grin.

"Well, I'll be damned. You have learned something. Let me know how it turns out."

}|{

The next morning, I looked up "The Word and Today" on the internet and found the web page for Reverend Blake's church and TV show. I found what I'd expected to find.

Almost all churches have a bank account for depositing collections, paying bills, and paying salaries. That account can only be accessed by two church members, usually the preacher and one of the older members who are called "elders of the church." Each check must be signed by either the preacher and one elder or by two elders. That's so a preacher or one elder can't write checks to himself.

Reverend Blake's church had four elders and their names were listed there. It took a little looking to match a name with an address, but once I had the addresses, I put my plan into action.

I printed off six copies each of Reverend Blake getting out of his Cadillac at the church, Reverend squeezing Grace's shoulder in front of the church, Reverend Blake helping Grace onto his boat, Reverend Blake with his hand inside Grace's suit and cupping her left breast, and Reverend Blake with his hand down Grace's suit and cupping her ass cheeks while he was kissing her.

I also printed each elder's name and address on some letter-size manila envelopes and then printed off six copies of a short note.

"To whom it may concern,

"I am a former member of your congregation who left because instead of healing my wife as Reverend Blake promised if I gave him a donation of $500, she died two weeks later.

"I spoke to an attorney about suing Reverend Blake and his church, but the attorney said it would cost me more than $500 and I probably would not win. I therefore took it upon my self to determine if Reverend Blake truly is a man of the cloth as he says.

"These pictures will show that he appears to spend money on a car and a boat that he can not possibly earn at the salary paid to the preacher for the church. It is my belief that the money has to come from donations to the church. I do not know who the woman is, but I do know that the woman is not his wife because I met Marion Blake once.

"I hope these pictures will show you that Reverend Blake is not the good Christian preacher he claims to be. I leave any actions up to you and the rest of the congregation.

"Signed,

"A former member."

Each of the four envelopes addressed to the four elders got the note and one set of pictures. A fifth envelope was addressed to Mrs. Marion Blake at the Blake's home address. The sixth set of pictures without a note went into the case file. I'd show that file to Emily.

That afternoon, I took the five addressed envelopes to the US Post Office in Clarksville and sent them as certified mail. That way the envelopes wouldn't look like junk mail and I was assured that Marion Blake would get her copy because she'd have to sign for it. I used the Post Office in Clarksville because nobody there would know me and it would be really difficult to connect me with the envelopes even though I used my Tennessee Driver's license as identification.

That was a Monday and the envelopes wouldn't be delivered until Tuesday. On Wednesday morning, I started looking up the tracking numbers for each envelop and found out that half had been delivered and signed for. By Thursday, all the envelopes were in the hands of Marion and the four elders. I called Emily and asked her to come to the office so I could explain what I'd found out.

}|{

I started out by explaining to Emily that it was going to be very difficult for us to determine if Reverend Blake had been taking money from her mother.

"I didn't see anything like that taking place, so unless your mother agrees to tell me how much she gave him, I really can't prove she gave him anything."

I paused then because I figured she was going to be mad when I showed her the pictures.

"Emily, I did find out that something is going on between your mother and Reverend Blake. These pictures I took show that they're probably... well, they're more than just a preacher and a member of his congregation. Please don't be mad at your mother. I think Reverend Blake is taking advantage of a woman who lost her husband. Like you told me, your mother was sad until she found Reverend Blake."

Emily spent a few minutes looking at the pictures and then looked up at me.

"That's why she's seemed to be pretty happy lately. I guess I can't blame her. I know she misses my father. I'd probably feel the same way if I lost my husband."

I nodded.

"Well, you shouldn't blame her. My mother lost my father when she was about your mother's age and she always said she missed him. She was pretty down on herself until she met this guy. He was married at the time and she knew he was married, but the fact that he uh... paid attention to her seemed to make her happy. He left her when his wife found out about what he was doing and that hurt her, but it still gave her the confidence to understand that she was still a desirable woman and it was OK for her to look for another husband. She found Raymond and now she's married and happy again."

Emily looked up at me then.

"Maybe I can talk to her and tell her what you just told me. How much do I owe you?"

I'd thought about that. To tell the truth, I felt bad about charging her anything. Not only had I not really done what the contract she'd signed said I'd do, I'd just told her that her mother was having sex with a married man.

"Tell you what, Emily, I didn't do what I said I could do, so why don't you just pay me for my expenses? I figure I burned up about fifty dollars of gas and my time is worth about another fifty so what if we say an even hundred?"

Emily wrote me a check, thanked me, and then left. When she started down the stairs, Roxy said, "I thought your mom and dad were still alive in Chicago."

I smiled.

"They are, but Emily doesn't know that. All I did was give her a reason to feel better about what her mother has been doing with Reverend Blake. She was caught between being mad at her mother and feeling sorry for her. I just gave her a reason to not blame her mother because it was all Blake's fault."

Roxy grinned then.

"You're starting to sound a lot like Daddy."

}|{

I didn't hear anything about Reverend Blake and his church for two more weeks. Emily called me then and filled me in on what had happened.

"Somehow, the church board figured out Reverend Blake was stealing from the church. The police arrested him right in the middle of his Sunday service and he's been charged with defrauding the public and for embezzling church funds. My mother told me that when the elders had a CPA look that the books, the CPA found out that Reverend Blake had set up a chain of fake accounts for his charities. He'd write a check every month on the church account and have an elder sign it. That check went to one of his fake charities and he was the chief financial officer for each one. That charity paid another charity and that charity paid another charity. Those charities all paid thousands to him for consulting and management fees each time they wrote a check, and that money went into a bank account in only his name.

"He's in bigger trouble than that though. I don't know how, but the church elders and his wife got the same pictures you gave me and she's suing him for divorce. I don't think she's going to get much other than the car and the boat because the church has frozen all the other accounts.

"By the way, you didn't send those pictures to them did you?"

I was smiling but she couldn't see that on her phone. I tried to sound like I was offended.

"Me, a licensed private detective, send pictures of a client's mother to other people? That wouldn't be very ethical, now would it?"

"Well, if you did, I'm glad you did and my mother is doing OK. She's pretty embarrassed because the elders recognized her from the pictures they got, but I told her I didn't blame her, and that what those pictures really were about was how she was still a woman who could attract a man. She attracted one of the church elders who's a widower. She told me she's not sure about him yet, but I know for a fact that they've spent at least two weekends together."

}|{

Well, as the saying goes, all good things must come to an end. Mack's end came with a heart attack when we were doing surveillance on a female high school principal thought by a teacher's wife to be getting a little too close to her husband. One second, Mack seemed fine and the next he said, "Troy, I don't feel so good. I think you better take me to the emergency room."

We swapped seats and I started for Mercy since it was the closest. On the way I called Roxy and told her she needed to meet us there.

When Roxy got there I was waiting in the waiting room for her. She asked what had happened. I told her what I knew.

"I don't know for sure. Mack was sitting there in the driver's seat and he seemed fine. Then he looked at me and said I should take him to the emergency room. He's been in a room for half an hour and I haven't seen a doctor come out."

A couple minutes later a man in a white coat walked up to Roxy.

"Are you Mr. Townsend's daughter?"

Roxy nodded.

"Your father had a massive heart attack. We're doing our best to help him, but it doesn't look good. He asked to see you. You should go see him right now."

Roxy grabbed my hand.

"You come with me, Troy."

Mack lasted about ten more minutes. I have to admit that I couldn't say anything. I had tears in my eyes and anything I said would have just been blubbering. I'd grown to like Mack almost as much as I liked my father. Roxy picked up Mack's hand and squeezed it.

"Daddy, I'm here and I won't leave until you're well again."

Mack sort of smiled and his voice was barely louder than a whisper.

"Roxy, Honey, you and I both know I'm not going to get well. I don't know if I'll see your mother again, but if I do, I'll tell her you grew up and became a really great woman. You stay the way you are, Honey. I love you.

"I want to talk to Troy now."

Mack held out his hand so I took it. It wasn't the vise-like grip I'd felt that first day in his office. I could barely feel it.

Mack looked up at me then.

"Troy, you've become a good PI. You've done everything I've told you to do and you've gotten good at doing it. I have to ask you to do one more thing. I want you to take care of Roxy for me."

Before I could say anything more than, "I will", Mack's hand fell back down on the table and he whispered, "Roxy."

Roxy held Mack's hand while the doctor and nurses tried to bring him back. After ten more minutes, the doctor shut off the monitor, then looked at Roxy and shook his head.

Roxy released Mack's hand, then walked up to me and put arms around my waist and her cheek on my chest. I seemed natural to put my arms around her and hold her tight while she cried.

}|{

I hung the "CLOSED" sign from the suction cup on the door for the next week. It took that long to arrange for Mack's burial in Nashville National Cemetery and to arrange for Roxy's mother to be disinterred and placed in the same vault as Mack.

Roxy didn't have a visitation or a funeral, and the graveside service wasn't some big affair with an Army color guard and riflemen firing a salute while a bugler played "Taps". Roxy said Mack wouldn't have wanted anything like that. It was just a simple ceremony, but there were more attendees than I expected. I figured it would just be me and Roxy, and since Mack didn't go to any church, the funeral home director would give the elegy. The funeral home director did say a few words, but there were about two dozen other people I didn't know. Roxy knew them though.

Angie Davis and her mother were there, and after the service, Angie said if Mack hadn't found her, she'd probably have ended up in big trouble. A woman named Jennifer Reynolds came up to Roxy and said she'd never forget how Mack had gotten her straightened out after he found her working as a prostitute. There were others, both men and women, who had a story to tell about how Mack had helped them.

When we left, Roxy gave me her keys and said she didn't think she'd better drive us back to the office. I didn't figure she'd want to cook either, so on the way I stopped in at a Burger King and got us each a burger and fries. When we got back, we ate, but didn't talk. As soon as she finished, Roxy said she was going to bed. I watched a little TV but found that I couldn't concentrate, so I went to bed too.

That's about how that first week went. Roxy cooked the first two days, but I could tell she was only doing that so I'd have something to eat. The third day I did some grocery shopping for things we could either microwave or just put in the oven. None of it was great, but at least neither I nor Roxy had to cook or do a lot of cleaning up.

We'd watch a little TV after dinner, but neither of us was really watching. We were thinking about Mack and usually went to bed early.

}|{

I woke up Monday morning of the second week and smelled coffee. After I dressed, I walked to the kitchen and found Roxy frying pancakes. She looked at me and smiled.

"Daddy always liked my pancakes so I'm making them for breakfast. Get a cup of coffee and sit down. They'll be ready in a couple minutes."

Roxy's pancakes were good, but then they always were. After the first bite I said I was going to miss them once I left. Roxy asked why I was going to leave.

"I thought you'd stay. You still have three months of your apprenticeship before you can get a permanent license."

I shook my head.

"I don't know how I'm going to do that since Mack's... since he's not here."

Roxy smiled.

"You never read that certificate on the wall by my desk did you? You were too busy looking at my boobs."

I hadn't expected that, but I said no, I hadn't read it but it wasn't because I was looking at her.

Roxy smiled again.

"I didn't say I didn't like it that you looked at my boobs. I just said that's what you did. That certificate is the reason you don't have to leave.

"As soon as I graduated from high school, I went to Nashville State and got an associates degree in criminal science. That was enough to let me take the test to become a private investigator. After I passed the test, I apprenticed with Daddy and got my permanent license three years ago. I've kept renewing it every year, so I'm a licensed private investigator too.

"He didn't want me getting hurt so I didn't help him much, but I did help him when he needed a woman. He also made me a full partner in Townsend Investigations so you don't need to leave. You'll still be apprenticed to a licensed private investigator. I'll just be your boss instead of Daddy."

That sounded like it would cause some problems.

"I can't keep living here with you, not now."

"You didn't have any problems before."

"Well, Mack was here then."

Roxy chuckled.

"So, Daddy was all that kept you from ravishing me?"

"No he didn't keep me from... dammit, Roxy, I wouldn't have done anything to you anyway. I can't stay here because it isn't right."

Roxy frowned.

"So, after you stared at my boobs all the time, you didn't want to ravish me? I'm kind of disappointed. I always thought my boobs were pretty good. By the way, you shouldn't swear when you talk to people. It's not polite."

"Roxy, I already told you I never stared at your... at you."

She smiled.

"Well, you are now."

"That's only because you said that's what I always do."

Roxy pulled her shoulders back.

"So, now that you are staring at them, what do you think."

I was getting upset.

"That's not the point. My point is that I can't live with a woman I'm not married to. That's not how I was raised."

Roxy relaxed her shoulders then.

"If you don't stay here, how are you going to take care of me like Daddy asked you to?"

"Roxy, I don't think you need anybody to take care of you."

Roxy put her hands in her lap and looked down at them.

"Sometimes I do, like there in the hospital and at Daddy's funeral. I needed somebody to hold me then. There are other times too."

"Like when?"

"Like when Daddy hires a lawyer who doesn't want to be a lawyer any more and other than staring at my boobs he never pays any attention to me."

"You wanted me to pay attention to you?"

Roxy nodded.

"It gets lonely when you grow up living in a private detective's office over a bail bondsman's shop. When other kids find out where you live, they think you're not good enough for them. When they hear that your father is a private detective, they think he sneaks around spying on people and they think you'll be the same way so they don't want you for a friend.

"It doesn't get any better when you go to junior college to study criminal science. I was the only girl in a class of thirty. All the guys figured I was more boy than girl, so I didn't get a lot of dates. As a matter of fact, I only had one all through junior college and it wasn't really a date. We just had coffee and studied together for about an hour."

I was having a hard time believing that.

"Roxy, you're a pretty girl. I bet there were a lot of guys who wanted to ask you out."

"Well, I guess there were a few, but they weren't my kind of guy so I turned them down."

"So, what is your kind of guy?"

Roxy smiled a weak smile.

"A guy who knows what's right and what's wrong and isn't afraid to do the right thing even if it costs him."

"You mean like Mack?"

Roxy smiled, but there were tears streaming down her face.

"No, not like Daddy. Like you."

I wouldn't have believed Roxy if she hadn't been so much like Mack. Mack would lie out his ass to anybody except me, Roxy, and his client. The client always got the truth. Roxy and I would always get the truth along with how Mack felt about the situation. I was sure Roxy was telling me how she felt. The only problem was I didn't know how to react. I decided to chicken out until I had some time to think.

"All right, I'll stay. I need to finish up Mack's cases anyway. I'll be in his office if you need me for anything."

}|{

Roxy didn't say much to me for the next week and that hurt. I thought she was probably still grieving and there wasn't anything I could do to help her. I did finish up the cases Mack and I had been working, but it took a while because I kept thinking about what Roxy had said.

I'd lied about Mack keeping me from getting closer to her. Mack had never said anything at all about that, but I figured it wouldn't be a good idea. Mack seemed to treasure Roxy above everything else and getting closer to her would have seemed like I was intruding into their relationship.

When Mack had asked me to take care of Roxy, I'd told him I would. At the time I thought that meant I'd stay in contact with her and help her anytime she needed help. After she said I was the type of man she liked, I had to reconsider. I didn't think Roxy was going to settle for calling me to unplug her sink drain or help her rearrange furniture.

When I let my mind wander a little, I could imagine what living with Roxy would be like, and that image was pretty nice. I mean, she was a pretty girl and she was intelligent and very likeable.

It wasn't until that Friday when I decided what I was going to do.

I took the last completed report to Roxy so she could make a copy for our files and make out the invoice. When she reached for the stack of paper, I didn't let it go.

"Roxy, I told Mack I'd take care of you and I've been trying to figure out how I can do that. How about if we start by having that date you never had? There's a pretty good Italian place two blocks from where I used to live. It's not fancy, but it's really good food."

}|{

Luigi's isn't fancy, but I did dress up a little. I changed into a white shirt, gray slacks, and my black wingtips. I thought I was probably overdressed. When Roxy came out of her bedroom, I thought about going back and adding a tie and a jacket.

The green dress fit her like a second skin and really made her brushed red hair stand out as it fell in waves over her shoulders. The black heels made her a little taller but more than that, they made her posture something that I'd only seen in models in magazines. She saw me staring and asked if something was wrong with her.

I chuckled and said if there was, I sure couldn't see it.

I locked the back door while we were standing on the landing. Roxy handed me Mack's key ring then.

"Daddy's car is your car now. Let's take it since you know where you're going and I don't."

That evening taught me a lot about myself, or rather, a lot about all the ways I'd been depriving myself. To get into a good law school, you have to have a bachelor's degree with a really good GPA. I'd spent all my time studying to keep that GPA high and had pretty much ignored women. Law school was even worse. You couldn't just study enough to pass the tests in the class. You basically had to memorize everything so you'd remember it for the Bar exam. Again, studies had substituted for women.

My job at JFM had taken up most of the hours of every day, so all I had time to do was go home, eat, work another two hours on my case and then have a drink or two before bed. Weekends were my recharge times if I wasn't still working on a case.

Sitting there across from Roxy made me realize I'd missed out on a lot of life. I didn't really regret all those hours of studying and work, but it was really great to just sit there and talk with Roxy over dinner. I knew she was an intelligent woman. I just didn't know much about her personality, but I found myself wanting to know her a lot better.

I was wondering why she wasn't still mourning for Mack until she told me what Mack had said to her just before he died.

"You're probably wondering why I'm not still sitting at home and crying because Daddy's gone. I miss him, but it's easier because of what he said to me just before he died. He told me that he'd lived a good life and that he didn't want me to spend time crying because he was gone. He said he wanted me to remember him, but I had my own life to live and I needed to get started living on my own."

I nodded.

"I can see Mack telling you that. It's good advice, by the way. I miss Mack too, but no amount of crying will bring him back."

Roxy smiled.

"I know he wouldn't want me to keep being sad. He'd want me to do what I want, how I want, and when I want to do it, just like he always did."

I drank the last of the wine in my glass and then asked Roxy what she wanted to do now.

"It's still early. We could take in a movie if you want."

Roxy smiled.

"No, I'd just like to go home."

Once we were inside, Roxy took my hand and led me to the living room. She turned to face me, put her arms around my neck and whispered in my ear.

"You know what you were afraid would happen if you kept living here with me? I've thought about that for the whole week. Well, I'm not afraid at all because that's what I want to happen and I want it to happen tonight."

}|{

When Roxy led me to her bedroom, I was nervous as a cornered mouse facing down a cat. I figured if Roxy hadn't had any dates she was still a virgin. I wasn't, but my experience was pretty limited. I wasn't nervous about what I was supposed to do. I just didn't want to hurt Roxy.

After Roxy pulled the sheet and blanket down to the foot of the bed, she put her arms around my neck again and smiled.

"It isn't polite to not kiss a woman when she really, really, really wants to be kissed."

I didn't say anything. I just held her in my arms and kissed her. I was expecting the same kiss I'd experienced at my senior prom, just a soft kiss with my lips on Roxy's. I wasn't prepared for Roxy to open her mouth like she did, and I really wasn't prepared to feel her little soft tongue on my upper lip.

Once I got over the feeling that raced down my spine to my cock, I gently broke the kiss.

"Roxy, for a woman who's never had a date, you're one good kisser."

Roxy smiled.

"Daddy had a sister in law who lived in Whitehouse, and since Daddy was too embarrassed to do it, she taught me what it means to be a woman. When I got old enough, she taught me some other things like kissing and... well, she said her husband was always happy and when I got a husband, I should keep him happy too. She taught me how to do that. I just never got to practice until now."

}|{

Well, Roxy hadn't gotten to practice but she'd evidently thought a lot about what she'd learned. That first time wasn't what you'd read in some porn story or what you'd see in a porn film. Roxy didn't just lie there quietly until I finished, but she didn't do a lot of screaming and contorting her body into impossible positions either.

It was more like I was finding out what Roxy liked and she was finding out what I liked. She seemed to like taking off my shirt. I know I liked taking off her dress. Undressing Roxy was like when I used to get books for my birthday or Christmas. I knew it was a book. The exciting part about unwrapping it was what was inside the wrapping.

It was exciting to undress Roxy, but more exciting because she'd done a really good job of hiding what she had under the jeans and shirts she wore every day. That green dress I gently took off Roxy was just a hint of what she was like naked and lying on the bed.

We have no secrets from each other and I know she'll read this so I won't go into a lot of descriptions about her body. She'll tell me it's not polite to tell anybody how she looked that night because our two kids and twenty years have changed her body. I think she's just gotten more sensuous and desirable, but she thinks she's gotten fat. She hasn't gotten fat. She's just changed from a really slender and sexy young girl into a very feminine woman who's even sexier.

Let's just say that I spent enough time just looking at the small, delicate woman beside me that Roxy finally grinned.

"You're looking at my boobs again. Do I pass your test or do you need to investigate me more?"

I stroked her left breast and smiled when she shuddered a little.

"Oh I definitely need to investigate you a lot more."

Roxy put her hand on my chest and then slowly moved it down.

"I'm going to investigate you too."

The rest of that night has pretty much disappeared from my memory, probably because I was too busy listening and watching Roxy get more and more aroused than trying to remember anything. I was also busy trying to keep what she was doing from taking me there too fast. There was something about her kisses and her hands stroking my body that was...

Well, if you've ever had the experience of a young woman doing her best to get to what she knew was probably going to cause her some pain but so aroused she didn't care if it did, you'll know what I'm talking about.

I tried hard, I really did, but when Roxy pulled me between her open thighs and whispered, "Aunt Mae said if you do it fast it'll only hurt for a second or two" I couldn't stop. I didn't just ram into her, but it wasn't just a slow and careful entry either. I tried that, but Roxy used her legs to push herself up into that first stroke. She cried out a little, but kept rocking her hips.

I didn't last long, maybe half a dozen strokes. I don't really remember. All I remember is Roxy pulling me down on top of her and holding me there while she kissed me and stroked my back.

}|{

Well, like I said, that was twenty years ago. Our first child, Macarthur, will graduate from UT this spring with a degree in Criminology and wants to become a partner in Townsend Investigations. He's also decided he wants to be called Mack. Our daughter, Helen, is two years behind Mack and studying toward a degree in Forensic Technology with an emphasis on Forensic Accounting and Computer Fraud. She wants to join Townsend Investigations too, and having someone with some forensic knowledge would make some investigations a lot easier and faster. If they both get married, we'll have to buy a bigger kitchen table, but we have two extra bedrooms and it will be easier on all us if they live with Roxy and me since investigations tend to not follow regular business hours.

Until they both pass the PI test and serve their apprenticeships, it'll be just Roxy and me. It's still Townsend Investigations though. Roxy and I agreed that we owed Mack for bringing us together and that we'd recognize him by leaving the name the same.

I've changed some too over the last twenty years. Roxy's cooking has put a few pounds on me, but I work out about once a week so I stay fit. I never know when I'll have to wrestle some skip to the ground and then cuff him.

I haven't put on a suit in months, but I started wearing a baseball cap about ten years ago. It seems that male pattern baldness is something you inherit from your mother. I thank her for that every time we go back to Chicago for the holidays.

Roxy is still the same woman I met that first day except what she used to do to Mack, she now does to me.

Last week, I was talking to a potential client who said he wanted me to find out if his wife was having an affair. Like I always do, I asked him to tell me why he thought she was. He said she'd just seemed a little cool lately and he figured she'd found another man to fuck her.

Like I always do, I asked the guy if there were any other problems in their marriage. He said they'd had a good marriage up until his wife turned forty-seven. After that, she didn't want to have sex any more.

"I do what I always do to her, but she always tells me I smell like beer and I've gotten fat. If I try any more, she just gets up and sleeps on the couch."

I tried to be gentle, I really did, because it sounded to me like the wife just felt like a lot of women feel at that age. Roxy told me that they think because they can't have kids anymore, they're no longer sexy and desirable. Then there was the fact that the guy did smell like beer and he was fat. The asshole wouldn't let me stay gentle.

"Mr. Draves, does she do anything else that leads you to believe she's having an affair, like not answering your phone calls when you call her or spending a lot of time with her cell phone or on a computer? Maybe she says you're spending too much time at work and ignoring her?"

He shook his head

"The only thing she's complained about is she wants me to stop helping our next door neighbor. Tiffany is about twenty-five or so and she's divorced and she doesn't have anybody to do man stuff for her, so I do."

Well, that put the last nail in his coffin. I didn't agree that a woman should step out on her husband, but in this case, I didn't think that's what was going on. Like Mack had taught me, I didn't turn down this case just because I didn't like the client. There was nothing that prevented me from discouraging the asshole from pursuing what I figured was nothing more than the guy trying to figure out a way to dump his wife for the girl next door. If I couldn't, I was going to make some serious money.

"Well, Mr. Draves, I can figure out if your wife is having an affair, but it sounds to me like she's pretty discrete about it. It's going to take time to catch her in the act. I'll probably have to watch what she does for at least two weeks. My going rate for this type of investigation is three hundred dollars an hour and you'll end up paying me for about eighty hours. That'll be, let's see, somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty-four thousand dollars depending upon if I incur any expenses along the way. Let me write up a contract for that amount. Oh, I'll need a thousand up front before I get started. I'll write that in the contract too."

The asshole looked at me for a few seconds and then started yelling.

"Twenty-four thou... You must take me for a fucking idiot. I was thinking more like a thousand. I've read that I could have her killed for two and nobody would ever find her body."

I frowned then, but inside I was happy that I'd pissed him off. I just didn't want him to take it out on his wife.

"Mr. Draves, what you just told me could be construed in a criminal court as a threat against your wife. If anything should happen to her, it would be my legal obligation as a state licensed private investigator to report this conversation to the police. As a matter of fact, I think I probably should call one of the detectives I know and tell him what you just told me. That way he'll have a head start should something happen to your wife. I'll be sure to give him your name and address."

He really blew up then.

"You fucking bastard, you just want to sit here on your fucking ass for two weeks and then tell me there's nothing going on. Well, I know she's fucking somebody else. I just don't know who or where or when. I'll go find another PI who'll prove it. You can take your twenty-four thousand and shove it up your ass."

I'd had all I could take and stood up.

"And you can take your goddamned fat ass out of my office. If you can't find your own way out, I'll help you out. Just don't let the goddamned door hit you in the ass when you leave. I don't want to have to replace the door."

After he slammed the door and started down the stairs, Roxy looked at me and frowned.

"You shouldn't talk to clients like that. It's not very polite."

I grinned at Roxy.

"The guy understood what I said though, didn't he?"