Private Heat

Praise for
Private Heat

It “deserves praise for sheer action and suspense. . . . Bailey has a good sassy sense of humor.” In this “hard-boiled homage . . . there's no denying his narrative drive, which keeps the reader moving right along until the last page.”

—Publishers Weekly

“First-novelist Bailey delivers a well-constructed, action-packed thriller. . . . A series to watch.”

—Booklist

“PRIVATE HEAT is Robert Bailey's first novel and the first in his Art Hardin series. No doubt, Bailey will quickly gather many devoted fans (including myself) with this action-packed, well-crafted thriller. His vivid characters and brilliant sense of humor won me over. I look forward to reading more from this talented new author.”

—The Mystery Review

A “knockout debut private eye novel. . . . There are a few classic scenes that would be great for a movie version. . . . Full of high speed, adrenaline-charged action and vividly drawn characters, Bailey's classic hard-boiled effort is a real gem, easily a candidate for best first private eye novel of the year honors.”

—Lansing State Journal

Also by Robert E. Bailey

Dying Embers

Dead Bang

Robert E. Bailey

San Diego

Private Heat

Ignition Books

Published by arrangement with the author.

Copyright © 2002 by Robert E. Bailey.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. For information please contact:
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eISBN: 978-1-937868-00-0

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, or events either are the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, corporations, or other entities, is entirely coincidental.

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Private Heat

For the eyes of the owl.

Thank you to the First Coast Writer's Festival for selecting this novel as the winner of the Josiah W. Bancroft Jr. Award and to the final judges, David Poyer and Lenore Hart, who were so generous with their guidance and encouragement.

Thank you to my agent, Andrew Zack of The Zack Company, Inc.

Thank you to Frank Green and members of the Bard Society—particularly Darby Grover with his rapier red pen and his wife, JoAnn, who has surely earned her angel wings for tolerating us.

Thank you to Joe Erhardt, the chairman of my writer's group, and the members—Gordon Andrews, Meredith Campbell, Linda Lyons, Anne Harmon, Heather McLees, Mark Pruett, David Swift, and Maurice Reveley.

Thank you to my wife, Linda, who was the first to take this project seriously; my sons, Adam, Eric, and Sean, who always encouraged me; and my sister, Mary Sue, who never gave up the faith. God bless my parents.

Everybody wants to be a detective, carry a big shiny gun, and be all the rage at cocktail parties. Nobody wants to get up at o-dark-thirty and drive ninety-three miles to see if Joe Insurance Claimant—who has been collecting a total disability check for the last three years—is also working for wages on the sly, but that's the kind of work that usually pays the bills, not the flashy stuff you see on the tube.

This morning's Joe Claimant was definitely double-dipping and that's the type of information guaranteed to warm the frozen cockles of any insurance adjuster's heart, including that of Virginia Hampton, the adjuster who had ordered this morning's surveillance.

Virginia was usually at her desk by eight-thirty, so I punched up Pacific Casualty on the speed dialer. She picked up the line; her switchboard doesn't open until nine.

“Pacific Casualty Claims,” she said, cold and all business.

“Morning, Ginny,” I said. I rocked my chair back and stacked the heels of my western boots on the corner of my cluttered desktop. “Art Hardin, over at the Ladin Agency. How's your Cinco de Mayo so far?”

“Sink-o-de-what?” she wanted to know.

“Mexican Independence Day,” I said. “Like our Fourth of July. Only it's today.”

“Must be good news for you to call me this early,” she said, her voice friendly now.

“Nah, I just called to be social,” I said. “You have to scrape the frost off your windshield this morning?”

She hadn't. Just a little dew she cleared with the windshield wipers.

“Guess I was up and out a little earlier than you.”

“Do tell,” she said. I could hear her digging in her desk drawer, maybe sorting out a ballpoint pen.

“You hit the lotto last night?”

“Arthur!”

“I'll take that as a no,” I said. “I don't think Mr. Fleming picked the right numbers either, because he went to work this morning.”

She was pleased.

“He left his house at five-twenty this morning and drove to Mount Pleasant Pallet Suppliers. He parked in the employee parking lot.”

She wanted to know if I was positive of the identification.

“Matches the picture on the insured's company ID card you sent me.”

She wanted to know what he was wearing and if he was using his walker.

“Jeans, a T-shirt, and a lightweight jacket,” I said, “and no walker or cane. I watched him drive a lift truck for about half an hour. He's pretty good. He can really stack up and move those pallets, vroom, vroom, you know.”

She wanted to know if I had placed a pretext call to verify his employment.

“No,” I told her. “I have no idea who owns the pallet outfit. Could be a friend or relative who's paying him cash off the books. Since he's abandoned his walker, I think we ought to run a little film.”

No one has actually taken film in ten or fifteen years. Videotape with time/date generation has become the standard for documentation of surveillance work. I say “film” only because I'm getting a little gray in the muzzle.

She wanted to know what the tab was.

“Five hours and two hundred miles,” I said.

How much for surveillance with film, Ginny wanted to know. She lived in the hope that I'd bid low.

“Sixteen to twenty hours, about four hundred miles, and the rental on a van,” I told her.

Ginny said she'd have to review the file with her supervisor.

I heard the lock in the front door turn and looked up to check the video monitor that hung from the ceiling across the room from my desk. A chip-cam—a very small video camera—hidden in a smoke detector mounted behind the reception desk provided the pictures.

I watched Marg—Margaret Ladin, my late partner's wife—trundle in the front door with a soft-sided attaché case in her hand and a purse the size of a golf bag hanging from her shoulder. She runs an accounting business from the front office, answers my phone, and takes care of the agency books.

Pete Ladin passed away peaceably enough while attending an American Society of Industrial Security dinner meeting. One minute he's scarfing the rubber chicken dinner, the next minute he's complaining about seeing double, and then—
bang—
out cold on the floor.

The autopsy revealed a walnut-sized cerebral aneurysm that had burst. In the county coroner's opinion, Pete had been dead when he hit the floor.

Marg later sold me her half of the agency for the accounts receivable and one dollar. I got the agency, the license, and accounts payable. Ladin Associates enjoyed a good reputation in the Grand Rapids business community and the logo was painted on the window. I think that last part made Marg feel at home. I didn't change the name. I told her it was because we'd just bought stationery.

Now we split the office rent. Marg pays a third of it, and I pay the rest. I also pay for the phone, including her private line, and the utilities. She's sweet with the clients, can read my handwriting, and types the reports and invoices, all of which outweigh the fact that Marg is a shrew.

“Let me know what you want to do,” I said to Ginny. “I'll send the report and an invoice for what we've got.” We made polite good-byes, and I hung up the telephone.

“Morning, Marg,” I called through my office door without getting up. I tried to sound breezy and upbeat.

Marg didn't answer. I heard bundles thump on her desktop.

“I need some walking-around money,” I said.

“You don't have any money,” she said as she walked by my office door to
hang her coat on the rack in the investigators' room. She'd done her dark brown hair “big” with a little flip at the end. Her straight blue business suit defied you to notice her ample figure. “Get your fanny out on the street and make some,” she said while she jangled some hangers on the coat rack.

“I've been busy.”

“You've been on the phone,” she said.

I shrugged and put my feet back on the floor. Sometimes it's best to let her have her coffee before I make any requests. I stirred the clutter on the top of my desk until a yellow pad surfaced. What I can describe to an adjuster in a few sentences requires five pages of “see Dick run” and “Jane threw the ball” before the insurance company's attorney will embrace the concept of a fraudulent claim.

The telephone rang. Marg hustled back to her desk and picked up the line. “Peter A. Ladin Agency,” she purred into the phone in a feline alto. “How may we be of service?”

I swear the woman has a split personality.

“Yes, Mr. Hardin is in. Just a moment, please.”

“Van Pelham and Timmer on line one,” she announced from her desk, her voice accusatory.

Van Pelham and Timmer, one of the premier legal firms in Grand Rapids, listed so many partners their letterhead looked like a bingo card. I had a lot of it in my file because I'd sued a county south of Kent for false arrest, and they had hired Van Pelham and Timmer to shovel paper on me in hopes that I'd suffocate. A federal judge awarded me one dollar and attorney fees from the county. Van Pelham and Timmer bleached the county's bones until they needed a bond issue to replace their patrol fleet. The attorney from Van Pelham and Timmer had painted my character pretty dark all over the federal courthouse, so unless they were calling to thank me for the tasty billing, I was at a loss for what they could possibly want.

“Hello. Art Hardin,” didn't seem to admit any kind of culpability, so that's what I said.

“Martin Van Pelham.” His voice was imperious hollow-ground gravel that squeaked only faintly from age—the bold-print Van Pelham.

“It's a pleasure to speak with you, Mr. Van Pelham. If this has to do with the Berrien matter, send it to Freeman. Anything else, send to Finney down on Forty-fourth, and we'll sort it out from there.”

“Mr. Hardin,” he said, “I am not suing you. If I were, you'd be talking to a process server.”

“So what's this about?”

“I have a rather pressing problem that I think you may be able to help me with. Are you free for lunch?”

“No, Mr. Van Pelham. I'm fifty dollars an hour, but if you spring for lunch I'll forego the four-hour minimum.” The line went silent for a moment. I expected him to hang up. He didn't.

“Very well,” he said finally. “Someplace out of the way.”

Grand Rapids is the biggest small town in Michigan. Over a million people inhabit the metropolitan area, but they all know each other and take notes. The usual downtown haunts were out.