June Jumping The Jaguar: A Xara Smith Mystery

June Jumping The Jaguar

A Xara Smith Mystery By Bill McGrath

Copyright 2010 Bill McGrath

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Xara Smith Mysteries By Bill McGrath

Available on Smashwords.com:

January Juggling The Jentons

February At Feldman’s On Fifth

March Of The Mustangs

April At The Antique Alley

May Might Mean Murder

June Jumping the Jaguar

July Jill's Justice

August Avenging Arlene

September Surgeon Shamed

October Octagon Occult

November Naughty Nurse

December Deadly Dolls

CHAPTER-01.

Struggling, I turned and looked out of the Jaguar’s rear window. I counted four sets of red and blue flashing lights, but admitted to myself that there were probably more cop cars behind those I could see. The road here was straight, flat, smooth, so my driver accelerated pushing the speedometer to the century mark.

Whether we had been running for a minute or for days it mattered not. We were now running from the cops and they had us in sight. Somehow I knew this would have but a single predetermined outcome.

There was little for my driver and I to speak about at this moment so we remained silent, but for some reason the words to a long forgotten prayer slipped into my brain and started repeating themselves. I interrupted the mantra long enough to thank God that there were no cars coming the other direction on the road. I did not pray for my own safety or that of my driver, but surprisingly I found myself begging for the safety of those in uniform who were pursuing us. Certainly I wished them no harm.

Our Jaguar was fast, really fast, in these straight-a-ways, but it was not very stable when we got to a curve, so my driver would brake hard when we got to the next, hoping to slow the car enough to make the turn safely, but allowing the cops to catch up as little as possible. I knew, of course, that eventually he would misjudge a curve and we would either be passed by the cops who would then use their cars to box us in and force us to stop, or, we would not slow enough to make the turn and we would crash. Neither option was good, but my brain could come up with no other possible outcome at the time.

Cresting a small hill doing a hundred we flashed past one of those yellow signs that shows a squiggly arrow and just below it was a suggested safe speed that read 35. We were heading down hill and I could clearly see that the curve was rushing at us too quickly.

For some reason my brain screamed out sorry mommy as the tires of the Jag left the pavement and skidded along the hard packed dirt.

My driver turned the wheel hard to the left which sent the car into a barrel roll. I did not count the revolutions until the vehicle came to rest. Fortunately it was upright when it stopped.

Cut! I heard the director scream into the ear bud in my right ear.

My driver, Tony Tornado, reached over and squeezed my hand in his. You O.K. Xara? he asked.

I started unbuckling my four-point safety harness.

Without a scratch I had survived my first well planned and well orchestrated stunt crash. I hoped there would be no initiation into the stunt-man’s union. The name of the movie we were filming was still in question, but, for sure, it would include several chase scenes, and I was the stunt double for the female lead.

Several days earlier:

June is a beautiful month in north Texas, filled with beautiful days. The mornings are already warm enough that one never needs a jacket, and there is hardly ever a chance of rain spoiling your afternoon. I was sure this was going to be one of my better days. The weather would certainly cooperate, but that would not be the best part. I was on my way to an early meeting with an old client who claimed she needed my help again, so I was sure to get a job out of the day, but that too was not the best part. For sure the best part was that the meeting was going to be in the restaurant in the Four Seasons Hotel, which serves by far the best breakfast in the world. It had been about a year since my last excuse to feast there, so my little heart was going pitter-pat and my mouth was already watering as I drove my way up MacArthur Boulevard.

My name is Xara Smith. I am tall, female, blond, lesbian, intelligent, athletic, and I own Xara Smith Discrete Investigations, which I run out of my house in Irving, Texas. Three months ago I took on Jill Stepho as a partner and she has been unofficially helping me solve crimes ever since, but she is not exactly licensed as a private investigator, so she was scheduled for a fire arms safety class today. That is why I was taking this meeting alone.

I had gotten the call yesterday afternoon from Dr. Andrea Garnett. Almost three years ago, when I had just opened my shop and was struggling to make ends meet, the good doctor had called me on a day similar to this one and I had been hired to hunt down some people who owed her money. I really do not like doing collections work, and can now afford to be a little more choosy about which cases I take and which ones I don’t, but this would be my first ever chance at a repeat customer, which could be a real boon for my type of business, but also, remember, she had bribed me with breakfast at the Four Seasons.

I was in such a good mood that I pulled my six year old Taurus up to the door and let the valet worry about finding an appropriate parking slot. I walked my way through the crowded lobby to the restaurant entrance where I gave my name to the hostess. She immediately led me to a table where I was met not by the doctor, but rather by the four doctors.

I had met all four before but it had been three years ago so Dr. Andrea handled the reintroductions. She reminded me that she was a gynecologist and next she introduced her husband, one Dr. Walter Garnett who was a licensed urologist. Next she pointed out Dr. Eric DeVerges, a fertility specialist, and wrapped up the intros with Dr. Michael Philson, who like Andrea, practiced gynecology.

These four highly educated professionals were partners who ran a very profitable fertility clinic located right here in Irving which I had always considered a place for rich people to go to order genetically perfect offspring. I am in my early thirties and each of these doctors were nudging fifty so I felt a little out of place, especially because the men were all really staring at me hard. I mean, you can tell when someone is just casually glancing at you or looking in your direction because you are speaking, but these guys were drilling their eyes into me.

I knew right away though that things were serious, because it was a Thursday morning at seven and the clinic these four ran would probably do around a hundred-thousand in revenue that day, so I couldn’t even guess at what would be so important that it would require all four of them to attend this breakfast meeting with me.

The first thing Dr. Philson said was She’s too tall. How tall are you?

Six-three, I answered quickly pulling out a chair so I could sit down making me appear less tall.

No she’s not, said Andrea.

Remember, piped in her husband that most of the shots will be with her sitting in the car.

Shots? I asked, confused.

Have you ever done any acting? Eric DeVerges asked as he started jotting notes down on a tablet.

What? was my witty response.

Gentlemen! said Dr. Andrea, Let’s get our breakfast and then we will fill her in.

Although the food here is world class, and the tables are all covered with linen tablecloths, with the atmosphere quiet and sophisticated, still it is a restaurant in a motel, so the food is buffet style.

The five of us got into a small line with Andrea Garnett first, me second, and the men crowding in behind us. They had a chef who would cook eggs to order, but they also had a big vat of scrambled eggs already prepared, so I started with a big chunk of those. I added half-a-dozen sausage links then filled the rest of the plate with hash-browned potatoes. I saw two of the men line up for eggs to order, so I knew I had a little time, therefore I went to the long row of toasters and bread, and made myself an English Muffin.

The two Drs. Garnett and I all arrived back at our table at the same time, but we didn’t have long to wait as our other two companions were there before we had sat a minute, and in that minute a waiter had come by to refresh all of our coffees. Three tables away a man was quietly but sternly lecturing his two teenagers about something but I could not quite hear the conversation. I spotted a mother carrying two plates back to a table with five young children still in their pajamas at it, and I wondered how the young family could afford the prices here at the Four Seasons.

As I devoured my large plate of breakfast I finally found out why they had brought me here. All four doctors helped telling the story, but most of it was told by Andrea Garnett.

The Garnetts had a single male offspring who they had named Perry. Perry was my age, which is thirty-one and my guess is that he had been a bit of a surprise and inconvenience when the Garnetts were working their way through medical school. At any rate Perry had completed college at Texas Christian University with what was termed a Radio-Television degree. It did not mean that he had majored in watching TV. It meant he had studied to be an actor or scriptwriter or director.

Immediately upon graduation Perry had spent six months locked in his bedroom at his parents home writing a screenplay. From there he had gone to Hollywood to sell his work and become a famous scriptwriter and hopefully a director as well. Things had not gone well for him and after three years of trying he came back to Texas. He had spent the past year convincing his parents that investing in his movie would be a sure-fire way to quickly double or treble their money. They had each read the script and thought it was pretty good, so they had talked with their fertility clinic partners and together the four had agreed to invest a bunch of cash. This was the first attempt any of them had made at film making, and they knew very little of the business. I, too, of course, knew very little about the movie industry.

At this point Dr. Eric DeVerges talked a bit about some research he had done, mostly on the internet. According to his research the movie business was a very cut-throat business and there were numerous ways to sabotage a movie. The four doctors wanted to protect their investment by placing a spy in the cast to keep and eye on things and report any irregularities to them.

When I was a teenager I had fantasized pretty seriously about this moment several times. Usually it included a fat man smoking a stinky cigar saying something like Hey doll, I could make you a star, as he leered viciously at a near-by casting couch.

I was sure there would be a good deal more to this meeting. I expected the four doctors had already figured it all out and would tell me exactly what they wanted me to do, but if they were going to offer me my standard daily rate for babysitting a movie set, I wanted to make it as easy as possible for them, so I quickly got my brief case on the table and yanked a blank contract out of it.

It didn’t take long to get their signatures on the document but they were doctors so I had to promise each of them a copy before the sun set this day. The doctors corrected me by stating that the hotel registration desk would have a copy machine so they excused me while I took care of that detail.

When I returned there was fresh coffee but my plate had been taken away and, in truth, I wasn’t quite finished nibbling.

Michael Philson took out a folder of pictures and one at a time he passed them to me. I was asked to point out any persons I knew from amongst the stack. I looked at perhaps fifteen black-and-white head-shots, and found only one I knew.

Bridget Birdy was a well-known actress with several good movies to her credit. She was perhaps two or three years younger than me, and a good three inches shorter. She had taken a rather familiar path through fame. She had appeared in several B rated movies, mostly zombie movies, but never been considered seriously for a major role. After several years of running from a crazed monster that wanted to bite her neck, while she wore the skimpiest underwear that would yield a PG-13 rating, she had shed the flimsy garments for a Playboy spread.

After that the major movie offers came quickly and she had a string of three major roles that yielded financially successful movies. Success continued down that twisty path until her first arrest when she crashed her car and the cops found a quarter ounce of cocaine in her purse. A slap on the wrist got her back on a movie set but this picture was only half filmed when she crashed her car again, this time with nearly a pound of illegal substances in her possession. Court ordered rehab followed but she could not finish the current movie, which cost her producer a ton of cash, so she was quickly blacklisted.

She tried modeling but she looked a bit