Cash Lowe, Cheap Detective

By Tom Nadeau
Copyright 2003

Part I: The Fortunate Daughter

It was foggy in Snug Harbor, as it often was. So foggy, in fact, the deadened air muffled the knock on Cash Lowe's trailer door. But he heard it anyway. You have to keep your eyes open and your ears peeled when you’re the "little cheaper detective."

"Coming!" Lowe said.

He lowered the heat on the chicken noodle soup he was cooking for lunch and turned to open the door. The beauty of trailers is nothing is ever too far away.

He looked down upon a sleek, leggy blonde dressed in a starched white blouse and pleated black slacks looking up at him.

"You Lowe?"

"Most of the time, but never in spirit," he said, tossing off one of his standard replies.

"The cheap detective?"

Lowe advertised his fee at a rock bottom $100 a day, expenses included. True, it was a significant downward departure from the $350 to $500 a day, plus expenses, most private investigators were billing. But the working poor must make sacrifices if they want to compete in the economic race to the bottom. After all, the demanding rich can afford to pay less in this globalized age.

He nodded. His hand shot to his collar to check the knot on his clip-on tie.

"What can I do for you?"

She put one foot up on the aluminum step. "I want you to find out if my Daddy's trying to screw me?"

Lowe's eyes widened.

"Out of my inheritance."

"Oh, well, step right in."

Like Lowe, the tallish blonde instinctively stooped slightly when she entered the aging Airstream. The roof wasn't that close, but the curvy walls suggested being inside a small cave. He pointed to the dining nook and booth.

"Have a seat."

As she squeezed by him, Lowe caught a hint of a mid-priced perfume. One probably franchised by Elizabeth Taylor.

He closed the door behind her.

"Make yourself comfortable," he said. "Coffee? Tea?"

"How about a beer, instead?"

OK, Lowe thought, no telling how this could go. He reopened the trailer door and left it that way. It would be a mitigating action he could later cite in court if this odd blonde should ever take it into her head to accuse of something.

"I can manage that," he said, extracting two 24-ounce Red Dogs from his tiny refrigerator.

"Sorry, only size I have," he apologized, as he popped the tops: Shpitt! Shpitt!

She smiled, coldly, as he sat down.

"A lady couldn't get a glass?"

He leapt up. "Of course. You'll have to forgive me. When you live alone like I do, you tend forget the amenities."

Lowe brought out an etched souvenir beer glass he had purchased when he toured the Schlitz brewery years before. He rinsed it out and wiped it dry with a paper towel. As he poured her beer, he wondered if the clash of brands would bother her.

Apparently not. The blonde took a long draft of beer before speaking again.

"My name's Ida. Ida Baynes. Pleased to meet you."

They shook hands. Lowe produced a business card for her.

"I'm Lowe."

"But not in spirit," she repeated.

"So, tell me more about what brought you here."

Over that beer, and another one after that, Ida sketched out her concerns.

Her father was Bernard "Buddy" Baynes, a well-to-do car dealer who retired to Snug Harbor. He lived there six months of the year, traveling elsewhere for three months at a time twice a year, usually in the fall and spring. It had been his regular pattern for the last 10 years, but this year he came back with a new wife in tow, and when winter came, he showed no signs of going anywhere.

Ida had not had the best of lives. Sure, she had been a rich trust fund kid and had enjoyed the best material things, but she'd had nothing but trouble with men, all of whom had been double no-goods. Fortunately, Daddy had always provided and, in the end, she had settled into living on her father's motor yacht in the Snug Harbor Yacht Basin. He let her share the yacht when he was there, and she boat-sat the vessel while he was away.

Enter Wanda, the new wife, a gold-digging hussy who was not much older than Ida herself. Upon her arrival things became definitely uncomfortable aboard the Scuppered Dreams. The mood between the two women simmered between hostile and hateful.

"I caught the snoopy bitch rummaging around in my panties drawer! Can you imagine?"

Worse yet, it seemed Daddy was no longer the doting parent he once was. He was less generous, had balked at raising her monthly allowance and Ida had even overheard him calling Wanda, "Pet."

"That's what he'd been calling me since I was a little girl. She's stole my own nickname," Ida said. She took another long draft of beer, and wiped her lips.

"No doubt about it. She's a goldbrick out to come between me and my Daddy. And I fear he's being persuaded. I want you to get the goods on that woman so we can show what she's up to, if it isn't too late already.

"And I want you to find out if Daddy's making any sudden moves with his will and my legal inheritance. See if he's fallen under that woman's spell and is trying to cheat me out of what's rightfully coming to me."

By that time, the two had finished off two Red Dog tall ones apiece, and Ida was beginning to look especially fine to Lowe.

"I'll see what I can do," he said.

"And do it fast, because Daddy's started to keep me on a short financial leash. I can't afford $100 a day for too many days."

Now came the hard part for Lowe.

"I'll need two day's earnest money, in advance," he said, nonchalantly brushing non-existent salt and crumbs off the table to cover his pitch.

She opened her black purse and fished out two hundred-dollar bills and an official-looking document wrapped in blue paper. Lawyers call them "bluebacks."

"This is the original that takes care of me. It's the only one I know about. See if there's been any changes in it."

They stood up together. She pressed up against him as she passed by. The Elizabeth Taylor scent, now mingled with beer, evoked ancient memories for Lowe. He followed her to a red hardtop Fiat Spyder parked outside.

She slid in, checked her makeup in the rearview, tossed her hair and smiled.

"I expect to hear something in three days, or sooner." She said, and gunned her engine.

He smiled back, waved and memorized her license plate as she drove off.

Back inside the Airstream, Lowe cleared the beer cans and checked on his chicken noodle soup. The broth had boiled away and the noodles were burnt black.

"It's hot dogs at the Slopchest again tonight," he sighed, as he got out the dish soap and scouring pad to clean the scorched pan.

TO BE CONTINUED