The Loneliest Places by Keith Edward Vaughn

Author:Keith Edward Vaughn [Keith Edward Vaughn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Blondie Street Publishing
Published: 2023-08-17T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 17

The sun coming through the window made the fluorescents in Ellis’s inner office unnecessary but he flipped them on anyway. Leaving his sunglasses on, he took the Smirnoff from his desk drawer, swiveled to face the Galleria, and took two long pulls. On top of the beers at Tres Brazos and the roach he smoked on the way back, he was feeling pretty loose and numbed to Hollender’s suggestion that Ellis’s father had been corrupt, had aided the Black Fist by making evidence disappear. When Ellis was honest with himself, he believed it was true. His dad hadn’t liked being a cop, citing what oversight and regulation existed as the reason the police weren’t more effective. Also, he was enigmatic and unpredictable, a drunk. But Ellis preferred not to think about that, and instead remember the man as the public had known him, or thought they did: as the virile, mustachioed private detective and best-selling author of the book that became the industry bible, (still in print and earning royalties, however dwindling). It was the image Ellis kept, like the dust jacket it appeared on⁠—fixed, flat, and tucked away on a high shelf.

Ellis hadn’t looked at Get ‘Em in ten years or more. He slid the book halfway out, and stopped. Until his father started spending most of their custody weekends in his bathrobe, pacing around his Avondale Village apartment with a whiskey in one hand and a tape recorder in the other, dictating his book, Ellis couldn’t remember him expressing any interest in writing. And yet, quickly and seemingly without trying, Hank Dunaway became a success as an author as well as an investigator. Despite advantages his father hadn’t had, Ellis had failed at both careers. And he had really tried to be a writer. Hadn’t he? Ellis pushed the book back into its space, unopened.

He took a drink and looked at his watch, the one his father gave him. His meeting with Vanessa Stefanidis was at four o’clock, in an hour, per her, he thought strange, insistence considering her husband had just been found dead. Ellis did a bump, opened his laptop and got to work on her report. As he typed, Hollender’s warning⁠—The Clayton family has ties to the Black Fist. So, be aware, and don’t stick your neck out too far. I’m proud of you.⁠—ran through his head. Ellis figured Hollender had deduced that he was working for Vanessa. Had Ellis said so? He couldn’t remember. Vanessa’s claim that Douglas had assaulted her while he was wasted didn’t wash with what Kip told him, and as far as Ellis could tell, Kip didn’t have any axe to grind or a reason to lie. He also seemed too sweetly stupid to lie effectively. Vanessa on the other hand… Ellis sat back from the keyboard and fingered the tender scabs on his chin. He had accused Terry of intentionally putting him into harm’s way, but what about Vanessa? She was the one who sent him to the marina.

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