Escape Clause (Murder Off-Screen Book 2) Read online

  ESCAPE CLAUSE

  Murder Off-Screen Series

  BOOK ONE

  by

  GA VanDruff

  COPYRIGHT

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 50

  CHAPTER 51

  CHAPTER 52

  CHAPTER 53

  CHAPTER 54

  CHAPTER 55

  CHAPTER 56

  CHAPTER 57

  CHAPTER 58

  CHAPTER 59

  FREE CHAPTER OF ESCAPE ROUTE – The Prequel

  HOLLYWOOD

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  READER APPRECIATION

  COPYRIGHT

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Text copyright © 2015 GA VanDruff. Kindle Edition. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the author.

  License Notes

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronics, mechanical, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author. The characters, incidence and dialogs in this book are of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Dear Reader

  The second book in the Murder Off-Screen Series is due for release. I’ve added the first exciting chapter of Escape Route – The Prequel at the end of this book. Enjoy!

  Dedication

  Mother

  Romans 8:38-39

  CHAPTER 1

  The weird thing about the ghost who stood watching the seagulls eat the corpse’s nose was that the corpse wasn’t his.

  The body, just shy of high tide, lay spread-eagled on its back in a finely tailored suit.

  The ghost, on the other hand, was dressed for the beach, slender, clean-shaven and transparent. I mean, you couldn’t see his liver, or anything unsettling like that, but you could definitely watch the sunrise through where his liver probably was—or had been.

  I’d left my pocketbook back on my boat, hanging on a hook in the galley. It was stuffed with brochures promising me a Caribbean paradise. Typical turquoise waters, tropical breezes, palm fronds kind of fare. Birds brunching on a middle-aged, white male stretched out surfside had not been among the images promoted by Puerto Rico’s Board of Tourism. Guaranteed.

  I eased the outboard’s throttle and backed up ever so slowly. We puttered beyond the folds of whitecaps and ducked behind a lone, house-sized rock tossed down by an ancient glacier two or three eons before I blundered onto this beach. I shut off the engine. Doofus wanted to swim. Labradors always want to swim, but I shook my head no, so he sighed and stared off in the opposite direction. I had to pull myself together.

  I creased a mental sheet of paper and made two columns. PLAUSIBLE and GET OUT OF DODGE.

  Ten minutes later, the only item under PLAUSIBLE was a man in a suit dead on the beach. The suit was unusual but I’m sure business men enjoyed a stroll along the shifting sands like anybody else. He must be dead because he had made no attempt to shoo the seagulls off his face.

  The ghost had assumed that responsibility.

  Acknowledging the activities of a ghost, checked the first box in the DODGE column. If I am watching ghost activity, there must be a ghost. And the ghost reminded me of Jeep McBain.

  Box number two. Check.

  The way he danced around flapping at the gulls—Jeep made those moves at the clubs in LA. But considering that for the past year, everything reminded me of my best friend and roommate did not make that a startling comparison.

  The night Jeep won the Oscar for best screenplay—he had taken me as his Plus One—he vanished without a word. I’d not stopped searching for him at every turn. Around every glacial rock.

  The last six weeks spent sailing to Puerto Rico had given me other things to think about—pirates, sharks, sinking—but Jeep was always at the periphery. Like a ghost.

  Like this ghost.

  The water pulsed off the rock and kept kicking us seaward so I set the oars and pulled long, silent strokes toward the beach until the gentle surf carried us to shore. I fanned myself with my straw hat, wiped the sweat from my eyes, grabbed the bow line and stepped off into the cool Caribbean up to my knees.

  Like they say, the first step to recovery is admitting there was a problem. And Jeep McBain was a big problem. If I was hallucinating, I’d call the Hot Line in the morning. If this ghost was Jeep, who would I call about that? Jeep would say Ghostbusters and roll around on the sand laughing.

  I turned to wrestle the dinghy further up on the beach. My ninety-pound dog acting as ballast did not make the job any easier. “Doofus, out!” He jumped overboard and headed out to sea.

  “Hey! Get back here!” Men. At least this one came back when I called.

  I dug my heels into the sand and hauled the dinghy far enough out of the water to stay put without the outboard’s prop getting banged out of shape. I looped the bow line twice around a piece of driftwood. In the event I had not hallucinated a dead body and a ghost, I for sure did not want my only means of escape floating toward the equator.

  I slipped my shirt on over my bikini top. A lump in the pocket shifted. José, my gecko, getting situated. The little fella signed on at the dock back home in Maryland as my eco-friendly bug zapper. Puerto Rican bugs the size of pup tents ate my food and hid my stuff so José’s long-term employment status was secure.

  I lifted my sunhat, fluffed my sensibly short hair, replaced the hat, scrunched the brim, smoothed the creases of my shorts and inhaled an exhilarating breath of sea air. No worries. None of what I had just seen was real. No corpse bobbing along the shoreline in a five-thousand dollar Bianchi suit, no Hitchcock seagulls, and because ghosts do not exist, no ghost. Simply too much sun, too little screen. When I turn around it will all be sand and surf, palm trees. Nothing more.

  When that didn’t work out, I debated waving at the ghost. I hadn’t waved at anyone since I stepped off the bus in Los Angeles three years back. Waving at strangers in LA is sign language for pleas
e run at me with a knife and steal my purse. Ghosts? I didn’t know a thing about ghost protocol. Who knew what a wave might signify in the netherworld? A firm handshake seemed improbable. But it might attract his attention and I could get a better look at his face.

  Mr. Ghost thrashed around in the receding tide chasing the gulls off his companion and didn’t wave back. I made a grab for Doofus, but my slippery dog trotted into the thick of the fracas. These Caribbean gulls were pros, not easily put off a free lunch by some lummox of a yellow dog. However, they did scuttle away a yard or two, swearing at my Lab, but then waddled back for seconds.

  José bolted out of my pocket, climbed to my collar and clutched on with his knobby gray toes for a better view. He puffed out the red flap of skin under his chin and waved it around as a warning, pretending to be brave. It’s a gecko thing.

  Apparently, no body meant no body odor because Doofus paid no attention to the ghost. The other guy, though, was ripe. Doofus snarfled the dead man’s armpits, and nibbled at the sand crabs scrabbling across the mostly bald head. It occurred to me to call my stupid dog, but the sight of a semi-dead guy playing scarecrow over a totally dead guy deactivated whichever lobe in my brain controlled speech.

  Not to worry. The ghost stepped up to the plate. “Jaqie Shanahan. Is that you? Get over here and give me a hand before I lose Dan to the currents.”

  At the sound of my name, I sputtered and said something like mcphorpherwhat. I recognized that voice.

  I chalked up the Joe Cocker quality of it to his being dead. He did resemble Jeep but the sun cut in and out of the clouds, casting shadows, distorting the image. Before I could make a positive ID, José skydived down to my foot, and I lost the connection. The clutch of tiny gecko toes on mine snapped me out of my metaphysical daze. It was time to snatch my dog, my lizard and leave this version of reality behind.

  “Come here, boy.” I clapped and whistled. The ghost looked around at me, confused. “Not you,” I said. “The dog. Come here, Doofus.” They both decided to come. Doofus tore across the beach, but the ghost took his good old time, stepping carefully around shells and driftwood, maybe afraid of stubbing a toe. I didn’t think stubbing things an issue for the undead, but I wouldn’t bet my life on it.

  Doofus skidded to a stop and nosed the lizard off my foot. José was out of his element. His was a simple life—eat bugs, play with dog. The lizard shinnied up Doofus’s leg and hid most of himself under the dog’s left ear.

  The hobgoblin, phantom, whatever, stepped into my comfort zone and planted himself directly in front of me, shimmering like heat off blacktop. “Jaqie Shanahan, my favorite dark-haired, Irish girl. Still cute as a button, I see. Great hat. Wassup?”

  “Not much.” I hedged a step back. “How about you?”

  My diaphanous friend smiled a beige smile. All of him was beige, French vanilla, old parchment. He was a tea stain against the horizon.

  “You don’t recognize me?” He swiveled and gave me a profile shot.

  “Maybe ...”

  He thumped his chest. To no avail. “Jeep! Your roommate!”

  CHAPTER 2

  My first thought was—reality show, hidden cameras, special effects. How else could Casper here know Jeep McBain? Jeep and I had been best buds. We wrote movies together. Not technically together—he wrote his and I wrote mine—but together, eating Ramen noodles, bouncing ideas in the same hovel in LA. But the day after my buddy, my friend, my pal won an Oscar for Best Screenplay, he and his typewriter disappeared.

  This boogey man could not be that guy. This imposter was a bit of plasma in a smoky Hawaiian shirt and sepia shorts. My Jeep was a fun-loving, womanizing, adorable force, not some patch of low-lying fog shaped like a beach bum.

  “Jeep had a beard.” I stroked my chin. “You don’t have a beard.”

  “Had to shave it. Too stinkin’ hot down here.” He flipped the tail of his shirt up and covered the bottom half of his face. “Just look at me from the nose up. Picture the beard.”

  I squinted and screwed his face into focus. Long hair, as usual. Never combed, hanging in his eyes, as usual.

  “Jaqie, come on. I used to call you Sugar Pop.”

  “Jeep!” Without thinking, I threw my arms around his neck, but the only thing I caught was a chill. I was so glad to see him, there were no words. I wanted to hug him. Squeeze him. I wanted to shake him to pieces.

  “Where have you been? You’ve been here, obviously. Why didn’t you tell me? We’re supposed to be best friends. Friends. Do you even know what that means?” A year’s worth of frustration and questions tumbling out.

  I wasn’t done. “I’ve been sick, just sick worrying about you. I called every hospital, the police in every county of California. I’m on a first name basis with an LA detective. Stubby. I call him Stubby.”

  Now I understood Aunt B’s reaction when I ran away, once, for three minutes. I was yelling the exact same things at Jeep she’d yelled at me.

  “You could’ve called,” I said. “Texted. Let me know that you weren’t lying in a ditch somewhere. You might have been hurt. Or worse.”

  An awkward silence followed my rant. Jeep looked straight at me like he was sorry, and really, really sad.

  “Jaqie.” He took a step away from me. “I’m fairly sure it’s Or Worse.” He held his arms out and turned a circle, modeling the new version of himself, Jeep Lite.

  Unacceptable. My best friend gone missing for a whole year, and this was not the acceptable outcome. “Don’t be ridiculous. You always were a crybaby. A splinter in your finger and it’s off to the ER. This is probably nothing at all. Turn around again.”

  I jammed my fists on my hips and studied him intensely as he stepped a small circle. Eleven seasons of Dr. McDreamy had taught me a thing or two.

  Jeep stopped and stared down at my shadow rippling across the beach. His was nowhere to be found. “Survey says?”

  “Low blood sugar, electrolyte depletion. Are you drinking enough fluids? Tequila does not count.”

  “Jaqie, you’re overlooking—”

  “Oh, just stop.” Speed talking. No bad news. Jeep was found. All was well in my world. “Now, let’s see what we can do for this poor man with an obviously genuine condition with which to be concerned.”

  I spun a divot in the sand and stomped off before Jeep argued that prone-on-the-beach-with-seagulls-roosting-on-your-face far exceeded the scope of a condition.

  A rope of seaweed tangled between my toes and the rubber sole of my flip-flop. I lurched forward and the momentum sent me stumbling toward the corpse. Two seagulls fighting over a nostril backpedaled as I windmilled for balance. Doofus put the run on them.

  I steadied myself, hands on knees, head down and took a beat. I could see my reflection in the dead man’s patent leather shoe. “What happened here? Jeep, do you know this gentleman?”

  “Dan Lithgow. My agent. Former agent.”

  “What? He wanted a higher percentage?” My voice climbed two octaves and cracked at the end. I was getting hysterical.

  “I think he had a heart attack. I vaguely remember I was to meet with him ... what day is today? Doesn’t matter.” Jeep pinched the bridge of his mocha nose. “Wailin’ headache. Say, Jaq, I don’t want to be a bother, but could you give me your opinion on something?”

  “Hang on a minute.” I stood, cracked my back, took a deep breath and pranced back and forth in the sand. I’m a tourist. I beachcomb—seashells, driftwood, mermaids’ tears. Dead men? Again, not in the brochure.

  I wrapped my hands around Dan Lithgow’s ankles. “Don’t want him drifting off with the trade winds.” I pulled and heaved and shoved. I remembered the whale documentaries on TV. Those folks worked in groups for a reason.

  The relentless gulls screeched on, the relentless sun beat down, parboiling my brain, Doofus dug like a back hoe bent on uprooting his very own palm tree. In a purely supervisory capacity, the lizard dangled like a charm from the dog’s collar.

  Meanwhile, back at
the water’s edge, I dragged a perfect stranger to drier ground. Hollywood agents typically weigh more than their clients, so I only managed a few yards. Dead weight is, well, dead weight. I sat down hard and judged the results. He now was well beyond the crooked line of brown seaweed drawn by the receding tide, but his socks were askew. I smoothed them into place. It seemed the polite thing to do.

  “Opinion on what?”

  “Be honest. I mean, I hope you’re right about the electrolyte thing, but ...” Jeep tilted his head forward, stopping two inches from my face, and pulled his hair back. A glistening glob of oatmeal that was his brain blossomed out of his mushroom-colored skull. Clots of blood, like chocolate chips, tattooed a starburst across his forehead. “If we did go to the ER—since I’m still sorta here—do you think they could take a run at this?”

  I spent the next few minutes in spectacular, unladylike behavior. Gagging, retching. Fourth-of-July retching. The sight of Jeep’s brain scooped out like so much oatmeal sent me reeling.

  “Jaqie, wow. I’m sorry. Guess I’m beyond a butterfly stitch.” He sat next to me. “You’d better lie down. Green is not your color.”

  “Excellent idea.” I waved him off, toppled over and took a snooze. It’s what I do. Everyone has their own coping mechanism. My therapist tagged mine as narcolepsy. Since that sounds like a Columbian drug lord with a skin condition, I call it REM Syndrome Major.

  When I woke up, Doofus slept beside me on the beach, dreaming with dancing paws. José must’ve sensed his future as a seagull hors d’oeuvre because he had wisely sought sanctuary in the right cup of my bikini top. I jacked up on my elbows and took a look around. Something I could not quite remember ... That something squatted twenty yards away next to his former agent. Jeep had faded a half-tone during my nap. He appeared less congealed than before.

  I chased José around my B-cup once or twice, snagged him and slipped him back into my shirt pocket, then dusted the sand off my shorts. Doofus yawned and we joined Jeep surfside.

  “You okay?” he asked me.