Ace of Hearts: A Scarlett Rose Adventure

By William Estabrook

Scarlett Rose is a modern American millennial woman. At the age of twenty-three she is a private detective, active in a field traditionally dominated by middle-aged males. She is skilled in martial arts and drives a specially modified, extra-fast car. She avoids the use of firearms but is quite familiar with a variety of weapons. Her favorite is the .357 Magnum pistol, with which she is a dead shot.

She is a tall, slender, green-eyed redhead of exceptional beauty who is as feminine and ladylike as it is possible to be. Unmarried, with a boyfriend, Scarlett enjoys the finest of relationships with members of the male population. She has a black belt in karate, is a masterful pugilist, and an all-around athlete. She respects the men, and they definitely respect her.

Ace of Hearts is Scarletts first solo case in which she makes all of her own decisions. Promising leads turn bad, and iffy leads work out well, leading to a successful conclusion that no one could have foreseen. The good people benefit from Scarletts wisdom, and the bad person is brought to justice.

Scarlett is, therefore, an entirely new type of fictional private eye, not a boozy brawling gunslinger nor a remote and impossibly intellectual robot. She is a courteous and charming young lady with the courage of a sky driver, the vision of a soothsayer, and the integrity of an angel. And when people are pleased by the success of her methods, what does Scarlett say? Its what I do. I find things out.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 13, 2017
• ISBN: 9781543464566

William Estabrook

NO AUTHOR INFORMATION

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Copyright © 2017 by William Estabrook.

ISBN:      Softcover      978-1-5434-6457-3

      eBook         978-1-5434-6456-6

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 11/13/2017

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Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ONE

The month was July, the day was Tuesday and the time was nine minutes past noon. My Uncle Ozzie had left his office an hour earlier, en route to a meeting with a pair of clients. Our administrative assistant Mrs. Mildred Parsnip had left her office at the stroke of twelve, en route to a meeting with a plateful of lunch. I, having opted to brown bag it, had not left my office at all.

Incidentally, my name is Scarlett Rose. I’m an early twenty-something female, and I’m employed by my uncle. More about that in a second.

Anyway, this Tuesday was a special one, for it was the first day on which I was able to refer to the space I was now occupying as my office. Previously, there had been only two such areas at OK Services, the investigative agency that my uncle Osmond T. Kellermeister owns and operates – one spot for the boss and another one for Mrs. Parsnip, his indispensable administrative assistant. When I came on the scene, that lady had been constrained to share her domain with me. But now, there were three actual offices, one of which was my own spiffy little nest, and it was there that I was preparing to celebrate my official entry into the world of private investigating with an inaugural lunch.

As I unfolded the wrapping on my first culinary treasure, and refreshed my memory of what the early morning me had prepared for the pleasure of the midday me, I heard the office telephone tootling from its station on Mrs. Parsnip’s desk. Officially, OK Services is closed between noon and one o’clock, and I quite properly ignored the plaintive call, waiting for our telephone answering machine to, well, answer the telephone. After one ring too many, I sighed and set down my beautiful sandwich, only once bitten into. Obviously, a momentary and exceedingly rare lapse of concentration had caused our administrative guru to forget the answering machine. I rose from my brand new roll-away chair and sprinted off through the doorway that connected me with the rest of the world and seized the phone.

OK Services, I announced.

Hello, an elderly female voice replied, I should like to speak with Mr. Kellermeister, please.

He’s out of the office at the moment and won’t be back until late this afternoon. May I take a message?

To whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?

Scarlett Rose. I’m one of Mr. Kellermeister’s operatives.

I was in point of fact the only one, but that seemed not to be a relevant item at the moment.

I see, she said, and then she paused.

Perhaps I might be of some service, I lobbed into the gap.

Hmmm, she replied, as if she were evaluating a bid on a family heirloom.

I am, the lady resumed, Mrs. Olivia Stackhouse. You may have heard the name.

It definitely has a familiar ring, I fibbed, as some remote part of my brain launched itself into a frantic data search.

What I should like to know, the lady continued, is whether someone from your agency might be able to come to my residence.

Certainly, I said, without a nanosecond’s pause.

It is no longer possible for me to travel great distances.

Great distances? I thought. Where could she be calling from? Some remote island off the coast of Peru?

And, she went on, I cannot discuss this matter on the telephone. I’m sure that you understand.

Actually, I thought, I don’t.

Certainly, I assured her.

How soon do you think you could be here? she asked.

That depends, I thought, on just how much of a trek is involved.

The data search synapses were now firing with some success. They were reminding me of an item that I had come across some few days earlier in the Sacramento Bee, our local newspaper. Somebody named Stackhouse had gone missing, and that was obviously big news. It was an – Arrowsmith, Adelbert, Altoona, Axel – an Alan! That was it: Alan Stackhouse, wealthy businessman, of the San Francisco Stackhouses, had vanished. He was gone. Pfft!

Miss Rose? her voice penetrated into me. Are you there?

Oh, yes. I was just checking my appointment calendar. I’m actually free this entire afternoon, if that would be convenient.

Splendid, Mrs. Olivia Stackhouse smiled into the phone. Let me tell you where I am.

The good lady recited an address in Menlo Park, which as you may know lies about twenty-five miles south of San Francisco and is just a hop, skip and a jump from my alma mater Stanford University.

I can be there by three o’clock, I smiled back at her.

We said our goodbyes. Instead of returning to my home brew lunch, I scrambled immediately to my computer and began feverishly hacking and slashing about on the keyboard.

Ah-hah! I murmured, as the monitor filled itself with the original newspaper account of the Stackhouse disappearance. According to the report, the fellow failed to return to his San Francisco home at his accustomed time. As the hour grew late, his wife began to worry. Shortly before midnight, she called the police. After the necessary delay of twenty-four hours, the boys in blue considered Mr. Stackhouse officially a missing person. The article was accompanied by a photograph of Mr. Stackhouse and his wife. He was balding, portly, bespectacled and probably older-looking than his actual age. The wife sported a magnificent display of hair, all of it extremely blond. Oddly, the reporter did not include the age of either person. I estimated him to be well into his forties; she looked as if she might not yet have celebrated her twenty-first birthday. Her name was Victoria.

Calls herself Viki, I thought. Has to.

At that point I could have embarked on a methodical search of sources in order to assemble a dossier on Mr. Alan Stackhouse, but decided to put that off until after my interview with the lady I assumed was his mom. At least I now had a good idea of what Mrs. Stackhouse wanted to discuss with me. I snatched up my shiny black briefcase, sunglasses and car keys and set out on my very first official solo investigation for OK Services. As I passed through the portal that afforded egress from my own personal realm, I could not help but admire again the brand spanking new door that my beloved uncle had caused to be placed in the formerly solid wall, so that a recently vacated adjoining office might be incorporated into his business. Sharing an office with Mrs. Parsnip, although she is an absolute sweetheart and I love her to pieces, had nevertheless become something of a hassle. Suffice it to say that everyone concerned was most delighted with the new arrangement.

I interrupted my outbound progress to stop at the good lady’s desk and compose a brief note in which I explained where I was going and why, and that I would not be returning before the close of business. Of course I could have left the note on my uncle’s desk, eliminating the middle man as it were, but I had learned that it is best not to cut our invaluable assistant out of the loop. It is preferable to route all intra-office communications through her. I could say that she is the net across which my uncle and I lob our written words to each other, except that in this game the object is to score points by whacking the ball directly into the net. The best route between two points, one learns again and again, is not always a straight line.

One of my quirks, and one that I am trying to remedy, is that I am congenitally incapable of ever recalling where it is that I have parked my car. Each trip out to the parking lot involves a certain interlude of reconnaissance, of walking and looking, looking and walking, before I succeed in locating my little gray sedan. One would think that I would acquire some sort of stand-out vehicle, a Corvette Stingray for example, painted iridescent metal-flake purple and with a wide and bright orange stripe from nose to tail. There are not too many of those around. But no, I prefer to come and go as quietly and inconspicuously as possible. I like a vehicle that blends in with the flow of traffic just like one more duck on the pond. Consequently, I drive a little gray sedan. She is, of course, equipped with a larger engine that is also highly modified, along with improved suspension, high speed tires and other niceties that any modern girl craves.

The drive down to Menlo Park was uneventful, and I won’t bother you with the details. Using the map that I had downloaded prior to my departure, I was able to find the Stackhouse residence with no trouble. Soon I was operating the ornate brass knocker that was bolted to a massive and dazzlingly white front door. Supporting this barrier was an appropriately huge and equally white house, surrounded by stretches of lawn complete with neatly clustered and manicured growing things. I expected that a butler would open the door, one of those characters from a 1930’s movie, with striped pants, tails and an insufferably snooty attitude. Instead, a tallish and slender woman responded to my appeal. She appeared to be hovering somewhere in the vicinity of middle age. There were no striped pants visible, but she was definitely equipped with the snooty attitude.

I’m here to see Mrs. Stackhouse, I confessed to her.

You are the detective? she replied, her tone implying that was perhaps not such a good thing to be.

Yes.

Come in.

As I passed the gate keeper, she looked me up and down, apparently checking the terrain for stains or missing buttons. I felt secure, however, in my emerald green jacket, slinky black slacks, blouse of purest white and glistening patent leather pumps. The slender briefcase dangling from my right paw completed my professional display.

As I crossed the threshold from outside to inside I felt like Dorothy when she found herself no longer in Kansas. Minus the munchkins, the Stackhouse residence offered a colorful and altogether magical experience. Aside from the visual goodies, there was also a certain scent in the air, one that I had never detected before. I assumed it was the aroma of affluence. It seemed that the air in the house of the very rich smells quite different than it does, say, where I live. Or perhaps the unaccustomed visual impact of these surroundings had given rise in me to olfactory hallucinations. I might be sensing, that is, scents that were not actually there. I still don’t know.

Please be seated, Madam I-Work-for-a-Very-Rich-Lady intoned, and I complied.

Having put me securely in my place, the gray eminence glided noiselessly from the room. I sat and gawked around me, like a college freshman on a summer tour of the Louvre. There were many things to look at in the room, many artistic things, the types of objects that an average person, someone like me for example, might feel reluctant to contaminate even with her gaze, and would never ever dare to touch. I sat, therefore, my limbs temporarily shifted into neutral.

How fascinating, I thought, that mere chunks of wood, globs of clay, hunks of cloth and splotches of paint can be manipulated so as to create all these . . . well, all these amazing objects.

As I hovered there, all caught up in the imponderability of esthetic expression, a sound shattered my reverie. I jumped, not exactly out of my skin, which is too firmly attached to permit that, but nevertheless with great suddenness.

Miss Rose? a voice was inquiring.

I shifted the necessary parts back into gear and stood up. I beheld a creature standing not all that distant from me. Had I been wearing a hat, I would have doffed it. If I possessed a forelock, I’d have tugged at it. As it was, I merely adopted a polite and expectant posture. The owner of the voice was a petite lady with fiercely black hair and exceedingly pale skin. Her diminutive form was swathed in a blue dress fashioned from what I assumed might be silk. She appeared to be somewhere in her mid seventies, and with an aging ageless aged look, like a woman who is fighting the ravages of time, and with considerable success. Her right hand rested upon a silver-headed cane. She was not leaning on it, but merely displaying it. I wondered whether there might be a sword concealed there.

Olivia Stackhouse, she smiled, exposing an array of teeth that were perfectly white and symmetrical, and perhaps even original.

The lady extended her hand, and I stepped forward to accept it. Instead of the cadaverous claw that I expected, her hand was soft and warm. She gave me a grandmotherly little squeeze. Disarmed and vanquished, I squeezed back.

Please, I said, call me Scarlett.

She nodded her agreement but did not make a reciprocal offer. I understood totally – addressing her as Olivia would have been like patting Mother Teresa on the rump and calling her Terry.

Your agency there in Sacramento is very highly recommended, she commented.

Thank you, I rejoined.

So that’s why she called us instead of someone local, I thought. Uncle Ozzie’s fame is everywhere.

I was just about to have lunch, she continued. Would you care to join me?

Lunch? I thought, suddenly remembering that unfinished sandwich on my desk.

Thank you, I responded. That would be delightful.

Elizabeth, Mrs. Stackhouse said, apparently into thin air, but actually to her housekeeper, who seemed suddenly to have materialized out of that very nothingness, you may serve luncheon now. For two. In the solarium, please.

Very well, Elizabeth replied.

My hostess and I trekked across the vast upholstered steppe that comprised the living room, into and through some large areas and others that were smaller, down a cavernous hallway and ultimately off through a magnificent set of French doors that gave onto a glassed-in and oddly bird-cagey sunlit area. All sorts of potted plants and decorative doodads stood, lay or drooped about.

I’d be willing to bet, I thought, that even the bugs here have pedigrees.

Please, the lady said, motioning toward a black wrought iron table with a shiny glass top.

I let myself down carefully onto one of the matching chairs. It received me with a grasp that was both firm and comfortable. Elizabeth materialized again. As if she were in training for the Olympic championship in noiseless table setting, she dealt out a steady stream of place mats, china and silverware from a wood and steel cart that she had spirited up to the table. I glanced about, expecting the sommelier to appear, or at least a waiter with suggestions for appetizers.

We have clam chowder, turkey sandwiches, salad and dessert, Mrs. Stackhouse volunteered. If you’d prefer, Elizabeth can prepare something vegetarian.

The chowder sounds marvelous, I countered, with unfeigned sincerity.

The lady nodded almost imperceptibly, and Elizabeth glided away. We chatted, Mrs.Stackhouse and I, for a few minutes, about the pleasures one might experience as a result of having a vast solarium as part of one’s residence, and then Elizabeth re-appeared, pushing another cart, or perhaps the same one, draped now in white linen and laden with the promised goodies. I observed how effortlessly and skillfully Madame Elizabeth the housekeeper/cook/ whatever performed her duties. Every gesture, each movement was accomplished in precisely the correct way, and with no apparent exertion. There is something, and I’m sure that you have noticed this also, very admirable about anybody who does his or her job to perfection. Whether that person is a brain surgeon or a pea picker, we appreciate a job that is well done. I recall one time . . . but I digress. Back to Mrs. Stackhouse and me.

The lunch was everything good that a lunch should be, and I brought to it a willingness to be pleased that was equal to the occasion. Had my hostess offered me another serving of Elizabeth’s excellent chowder, I would have eagerly accepted, but she didn’t and I didn’t, which was actually a good thing, for the turkey sandwiches turned out to be quite generously proportioned and, truth to tell, well worth the sacrifice that some hapless bird had made on my behalf. Over hot coffee and chilled wedges of key lime pie, we drifted gradually into an airing of the original purpose of my mission to Menlo Park.

It’s about my son, she began.

Mr. Alan Stackhouse, I interjected, supplying the Mister as a nod to the splendor of the occasion.

How do you know that? she asked, obviously surprised by my display of clairvoyance.

It’s what I do. I find things out.

She paused and nodded, lips pursed.

Well then, she smiled, you are probably aware that he has gone missing.

Yes.

She paused again.

More pie? she offered, and I politely declined.

Then, having taken time to re-load and lock, she spoke again.

I first learned about it from an item in the paper. You can imagine my astonishment. And then the following afternoon I received a visit from a police officer.

Ah, the police.

Yes. I informed him that not only did I not know where my son might be, but I had not even known that he had gone missing. He is, after all, a grown man now, with his own separate residence. If he and his . . . wife have quarreled, well then, that may explain things.

The pause that Mrs. Stackhouse inserted before she could bring herself to utter the word wife, and the fact that she was quick to assume difficulties between her son and his spouse led me to believe that all was perhaps not sweetness and light between this lady and her youthful daughter-in-law.

That would be Victoria? I ventured.

She nodded, her eyes firmly fixed on the plate before her.

Does she call herself Viki? I asked. V-I-K-I?

Why, yes, she replied, a slight shading of wonderment in her voice.

The newspaper report, I pressed on, seemed to imply that she was at a loss to explain your son’s absence.

My hostess paused, as if she were wondering whether the next treasure that she was about to present to me was something that I really ought to have.

Of course, I tossed in, trying to smooth her path, people often make statements to reporters that are not completely accurate. And reporters are known to misstate occasionally what has been told to them.

No doubt that’s what she said to them, the lady offered, but the veracity of whatever she might come up with . . . well, she is a person who is given to a certain carelessness regarding the factuality of what she tells people.

I see.

She lies. Constantly. She is a compulsive liar.

I nodded my acceptance of her charge. In the uncomfortable silence that followed, I glanced down at the remaining shards of my pie and resisted the impulse to pick up my fork and begin poking about.

Judging from the picture in the paper, I inserted, I would guess that there is a considerable difference in their ages.

He is forty-three. She is less than half that, I’m sure.

At that moment Elizabeth emerged from whatever secret passage she had been languishing in and swiftly cleared the table.

Would you open the shade, please? Mrs. Stackhouse asked her employee.

Elizabeth moved over to the wall and inserted her hand behind a large tapestry that displayed armed men and their dogs, all engaged in various degrees of interaction with a swarm of wild fowl. She apparently flipped a secret switch, for a great green canvas screen that was suspended aloft and parallel to the floor began to move slowly aside, revealing a glassed in ceiling and permitting even more soft warm sunlight to filter down upon us. The effect was most pleasant, even idyllic.

If ever, I told myself, I should choose to adopt an alternative life style, this is what it will be.

I popped open the latch on my briefcase and plucked from it a legal pad and a ball point pen. I placed the pad on the table before me and looked up at my hostess.

It may be necessary to ask you some questions about very sensitive areas, I explained, and even pry into matters that are very uncomfortable to speak about.

I am prepared, the lady responded.

Slowly I began to assemble a picture of the person who was her son Alan. In comparison to the individual that she described to me, anyone else, even a very paragon of Boy Scout virtue would appear to be nothing but a boor and ruffian. Angels, I was sure, came to him regularly for tutorials in the art of goodness. However, when the conversation turned to the relationship that she enjoyed, if that is the proper word, with her barely post-pubescent daughter-in-law, Mrs. Stackhouse had nothing positive to offer. The elder lady described young Viki as dishonest, cunning, deceitful, vulgar, manipulative, repugnant and absolutely stupid. She offered no anecdotal evidence of her assertions, but appeared merely to be venting a vast accumulation of hostility toward her son’s golden haired sweetie-pie.

How did your son happen to meet this woman? I inquired.

He told me that he made her acquaintance while he was on a trip over to Reno, Mom confided. Something about her being a cocktail waitress, but I believe he was merely trying to put a good face on things. That she was serving the public is no doubt true. Specifically the men. You’re aware, I’m sure, that certain kinds of activity between men and women are legal in the state of Nevada.

I assume that it was a fairly brief courtship.

Courtship?

Mom laughed a dry, bitter and mirthless little laugh. I did not pursue the topic.

Has he ever been married before?

No. Alan appeared to be a confirmed bachelor.

And his new residence in San Francisco – how long has he been living there?

"Since he took up with her. It’s not a house, from what Elizabeth tells me. Some kind of rented something. She happened to drive up there one day and, you know, look around.

Of course.

Before that he made his home here with me. He is a very serious and hard working person. Completely devoted to his profession, at which he is eminently successful.

What is it that he does?

Commercial banking. A highly lucrative area.

She provided the name of her son’s employer and also the address.

So there is no reason to suspect that he might be in some sort of financial difficulty? No personal problems? Anything like that?

Nothing that I’m aware of.

Has your daughter-in-law been able to tell you anything? Has she any idea at all why her husband has gone missing?

We have not discussed the matter. She has limited her contacts to the police.

I’ll have to go and talk with her, I advanced. I may be able to elicit some scrap of information that will prove helpful.

Possibly.

Mrs. Stackhouse provided me with her son’s street address in San Francisco, along with his unlisted telephone number.

That about does it for now, I offered. I’ll keep you informed on whatever I turn up.

I made a slight motion as if to rise from my chair. My host made an even more subtle motion with her right hand, signaling that I should remain seated.

You may think it odd, she began, that I have engaged the services of a private investigator in this matter, when the police are already involved.

Yes, I thought, I was kind of wondering about that.

That is certainly your prerogative, I replied.

As I said earlier, I first learned of my son’s unexplained absence when I read about it in the newspaper. Actually, Elizabeth saw the item and called it to my attention. You can imagine my consternation and my dismay that not one individual had shown me even the minimal courtesy of a telephone call. That woman obviously intends to continue separating me from my son and anything that concerns him.

Hmmm, I offered.

Then, as you know, the very next afternoon a uniformed policeman appeared at my door. Elizabeth told me later that he had parked one of those dreadful black and white vehicles directly in front of the house, for all the world to see.

How tacky.

I had withdrawn to this very room, trying to find some peace of mind, after the shock of what I had learned, and I was entirely unprepared to entertain a guest.

Of course.

I agreed to speak to that person, and then, despite my urgent appeals, he refused to supply me with any information about the matter. He merely gave me to understand that it was his place to ask questions and mine to answer them. Impudent puppy.

I’ve never heard of such a thing.

I must confess, Scarlett, that his attitude engendered anything but a spirit of cooperation in me. I have friends in city government, in high places, and I am sorely tempted to report this fellow.

Absolutely.

She paused. I remained respectfully silent. She was on a roll, and I was hoping that at some point she might inadvertently say something that would be of use to me.

That officer, she resumed, was in my home essentially to represent the interests of my daughter-in-law. It was only fitting then that I should not be at all enthusiastic about aiding him in any way. The proper approach would be to handle such a matter with tact and discretion, and to involve the police only as a last resort. That is why I have sought out your assistance.

Our investigations are carried out with the utmost care and thoroughness, I assured her. All information is strictly confidential and divulged only to the client.

Mrs. Stackhouse smiled and nodded. We talked then of other things, chatting amiably and bonding, I suppose. The content of that discussion is not relevant to this narrative, and I’ll skip over it. Finally, when we had talked ourselves out, one of those little