Harbour Falls (A Harbour Falls Mystery #1)(24)

“Drugs?” I ventured.

“What do you think?” Jimmy snorted, blowing smoke in my direction. “But that was just the tip of the ol’ iceberg with her. She’d pick up guys here and do ’em right in the backroom after we closed up.” He nodded to the room with the pool tables. “Bet you didn’t know that about your friend, huh?”

I shook my head. Holy hell, this was much more than I’d expected.

“She brought that guy in a bunch of times,” he said, pointing to the picture of J.T., still on the bar, with his cigarette. “People used to talk. Said that guy got married on the rebound after she dumped his ass to get engaged to some rich prick that was away at college. Boy, that dude had no f*ckin’ clue what his girlfriend was up to back home.”

Or did he? I wondered. That might explain Adam’s supposed reluctance to marry Chelsea. Not to mention lend credence to the blackmail theory. Oh, Adam, how much did you know?

Jimmy stubbed his cigarette out on the floor, picked up the dishrag, looked at it like he didn’t remember why it was even there, and then threw it back down on the bar. “You wanna know somethin’ even funnier?”

I took another fortifying drink of beer. “What’s that?” I asked, trying to keep my voice even.

“She still brought that guy in here even after he got married, and she was engaged to that college dude. Guess a girl like that doesn’t give a shit ’bout things like marriage and engagements, huh?”

“Guess not,” I whispered, glancing down at the picture of J.T. He looked so young, so innocent. Not like a guy who’d end up doing drugs and cheating on his wife. Had I ever really known him? What else was he capable of?

“Hey, you OK?” Jimmy asked.



“Yeah, fine,” I replied heavily as I crumpled the photo and stuffed it into my bag.

I drank the last of the beer, which had grown warm, and readied to leave. But as I pushed the empty bottle away, Jimmy said, “Oh, hey, there was someone else she used to bring in here once in a while.” I raised a questioning eyebrow.

“Not a guy though.” Jimmy smirked.

“You remember a name?” I asked.

“Nah, but the chick sure was hot.” He whistled. “Had a killer body and sexy long blonde hair.”

“Was that it?” I asked, fighting the urge to roll my eyes.

Jimmy shook his head, a lecherous smile turning up his lips. “No, there’s more. I remember this one time…”

I stood, waiting. Hell, I’d paid a hundred bucks for information; I wasn’t going anywhere until he finished. Jimmy shuffled around behind the bar, acting strangely excited. “And?” I said impatiently.

“Yeah, so like I said, Chelsea was wild.” He paused, all the while looking like maybe he was replaying in his head whatever tawdry tale he was about to tell. “So this time I’m talkin’ about, she was here with that hot girl…the blonde…and they’re both really drunk. Hangin’ all over each other.” Jimmy snickered. “Shit like that, you know what I mean?”

He looked at me, waiting, so I decided to humor him. “Sure.”

“So it’s late…like closing time late. Only people left are me, Old Carl, Chelsea, and her friend.” Jimmy leaned on the bar, continuing in a low voice, “So Old Carl pulls out one of them Polaroid cameras from behind the bar. He tells Chelsea he’ll let her bar tab slide for the rest of the week if she makes out with her friend. Oh, and lets him take some pictures, of course.”

“Of course,” I said dryly.

“Hell, she wasn’t offended or nothin’,” Jimmy said, snorting. “But it sure as hell wasn’t like she needed a pass on her bar tab. Everyone knew she had money. No, her ass was all over that shit just for kicks. Full on tongue action too, man. And Old Carl got his pictures. A bunch of ’em too.”

I perked up. Who was this mystery blonde? Nothing like this had been mentioned in the case files. Maybe it would turn out to be nothing, maybe she was just another wild girl who happened to meet up with Chelsea that night. But no, according to Jimmy, they’d been in here more than just that one time. She had to have been someone Chelsea knew. And that made me wonder why the police had never found her, never questioned her. What if she held some kind of key to the case? How much more had she known about Chelsea’s secret life? Without a doubt, I needed to find out the identity of the girl.



“Do you know what he did with those pictures?” I asked Jimmy.

“Don’t know what that old perv did with his, but he did give me one.”

It was looking like my hundred bucks was about to pay off after all. “You still have it?”

“Yeah, somewhere, I think. I’ll have to look for it, but I could call you if I find it.”

“That’ll work,” I said, writing my cell number on the back of a coaster.

Jimmy picked up the coaster, but as I got up to leave, he stopped me. “Oh wait. I remember one more thing about that night. It was somethin’ I overheard Chelsea sayin’ to her buddy.”

“What was that?”

“Right as Chelsea leans in to lay one on her friend, the girl starts pulling away…suddenly acting all uptight and shit.” Jimmy took out another cigarette. “Then I hear Chelsea whisper something to her, like ‘just go with it, nobody knows who you are here,’ and ‘it’s not like we haven’t done this before.’”