by Ann Charles
“I was thinking about Prudence’s last demand.”
“Remind me what she said.”
“To bring her ‘the librarian,’” I told him. “Do you know any of the Lead librarians at all?”
“Enough to say the same—none of them show any outward signs of interest in the paranormal world. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t.”
“Right. One of them could be hiding something.” Or maybe Prudence didn’t mean an actual librarian. I paced across the porch and back. “Is there any secret test I could use to tell if someone is a medium?”
His full-bodied laughter warmed my chills. “No, Violet, not that I know of.”
“Damn. How does one go about asking that kind of question without appearing to be off her rocker?”
“One doesn’t, that’s how. Give me time to finish down here and catch up with a few other clients tomorrow and then we’ll put our heads together.”
I nodded to nobody in the darkness. “Fine but when do we get to put our bodies together again?”
“Keep it up, Violet. You’re going to make it hard to work.”
“Well, it does work best when it’s hard, although I’m willing to work with it when it’s soft. It’s just not as much fun.”
“Night, Boots,” he said, chuckling. “Sleep tight.”
I’d rather sleep nightmare-free. I hung up and leaned against the wall next to the door, staring out across the heavily shadowed yard. A cloud that had been covering the moon moved on, the shadows becoming more defined.
Something moved in the semi-darkness near the back of Aunt Zoe’s glass workshop, something low to the ground.
My breath caught. What in the hell was that?
My imagination raced to answer, picturing something crawling toward me—an albino with a barbed hook, a zombie with blood-covered jaws, a killer with a burlap sack over his head. I wanted to look away, but my eyes downright refused.
Get inside!
I fumbled behind me for the doorknob, finally catching hold of it, and stumbled inside. Locking the door behind me, I shut off the kitchen light. Then I put my ear to the crack, listening for the sound of footfalls, breathing, moaning, scratching, anything.
I heard nothing.
My breath rattled in and out of my throat.
I pulled the curtain back an inch and peeked out the back door.
I saw nothing, only shadows.
Maybe I’d imagined the whole thing. All of these ghosts and zombies were starting to mess with my head.
I kept watching. The shadows grew thicker as another thin cloud filtered the moonlight. When the cloud moved on, the shadows grew more defined again.
Then I saw it move again, this time on the other side of the workshop, near the door. I pressed my nose against the glass, squinting. Blood rushed in my ears.
Something grabbed my arm. “Mom, what—”
I screamed.
Addy screamed back at me as my knees gave out and I slid to the floor.
Harvey came busting into the kitchen and hit the lights. “What the hell is going on out here?”
I blinked up at his grizzled face. “I saw something out by Aunt Zoe’s workshop.”
He grabbed a frying pan off the rack and a flashlight from the cupboard over the fridge next to the liquor. Yanking open the back door, he stormed out into the night.
“Harvey, wait!” I scrambled to my feet and peered out after him through a crack in the door.
“Well, I’ll be a son of a gun,” he said, standing on the bottom porch step. “You did see something.”
I tucked Addy behind me. “What is it?”
He disappeared into the yard, returning a moment later with Elvis tucked under his arm. A big grin hung on his cheeks. “Looks like an attack of the killer chicken.”
I closed my eyes and rested my head back against the wall. Christ, I was losing it. What happened to the good ol’ days a couple of months ago when a shadow was just a shadow, nothing more?
“You okay, Mom?” Addy asked, touching my forehead with her cool palm, checking my temperature.
“No. I’m definitely, one hundred percent NOT okay.” I opened the cupboard above the fridge and grabbed the half-empty bottle of tequila.
Chapter Twenty-One
Sunday, September 9th
The world had turned on its side.
No, wait, it was just me. I lifted my head off my pillow long enough to groan and let it fall back down.
What was wrong with me?
My gaze darted around the room, landing on the bottle of tequila on my nightstand. Make that the three-quarters-empty bottle of tequila.
Oh, my God, what had I done?
Then I remembered—that damned chicken clucking around in the shadows, scaring the crap out of me. I’d taken the bottle of tequila to my room to calm my nerves, worrying about how to keep my kids safe in a world with creepy ghosts, killer albinos, and body-dumping zombies. After a few swigs too many, followed by some texts to Doc and someone else I couldn’t remember—maybe Natalie—I’d passed out.
I groaned. Nice irony. So much for being a great protector. Good thing Harvey and his shotgun were practically living here now.
I pushed myself up to a sitting position, sat there for several seconds while the room spun and rippled, and then stumbled to the bathroom where I hugged the toilet for a bit. Brushing my teeth had me bending over the toilet again, so I settled for a swish of minty mouthwash and then slid my shoulder against the wall for support all of the way back to my bedroom.
A look at the clock made me groan again. Dang, I needed to get into the office. I had some paperwork to do, Jeff Wymond’s and Cooper’s places to show to some new clients, my boyfriend’s ex-girlfriend to call, and one frustrating Abe Lincoln doppelganger to track down.
But my bed looked so soft.
As if on cue, a small chicken feather, more like a tuft of down, floated in from who knew where, landing gently on my quilt.
Just five more minutes, I thought as I fell face-first onto the bed. Make it ten, I told my internal alarm keeper …
… I blinked awake, the soundtrack of screams and evil laughter and pain-laden moans that had been playing in my head stopped in an instant, leaving my ears throbbing.
I sat up, swallowed another bout of nausea, and then glanced at the clock.
“Oh, crap,” I whispered, blinking at the number eleven. My internal alarm keeper was fired! I needed to dive into a phone booth and turn into Superwoman, because I had a client showing up at my desk at noon. I stood up and immediately sat back down.
Okay, maybe I should call first and then hurry second.
I grabbed my cell phone from the nightstand. Five voicemails waited for me, four of them from Mona, one from Doc.
Damn, damn, damn!
I called Mona’s number and got her voicemail. “Hi, Mona. I’m sorry I didn’t call in sooner, but I was … uh … ill this morning. Give me a call back when you have a moment. I’ll be there soon; I just need to shower first.”
Forty-five minutes and two ibuprofen later, I dropped my purse on my desk and practiced smiling at the empty chairs across from me. It felt stiff on my face, but doable.
“Blondie!” Ray’s voice boomed behind me, inspiring a bolt of pain to ricochet through my skull, leaving me cringing. “So nice of you to grace us with your presence today.”
Mona had passed me in the parking lot on the way to meet a client for lunch, leaving the office empty at the moment except for Ray and me. I didn’t even try to hold my tongue. “Kiss off, jackass.”
Chuckling, he dropped into his chair and kicked his Tony Lamas onto his desk. “You know, Blondie, you and I haven’t really had the chance to talk about that night at Mudder Brothers, have we?”
His cologne burned the back of my throat. Ray gave Stetson cologne a bad rap. Someone from the manufacturer should sue him for sullying their reputation.
“What’s to talk about?” Besides, of course, my suspicions that Ray was running
some kind of contraband for the late George Mudder under Cooper’s supervision—although crates loaded with bottles of mead didn’t really seem like contraband.
“Unless you want to discuss how I saved your bacon,” I said, referring to when I’d found him tied bare-assed naked to an autopsy table. “Yet you refuse to acknowledge that fact and show me the respect I deserve for saving you from a possible live dissection demonstration.”
“Respect you deserve?” he scoffed. “For what? You left me strapped down and you ran away screaming.”
“First of all, I wasn’t screaming.” Well, not aloud anyway. “Second, I left you strapped down because we had company, remember?” As in a huge albino with a barbed hook in his coat pocket who wasn’t there to sell me Tupperware. “If I hadn’t come along, you’d be just another file in Cooper’s caseload.”
“If you hadn’t started nosing into what we were up to in the first place, I wouldn’t have even been on that autopsy table.”
I glared at his sneer. “So, it’s my fault they figured out you were a nark?”
“Yes.”
“How can you possibly blame your inadequacies as an undercover informant on me?”
“Because you distracted me.”
“What?”
“I knew you were spying on me, trying to find something you could exploit to fuck with my job.”
Well, he had me there. I had wanted to kick his I’m-the-king-of-Deadwood arrogant ass right off the mountain. But he’d have to twist my arm for me to own up to that right now.
“Christ, Ray. You’re such a narcissist that you can’t even take ownership for your own screw up.” I dug through my purse for a tube of lip gloss, trying to act like I was bored with our conversation. “What were you doing running contraband for George Mudder anyway?”
“My actions are still none of your business.”
Cooper must have schooled him on that response. “Don’t tell me you were doing it for the good of the community …” I continued as if he hadn’t parroted my favorite detective, pulling the lip gloss from my bag. Then a thought struck me. “Unless this was some kind of community service you had to do after getting caught breaking the law.”
His eyes narrowed, his mouth wrinkling into an ugly scowl.
“That’s it! You screwed up somewhere along the line and Cooper busted you.” I rubbed my lips together. “The question is, was the screw up from some illegal dealings with George Mudder, like laundering money or running drugs? Did Cooper give you the chance to be a snitch and take down some bad guys?”
“You’ve been watching too much TV.”
“Yeah? Then why is your eye twitching?” I asked.
“Good try, Blondie.”
“No, seriously, your eye is twitching.” Undoubtedly because I was hitting the mark.
He touched the corner of his eye.
Pulling a small makeup mirror from my desk, I checked my lip gloss. “I’m beginning to wonder if I was wrong about what I told Detective Cooper.”
“About what?”
“You and Jane.”
“What about us?” His voice sounded downright snarly.
I placed the mirror back in my drawer and shut it, and then faced him. “That she had sex with you out of desperation.”
His feet hit the floor with a thud. He leaned forward, his nostrils flared. “You shut your mouth now, little girl, before I shut it for you.”
Oh, plucked a raw nerve there, did I? I extended my claws and strummed it again. “Now I’m beginning to wonder if she’d caught onto George’s and your game. Maybe someone threatened to kill her if she didn’t have sex with you.” I highly doubted Jane had been blackmailed into sex, but I couldn’t resist adding more insult while injuring Ray’s big, fat ego.
His fists clenched, his face darkening to a ruddy shade.
I grabbed my stapler in case he lunged. “There were certainly plenty of empty liquor bottles in her office the next morning. For the life of me, I haven’t been able to think of a reason she would allow you anywhere near her even if she was drunk as hell,” that was the honest truth, “but blackmail makes complete sense.”
I purposely kept quiet about Jane’s admission that she was lonely, and how she’d given it up to Ray because of her momentary need to feel attractive and wanted again.
“I said shut your fucking mouth, you little cunt.”
“Ah, there’s the Ray I know and love.”
He pushed to his feet, all bristle and hate.
“What happened, Ray? Did she get caught up in your mess and wind up at the bottom of the Open Cut because of it?”
Was there an albino or two mixed up in this?
He took a step toward me. “I should wring your scrawny ne—”
The bell over the front door jingled.
“Lucky girl, Blondie,” he said through clenched teeth. “Saved by the bell.”
He turned, plastering a big schmoozing smile on his over-tanned face. “Howdy, folks. If you’re looking for your dream house, you’ve come to the right place.”
Back off, dickhead.
I waved my new clients over to the chairs opposite my desk, and then squeezed my trembling hands together in my lap. “It’s good to see you both again. Would you like some coffee or tea?”
Or a house in Central City with a brand-spanking new garage roof?
* * *
My day had started off with my hugging the toilet and ended with my spanking the chicken.
Well, I never actually made contact with Elvis’s butt, since she outran me when I chased her out of my bedroom and down the stairs. But the intention was there after finding her yet again roosting in my closet.
The doorbell rang as I hit the bottom step. “I’ll get it,” I yelled to Aunt Zoe, who was still clanging around in the kitchen long after supper was over. I figured tonight’s ringer had to be Harvey. He’d left a message with Layne before I got home saying he’d be over later this evening after his hot date.
“So, did you get to second base?” I asked as I opened the door.
Cooper stared back at me through the screen door. “I don’t believe that’s any of your business, Parker,” he answered.
My neck warmed. “I thought you were your uncle.”
“You keep up on my uncle’s sex life, do you?”
“No, your uncle won’t shut up about his sex life. I don’t have much choice without earplugs.”
“Are you going to let me inside?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Are you going to arrest me?”
“No, I’ve done that once this week. I don’t want the thrill of it to get old too fast.”
“Funny man. I’m beginning to understand why your shirts are full of bullet holes. Why have you decided to grace my front porch with your presence this evening, Detective?”
“I’m not going to talk to you through a screen door.”
“Fine.” I grabbed my sweat jacket off the coat tree next to the door and stepped outside, closing the door behind me. “So, what have I done now?”
“What were you doing at the Lead library today?”
My mouth fell open. How did he know I was there? I hadn’t even told Doc earlier on the phone about my visit to Lead’s library, which just so happened to sit conveniently next to the opera house. “Are you having me followed?”
“No, one of the guys from the station was in there visiting his wife who volunteers as an assistant librarian.”
“His wife is an assistant librarian?” Hmmmm.
Cooper gave a nod.
My head filled with questions, which I kept to myself. Was she the “librarian” Prudence wanted me to bring to her? If so, why? Was she into the occult like Lila and Millie had been? And if that were the case, could her husband have sneaked her into the evidence room while I was in jail and allowed her to plant that note in my purse?
Okay, so that sounded borderline nutty, but so did a ghost ordering me to bring her a librarian as if she were ordering tiramisu for dessert. My
logical brain had left the building after Doc had started being used like a karaoke microphone.
“My reason for hanging out in the library is none of your business.” I repeated his favorite line back to him.
His shoulders and jaw stiffened in one grunt. “Excuse me?”
I stood solid under the intensity of his squint. “You heard me.”
For a moment, I wondered if I should have grabbed Layne’s boxing gloves before joining Cooper on the porch, because it certainly looked like we might come to blows.
“You’re right,” he said, surprising me. He squeezed the bridge of his nose above the swollen area, grimacing. Then he dropped his hand and when he looked at me, all of the rough ridges and sharp angles on his face had softened. “But here’s the deal, Parker. Over the last few months, I’ve had citizens getting murdered and others going missing, some finding body parts hanging in trees, and some telling me bizarre stories about albinos and zombies.”
Shivering in the cool night air, I found myself wishing I’d had no part in the farce. “Did you ever figure out whose foot that was?” I asked, referring to the severed foot Layne had found back in July, hanging from a tree with a sprig of mistletoe stapled to the toe.
“Not yet, but I have a few theories.”
“What are they?”
“Not your business,” he answered. “Anyway, more often than not, you’re connected to these events, one way or another. Or—” he held up his hand when I started to object. “Or you seem to have information about things that you shouldn’t, and I don’t understand how you know what you know, but you do.”
Behind him, a black racy Jaguar with dark tinted windows pulled into Miss Geary’s drive. Her visitor honked twice and the garage door opened for the sports car to rumble inside. I tried to peek around Cooper to see who had taken Harvey’s place enjoying Miss Geary’s sweet tarts, but Cooper stepped into my line of sight, making me focus on him.
“Tonight I came here to find out why you were at the library today, because the off-duty officer who saw you said that while you pretended to be reading a magazine, you were staring at his wife and the other librarian more than seemed normal. This leads me to think you have yet again stumbled onto some piece of information. Something I need to know regarding one of the many open case files sitting on my desk that the chief of police keeps breathing down my neck to solve.”