by Stacey Jay
“Is that a carrot?” Hitch asks.
“Or a sweet potato,” I mutter. “Gimpy! Here!” I point to the ground at my feet.
“I didn’t think cats ate vegetables.”
“I’m not sure he’s eating it.” As if to emphasize my point, Gimpy hitches his arthritic leg around the carrot-tater and rolls through the dirt, coming to a stop in a row of spinach, where he proceeds to writhe obscenely. “Even if he is, at least it’s not jewelry. Or a fishing lure. Or my bra.”
“Is that what the feminists are doing with their bras these days?” Hitch pokes me in the side with a finger that I brush away with a stabby elbow. I refuse to joke with someone occupying such a prominent place on my shit list.
By the time I came out of my powwow-with-fairy/shower, Hitch had hidden the shots. He says they’re in my house, but that no one, including me, will be able to find them, and that we’re good to “stick a pin” in that conversation for a while.
Which made me want to stick a pin in him. A sharp pin.
Unless I can read Hitch’s mind and figure out where he stashed those shots, I’m going to have to tell Tucker that I’ve lost them. Call me crazy, but I don’t think he’s going to be cool and slip me a few extras behind the Big Man’s back. Not after he warned me ten jillion times to keep them safe and secret.
No. I can’t ask Tucker. If it comes down to it, I’ll have to tie Hitch up and stab him with knives until he tells me where the shots are. Or pins . . .
“Gimpy, come on. Kitty, kitty,” I call, but Gimpy only rolls on his back and hugs the large carrot/skinny potato between his legs, licking it like he’s found his soul mate. I resist the urge to flip him off—the Hernandez family next door has kids under the age of obscene-gesture-viewing who could be peeking out a window—and stomp off down Perimeter Road Five. It’s already hot as hell. My head can’t handle standing around in the sun yelling at my stupid cat. Even in light olive cargo pants and my thinnest brown tank top, I’m already starting to sweat.
“You’re going to leave him there?” Hitch catches up to me on the dirt path.
There’s no sidewalk here. The perimeter roads were created right after the emergence, lanes of iron-fortified cabins with oversized backyards for families with gardening skills. The city council hoped these gardens would provide the town with food we weren’t sure we’d be getting from the outside. The yards are almost an acre each, with a dirt foot path weaving around the edges. Sometimes there’s no path, and we have to pick our way over rock-lined gardens.
“It looked like he was doing some damage,” Hitch adds. For a man with real problems, he’s awfully worried about my cat.
“I’ll send some money to pay for what he eats,” I say. “But he’s probably safer in their garden than at my house. You’re not the only person who likes to drop in unexpectedly, and some of my visitors aren’t as relatively harmless.”
“Like who?”
“You wouldn’t believe me. And I can’t tell you, anyway, so . . .” I sigh, feeling the weight of the day drag at my feet. So many pieces have to fall into place before tomorrow. If they don’t, I’ll have to warn my friends about the danger of a fairy attack, kidnap Deedee from Sweet Haven, and head north. I can’t have any more blood on my hands, especially innocent blood. My part in the deaths of Libby and James is sufficiently haunting, and they were murderers who deserved to die.
I sigh again, and wish I’d tucked more Tylenol in my purse. The two pills I popped before Hitch and I left the house aren’t going to last long. I can already feel the headache creeping up the back of my neck.
“You okay?” Hitch asks.
“Peachy.”
Hitch’s fingers brush my hand. “Stay at the bed-and-breakfast tonight. The room across from mine is empty. I’ll feel better if I can keep an eye on you.”
Before I can tell him what a bad idea that is, or explain that I’m already risking severe torment from Fernando for walking Hitch into the lobby of the B and B to get his suit, my phone buzzes. I wiggle it out of the pocket of my cargo pants—expecting Cane or maybe Fern if he’s up early and eager to yell at me for standing him up—but the number isn’t one I recognize.
I stop at the end of the path and edge into the shade of an oak at the corner of Perimeter Five and the far end of Railroad. The First and Last Chance Flophouse is catty-corner across the street, and I don’t want anyone overhearing this conversation who doesn’t have to.
What if it’s Tucker or the Big Man? What if they saw Hitch in my house with his hands all over their precious, secret shots, and are calling to tell me to expect a bullet to the brain in the next few seconds? Big Man, at least, would do something like that. He likes to savor a victim’s fear before he kills them.
“What’s wrong?” Hitch asks.
I shake my head and turn my back on him, hoping he’ll get the hint and give me some privacy. With a tremble in my finger, I hit the green button. “Hello?” My voice is tremblier than my hands.
“Hey. What’s up?” I recognize the sleepy—or stoned—voice and my next breath comes easier.
“Hey, Lance. Nothing much,” I say. “Heading to breakfast. Then I figure I’ll go home and change into my supersecret-life-of-crime clothes, make sure I’m ready for any deliveries that might need to be made.”
He makes a snuffling sound that could be a laugh. “You’re confident.”
“I am. You’re too smart to let a chance like me go to waste. Did you talk to Jose about letting me in on the action?”
“Yeah, he wasn’t into it at first, but I made him see the light. We can move more product if we have someone else doing deliveries while we organize the warehouse. But here’s the thing . . .”
“I don’t like ‘things.’”
He snuffles again. “Jose wants to start you out at ten percent.”
“Ten percent?” It’s easy to sound pissed off. I’m obviously not doing this for the money, but still—they expect me to risk my life for ten measly percent? “That’s bullshit, Lance.”
“You can earn your way up to more. After you prove yourself. And if you really need the money . . .”
I grunt. “It still sucks.” I pause, as if weighing the offer. “But I guess I can live with it for a while. How long am I going to be at ten percent?”
“I don’t know . . .” There’s a scratching sound and I hear a muffled Lance mumbling to someone else. They go back and forth, and finally Lance comes back on the line. “Twenty deliveries.”
“Twenty?! Fuck Jose in his cheap pink asshole. Five. I’ll do five deliveries at ten percent, then you bump me up to twenty five.” Lance makes a skeptical sound. “Or you keep doing the face-to-face work with scary people on your own. I have other options.”
Hitch, who has circled around and is hovering uncomfortably close, bulges his eyes. He knows I have directions to the cave—allegedly obtained from a secret source I met late last night—but he still thinks we should meet the person delivering the supplies. I’m counting on the fact that he’ll be on his way back to New Orleans before that meeting happens, but he can’t know that.
I pat his arm and turn my back on him again. If I’m too eager to take a crappy deal, it’s only going to make these guys suspicious. “That’s my final offer. Take it or leave it.”
“We’ll take it. Five jobs is fair,” Lance says, triggering some mumbling in the background. But it isn’t angry mumbling, and I get the feeling that Jose would have agreed to 25 percent from job one if I’d pushed harder. “There’s a delivery today.”
Great. Today. It had to be today.
“You ready to jump in and get your feet dirty?” Lance asks.
“I’m always willing to jump in and get my feet dirty. Or my hands dirty and my feet wet, what have you.” Another sound from the background, a real laugh this time. I’m guessing Jose is listening in on another line. “What time do you want me out there?”
“Two o’clock. We’ll have the load ready. Bring your truck. It’s a big one.”
“Where am I taking the stuff?” I lower my voice as the front door to the flophouse swings open. Hitch and I are still pretty far away, but there’s no need to take chances. “How far from the—”
“We’ll have a map when you get here.”
“Can you at least tell me how long it will . . .” Words escape me as I get an eyeful of the people stumbling out Fernando’s front door. One of them is Tucker.
This would be enough to short-circuit my brain—what’s he doing at Fernando’s? why isn’t he heeding my warning to stay away from my friends?—if he were alone. But he isn’t. He’s snuggled up to a blond woman, his manly arm looped around none other than Barbara Beauchamp.
Barbara Beauchamp, grandmother of the murdered Grace and mother of her murderers, Libby and James. Barbara doesn’t know that James was Grace’s father as well as her brother, but she knows that the children she loved were killers. She lost her entire family to violence in less than six weeks’ time. I know we all grieve in our own way, but the woman with the goofy smile and her hand straying down to get a handful of Tucker’s ass does not look like she’s grieving.
She looks like a cougar with a claw full of man meat.
“You there?” Lance asks.
“Yeah, I think the phone cut out for a second.” I force myself to pull it together and end this conversation before Tucker gets any closer. “One question: Is this delivery going to the woman from the tape? If so, I’m bringing my gun.”
“You should always bring your gun. But yeah, it’s her.”
It’s her. A fresh wave of pain flashes behind my eyes. “See you at two.”
I end the call as Tucker and Barbara stumble by on the sidewalk across the street. It’s not quite eight, but from the weave factor, I’m betting they’ve already had a few. For a moment I don’t think Tucker’s noticed me, but then he turns and lifts a hand. “Cousin! Morning!”
“Sure is.” I grit my teeth. Hitch takes a long look at me, before shifting his curious gaze to Tucker. I never introduced him to my family, but I did talk about them from time to time, and I never talked about a male cousin close to my age.
That’s because I don’t have one. All of my cousins are girls, a fact I think I mentioned to Hitch at some point. But whatever. The lies I’ll have to tell him will be worth it. I need a powwow with Tucker. Now.
“You got a second?” I shout. “I wanted to talk to you about that shed you were going to build.”
“Well . . . we’re kind of on our way somewhere important,” he calls back, a leer in his voice I’ve never heard before, a leer that leaves no doubt where he and Barbara are headed. He’s bound for Camellia Grove and some plantation-house sexy time with Barbara in her big brass bed.
My nose wrinkles. I don’t like the thought of Tucker rolling around with Barbara, and not just because she’s old enough to be his mother. Barbara has aged well and can afford all the lotions and creams and injections of deadly viruses that keep a middle-aged woman looking younger than she is. But she’s an elitist snob who’s always treated the people of this town as members of the servant class. I have no doubt she’s using Tucker.
But maybe he’s okay with that. Maybe he’ll sleep with anything with boobs—even if they’re fake and once nursed a child only a few years younger than he is—and I shouldn’t have been even a little flattered that he tried to get into my panties yesterday.
“It’ll only take a second.” I ignore a disapproving grunt from Hitch, who doesn’t realize that “building a shed” is code for “I’m in deep shit and need your help immediately.”
“If I don’t get a place to store that motorcycle, I’m going to go crazy.” I hit the word like a mallet upside a gong. “Really crazy.”
Tucker laughs, but he smells what I’m cooking. Tension creeps into his shoulders and he stands up straighter. “All right,” he drawls. “I guess I can spare a—”
Barbara interrupts him. Her whisper is too soft for me to hear, but I see her artificially plumped lips move. Tucker turns to whisper something back, but Barbara only gives a delicate shake of her head and fluffs her hair with pink-tipped claws. She doesn’t look my way, or give any sign that she’s aware there’s anyone else on the street.
Ever since it came out that her daughter tried to kill me with a shrimp muffin, the woman’s been giving me the cut direct. When I see her on the street, she sticks her nose in the air and turns around to walk in the opposite direction. As if I committed some unforgivable social faux pas by daring to be almost murdered. I never expected an apology—it isn’t completely her fault that she raised a homicidal maniac—but this blaming the victim crap is crap.
Tucker turns back to me, but makes no move toward my side of the street. “Let me shout at you later, Cousin. We’ve got an appointment. The massage therapists are coming at eight-thirty.”
Massage therapists? He’s blowing me off for a couples massage with Barbara Beauchamp?
“I’ve got work stuff lined up all day,” I say, hating how desperate I sound. “Are you sure you can’t—”
“I’ll call you.” Tucker lets Barbara tug him farther down the sidewalk. “Later, Red!”
“Suck it, Bubba,” I shout. Tucker laughs, making me want to race after him and punch him in his pretty face. “For real. You totally suck. I have a major, pressing need!”
But he doesn’t turn around. He’s that committed to being Barbara Beauchamp’s boy toy. I shake my head in disgust and imagine all the really mean things I’m going to say to him the next time we’re alone. Like the fact that he could have been born from the vagina he’s so hot to get into, and how totally gross and unprofessional it is to blow off a fellow magical person in need to get his daily dose of Frigid Rich Bitch with a superiority complex.
“Who’s that?” Hitch asks.
“My cousin,” I mumble.
“That man is not your cousin.”
I turn back to Hitch with what I hope is an innocent look. “He is. Unfortunately. On my mom’s side. A real loser jerk asshole. Don’t ever loan him money.”
“Wouldn’t think about it.” Hitch leans down to whisper in my ear. “I don’t like seeing you so eager for another man to build you a shed.”
Hm. Maybe my code did not go as unnoticed as I assumed. Time to lie a little harder. “I’m not eager for Tucker to do anything. I just don’t like seeing my cousin with a woman like Barbara.”
“I’m not stupid, Annabelle.” He turns his head. His lips brush my cheek, and my breath rushes out. “If that man’s your cousin, I’m your Aunt Floe.”
“That’s what women call their periods,” I say, angry that Hitch can still make my stomach do that fluttery thing, even when he’s topping the list of people I want to smack with a dead fish. Or at least he was until Tucker strutted down the sidewalk. “That’s disgusting.”
“I’m hurt,” he says, ignoring me. “You never gave me a nickname.”
“Your name is a nickname, Herbert Mitchell. It’s stupid to nickname a person who already goes by a nickname. And besides.” I step away and start across the street. “You never gave me one, either.”
“Red is hardly original,” Hitch calls after me.
I don’t respond. I keep gunning for Fernando’s front door, knowing Hitch will follow. He has to come get his suit and whatever else he needs to head out into the bayou. Until then, I’ll spend my time pumping Fern for information about what the hell is going on between Barbara and Tucker. Hopefully he’ll be hot enough for gossip that he’ll forgive me for standing him up last night because I need the dirt on those two. The sooner the better.
I’ve got a bad feeling Tucker’s relationship with Babs isn’t purely about physical pleasure and gigolo-type treats. I smell an agenda, an invisible-person agenda.
I push through the front door of the flophouse into the gently wafting air-conditioning and even gentler wafting jazz music. Except for a few men lounging on the lobby’s vintage couches, sipping free coffee out of a mishmash of midcentury chi
na cups, the place is pretty quiet.
Way too quiet for Fernando to be close by. I peek into the bar area, anyway, just in case, but Barry, one of the bar backs, is the only one there.
He stops chopping limes to shoot me a smile. “Hey, slut! What’s up?”
I try not to roll my eyes. It’s one thing for Fern to call me a slut, it’s quite another for him to spread the use of the moniker. Still, I know Barry doesn’t mean any harm. He’s a sweetheart and it’s not like he doesn’t get around. He’s a delicate, boyish type with skin so dark it’s nearly black, and a goatee so cute it makes me want to pinch his face and other gay men want to pinch all his other parts. He and Fernando had a brief thing a few years ago, but parted amicably. Fern isn’t the type to hold a grudge with his exes . . . only his best friends.
Ugh. I need to find him, and head the pout off at the pass.
“Fern around?” I ask Barry as Hitch breezes into the lobby. He spies me, but doesn’t stop to say hello. He starts up the stairs to his room, pulling his key from his back pocket. I’ve only got a minute or two.
“Um . . . yeah. Somewhere,” Barry says. “He’s not in the laundry room because I was just there, and he’s not in the kitchen because the limes were in the big fridge and I had to—”
“Never mind, I’ll find him.” I cut him off before he can complete his list of all the places Fern is not. The bed-and-breakfast isn’t that big, and I’m not afraid to head up to the top floor and breach Fern’s inner sanctum if I have to. It’ll be faster to start looking.
I head up the stairs, but change my mind on the third step and turn back around. It’s so early—barely eight o’clock. I can think of only two places Fern might be at this hour. He’s either upstairs in bed, or out on the back patio watering his flowers before it gets too hot. In the name of avoiding climbing unnecessary stairs, I slip through the lobby and out into the back garden.
The dark red tiles on the patio are already damp and the flowers in the planters dewy and dripping. Fern’s definitely been here, but maybe he—