by Alyssa Day
Jack grinned smugly at Uncle Mike. “Thank you, Mrs. Callahan. You were always my favorite person in town.”
She beamed. “I bet you could eat some eggs too, couldn’t you? I’ll just make some eggs and sausage. A man needs protein for breakfast.”
“Maybe some tuna fish for the kitty,” I muttered, snatching the last doughnut and taking a big bite when I saw Jack reaching for it.
He shook his head sadly. “Poor Owen.”
I almost choked.
Uncle Mike stared at his wife in outrage. “A man needs protein? You made me eat oatmeal!”
It was his turn for a shoulder pat. “It’s better for your heart, dear. But you can have some eggs and sausage too, since I’m making it.”
I raised my hand, and Aunt Ruby laughed. “Yes, yes, everybody gets eggs.”
“I’ll help,” I said, but she shook her head.
“I’ve got this. Why don’t you tell us what happened?”
She started pulling out pans, and I told them about finding Chantal. Jack added in bits and pieces from his point of view. Uncle Mike’s face turned more and more grim, and Aunt Ruby sighed a lot and murmured “that poor girl” and “I just don’t understand what the world is coming to” while she cooked.
“It doesn’t make sense to me,” I concluded. “Why would anybody shoot Chantal? I didn’t know her well, but she seemed like a nice person.”
“She was a sweet girl. Never complained about stocking the shelves when I was filling in as cashier,” Aunt Ruby said, plating the food and placing steaming hot breakfasts in front of us.
I looked at mine, too full of doughnuts and regret to be hungry. “Still, somebody hated her or got mad enough at her to kill her. Not to be casual about death, but we all know that it happens. Especially when people have been drinking a lot. But why bring her to the pawnshop?”
Jack thanked Aunt Ruby and took a deep whiff of his heaping mound of eggs and sausage with obvious and deep appreciation. “I cannot tell you when I last had a home-cooked breakfast. Thank you so much, ma’am.”
Aunt Ruby’s face lit up. “You’re very welcome. And call me Ruby.”
Jack grinned. “Yes, ma’am.”
Uncle Mike looked troubled. “It’s too much like what happened to Jeremiah to be a coincidence. And anyway, I don’t much believe in coincidences, especially when it comes to something like this.”
Aunt Ruby poured herself another cup of coffee and sat down, nodding absently when I thanked her for cooking. “I don’t like anything about it, coincidence or not. It makes me worry that Tess might be in danger.”
I paused with a forkful of eggs halfway to my mouth. That possibility had never occurred to me. But if a killer had some kind of sick fixation on the pawnshop…
“Tess won’t be in danger,” Jack said, his voice hard. “I’ll make sure of that.”
Uncle Mike’s head popped up from where he was bent over his breakfast, inhaling sausage like he was afraid Aunt Ruby would change her mind any second and take it away from him. He eyed Jack with suspicion. “Right. For how long? The week or two until you settle up details about your uncle’s estate and close the P.I. firm? And then the people you managed to piss off along the way come after her twice as hard.”
I dropped my fork on my plate. “Maybe you could quit talking about me like I’m not in the room, Uncle Mike. I don’t need Jack to take care of me. I am perfectly capable of taking care of myself, just like you raised me to be. I can change a tire, split wood for the fire, and shoot a gun.”
Uncle Mike snorted. “You can shoot a gun. You just can’t hit anything you aim at.”
Aunt Ruby pointed a finger at him. “Enough of that. We have more than enough people around here carrying guns without you encouraging Tess to arm herself. Anyway, guns won’t do much good against a lot of our residents, like the vampires or the witches or—no offense, Jack—the shifters.”
“If we had a killer vampire on the loose, we wouldn’t have gunshot victims who still had blood in them,” Uncle Mike replied.
“Two things,” Jack said. “First, I’m not going anywhere until we figure this out. Second, what do you mean, the P.I. firm? What P.I. firm?”
We all stared at him.
“Jeremiah’s P.I. firm,” I said slowly. “He started it about five or six years ago. We thought it was just a hobby, but he occasionally took on clients. He knew somebody who knew somebody, so he got a waiver for the required two-year apprenticeship period, not that state laws apply in Dead End, anyway. Didn’t he tell you about it?”
Jack flinched like I’d punched him. “No, he did not. And you didn’t think to mention this before? It seems like a pretty obvious place to start looking for people who might be holding a grudge or have reason to want my uncle dead.”
Aunt Ruby smiled and shook her head. “No. It was nothing like that. I typed up his files for him. He only ever handled about five cases, total, in six years, and the most dangerous one was when Mrs. Quindlen kept losing her cats. Jeremiah found out that Bubba McKee’s pet boa constrictor was eating them.”
I shuddered, thinking of Lou.
Jack stood up and took his empty plate to the sink, then collected mine and Uncle Mike’s too. Uncle Mike raised his eyebrows at me.
“He tried to do dishes at my place last night,” I admitted.
“He is a nice southern boy at heart,” Aunt Ruby said, smiling, and I rolled my eyes again.
Jack grinned at me and then sat back down. “I know history and collecting were Jeremiah’s true loves. The pawnshop made sense. But why a P.I. firm? It’s weird. I got a P.I. license several years ago, as part of an undercover job I was doing, and I wrote to Jeremiah about it. But he never told me about this.”
Uncle Mike and Aunt Ruby traded glances, and then she reached over and patted Jack’s hand. “He did it for you, of course. He was hoping you would eventually get tired of all your roaming around and come home, and he wanted you to have something to settle into.”
Jack’s face was a study in confusion. “But—”
“It’s incorporated as Tiger’s Eye Investigations,” she said gently. “He did it for you.”
Jack blinked, hard, several times and then he abruptly stood up and strode out of the room, leaving Uncle Mike and Aunt Ruby staring at me in surprise.
“He just found out about Jeremiah’s death a month ago,” I told them. “He hasn’t had half a year to mourn and move on, like we have. And for whatever reason, Mr. Chen didn’t tell him that Jeremiah was murdered, so Jack didn’t know that until yesterday. This must be really hard on him.”
Aunt Ruby tilted her head toward the doorway. “Go.”
Uncle Mike started to protest, but she stared him down. Aunt Ruby was soft and nurturing on the outside, but she had an inner core of solid steel and made sure to remind us of it whenever we forgot.
“Go,” she repeated.
I went.
*
I found him in the pasture, standing near the fence and feeding Bonnie Jo an apple that he must have taken from the bag in the barn. She nickered a greeting to me, and I stroked her silky neck.
“I’m sorry,” I said, feeling inadequate, but not knowing what else to say. “I miss him too.”
“It’s just so damn wrong. I should have been here to protect him. I spent most of the past ten years protecting the whole damn country, but I couldn’t protect the one man who meant the most to me.”
Bonnie Jo tossed her head and ambled off.
“I remember when she used to canter,” I said, watching her. “She’s too old to do any running anymore, but I don’t blame myself for that.”
A muscle in Jack’s jaw clenched. “Is that some kind of life lesson you’re trying to teach me? Jeremiah wasn’t a horse to be put to pasture. He was murdered in the prime of his life.”
“And you couldn’t have done anything about it, even if you’d been here. It’s not like you would have been with him twenty-four hours a day. I found him when I opened the s
hop in the morning. Would you have driven him to work every day to keep him safe from an unknown danger we had no idea about?”
He didn’t look at me, but his shoulders relaxed a little bit, and he sighed. “No. You’re right. I know you’re right. But it doesn’t matter.”
“And it doesn’t make it hurt any less,” I said, shoving my hands in my jacket pockets to keep them warm. “I get that, but he loved you. He wouldn’t want you to blame yourself.”
Jack suddenly snapped his gaze back to me. “Why wasn’t she wearing a jacket?”
“What?”
“Chantal. She was just wearing a tank top, and it was cool that night, right?”
“Yeah, it was cold. You think that her killer kept her jacket?” I felt excited and a little nauseated. Was this our first clue? “Or maybe it’s still at the crime scene?”
He shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe she left it at the bar, or wherever she was. Maybe she didn’t wear it that night. Do you think your friend Deputy Gonzalez will tell us what they find out about time of death?”
“I don’t know. She didn’t tell me much about the investigation when Jeremiah died, but then again, I didn’t try to be part of it. I trusted them to do their job while I took care of the shop and his house and the…things.” I didn’t want to bring up the funeral. We hadn’t known where Jack was or how to reach him, so he hadn’t been here to say a final goodbye. Just thinking about it made me realize that I did have something I could do for Jack that might help.
“Would you like to go visit his grave?”
Jack’s eyes darkened. “Later. When I can bring him justice. For now, I need to get back to my bike so I can get some things done. Can you give me a ride back to the bakery?”
“Sure. Let me go say goodbye.”
Aunt Ruby, who had a keenly honed ability to peek out of windows without being seen, popped out onto the porch when we started back up to the house. “Do you want to come in and have some more coffee?”
“No, ma’am, but thank you again for the amazing breakfast and the hospitality.” Jack flashed a smile that was so charming it nearly blinded me, and Aunt Ruby all but fluttered.
“Oh boy,” I muttered, before bounding up the stairs to give Aunt Ruby a hug. Uncle Mike stepped out of the house, and I hugged him too.
“Stop worrying so much,” I whispered in his ear. “I promise to be careful.”
“You better be.” He hugged me back and then frowned at Jack. “You be careful.”
Jack nodded. “Yes, sir. Careful is my middle name.”
“I doubt it,” Uncle Mike said dryly.
Jack’s face took on a dangerous cast. “You’re right. But the person who killed my uncle needs to be careful, because I’m coming for him.”
“That’s what I’m worried about,” Uncle Mike said, and then he stood on the porch and watched us leave. He was still frowning when I glanced back at him in the mirror.
Jack wasn’t in a talkative mood, and we drove along in silence for a while.
“The visions,” Jack said abruptly, when we were almost to town. “Does it happen every time you touch a person? I noticed you had no problem touching Mike and Ruby.”
I glanced at him, startled. “No. Once and done. Also, it doesn’t happen with everyone, and there’s no rhyme nor reason as to who or why, as far as I can tell. When the witches came out after Jeremiah was killed to do that magical resonance thing to see if they could pick up any trace of magic—”
“What? They performed magical resonance testing at the shop? You didn’t tell me that.”
“I’ve been a little busy,” I said dryly. “They didn’t find anything, anyway, and Olga Kowalski came herself, even though the sheriff didn’t ask her to do it. It was a long shot. If a witch or other magic user had been involved, why would Jeremiah have been shot? They wouldn’t need guns to kill anybody.”
“Olga Kowalski? Any relation to Walt and Hank? They were idiots. Bruisers on the football team, but idiots,” said Jack, the former quarterback for the Dead End Manatees, a team name that was only slightly more unfortunate than our losing record. We’d had one brilliant year, until somebody’d figured out that one of the tight ends had enchanted the footballs, but that had been after my high school years.
“They’re her sons. Olga is the local coven leader, or high priestess, I think they call it, and she’s crazy powerful. If anybody could pick up the slightest traces of someone using magic on Jeremiah, it would have been her. But it was just an ordinary shooting.”
“Right. A drifter. You told me.” Jack shook his head. “Even if I’d been inclined to believe it before, I wouldn’t believe it now.”
“Anyway, she said that she didn’t know how to explain the random nature of when my visions strike. Just another one of the weird things we have to put up with these days, I guess.” I shrugged, trying to look nonchalant, but I doubted he was fooled.
I pulled up outside of the bakery, next to Jack’s bike but not too close. The last thing I needed was to back up and run him over when I was leaving and—sadly—it wasn’t out of the range of possibility for me and my lack of spatial skills. “You know, the keys to Jeremiah’s truck are in the drawer next to the sink in his kitchen, if you want to drive that. It’s yours too. It has pretty good gas mileage, and it’s not too old. It’s an F-150. Jeremiah shared Uncle Mike’s car prejudices.”
He laughed. “I know. You do realize I drive a Harley instead of a foreign bike? It’s ingrained in the blood if you’re a man in Black Cypress County.”
“Not just the men,” I said, with a rueful grin. “I’ve been lusting after a sweet little Ford Mustang for years.”
“Does the famous Owen know about all of these dark lusts his girlfriend harbors?” Jack mockingly started counting on his fingers. “Doughnuts, fast cars, and dare I hope, fast men?”
“Not on your life, pretty boy. Get out of my car and don’t darken my door again until you have an actual, you know, plan or something. I have to get to work.”
He raised his hands in apparent defeat, a ploy I didn’t fall for one bit, not for a second. “Whatever you say, boss. Your wish is my command.”
He shut the car door behind him, leaving me steaming behind the wheel. I pushed the button to lower the passenger window and called out to him. “What do you mean by that? I’m not your boss.”
“That’s not how I see it. We share the pawnshop, which I know nothing about, so until you teach me, and I get up to speed, you’ll be my boss.” He gave me a shark-like grin and put on his helmet. “I hope I can be teacher’s pet.”
With that, he peeled out of the lot, leaving me fuming, and leaving way too many Dead Enders staring at me speculatively. I didn’t even want to go in the bakery and get round two of doughnuts, which goes to show how rattled he had me.
Jerk.
Mrs. Quindlen toddled over from where she’d been putting cake boxes into the back of her Buick for her granddaughter’s baby shower. “Who was that?”
“That’s Jack Shepherd, Jeremiah’s nephew, Mrs. Q. Is everything ready for the party?” They’d invited me, but I had to work, since Eleanor couldn’t manage the afternoon shift today. A grandkid had to go to the dentist or something.
“Yes, and you get a chance, you stop by, you hear? I’ll put a piece of cake by for you. And you bring your hot new man, he got you so flustered—whoo-hoo!” Mrs. Quindlen’s Cajun accent got thicker when she was excited, apparently.
“He’s not—we don’t—oh, never mind.”
“You don’t want that hot burnin’ piece of man, you send him my way, okay? I still got it.”
I tried to keep from wondering what it she was referring to. Gout? Varicose veins? Depends?
I thought about Jack for a minute. I could kind of see the Depends.
Argh!
I couldn’t yell at myself while Mrs. Quindlen was still staring at me with such interest, so I did the next best thing. I smiled politely and excused myself, and then I drove to the shop, parked, and pr
oceeded to bang my head against the steering wheel a few times. I had a feeling that I was going to be in constant danger from self-inflicted concussion if Jack kept hanging around Dead End and me.
I should look at the bright side. Maybe I could blame my lack of parking skills on head injury.
Chapter Seven
Eleanor was with a customer when I walked into the shop. Jeremiah had always said that Eleanor was our secret weapon. She was in her early sixties, not very tall, and she looked like everybody’s favorite next-door neighbor. She was smart, one of the nicest people on the planet, and the best negotiator I’d ever seen. While I focused on profit margins and averages, and Jeremiah had focused on what he coveted with his collector’s eye, Eleanor saw it as a hugely exciting game to get the best possible deal on every single item that came into the pawnshop.
Not in a shady or dishonest way, just in a way that made every transaction into a high-stakes poker game for her. We made sure to treat our customers fairly, both because it was the right thing to do and because a pawnshop that cheated people would never survive. Eleanor’s customers, in fact, loved her so much that they came back over and over. She had a way of making the simple act of pawning the family guitar until after payday seem like a bit of fun and excitement in an otherwise humdrum day.
This morning, though, she was talking to a man I’d never seen before. He turned to look at me when the little bell over the door tinkled, and his eyes narrowed.
“You are the one who discovered the body?” His accent was definitely not from around here.
I took a quick inventory of the stranger, who was totally hot. Black hair, rich brown eyes, and deep caramel skin. Okay, that didn’t exactly help identify him.
Suit too expensive to wear to a pawnshop? Check. Shoes way too nice and shiny for any kind of local or state law enforcement? Check. Expression too open and honest for a journalist? Check. Or maybe that last one was just my own personal prejudice. I’d hated reporters ever since the incident with Annabel Yorgenson. Somehow, that story had made its way onto the CNN website, and I’d been a seven-day wonder. Everyone in town had gone into overdrive, trying to portray Dead End as a normal, sleepy, southern town to the press who’d bothered to come in person. We’d succeeded, mostly, but there were some who were still ticked off at me about the whole thing.