The Baron Blasko Mysteries (Book 3): Claws

by Howe, A. E.

  CLAWS

  The Baron Blasko Mysteries–Book 3

  By

  A. E. Howe

  After inviting a vampire to live in her basement and stopping a cult from summoning an ancient evil, Josephine Nicolson figures she’s seen it all. But that’s before her small Alabama town becomes the hunting ground of a bloodthirsty monster.

  The local sheriff is convinced that a wolf or a bear is responsible for the grisly deaths, but Baron Dragomir Blasko is sure the sheriff is wrong. He believes a werewolf is stalking the community and that he is the only one who can stop it

  Enlisting the aid of friends old and new, Blasko and Josephine set out to find the beast before it can kill again.

  Books in the Baron Blasko Mysteries Series:

  FANGS (Book 1)

  KNIVES (Book 2)

  CLAWS (Book 3)

  More coming soon!

  Join the mailing list to be notified of new releases by this author and to receive a free short story from his Larry Macklin Mysteries series.

  Copyright © 2019 by A. E. Howe

  All rights reserved.

  www.aehowe.com

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Epilogue

  Other Books by this Author

  About the Author

  Prologue

  Seth Taylor’s eyes stared unblinking at the bright February sky. The first vulture landed on him an hour after sunrise and more soon followed. It was the sight of the birds circling that alerted Ol’ Man Murphy that there was something dead near the creek which formed the border between his property and Elroy Taylor’s land.

  Vultures weren’t an unusual sight out in the country, signaling a transition in the circle of life for many animals. Being in his late seventies, Murphy decided to wait until his grandson came home before going out to check on whatever had died. He owned a number of cattle and diligently kept track of their births and deaths. Take care of the small things and the big things will take care of themselves was a phrase that his family had grown tired of hearing him spout. Though they were a bit more respectful now when the country was wallowing in the pit of a great financial meltdown and they still had a roof over their heads and food in their stomachs.

  Seth Taylor was beyond caring about the vultures or if he was found. Many of his insides were on the outside, and when Murphy later recounted the moment when he and Todd found Seth, he’d say that as soon as he saw how far the foot was from the head, he knew something horrible had happened to the boy.

  When Murphy saw the body, he jumped down from the wagon and pulled his shotgun from its leather scabbard on the side of the buckboard. He told Todd to take the wagon back and get the sheriff, which would mean pushing the horses at a trot all the way down to the Campbell place, which was four miles closer to town and had the nearest phone. Murphy cautioned the boy not to talk to anyone but the sheriff. Seth’s father was a bit of a hothead and didn’t care much for the Murphys. The old man didn’t know how Elroy Taylor would react when he learned that his son’s dismembered body had been found on Murphy land.

  Chapter One

  That night, Baron Dragomir Blasko sat in his wingback chair, holding a small bag. He listened to the clink of the coins inside as he shifted it from one hand to the next. He glanced up at a small brown bat hanging from the rafters of his basement apartment.

  “Vasile, we are going to reach a crisis point soon. Fifty gold coins will not last very long.” The bat seemed unconcerned with the baron’s financial situation. “At least you can hunt your own food.”

  Blasko had spent the early part of the evening with Josephine upstairs, but she had planned a night out with friends, so he’d come down to his Victorian-inspired parlor to read before going out for his usual late-night walk.

  “Prowling. That’s what she calls it when I go out. She refuses to trust me, even after all we’ve been through. Bah! I’m not going to beg her to trust me, and I’m certainly not going to rely on her for money,” he said to the bat, who had pulled both wings over its head. Now that it was winter, the creature wasn’t very interested in foraging outside.

  Before Blasko could grumble more about his current situation, there was a knock at the door that led to the back yard of the house. Vasile let out a small squeak of surprise and fluttered to a dark corner of the room.

  “I doubt that it’s Poe’s raven knocking at my chamber door, my leathery little friend,” Blasko said as he rose from his chair. When he opened the door, he was surprised to see Deputy Robert Tucker standing in the small alcove.

  The deputy’s expression was grim as he nodded and removed his hat. “Evening, Baron.”

  “Tucker, come in out of the cold,” Blasko said, moving out of the way to give the large man room. As he led the way into his parlor, Blasko discreetly closed the door to his bed chamber. The deputy knew the baron was unusual, but he wasn’t aware that he slept in a coffin. Blasko didn’t think he needed to burden him with that knowledge tonight.

  “Have a seat,” Blasko said, waving the deputy to the other chair in front of the fire and sitting down himself. Bobby looked uncertain for a moment, but finally sat. Blasko noticed that the deputy’s uniform was dirty and his shoes looked like he’d been hiking cross-country.

  “I need to talk to you about… a boy who was killed last night,” Bobby said slowly.

  “Killed. Do you mean murdered?” Blasko asked, repressing the excitement he felt. Solving crimes was becoming a consuming passion for him. What else do I have to do in this country? he’d asked Josephine.

  “Sheriff Logan says he was killed by a wild animal. A bear or a wolf. But I don’t know…” Bobby shifted in the chair as though doubting the sheriff caused him actual physical discomfort. “Neither suggestion makes any sense. First of all, the black bears we got around here aren’t big enough to tear someone apart like that. As for a wolf? There hasn’t been one around here for as long as I’ve been alive.”

  “Go back to the boy. How old was he? Where was he found?” Blasko asked.

  “His name’s Seth Taylor. He was seventeen. A neighbor found him this morning down by a creek that runs along his property. I’ve seen a man who was attacked by a pack of wild hogs. This was worse,” Bobby said with a shake of his head.

  “Why does the sheriff believe that it was a wolf or a bear?”

  “’Cause he hasn’t seen the things I’ve seen,” Bobby said, and Blasko realized what he was implying.

  “You think this has something to do with the summoning we broke up in November?”

  “What I know is that nothing around here could have done that to the Taylor boy. I wondered if something might have… I don’t know… got out of that pit before it closed up.” It was obvious that the strange and terrifying events three months earlier had left a shadow hanging over Bobby Tucker.

  “I doubt that’s the case,” Blasko said, then stood up. “But why don’t we go take a look at the spot wher
e the attack took place? Perhaps I will see some evidence of who or what killed the boy.” Blasko’s condition enhanced his senses and he was sure he’d be able to identify the killer, by smell if nothing else.

  “It’s funny. You know I’m not a person to shrink from danger, but thinking about going back out there at night… I’m telling you, something tore Seth up.” Bobby shuddered and put his hat back on as they walked out of the basement.

  “If it is something… dark, then we can deal with it,” Blasko said, though he was confident the killer was a man. He had seen men do unspeakable things to other men. He’d had to subdue human monsters many times during his years as the voivode of his district in Romania.

  As Blasko and the deputy talked, Josephine Nicolson was driving through Sumter to pick up the Bryant sisters, Eileen and Eva. The whole night had been Alice Robertson’s idea. She was the wife of the manager of Josephine’s bank. Even though her father had passed away almost a year earlier, Josephine found it hard not to think of the bank as belonging to her family, though in reality it was overseen by a board of directors. However, Josephine did own a majority of the stock.

  Alice had come into the bank the previous afternoon while Josephine had been in to meet with the manager. Always effusive, Alice was beside herself when she started talking about the medium who had held a séance at a neighbor’s house.

  “You simply won’t believe what he can do. He literally conjured up my dead aunt!” she told Josephine while they stood in the lobby, waiting for her husband to come back from lunch.

  “How did he do that?” Josephine asked, trying not to sound too cynical.

  “Channeled her voice. It was uncanny. Took me back to my childhood. That woman has been dead for twenty years!” Alice said, going up and down on her toes. Josephine had always assumed she’d gotten into this habit because the petite woman was less than five feet tall.

  “That does sound impressive,” Josephine said, looking at the door and hoping Daniel Robertson would arrive soon.

  “Oh! We should all go to one! I can arrange it. That would be wonderful. I bet Eileen and Eva would like to go. The poor girls never get out,” Alice said, looking across the lobby.

  The “poor girls” were actually two middle-aged, unmarried sisters who worked as tellers at the bank. Their parents had been friends of Josephine’s father, but they’d been orphaned in their teens following a train accident. Andre Nicolson had taken them under his wing and had given them both jobs at the bank. At the start of the Depression, there had been a strong push by board members to have the Bryants replaced by men with families to support. But the fuss had been over pretty quickly once Josephine’s father gave a passionate speech in their defense at a board meeting. He argued that both of them were polite and precise in their work, two qualities necessary at the teller windows. The point he used to end the debate was that the middle of a financial crisis was not the time to be making personnel changes.

  “The experience of talking to the dead is… so… bizarre,” Alice continued. “Please say yes.”

  “I’m not…” Josephine hesitated.

  “Oh! Your father. Of course. No, I’ll just tell François that it would be too painful for you. Everyone will understand that. But you have to come. He is just the must amazing man you will ever meet. And he’s got a quality about him… Well, I’ll say no more!”

  “All right, I’ll come,” Josephine said abruptly. She just wanted Alice to stop talking. The woman was as sweet as she was verbose, but there were limits to how much chatter Josephine could take. After meeting Alice years ago, she understood why Daniel Robertson would work for hours in the bank without saying a word.

  Both women turned as the door opened behind them. Daniel walked into the lobby and looked a bit surprised to find both of them waiting for him.

  “Miss Josephine,” he said with a nod before hanging his hat on a rack by the door. Then he turned to his wife. “Alice, what are you doing here?”

  “Why, I came to see you. What else?” she said as the two women followed him into his office. “Though, honestly, I was hoping to get a bit of cash. I want to pay off Mr. Decker down at the five-and-dime. We’ve been running a tab for months and I just heard that his daughter is engaged. The poor man is going to need every penny he can get. That girl is bound to want the sun and the moon for her wedding.”

  “Very thoughtful,” Daniel said, and gave her a light kiss on her forehead. He was slightly above average height and had to bend down to do it. Then he took out his wallet and gave her a twenty-dollar bill.

  “Don’t you think Eva and Eileen should go with us tomorrow night?” Alice asked him.

  “What? Where?” he said, having not been privy to the earlier conversation.

  “To a séance with François, of course. Josephine is going to come.”

  Daniel looked at Josephine, who smiled and gave a slight shrug of her shoulders.

  “If they want to, of course,” Daniel said, looking down at the papers on his desk. Josephine could tell that his mind was already drifting away from the conversation. “You should go ask them,” he said to Alice in an obvious ploy to get his office back.

  “I’ll do that!” Alice said. She touched Josephine on the arm as she went toward the door. “I’ll call you and arrange everything.”

  “I want to get a list of the loans that are in default,” Josephine said once Alice had left.

  “You can’t keep bailing people out,” Daniel told her.

  “I don’t bail many people out. What I do is try to keep people from being humiliated. If I can help them find a new home or help them move someplace else where they have family, it makes me feel better. I don’t think the bank needs to push anyone off a cliff.”

  “You’re as kind as Alice. Just not as talkative,” Daniel said with a rare smile.

  Chapter Two

  Sure enough, the Bryant sisters were excited at the prospect of a night out. Josephine picked them up in front of the small bungalow they shared.

  “I’ve never been to a séance,” Eva said, pushing her sister across the back seat as she got into Josephine’s car. “I admire you so much for driving your own car. I keep telling Eileen that we need to learn to drive.”

  “Why would we do that?” Eileen, the dour one of the pair, asked. “What would we do with a car?”

  “We could go places and we wouldn’t have to rely on others to drive us.” Eva leaned over the front seat. “Thank you so much, Miss Josephine. We never go out.”

  “Now that’s not true. We got out to dinner every Saturday,” Eileen said.

  “Yes, that’s true, we do. We go to the same old place. Winnie’s Diner. Someday I’d just like to get in a car and drive away… maybe to Montgomery. Wouldn’t that be something?” Eva said with a world of wonder in her voice.

  “Pick a day this summer and I’ll be glad to drive us all over to Montgomery for a shopping trip,” Josephine offered.

  “Oh my, that would be a dream. Did you hear that, Eileen?”

  “What do you want from Montgomery?” Eileen asked. She sounded genuinely puzzled, trying to imagine why anyone would go to the big city of Montgomery to shop.

  “Because the trip would be something different. That’s all. My gosh, can’t a person want to do something they haven’t done a million times before?”

  “That’s what we’re doing tonight,” Eileen argued.

  “True enough. I can’t wait. Mrs. Robertson said François knew everything about her and the other people at the séance. He could talk to the dead.” Her voice held the awe of a ten-year-old talking about Santa Claus.

  “I doubt that. Besides, what she said was that the dead talked through him,” Eileen said matter-of-factly.

  “That just gives me the shivers,” Eva said with an excited tremor.

  The séance was being held at the home of the MacDonnells, elderly neighbors of Daniel and Alice Robertson. Josephine knew them only as acquaintances of her parents and patrons of the bank. They�
��d had a son, several years older than Josephine, who had been killed in the Great War.

  Once Josephine parked the car, the three women made their way up the driveway to the large craftsman-style house. The broad front porch was dimly lit by a small bulb above the door and soft yellow light came through the house’s windows.

  “Looks like they’ve got the whole place lit by candlelight. Hope they don’t burn the house down around our ears,” Eileen said.

  Josephine knocked on the door.

  “Come in, come in,” said Mr. MacDonnell. He was wearing an old-fashioned waistcoat with a plaid bowtie. “You ladies are in for quite the evening. We saw him last night. It’s really quite amazing,” he said as he took their coats and scarves.

  Mr. MacDonnell led them into the parlor where a large, round oak table had been positioned in the center of the room with seven chairs around it. The burning candles added a spooky element to the atmosphere. Standing by a bookcase and talking with Alice and Mrs. MacDonnell was a short man whose black hair was a little longer than the fashion of the day. He was dressed in a conservative suit and looked all the world like a college professor.

  “There they are!” Alice said as the women approached.

  Josephine took a moment to observe the man as he looked at Eva and Eileen, a slightly amused expression on his face. When his eyes met Josephine’s, she felt an odd chill. He seemed to be looking past her social façade. “Like he knew more than he should have,” was how she would later describe it.

  “What a delight!” François LeSauvage said after Alice had made the introductions. His smile made Josephine think of a cat, reaching out with claws extended, to pull them into his world. “We are going to have a fascinating evening together.”

  Alice was acting as hostess. Mrs. MacDonnell seemed frail and slightly unfocused. Josephine tried to figure out her age, deciding that both she and her husband had to be well into their eighties.