by Renee George
I could see Parker’s thoughts in the myriad of expressions playing on his face. He was having mixed feelings about Reggie walking in without knocking first. Her black hair was pulled back in a severe bun for work, and she wore a gray pinstripe suit that had been tailored to fit her body beautifully. She finished off the ensemble with an onyx necklace and earrings with black heels as accessories. She appeared as a powerful woman ready to take on the world, and I loved that she was my friend.
I took Parker’s hand and squeezed it. It was okay for him to have feelings about Reggie filling the void his mother had left in Greer’s life, but I was grateful he wasn’t petty enough to act on childish emotions.
I jumped up from the love seat when she crossed the room to me. “Lils!”
“Reg!” We embraced. “CeCe looks so good. College life is agreeing with her.”
“I know, right?” Reggie said. “I can’t believe she’s moved on from all black. I never thought I’d see the day.” She smiled at Parker. “It’s so nice to see you, Parker. Lily tells me you all are almost done with your new shelter and ready for the grand opening. That’s really exciting.”
“Yep,” he said. “We’re excited.” He forced a smile.
Greer stood and gave Reggie a kiss. Nothing too sexy, but it was tender enough to make Parker glance away. I, on the other hand, watched, because for one, it was lovely, and second, my heart was bursting with joy for my friends. Their happiness made me happy.
“Are we ready to eat?” Greer said.
“Starved,” Reggie said.
Greer grinned as he took Reggie by the hand, and they walked to the kitchen.
I held my hand out to Parker. “Are you ready to eat?”
He took it, and I helped him to his feet. “I think I’ve lost my appetite.”
“Don’t be a spoilsport.”
He kissed me. “Never.”
After dinner, Parker and Greer cleared the table and started the dishes while Reggie and I went out to the front porch to “get some air.”
Reggie kicked her heels off when she sat down on the porch swing. “Antifreeze,” she said.
“What about it?”
“Antifreeze can do a lot of damage to a body.”
“We had a dog poisoned just last night,” I said. “She’s okay. Ryan says she’ll make a full recovery because it was caught within five hours of ingestion.”
“That’s great, Lily.” She crossed her right leg across her knee and turned to me. “It’s awful the things it can do in a body. Hypothetically, it can cause confusion, diarrhea, crystals of calcium oxalate can form in the kidneys causing renal failure, and—”
“--it can cause pulmonary edema,” I guessed. It was clear we were talking about Jock Simmons.
Reggie nodded. “Terrible way to die.”
“Hypothetically,” I added.
She shrugged. “Hypothetically.”
“How long would it take to die, hypothetically?”
“Well, it depends on the amount of antifreeze and the overall health of the individual. Calcium oxalate crystals form in the kidneys in two to three days. That causes acute kidney failure, but even then, if it’s caught early enough, they can live with dialysis, medication, or transplants. Pulmonary edema is rarer, but it can manifest in some victims if they already have the beginnings of lung disease, and they’ve been dosed for a week or so.”
“Wouldn’t the person taste the antifreeze?”
“It’s sweet, so it’s easy to hide in sweet stuff.”
“But this is all just hypothetical,” I added.
“Exactly,” Reggie said.
So, whoever killed Jock had been poisoning him over a short period of time. Who would have had access to his meals or his drinks? A bartender or waitress, for sure. But they risked someone else possibly ingesting the antifreeze. Jock hadn’t spent much time at home lately. The lack of his scent in the house was enough for me to come to that conclusion, but he’d had to stay somewhere. I mean, the guy wouldn’t have slept in his car. Pearl and Opal had said they’d seen him kissing that woman from the courthouse a few weeks ago. Had Jock been staying at her house?”
“I don’t suppose you know an Electa Laverty?” I asked Reggie.
“It’s an odd name,” she said, shaking her head. “Odd enough that I’d remember if I had.”
The screen door opened. “Electa?” Greer asked. “I never liked that woman. She always came off as a bit snooty. Besides, she sent me a zoning code violation for weeds three weeks ago. Apparently, some vigilant citizen complained. There was one tiny patch of extra growth on the side of the garage.”
“Electa sent you the letter?” I would have to double check the letter we received, but I kind of remembered Laverty being the last name of the person who’d signed the citation. “We got a similar letter from the zoning office.”
“Electa is a cog in the machine. Nothing more. She started showing up for pop-in inspections when I turned down Clem Hanley’s offer to buy the place last year. She works for him at the zoning office.”
Parker gawped at his father, then said. “Clem wanted to buy my place as well. I’m not ready to sell, which is what I told him. But that was just two months ago. I just figured he thought I’d put it on the market since I was moving the rescue out of the city limits.”
“Theresa had said that Jock and Clem were friends. Jock was godfather to Clem Hanley’s son.” I shook my head. “I thought the letters were about revenge, but what if they were about property? I’ll have to talk to Buzz and Ryan, but I wonder if they got offers on their places as well. You are all zoned for business. But why would Clem want to buy up commercial property in Moonrise?”
And what did it have to do with Jock Simmons?
Chapter 14
I’d spent most the night before on my phone searching everything I could find on antifreeze poisoning. There was a disturbing amount of information. I just hoped nobody browsed my search history, or I might become suspect number one. Thank the goddess I didn’t have any homework due today.
I stopped by Buzz and Nadine’s house in the morning before class. Nadine’s car was in the driveway. I wondered if Buzz’s truck had been impounded. Their cute white colonial house with the white picket fence epitomized the small-town American dream. And Buzz had been trying to live the dream with the woman he loved and possibly a child in the future.
His eyes were bloodshot, and the lines in his face deeper than I’d ever seen them. Even though he was in his eighties, by human standards, his appearance was that of a man in his late twenties, early thirties. But today, Buzz could have easily been mistaken for someone in his forties or fifties. Was that because of stress? Or was he physically aging?
“Morning,” he grumbled as he welcomed me inside. “Don’t you have classes to get to?”
“I have an hour,” I told him as we went into the kitchen.
Buzz poured me a cup of coffee. He added two heaping spoons of cream and just as much sugar. “Here you go.”
“Thanks. How are you holding up?”
“Crap-tastic,” he said.
“Where’s Nadine?”
“She’s still in bed. We were up late last night talking.”
“Is that why you look so tired?”
“And then some.” Buzz ran his thumbnail over a scratch in the table. “I don’t know if I can last two more months without shifting.”
I glanced around, surprised to hear him having this conversation in the house when Nadine was right down the hall.
He grimaced. “She knows.”
“What?”
“I told her last night.” His knee began to bounce. “I had to. She’s been noticing the difference in my mood and behavior. When she confronted me about it last night, I blurted it out.”
Trepidation tightened my throat. “How’d that go over?” The answer was important. If Nadine knew what Buzz was, then she also knew I was a shifter as well. Would she hate me for keeping the truth from her? Goddess help me, I knew
I was feeling selfish, worrying about how Buzz’s revelation would affect my relationship with Nadine, but I couldn’t help it. “Is she mad? Frightened? Freaked out?”
“All of the above,” he said. “At first she thought I was crazy. She even talked about us visiting a shrink or checking into a clinic. I think, on some level, she was already planning my insanity defense.”
“How did you convince her?”
“The same way you convinced Parker.” He gave me a flat stare. “I turned my hands furry and showed her my claws.”
“Oh, my.”
“Yep, that went as about as well as you can imagine. It took me almost an hour to talk her out of leaving.”
“Damn, Buzz. I’m sorry this is happening to you, but I wished you would have waited to tell her. At least, do it when there wasn’t a big crisis.”
His brow furrowed. “Don’t you think I know that? I’d love to turn back time to the second before I blurted it out and Superglue my mouth shut.”
“How did you all leave it?”
“She stayed,” he said. “I guess that’s all I can ask for right now.”
“That’s something.” I took a sip of my coffee. “It took Parker months to come to terms with what we are, but he eventually did. Nadine will come around. She loves you.”
“But Parker has your scent, and you have his. You both have a supernatural bond that can help smooth out the rough times. I don’t have that with Nadine.”
“I think you’d be surprised at the capacity humans have for love, even without a magical nudge.”
“I hope you’re right. If you’re not…” He placed his hands over his face. “I don’t even want to think about it.”
“Not shifting has gotten you in trouble. You are having a tough time mentally, physically, and emotionally. Maybe you should just shift all the way. At least, you’ll feel more like yourself. After things settle, you can try again. You know, if you both still want it.”
“Not being truthful is what got me in trouble. I should have either told Nadine the truth before we moved in together, or I should have moved on.”
“Did she say that?”
He sighed. “No.”
“When we clear your name, you and Nadine will have some time to work things out.”
“You mean if my name gets cleared.”
“No, I mean when. Jock didn’t die from the stab wound.”
Buzz leaned forward and ran his fingers down the side of his beard. “Really?”
“It was antifreeze poisoning.”
“Could it have been accidental?”
“I don’t think so. But it means that someone was killing him days before he wound up in your parking lot.”
“What’s this about antifreeze?” Nadine walked into the kitchen. Her chestnut brown hair was flat on one side and messy on the other, and her pale-green eyes were puffy.
“Hi,” I said, unsure of how to talk to my friend now that she knew my biggest secret.
Nadine stared at me as if trying to decide if she wanted to slap me or kick me out. She did neither. “Hey.” She got herself a cup of coffee. She and Buzz didn’t make eye contact when she sat down. I thought she would have questions for me about Buzz’s midnight reveal, and I braced myself for whatever repercussions that were coming my way. Imagine my surprise when the only thing she said was, “Tell me what you know.”
If she didn’t want to talk about the werecougars in the room, I wasn’t about to push it. “Jock died of poisoning, not the stabbing. The knife or whatever he was stabbed with didn’t cut any vital organs or arteries. Nothing he wouldn’t have survived. The antifreeze caused kidney failure, and it made his lungs fill with fluid. Essentially, he couldn’t breathe and suffocated to death.”
Her cheeks colored with interest. “But does antifreeze kill someone immediately?”
“Not usually. He could have been having symptoms for a while.”
“So, he was already dying when Buzz punched him?”
Buzz’s head jerked up. “Was he?”
I nodded. “He had to have been.” I remembered the sweet smell on him and his slurred speech. “I thought he was drunk, but it could have been a side effect of the ethylene glycol.”
“How do you know all this?”
I gave her a stare that said, who do you think? But said, “An anonymous source.”
“Uh-huh.” Nadine wiped a dribble of coffee from her lip. “I see.” For a micro-second, the side of her mouth turned up into a half-smile. Just as rapidly, it went away.
“Did you find out about the call? Did the sheriff’s station get a report about the break-in at The Cat’s Meow?” I asked.
“Sheriff Avery has shut me down completely. He has threatened everyone connected to the case that if they share information with me, he will put them on suspension.”
“He threatened Reggie, too.”
Nadine released a huffing sigh. “He’s such a dick.”
I raised my hand. “Preach.”
“I need to get back to work.” Buzz stood up and dumped his coffee in the sink. “This is the first time in twelve years that I haven’t opened on a Thursday.”
“I think your regulars will understand,” I said.
“Then, you don’t understand humans very well.”
“Neither do you,” Nadine snapped.
Uh oh. This was about to go down.
“I better get to class,” I said.
Nadine smashed me with a stare. “You stay put, Lily Mason.”
Yep. Things were about to blow up.
“I don’t know what else to say to you,” Buzz said. He smashed his cup in the sink. When he turned to face us, his dark-emerald eyes had turned bright green.
I jumped up. “Buzz!” I turned my gaze to Nadine. She had tears in her eyes. “He needs to shift, Nadine. The full moon is Saturday, and he is feeling it hard.”
“How is any of this real?” Nadine asked. “I’ve seen it, but I can’t wrap my mind around it. I keep thinking that this is a bad dream, and I’m going to wake up at any minute.”
“Is it really so awful?” I asked. “Nothing has changed. I’m still me. Buzz is still Buzz.”
She shook her head. “When you’re not furry and walking on all fours.” She stared at me. “Why didn’t you tell me? I tell you everything, Lily. Everything.”
I glowered at Buzz. I couldn’t throw him under the bus. He was the biggest reason I hadn’t told Nadine, but if I told her that, she’d never forgive him. “I regret not telling you, but it’s not just my secret to share. There are shifter communities all over the country. Every time we show our truth to a human, we take a chance that we are exposing all our kind. You’ve seen enough to know that there are folks who would have us imprisoned, or worse, exterminated.”
She appeared heartbroken. “Do you really believe I’d betray you?”
“No.”
“You should have told me.”
Buzz sat down in the chair next to Nadine. His shoulders slumped in defeat. “This is my fault. I asked Lily not to tell you.”
“Why?”
He balled his hands into fists. “Because I was afraid.”
“Of what?”
“Of losing you.”
“How did you think you were going to keep this from me?” She turned to me. “How old are you? Buzz said he was eighty-six.”
“I’m thirty-nine.”
“This blows my mind so hard.” She rubbed her cheeks and blew out a harsh breath. “How did you think I wouldn’t notice that you weren’t aging? It was bound to come up sometime down the road. Or worse, did you just figure on leaving me before any questions came up?” These questions were directed mostly at Buzz.
“Honestly,” he said. “I don’t know.”
“Why did you move in with me? Why did we talk about babies? You made me believe we had a future.” She studied me for a moment. “And does Parker know?”
“Yes.”
Her expression darkened. “I don’t know where to
go from here. What am I supposed to do with all this?”
“I hope you’ll forgive me and accept me. You’re one of my best friends, and I don’t know what I’d do without you in my life, but I’d stay away if that’s what you wanted.”
“I just need some time to think about this.”
“How long?” Buzz asked.
“Longer than a minute,” she replied. “It’s a whole lot. I mean, I see you. Both of you, but it’s like finding out your favorite dog is really a cat. You still love it, but it’s a shocker.”
“What I hear,” I said, “is that you still love us?”
She rolled her eyes. “Of course, I love you. I’m not so sure about mister cut and run, but you, Lily, yes.”
“I love you, Nadine. I love you more than I thought I could love anyone. I would stay for as long as you wanted me.”
Nadine fixed him with her gaze. “I’m going to get old and gray, and you aren’t.”
“I’m not immortal. I’ll eventually get old.”
“But I’ll get older faster.” Her lips thinned in a grim frown. “What then?”
“Then I make every moment of our life together count until I can’t. And hey, I could always get hit by a bus. It’s not like I can’t be killed.”
“Well, there’s always that,” she said.
I cleared my throat. “It seems you two have some more talking to do, and I have a class I’ve got to get to.”
Chapter 15
On the way to school, all I could think about, aside from Buzz and Nadine, was the phone call. Buzz had said it came from the police. It should be logged on his phone. Was the sheriff’s department looking into it at all? I hated that the sheriff was not even open to the idea that there might be other suspects. And who in the heck was the witness? I still didn’t understand what the person could have possibly seen him doing other than trying to stop the bleeding?
My composition class’s first lesson was on reading and analyzing text to determine the value of the information. Mr. Danby, a short man with a receding hairline, opened the class with, “The past, the present, and the future walk into a bar. Man, was it tense.”