Thank You For Not Shifting (Peculiar Mysteries Book 2)

by Renee George

  Before they could drop their clothes, I cleared my throat.

  Ed set Ruth down, the biggest, dreamiest smile on his face. “If I’d have known getting stuck in Timbuktu would create this kind of reaction, I would have done it much sooner.”

  Ruth’s face turned red. Ed had said exactly the wrong thing. “You jerk!” she yelled. “I thought you were dead. Dead!” She beat her fist on his chest. “They told me—” She wheezed in a breath. “They told me!” she accused him.

  Ed pulled his wife into an encapsulating embrace, keeping a good hold as she fought against him. He kept saying things over and over, like, “I’m all right. It’s all right. There, there. I’m here.”

  When Ruth stopped struggling, he just held her while she sobbed into his chest.

  “Chavvah, what’s happening?” he asked me as he stroked his wife’s hair. “Why did you all think I was dead?”

  “I found a body last night. He was out back of the restaurant. The sheriff thought it might be you.”

  “Did he look like me?”

  “No.” I shook my head as if trying to shake the memory. “He didn’t look like anyone.”

  Ed’s expression grew puzzled. “Then why me?”

  Ruth leaned back. “Because the man had been skinned alive, your ID was under the body, and you didn’t fucking come home last night!”

  Whoa. Ed’s shocked expression must have reflected my own. I think that was the first time I’d ever heard Ruth cuss. Ed and I were both smart enough to keep our comments on her uncharacteristic outburst to ourselves.

  I took a shot at helpful. “I think the first thing we need to do is call the sheriff and let him know he’s been barking up the wrong corpse.”

  Ruth put her hands on her hips. “Is that supposed to be funny?”

  “Uhm.” I swallowed the spit in gathering in my mouth. I phrased my response as a question. “No?” The body obviously wasn’t Ed’s, and the police needed to reassess their investigation.

  Ruth harrumphed as she disengaged from Ed. “Where are you going?” he asked.

  “To get my phone, damn it. I guess we better call the GD sheriff.”

  I raised a brow at Ed. “Wow,” I mouthed. “She nearly went there.”

  He shook his head at me and sat down at the table. I noticed then how tired he looked.

  “What happened to you last night?”

  “I got a call to tow a vehicle from Lake Ozark to Peculiar, a council member’s car. It took a while to get it hooked up right because of it being one of those fancy foreign cars. A sporty two-door with a really narrow carriage. I knew I should have called Ruth, but I had expected to be home in less than an hour once it got all situated on the back of my tow truck. But on the way home, I had two tires blow out. Don’t know how that happened. Anyhow, I was between here and Lake Ozarks, and it was going to be a twenty-mile walk no matter which way I played it.”

  “And you left your phone in the garage.”

  “Yeah.” He nodded. “That too.”

  “You could have shifted. It would have been a much quicker trip.”

  “I supposed I could have.” He pulled his wallet from his back pocket and set it on the table. “But I didn’t want to leave this behind, and really, I thought someone would come along and give me a ride into town.”

  “Well, you scared the shit out of all of us. Where did the killer get your driver’s license from anyways?”

  He furrowed his brow and opened his wallet. “It’s not in here.”

  “When did you last use it?”

  “It must have fallen out when I paid for lunch yesterday.”

  “Can it really just be a coincidence that your ID was under the dead guy?”

  “Those are questions for the Sheriff’s department, Chavvah,” Sheriff Taylor said when he walked into the kitchen with Ruth. “This is an official investigation, and beyond a witness statement, you need to stay out of it.”

  I didn’t fight the heavy sigh that went with my disappointment. I stood up. “Fine. I’m glad you’re okay, Ed.” I turned to Ruth and gave her a quick hug. In her ear, I whispered, “Call me later to compare notes.”

  She whispered back, “You got it.”

  I nodded to the sheriff who looked less burdened. He had known Ed his whole life and having to think his friend was dead, murdered so awfully, had taken its toll. “I’ll let you know if I think of anything else.”

  He gave me a two-finger salute. “Do that,” he said.

  I shouldn’t have, but as I walked out of the Thompson house, I felt lighter, even more than before the murder. It was as if the scorecard of my life finally had a checked “win” box for once. My friend was alive. He was with his family and not a bloody skinned, eyeball-less corpse on Billy Bob’s slab. Someone was dead. That hadn’t changed, and even through my relief, I was determined to find out who had been left for me to find.

  Chapter 6

  Main Street was packed with therians from all over Missouri, Arkansas, and Kansas. I think a few might have even come in from Oklahoma, even though they weren’t a part of the Tri-State Council. The news of the murder must not have gotten out yet because no one seemed frightened or alarmed as they jovially shopped the local stores and the many craft booths set up around town.

  Elton Brown smiled when I walked past his furniture shop. He was helping a non-local load up a unique hand carved side table. Some of his furniture was antique, but some he made himself. The craftsmanship on this one was special.

  “That’s gorgeous, Elton,” I said as he helped the young woman close the tailgate on her small truck.

  “Thanks, Chav.” His whole demeanor was more cheerful than I’d ever seen him. “I can’t believe how many custom made pieces I’m selling.” He lowered his voice. “And these people don’t mind paying for quality.”

  “As they should,” I said. His happiness infected me, that and Ed being alive, gave me a sense of hope. I saw a basket full of ornate walking sticks. “Are those yours too?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I’ve sold a half dozen in the past three days. I think this week is going to go a long way to paying for the new addition off the back of the store. It’ll be nice to have my workshop so close.”

  “I’m glad for you, Elton. Real glad.”

  “Thanks, Chavvah.” He put his hands on his hips in a very Superman kind of way. “I think things are finally turning around for me.”

  “I’m glad.” I waved good-bye and headed for Sunny’s Outlook. I really didn’t want to go into the restaurant, but my need to get into my apartment for my car keys outweighed my need to avoid.

  Just past the courthouse, someone shouted my name. “Chavvah!”

  When I looked up, Dominic Tartan was striding toward me. He smiled, waving as he wound his way through the morning Jubilee crowd.

  “Hey,” I said when he stood in front of me. I smiled, slowly raising my gaze to meet his.

  Hubba, as Sunny would say. This was one handsome man. His features reminded me of a muscular, more handsome, less pretty Johnny Depp. In the bright sunlight, his eyes were the color of the inside flesh of an exquisitely ripe California avocado. They were light, opaque yellowish-green around the pupils and a darker green on the outside edge of the irises. I’d never seen anyone with that eye color. “Is it already Sunday?”

  “I wish.” He hesitated and then gestured to the festivities. “Do you want to walk down to Riverfront with me and check out the Jubilee?”

  “I…I don’t know.” Going with him was probably a bad idea, but I was flattered by the attention. I wasn’t sure I was ready to go back to the restaurant and my apartment yet, anyhow. Besides, Dom wasn’t playing games with me, like a certain werewolf I won’t name.

  “I promise to win you a stuffed animal,” he said.

  I laughed. “I don’t know how I can say no to such a generous offer.” I cocked a brow. “Throw in a corn dog and a fresh squeezed lemonade, and you got yourself a deal.”

  “You drive a hard bargain,
Chavvah Trimmel.” He grinned. “I like that in a woman.”

  I flushed with pleasure and took his arm when he offered it. Twelfth Street to Riverfront was less busy than Main. It was a short two-block walk, but my left leg started to ache from all the activity. I hated feeling like a weakling.

  “Something wrong?” Dominic asked.

  “No,” I said. I didn’t want to admit to him that I hurt because that would entail telling him about my past. For Dominic, I didn’t want to be the girl who’d been kidnapped and tortured for three weeks. Right then, I didn’t want to be the girl who tripped over a body the evening before. I wanted to be the girl a guy like Dom wanted to woo. “I just got a hitch in my giddy-up. Must have slept wrong last night.” Not a complete lie.

  “Well, it hasn’t taken away from your beauty.” He turned his gaze to me. “You are lovely, Chavvah. Uniquely beautiful. Your name as well.” He furrowed his brow. “Does it mean something? It sounds almost Native American.”

  “It’s actually biblical,” I said with an easy smile. It wasn’t the first time someone mistook my name for something more exotic than what it was. It’s Hebrew for ‘breath of life’.”

  “Are you Jewish?”

  I snorted. “No, but my parents a die-hard Christians. They named my brothers and me after names they found in a Hebrew baby names book. They wanted to take it Old Testament with us.”

  “It’s really lovely.”

  “Thanks.” I shrugged.

  Riverfront Street, the first and oldest street in Peculiar, still had the original paving laid down from more than eighty years ago. The rectangular brick-like stones gave the area an authentic old-timey charm. It made me glad the town kept this part of its history.

  I saw Selena Messer holding hands with Deputy Connelly. Who would have thought two very different types of therians could be soul mates? My friend Sunny Haddock, that’s who. She’d told me about the vision she’d had of those two, and it made me warm with a strange kind of joy.

  “See something you like?” Dominic asked.

  “Yes,” I said. I pointed to Selena and Connelly. “Those two. They shouldn’t work, but they do.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Bear,” I said, indicating Selena then gestured to the Deputy. “Squirrel.”

  Dominic laughed, his mirth rich with timbre. “This town is full of surprises.”

  The sudden scent of sassafras darkened my mood. “No kidding.” Damn it. I’d forgotten to tell the sheriff about the smell. As we walked past game booth after game booth, the perfume of sassafras mingled with corn dogs, sausages, hamburgers, funnel cakes, and a variety of drinks.

  I was so intent on finding the booth that gave away the flavored root bark, I tripped over Linus and knocked a genuine root beer from the kid’s hand.

  “Aunt Chav!” he said.

  “Crap.” My purse was still back at the apartment. “I’m sorry. I don’t have any money on me to get you another one.”

  Dominic pulled a five-dollar bill out of his wallet and handed it to the kid. “Don’t spend it all in one place.”

  Linus snatched it quickly, and with a perfunctory “Thanks!” he ran toward another game booth.

  “You didn’t have to do that,” I told him.

  He smiled, the right side of mouth tugging slightly higher than the left in a flirty way that really worked for him. “Does it make you think more kindly of me?”

  I chuckled. “Why, yes. I think it does.”

  “Then it was five dollars well-spent.”

  “Where are you from? Arkansas, right?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Near the Green Mountains.”

  “And what kind of therian are you?”

  He brushed his fingers through his light brown curls. “Black Bear,” he said. “You’re coyote, right?”

  “Yes,” I said, surprised he could tell. I remembered the comment I made about Selena and Connelly. I wondered what my parents would think if I dated a bear shifter. They’d certainly like it better than me dating a wolf. “I’d have never guessed you were a bear.”

  “It’s true what they say.” He wiggled his brows. “We’re good cuddlers.”

  I laughed hard then. Dom really put me at ease. “Did you find that Jerry guy?” Now that I knew Ed was alive, the identity of the corpse was still a question to be answered. What if it was poor Jerry that had ended up by my Dumpster?

  “No, not yet,” he said.

  “Does he disappear a lot?”

  Dom shrugged. “If he pissed off Willy then he’s smart for taking off. That woman is hell on wheels.”

  “Oh, I can tell there’s a story there.” I chuckled. “She’s an ex.”

  “Something like that, but I really don’t want to talk about Willy. I’d rather focus on you.” He gave me his arm again, and I gladly accepted. “The lake is nice. It must be great living in this community. The area is perfect for privacy.”

  Okay, then. It appeared the conversation about Willy Boden was over.

  “Yeah,” I said. “It’s nice.” When people weren’t getting murdered. On the surface, Peculiar seemed like a quiet town, but I knew all too well what kind of awful could hide in a place like this.

  “Oh!” he said. “There’s a BB Gun shooting game. I used to be really good at clearing out the star target. How about we start there on my quest for your prize?”

  I patted his arm with my free hand, and he covered it with his. “Sounds like we have a plan.”

  The noise was almost deafening the closer we got the game. Kyle Avery had one of the air rifles aimed at a target, and the teenager was diligently grouping his shots in small bursts to take out the star. I purposely bumped up against him when Dominic and I strolled up to the counter. His BBs went awry, and he turned on me with a growl. I glared at him until he looked away like a whipped pup. I hadn’t forgotten what he’d put Sunny through the week of her wedding. She might have forgiven him, but I hadn’t.

  Kyle put his rifle down, picked up a jar of brown wood chips that I hadn’t seen, and began to walk away.

  “Hey,” I said.

  He turned, his eyes respectfully cast to the ground. Smart boy. He’d recently graduated from high school, and he and his mom were trying to make a go of Paw-On Pawn Shop. The ex-owner, Jeremiah Bowers, another guy killed in Peculiar, deservedly so, had been using Kyle and some of his friends to rob nearby towns. When Bowers was stupid enough to steal my grandmother’s wedding rings, my Great Aunt Erma took matters into her own hands.

  “Where’d you get that jar of sassafras?” I asked Kyle.

  “I didn’t steal it,” he said defensively.

  “Well, duh. Answer the question.” Exasperation colored my tone.

  “They’re selling sassafras at the cotton candy and kettle corn stand at the end of the street. My mom wanted some.”

  “Thanks.” I turned back to the BB Gun stand, effectively dismissing the kid.

  “What was that all about?” Dominic asked.

  “Oh, just an old grudge.” I smiled. “Nothing I can’t handle.”

  “I do love an assertive woman.”

  Damn, this guy was smooth. “You certainly know how to charm, Mr. Tartan.”

  “It’s easy to be charming in such excellent company, Ms. Trimmel.” He picked up the air rifle the vendor handed him. “Now, which stuffed animal would you like?”

  I pointed to the biggest most ridiculous looking giraffe—the grand prize—and grinned. “That one.”

  He grinned back. “Challenge accepted.”

  Dominic Tartan turned out to be a man of his word, and lucky me, I got to lug a giant giraffe around by the neck. About the time we got to the corn dog stand, his phone whistled. He pulled it from his front pocket.

  “Shoot.” He frowned. “I’ve got to get over to the courthouse. The Tri-Council president has called an emergency session.”

  “Well, duty calls,” I said. “Do you know what it’s about?”

  “Apparently, they have officially pr
oclaimed Jerry missing.”

  “Oh.” I wondered again about the skinned body. Foreboding settled heavy in my stomach. What if Jerry was the one on the doc’s autopsy table?

  A scream raised the hair on the back of my neck. My knee jerk reaction was to run away from whatever terror had brought on the high-pitched wail. Instead, I let my fear act as a bolster to my courage and ran toward the commotion. A crowd gathered down by the lakeshore. Blondina Messer, the owner of Blonde Bear Café, held her daughter Selena as Deputy Connelly went into crowd-control mode. His eyes met mine in a kind of plea. I nodded to him, pulled out my phone, and hit call on the screen.

  “Sheriff,” I said. “You better get down to Riverfront.” I could see a body, red and bloated, floating near the shore. “Call Mark and Doc Smith, too.”

  Numb from my fingers to my toes, I swayed where I stood. Two strong arms wrapped around me and held me up.

  Dominic said, “What is that?” The awe in his voice matched my shock.

  “It’s a person,” I told him. I hugged the stuffed giraffe to my chest. “It’s…”

  “Whoa.” His grip on me tightened, and I wasn’t sure if it was for my comfort or for his own, but I didn’t resist his hold. “Who? How? Why…”

  “That remains to be seen.”

  “What’s going on?”

  I turned to see Randy Lowry standing behind us.

  “It looks like a body in the river,” Dom said.

  “Wow,” Lowry said. “He just floated up.”

  “Or she,” I countered. It was hard to tell from this distance.

  “Chance,” someone shouted.

  I looked and saw, again, Randy Lowry. “What the hell,” I muttered.

  Randy put his hand on the shoulder of a man identical to him. “Hey, Chavvah. I see you met my brother Chance.”

  “Identical twins?” I noticed now that Chance was thinner than his brother, but they both had boyishly handsome faces.

  “Since birth,” he joked. He put his arm around his brother’s shoulders. “Chance is twelve minutes younger than me.” His ring, a silver cube overlaid with a rotated gold cube, flashed brightly under the midday sun. Chance had one as well, only his was gold with a silver inlay. Or was it platinum. It was definitely bright enough to catch the sun’s rays.