by Ann Charles
He straightened his shoulders. “I’m not a chicken, Parker.”
“Why did you pull away without even giving Natalie a chance?”
“I’m a cop. My profession comes with a high rate of relationship casualties.”
“So you were protecting her?”
He nodded.
That was hogwash, but I let it go. “Fine. If that was true then, what’s changed? You’re still a cop. Why are you pursuing her now?”
He took awhile to answer. “I’m tired.”
“I know, I know. You’re working long shifts and worn out. You look like hell, by the way. Maybe you should try some sleeping pills to really knock yourself out for a solid eight hours.”
“No, jackass. I mean I’m tired in here.” He tapped his temple. “I’m tired of battling the voice that says I need to keep my hands to myself. I want Natalie as much as I did that night at the Purple Door.”
“Really?”
“No, that’s not true. I want her even more now.”
I pursed my lips, weighing his words. “What if you take what you want and then break her heart?”
“What if she breaks mine?”
I held his gaze, my chin high. “That would require you to actually have a heart, Tin Man.”
A cough of laughter escaped from his lips, followed by several more before he could contain the rest.
“Uh-oh. You’re cracking up again,” I said. “You need to go home and get some sleep, Cooper.”
He sobered. “Yeah, I do.”
We stared at each other for a few more seconds.
“I won’t say anything,” I told him, and I meant it.
“If you do, I’ll throw you in jail, no matter our previous agreement.”
I had little doubt that he meant that, too. “Understood. I also won’t sabotage your efforts.”
“Thanks.”
“But I won’t overtly steer her in your direction either.”
“Good. If she comes my way, I want it to be her choice alone.”
“In the meantime,” I said, “you should treat me nicer.”
“Why in the hell would I want to do that?”
“It might help warm her up.”
He smirked. “Good try, Parker, but I’d rather heat her up without you in the picture. Now go to your meeting.” He started to walk away and then stopped. “Oh, and Parker, one more thing.”
“What?”
“Don’t call me until I’m back on duty tonight. I need some sleep, and your problems screw up my beauty rest.”
“I’m not sure even a week’s worth of sleep will fix that mess.” I pointed at his face.
“Said Medusa’s blond twin.”
I flipped him off.
He grinned and crossed the street without a backward glance.
“Dang,” I said, watching him go.
Natalie was about to get slammed by Hurricane Cooper. I had a feeling his sustained winds might knock her back a few steps, but that’d be nothing compared to the storm surge of lust and emotion that would sweep her off her feet.
I pushed inside Doc’s office, locking the door behind me. Cornelius had texted earlier that he was heading back to his apartment to shower, so I grabbed my purse from where I’d set it next to the boxes of clocks, which were now gone. Cornelius must have taken them to the apartment above Calamity Jane’s. Slinging my purse over my shoulder, I zipped out the back door, making sure it was locked, too.
Halfway across the parking lot, I snapped out of the highlights reel replaying my conversation with Cooper and realized someone was leaning against my Honda. Someone dressed in an expensive black wool coat, mirrored sunglasses, and leather gloves.
“Good morning, Dominick. What can I do for you today?” I kept my distance. Dry heaving before breakfast didn’t appeal to me.
His smile would have charmed the skin off a snake. Good thing I didn’t have a head full of them in spite of Cooper’s claim.
“You look stunning in that shade of blue, Violet.”
“As do you in your black duds.” I gave him a dismissing smile. “As much as I’d like to stand here and exchange pleasantries, I have an appointment for which I’m on the verge of being late. Can you get to the point of your surprise visit?”
He clucked his tongue. “Life is so short for you human hybrids, and yet you insist on rushing through it, wasting precious time with puerile obligations.”
Of all the condescending … I was going to sic his damned lidérc on his uppity ass. “Dominick,” I said in a warning tone. “State your case.”
“I have information on your missing informant.”
Crap. I was going to have to call Cooper before he clocked out. There went his day of beauty rest.
“What did you find out?” I asked.
He shrugged. “He is no longer with us.”
“What’s that mean? He moved to another state?” Or was it another realm?
“It means your informant has been permanently taken out of commission. He will snitch no more. Ever.” He laced his gloved fingers in front of his coat. “Now about your end of the bargain …”
Chapter Twenty-One
Bighorn Billy’s was dead, much like Cooper’s informant from Slagton, damn it.
The whole drive to Jerry’s emergency huddle, I’d plucked daisy petals in my head. Only instead of debating whether somebody loved me with each petal, I vacillated between calling Cooper now or later this afternoon after he’d had some much-needed rest. By the time I’d parked my Honda beside Jerry’s Hummer in the diner’s gravel lot, I still hadn’t decided what to do.
I could text Cooper. He’d told me not to call, but he hadn’t said anything about texting.
Nodding to myself at that brilliant plan, I thumbed a quick message to him: FYI—Your informant is dead.
No, that was too blunt.
I erased it and typed: Sorry to bother you, Detective Cooper, but I received news that your informant has met his demise.
I read my text aloud. Nah. Too wordy.
How about: Got information on your informant. Call me.
I pondered that. It was kind of redundant with both information and informant in such a short sentence. Was there a better word for information?
I deleted and typed: Good news—I know what’s up with your informant. Bad news—He’s dead.
Ugh, that was pretty cold and harsh. I cleared that message. For all I knew, the informant had been a nice guy who happened to live like a hermit in the boonies, unaware that deep freezers were not normally considered dining room furniture.
Jeez, how did one tell a cranky detective that his snitch would breathe no more, let alone inform anyone of anything?
I glanced at the time. Shit, I was now two minutes late. I opened the door and pulled up my speakerphone texting option, jogging across the parking lot while I used the talk-to-text feature. “Talked to Dominick. Your informant has been compromised. Call me when you wake up.”
After I hit the send button, I silenced my phone and stuffed it in my purse. One step inside the diner, the smell of fried bacon and eggs filled my lungs, nudging my stomach awake. Dolly Parton was singing through the overhead speakers about being fine and dandy for her “Hard Candy Christmas.” I could relate to good ol’ Dolly when it came to barely making it through each day and took her words to heart about not letting my problems get the best of me.
Jerry waved me over to the corner booth.
A sprinkling of locals were enjoying brunch along with us in the diner, but I didn’t recognize anyone.
“Hey, Sparky,” said a skinny Santa look-alike with a red plaid hat and earflaps as I walked by the table where he sat with two of his cronies.
I slowed to a stop, doing a double take. Who in the hell was he? “Uh, good morning,” I said to him and his grinning pals. That was the second old guy in a week who’d called me Sparky. Was Harvey spreading my nickname around town?
“Have a nice Christmas, boys,” I told the three musketeers and joined Jerry, Mona, and B
en. “Where’s Ray?” I asked, scooting onto the booth seat. Jerry bookended the other side of the half-circle bench, with Mona and Ben the monkeys in our middle.
“How about some coffee?” Jerry asked instead of answering. He motioned the waitress over.
Mona and I exchanged quizzical looks across the table as Jerry ordered coffee for all.
“Do you need to look at the menu, Violet?” he asked.
“No, I know what I want.” I gave the waitress my order, and around the table she went collecting the others’ requests.
As soon as she left, Jerry cleared his throat. “I called this huddle because we’re a man down.”
We were? He must mean Ray. That was why he wasn’t here. Had the horse’s ass gotten hurt? Slipped on the ice? Or was it something to do with his top-secret dealings with that troublemaking juggernaut back in September? Had those mysterious shipments Ray used to make for George Mudder come back to haunt him somehow? Whoa, I’d gone from zero to paranormal in seconds. Ray could be sick with the flu, not being tortured by a one-horned demon fiend.
“Is Ray okay?” Mona asked.
I glanced at Ben, who sat next to me. He lowered his gaze, fiddling with his spoon. I’d expected him to look concerned, not guilty.
“Ray is fine physically,” Jerry said. He laced his big fingers together on the table. “Unfortunately, I had to fire him yesterday.”
My eyes nearly popped out of my head. “Say what now?”
Mona took the news a fraction better than I did. Her face paled, her eyebrows climbing halfway up her forehead. “Why?”
Ben fiddled some more, frowning.
“For good reason,” Jerry said. “As you all know, Violet recently lost a customer to a competing Realtor.”
“Jeff Wymonds?” I asked, trying to piece together how my losing Jeff to Tiffany had turned into Ray getting shit-canned instead of me.
“Yes, Mr. Wymonds.” Jerry’s square-cut jaw jutted. “I have since come to learn that Ray had a hand in this customer firing Calamity Jane Realty in favor of the competing agency.”
Holy shitballs of fire! Jerry must have found out about Ray working behind the scenes with Tiffany. I sat back, still trying to grasp the fact that Jerry actually fired Ray, one of Calamity Jane’s longtime, top-selling agents.
“Ray was scheming with Tiffany Sugarbell?” Mona asked.
Jerry nodded once.
While it wasn’t news to me, apparently Mona hadn’t realized how low Ray would sink in his effort to eliminate me from the competition.
I shot another glance toward Ben. How did he feel about this? His uncle had helped him land his position with Calamity Jane after Jerry took over as boss. Where did Ben’s loyalty sit? At the moment he was here with us, but was this temporary for him as he searched for another position somewhere else? Jerry had sunk a lot of marketing money into Ben, same as he had me. Did that count for anything in Ben’s head? Or did Ray being blood trump everything else?
“How did you find out about this?” Mona pressed Jerry.
His chiseled face hardened. “I have my ways. Let’s leave it at that.”
I tried to, but my brain had its own plans. It flashed back to Friday, after my first kill in Slagton, when Cooper and I had gone in Doc’s office to tell him about the chimera in the informant’s woodshed. Harvey had come in a short time later and told me about a parking lot meeting between Jerry and Tiffany. I’d been worried at the time that they were talking about exchanging me for Tiffany, but maybe—as Cooper often told me—not everything was about me. Although this sort of had to do with me, so take that, Cooper!
Had Tiffany been ratting out Ray that day? The timing was right. Jeff Wymonds had contacted me a few hours later, right after lunch, and fired me.
I took a sip of coffee, trying to nail down the possible timeline of Ray’s demise in my head.
“The point is,” Jerry continued. “Ray played dirty, turning on one of his own teammates for personal gain.” His gaze settled on me. “That’s unacceptable in my game book. While I want us to be the number one selling real estate office in western South Dakota, I want to do it playing a clean game.”
I nodded. Point taken. It was a good thing I’d been too busy hunting juggernauts and a lidérc when I wasn’t channeling spine-chilling changelings to plot against Ray.
“When you return to work today, his desk will be cleaned out. There will be no good-bye party for liability reasons.”
Damn. Ray was gone. No more staring across the office at his stupid sneer day after day. No more putting up with his nasty comments behind the boss’s back. No more insult matches in the parking lot. What was I going to do with all of my free time now?
“Ben,” Mona said. “Are you okay with this?”
Ben stopped fiddling. “I am sad to see Uncle Ray go, but Jerry has done the right thing.” His focus turned to me. “I’m sorry you had this happen, Violet. You’re a good agent. I wish my uncle had been able to see that and appreciate what you bring to the team.”
I blinked in surprise. “Ben, you don’t need to apologize for Ray. You’ve been kind since the first time I met you. But thank you for saying that.”
He nodded, frowning down at his spoon again.
Mona reached over and squeezed Jerry’s arm. “Now what, coach?”
His hand rested on hers for a moment before she pulled her hand back. “Ray’s absence leaves a big hole in our team. He and Mona shared the top spot for both sales and clients. I won’t lie to you—not having Ray in our lineup will make us scramble for a while, but I have faith that Ben and Violet will continue to build their clientele and sales to make up the difference. I’ll be taking on more clients, too, until we have our feet back under us.”
This had to really suck for Jerry. He’d been so close to landing that number one real estate agency spot on this side of the state.
“I can put in more hours,” Mona offered. “Maybe pick up some extra brokerage work to help with the loss of income.”
“Thanks, but let’s see how our Paranormal Realty debut goes and what sort of upswing we get after the show.” He looked around at each of us. “I expect each of you to put your heart into the website vlogs, giving it one hundred and ten percent.”
I nodded, accepting my fate, but feeling guilty for Mona and Ben having to step up to help replace Ray’s sales. If I’d been able to keep my mouth shut around the asshole, maybe it wouldn’t have come to this. But his constant harassment spurred the fighter in me, so I’d stood toe-to-toe and swung back instead of cowering in the corner. I stirred my coffee, staring down into it like I was reading tea leaves. Then again, Ray hated me out of the gate because Jane hired me instead of Ben. There probably wasn’t much I could’ve done to derail him short of accepting his crass proposition for lewd sexual acts in exchange for his support back in the very beginning. Lucky for him, I’d walked away from the table without ripping off his dick and cramming it down his throat that day.
So, fuck Ray. Well, in a metaphorical sense, anyway. He’d made his own bed when he’d decided to come after my job. I’d warned him more than once to back off, promising I’d knock him off his king-of-the-mountain perch. I just hadn’t figured Jerry would act as my muscle when it came to the blow.
The rest of our brunch huddle passed in normal fashion, with each of us giving a verbal report on how sales were going and what we thought might be landing in our pipeline soon. I shared the printout I’d grabbed from the office after Jane’s ghost had disappeared. The sheet listed more upcoming changes to real estate laws that Jerry had wanted me to research, additions that would possibly add more red tape to our job.
It was almost noon by the time we finished eating and filed out of the diner into the parking lot. I checked my phone for messages, taking it off silent mode.
“Violet,” Jerry said when we neared our vehicles. “You have a minute?”
I nodded, my pulse speeding up. Here it came, the result of Tiffany’s attempt to screw me over like she did
Ray. I wondered what the red-haired spider had whispered in Jerry’s ear about me last Friday during their parking lot meeting. The fact that I’d slept with a client, aka her ex-boyfriend, was old news in our office, so it probably had to do with Jeff.
“I want to apologize to you,” Jerry said.
Why? What was the catch? “Apologize for what?”
“When I talked to Ben last night about having to fire his uncle, he told me about some exchanges he’d witnessed between Ray and you when I wasn’t in the vicinity.”
Yikes! “He did?”
Jerry nodded. “I knew that Ray had said some inappropriate things to you, but I had no idea how bad things had become. I should have paid more attention sooner.”
It took me a moment to find my tongue. “Jerry, my battle with Ray started long before you came into the picture.” How was he to know the depth of depravity? “Ray played a good game when you were around, and the boost his sales gave Calamity Jane Realty was worth overlooking some silly name calling in my eyes.” I patted him on the arm. “Besides, my skin is pretty thick.”
He gave me a lopsided smile. “You’re a good agent, Violet. I see a bright future for you. I know you don’t love some of my marketing tactics, but I think that together, you and I can increase your sales to Ray’s level within six months.”
Wow. He had more faith in me than I did.
“I like the sound of that.” That was if I didn’t end up dead first. “Thanks for believing in me, Jerry.”
He clapped his big hands together, marking the end of our little talk. “I’m going to take the rest of the day off. I didn’t get much sleep this weekend. Tell Mona she’s in charge of holding down the fort.”
“Will do.” We headed to our vehicles.
For several seconds after Jerry drove away, I sat behind the wheel staring out the windshield while the sky spit snow.
“Ray got fired,” I said aloud. I pinched myself. “Ouch.” I rubbed my arm. I really needed to find a new way to prove I wasn’t dreaming.
My cell phone rang as I keyed my Honda to life. I stared down at Eddie Mudder’s name, my heart skipping a couple of beats. Oh, crap.
I accepted the call. “Please tell me Mr. Haskell is still chilling in the morgue,” I said in place of a greeting.