by Tegan Maher
“Did you find out where he’s been today? Who he’s talked to?” I asked her.
“Yeah. He met Hunter at the diner for breakfast, then apparently lost his mind, because Will said he never showed up to work.”
“He didn’t go to Sam McCauley’s?”
“Nope. Not that he mentioned.”
Well, it seemed like we had a starting point: the diner it was. I told Shelby to keep track of him until we figured out what was going on. According to her, the odds of him leaving her side were about the same as the odds of Hunter leaving mine, so at least we had that going for us. She must have held the phone away from her ear because her voice became muffled. “Get off me! Go sit down and watch TV ... no, we are not watching Sleepless in Settle! What’s wrong with you? Put it on FX or something.”
Her voice became clear again. “Hurry up, Noe. He’s seriously freakin’ me out; I think I’m gonna take him to Bobbie Sue’s. At least a rack of ribs will keep his hands busy.”
I smiled, until I noticed Hunter had drawn a big heart on his napkin, with Hunter N Noe written inside. I rubbed my forehead; whoever was responsible for this was gonna have hell to pay when I caught up with them.
We stood to go, but Hunter continued to sit there, staring at me like the sun rose and set on my backside. I took his hand and tugged on him. “C’mon Cassanova, let’s go see about getting your stones back.”
CHAPTER FOUR
On the way to the Starlite, I called the Clip N Curl to check on Buddy. He must not have been any better because when she answered, Coralee sounded thoroughly perturbed. “For the love of god, Noelle, hurry up before I lose all respect for him. This ... blubbering fool ... is not the man who takes me to truck pulls and beats my pants off at pool every weekend. It’s like he doesn’t even have a man-gene anymore!”
I bit back a laugh, mostly because her sentiments echoed what I’d been thinking earlier. I looked over at Hunter, and he was making the heart symbol with his hands and blowing me kisses from the passenger seat. “Trust me, Coralee. I feel ya. We’re doing everything we can to get to the bottom of this.”
“Well do it quick, please.” She hung up, and I did my best to ignore Hunter as we pulled into the gravel lot of the diner.
The place was empty when we pushed through the double doors into the warmth. The smells of coffee and bacon grease permeated the air, and my stomach rumbled as Becki, the owner’s teenaged daughter, greeted us.
“Hey, Ms. Noelle, Ms. Shelby, Sheriff. Y’all sit wherever you want. Coffee?”
As much as my stomach screamed yes to both the caffeine and a plate full of greasy deliciousness, there was no way I was eating or drinking anything from there until we figured out the love-potion business.
“Thanks, Becki, but we’re not here to eat. Can you tell your mom we need to talk to her for a minute?”
Her eyes shifted between the three of us and settled on Hunter. “Is he okay? He looks drunk.”
Subtlety was an art she hadn’t quite mastered yet.
I smiled. “He’s fine, sort of. That’s actually what we need to talk to your mom about ...”
I let my words trail, and looked pointedly toward the kitchen door.
“Oh. Of course.” She looked away from Hunter, who was rubbing one of my curls between his fingers and looking at me like a bloomin’ idiot, and her cheeks pinked. “I’ll go get her for you.”
It only took a few seconds for Jeanie, her mom, to shoulder through the batwings.
“Hey Noe, Rae.” She pushed her eyebrows together and studied Hunter. “Sheriff, you all right?”
“Huh?” he said, then realized what he was doing and dropped my hair. He shook his head and cleared his throat. “Yeah. Well, sort of. The girls will explain.” He drifted back behind his loopy grin, and my love-struck lunatic was back.
“Okay,” Jeanie said, looking at him like he’d lost his mind, which, to be fair, he had. “What’s he talking about? And what’s wrong with him?”
Rae huffed out a breath, blowing her bangs off her forehead. “Apparently he managed to consume a love potion somewhere.”
Jeanie cocked an eyebrow. “Well, of course he did. That just explains everything. Silly me—I can’t believe I even had to ask.” She put her hands on her hips. “Seriously though. Is he drunk?”
I drew my brows down. “Of course he’s not drunk! You should know better than that. Buddy Hawkins and Cody are in the same shape. The only thing we can find in common so far is that they had breakfast here.”
Her face flushed. “Surely you don’t think they got into it here! They came in and had coffee and breakfast, that’s it!”
“Calm down,” Rae said, holding her hands out. “We’re not saying you did anything to them. We’re just startin’ here because so far it’s the one place they had in common. Were they here at the same time? If so, did they talk to each other?”
That seemed to smooth Jeanie’s feathers a bit and she furrowed her brow, thinking. “Cody was in first. Said he had to go help Will with a calving. Hunter came in about twenty minutes later, then Buddy about five minutes after that. Hunter actually sat down with Cody, and Buddy was sittin’ across the aisle from them, so he probably talked to them, too.”
“Okay,” I said, elbowing Hunter out of my space for the hundredth time. “That’s a start.”
He threw his arm back around me and squeezed me so hard I felt like one of those stress toys; I was sure my eyes were gonna pop out at any minute. “Isn’t she just brilliant, Jeanie? Can you make her some heart-shaped pancakes from me?”
“Oh, lordy,” she said, shaking her head. “He has it bad. Lemme ask Becki if she noticed anything off. She was serving so she saw more than I did, I’m sure.”
Becki must have heard her name from the bar where she’d been rolling silverware because she scooted right over to us without being called.
“It’s like Mom said—Hunter sat with Cody, and Buddy sat at the half-booth across from them. They were all talking.” She crinkled her forehead. “Mr. And Mrs. Spangler were sitting in the booth behind Buddy.”
Hunter piped up. “Yeah, nice couple, but he talked about his new tractor so much nobody else could get a word in edgewise. I tried to tell them nice things about you, but he just wouldn’t stop.”
I jerked my gaze toward him. “Wait, you had the urge to talk about me by the time you were eating breakfast?”
He reached out to touch my face and I pushed his hand away. “Knock it off, sweetie. Seriously. Now, answer my question, please.”
“Hmm,” he said, stuffing his hand in his pocket. “I can’t imagine not wanting to talk about you, but now that you mention it, I was thinking more along the lines of what to do for Valentine’s Day and—can you believe it—all I was gonna do was take you to the movies to watch the new Marvel movie, then grab a pizza on the way to your place because the restaurants would all be packed.” He wrinkled his nose. “I can’t believe I was so unromantic.”
I heaved a sigh of relief. That was more along the lines of the normal Hunter—and definitely more up my alley than gooey, flowery text messages or standing in line for an hour waiting to eat an overpriced dinner that wouldn’t have been half as good as Duck’s pizza anyway. That was good info, though, because now I knew he hadn’t gotten into it at that point.
“What about Cody?” Rae asked. “What did he say he was going to do?”
Hunter scoffed. “He didn’t mention Valentine’s Day at all. Just said he was gonna help Will with a calving, then go hang out with Shelby and watch movies because it’s cold. He asked me to pick up a pizza for them when I got ours.”
Okay, so that was two out of three who hadn’t lost his mind to the love bug before breakfast.
“And Buddy?” I asked.
“He wasn’t doing anything at all for Coralee!” He looked appalled at the idea. “Said they’d been together too long for such nonsense, and he’d already taken her to the truck pull and the Golden Corral last night.”
So three normal guys came in. But did three normal guys leave?
I was about to ask Becki if she’d noticed anything unusual about them when she left, but Hunter’s phone rang. He answered, then frowned. “Yeah, she’s right here. Hang on.”
He handed to phone to me and I answered.
“Noelle? Oh thank god! This is Callie McCauley, and there’s something bad wrong with Sam.” She lowered her voice. “Something of the ... witchy variety, if you know what I mean. Or at least I think so. I think maybe ... well, I think he’s possessed or somethin’!”
“Callie, I’m here with Rae, Hunter, and Jeanie from the diner. I’m putting you on speaker.”
She agreed, then went on to describe the same symptoms the other three had. “He went to breakfast, then when he got home, he was actin’ all weird and had a big, mixed-bag bouquet of lilies and carnations for me.”
“Aww, that’s sweet,” Jeanie said.
“Yeah, you’d think so,” Callie said, “’ceptin’ the card attached to the carnations said, From all the guys at the station: you put up one hell of a fight. We miss you already.”
I bit back a snort and Jeanie’s coffee came out her nose; they lived right up the road from the Keyhole Cemetery and the potion had apparently taken effect on his way home.
Or at least I sure hoped so.
CHAPTER FIVE
Jeanie scratched her head. “That don’t make no sense if they got into somethin’ here. Sam took two breakfasts—one for him and one for Callie—to go. Only thing he got was the coffee, and it couldn’t have been that, seein’ as how the diner was full at that point. At least five or six other people got coffee, at least top-offs, from that pot. We’d have a whole batch of other folks declarin’ undying love in whatever way they’d see fit.”
Becki nodded. “That’s the truth.” Her eyes got wide. “Good grief. Old Ms. Simmons was here then. I filled her cup up right after I filled Sam’s.”
“Oh dear,” Jeanie said. “That coulda turned ugly, fast.”
They were looking at each other, wearing identical expressions of horror and humor mixed together.
“Why’s that?”
Belle chose that minute to pop in. “I’ll tell you why! Cuz the old bat’s a donut shy of a dozen. She was into that free-love-and-peace, hippy mumbo-jumbo. Spent most of the sixties topless following the Grateful Dead and hittin’ so much LSD her brain’s et clear up. You go givin’ her a love potion and you’re gonna be seein’ a whole lot more of her than you want, I guarantee. And lemme tell ya, as a well-endowed woman myself, some things just ain’t supposed to swing free in the wind, ’specially after a certain age.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. I knew Ms. Simmons; she came into Brew a few times a week, and now I was never gonna be able to scrub that visual from my brain.
“Jeanie, you sure you didn’t change any ingredients in anything at all?” I asked. “Maybe you should get Ray out here, too.”
She shook her head. “I didn’t change nothin’. Got everything from the same people I buy from every week. Didn’t change no recipes or anything. If it ain’t broke, there’s no need to fix it.” She turned toward the back and bellowed, “Ray! Get out here!”
Almost immediately, Ray, a lumberjack of a man, pushed through the batwings wiping his hands on a towel. “Whatcha hollerin’ about out here? Oh, hey y’all! How goes it?”
“Hey Ray. Not too great,” I said. We gave him the general idea and he shook his head, looking at Hunter with sympathy. “Onlyest thing I can tell ya is they was all standing around the back of Hunter’s truck shootin’ the breeze after they finished eatin’.”
“All of them? Even Sam?” I asked.
He nodded once. “Yup. All of ’em. They was standin’ out there when Sam came out carryin’ his food. I know because I was takin’ the trash out.”
I turned to Hunter and narrowed my eyes. “Did you guys eat or drink anything while you were standin’ out there?”
He shrugged, but his expression became guarded. “Maybe. But nothin’ much.”
I ran my tongue over my teeth. “And what, may I ask, was it?”
“We might maybe have had a nip or two outta Mr. Spangler’s private stock while Mrs. Spangler was in the bathroom.”
I rolled my eyes. Private stock was a polite term for the turpentine the Spanglers made and called liquor. To be fair, it was pure—so pure it burned blue; Mr. Spangler prided himself on that. I’d warned Hunter when he first moved to town not to drink anything from a mason jar, but apparently my advice had gone in one ear and out the other.
“He had it left over from the holidays. Apple pie-flavored,” Hunter said.
In his defense, the Spangler pie shine was hailed near and far as the most delicious—and dangerous—holiday home-brew in the state. But I’d had it plenty of times, and it hadn’t done anything weird to me, or to anybody else that I knew of. At least not anything more weird than pure shine makes anybody do.
I sighed. “C’mon then. It looks like we need to talk to the Spanglers.”
CHAPTER SIX
We’d just buckled up when Hunter’s radio went off. “Sheriff, you got your ears on? This here’s Smitty. We got a problem.”
I snatched the radio off Hunter’s hip before he could answer. Lord only knows what’d come out of his mouth. “Smitty, it’s Noelle. Please tell me nobody’s nekkid.”
“What? No!” His embarrassment was obvious even over the scratchy waves of the walkie-talkie. Smitty was a home-grown boy, raised as a true backwoods gentlemen. Just the word nekkid used in mixed company was enough to turn his face scarlet.
“Okay, then. Hunter’s a bit under the weather”—understatement of the year—“so what can I do for you?”
Hunter scowled at me and snatched the radio from my hand. “Smitty, this is Hunter. I’m here. Just admiring how Noelle’s eyes are the color of Kentucky bluegrass. What’s up?” He really was looking into my eyes like they were deep pools he wanted to drown in. I squeezed them shut and turned away, fighting the urge to drown him for real.
Smitty’s voice squawked back through the box. “We just got a 911 call that was a little strange.”
“How strange?” I asked, worrying my lip.
“Donnie Stills and Cody are takin’ swings at each other over Ms. Shelby down at Bobbie Sue’s. Earl’s got Donnie locked down and Shelby and Bobbie Sue managed to talk Cody off the ledge, but it’s weird. Usually, a fight happens and it’s over, but Donnie’s mad as the dickens. Every time Earl sets him loose, he jumps back after Cody. What on earth is goin’ on?”
I snatched the mic from Hunter. “Smitty, you don’t happen to know whether or not Donnie’s been around the Spanglers today do you?” Shelby had dated Donnie briefly in her freshman year, back before she became a royal pain in the butt and developed a thing for bad boys. He was crushed when she broke up with him.
“I’m not for sure, but I know he helps with odd jobs out there a couple times a week. But how did you know that?”
I heaved a sigh. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll take care of it. Just ... if anything else weird happens, call me.”
I disconnected and turned to Belle. “Can you please go get Addy, then go help Shelby?” Addy was my living-impaired aunt, and she was good at putting a broom to a backside even if it was a proverbial one rather than a physical one. Trust me. Addy—or Belle either, for that matter—didn’t need a corporeal body to bend folks, especially kids, to their wills.
She nodded and popped out of view.
Ray and Jeanie had delivered food to the Spanglers’ a few times for reunions, so they gave me directions. Fortunately, they didn’t live far away, and we were rumbling up their dirt-road drive ten minutes later.
The sight that greeted us when we arrived was nothing short of bizarre. Keep in mind that the Spanglers are well into their seventies. Mrs. Spangler was standing behind a rocking chair on the porch holding an old straw broom like a baseball bat. Mr. Spangler was on the other side of the chair, fa
cing her with his shirt off. The sun glinted off the gray hair on his shoulders and he was jumping around in such a way that I thought maybe he’d gotten into a fire-ant hill.
When I pushed my truck door open, Mr. Spangler’s off-key voice about ruptured my eardrums, and it took me a minute to recognize the mangled lyrics to J-Bieb’s Love Me that he was belting out at the top of his lungs. Apparently there were no ants in his pants, either; he was bustin’ some moves. Or a seam, one of the two.
Rae and I rushed to the porch. Poor Mrs. Spangler looked horrified, brandishing her straw-tipped Louisville Slugger.
“What’s going on here?” I shouted over the chorus. Mr. Spangler’s voice trailed off when he saw us.
Hunter clapped him on the shoulder. “Serenading. Man, I wish I’da thought of that.”
He cleared his voice and I glowered at him. “Don’t even think about it.”
With our arrival and the blessed silence that accompanied it, Mrs. Spangler lowered the broom and stepped from behind the rocker, keeping a wary eye on her husband. She glanced at me.
“You have any idea what’s wrong with him?” she snapped.
“Well,” I told her, “I was hoping you could shed some light on that. Seems we’re having a bit of a crisis. All the boys who got into your home brew this mornin’ at the diner while you were in the ladies’ room are acting like lovesick fools.”
She glanced nervously at Hunter, who was in uniform, and set the broom down. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I ain’t got nothin’ to do with no home brew. That stuff’s illegal.” Her prim tone and posture would have made a nun proud.
I scoffed. “Oh please! Everybody in the county knows you brew the best lightnin’ in Georgia. That’s not even up for debate. What I need to know is whether you did anything different to this batch. Your apple-pie batch.”