Tim dashed over to the carefully arranged mats and dropped his armful of dryer-warmed silks. He gestured for Kissy and Avi to make themselves comfortable and hopped over to the bar to collect his Manhattan and Evelyn’s inner office envelope. When he got back to the mats, Avi and Kissy had discovered the joy of the warm fabric and cuddled into it, wrapping themselves up.
Tim handed his drink to Kissy and pulled the little metal garbage can closer to the homemade couch and crouched by it. He reached in and crumpled the papers inside. Then he pulled out a matchbook he’d rolled into the waistband of his new sweatpants. He pulled out match, struck it and tucked it into the book before folding it closed again and tossing the whole thing into the garbage can.
“Whoa,” Avi started to stand, but Kissy pulled him back down beside her.
“Trust me, boy scout. Just this once.” Tim assured him.
He knee walked over to the stacked mats and pulled four bundles of cash out of the envelope, setting them by Kissy’s knee. He pulled the three sheets of paper and Crella’s photo out and blew in the envelope to be sure it was empty.
Kissy giggled.
Tim looked up, “What?”
Kissy wiped the smile from her face and tried to look innocent. “Nothing.”
But Tim saw her glance at Avi who also giggled.
He perched his butt on the edge of the seat and held up the envelope. “There are holes in this. You couldn’t fill it with powder,” he looked at her carefully, “or anything else.”
Kissy shook her head and shrugged her innocence, carefully not looking at Avi.
“Seriously,” he added. “Don’t try it.”
Both of them giggled.
Tim gave up. He reached over and dropped the envelope, the picture, and the papers into the flames poking out of the trash can. He picked up the cash and handed two bundles to each of them.
”I said I’d pay good money to see Officer Kee play a killer and here it is,” he said. “Thank you for your help.”
Kissy quickly tucked hers by her leg but Avi put up a hand to refuse.
Before he could, Tim simply said, “Take it. Or does your insurance cover car bombs under comprehensive?”
Avi reluctantly took the cash. Tim lifted the fabric beside Kissy and snuggled in next to her. He lifted his glass.
“To a job well done.”
“I got thrown in a freezing cold lake,” Kissy protested.
“I’m suspended and my car was blown up,” Avi pointed out.
Tim kept his glass up. “The bad guy is dead and we have a lead on Vanessa.”
Avi and Kissy lifted their drinks in unison and they all reached high into the air to clink their glasses. But Kissy was left hanging as both boys strained their injuries.
“Ow.” Tim lowered his glass and rubbed the bruises at his waist.
“Ow.” Avi drained his apple juice and held onto his broken ribs.
“Aw, my poor boys.” Kissy threw an arm around each of them.
And Tim knew he had a chance.
The End
Pot
Killer on Call
book five
by
Gwendolyn Druyor
www.KillerOnCall.com
Copyright © 2015 by Gwendolyn Druyor
One
Kissy put her forehead down on the cold cement and wished she could turn invisible. That would be nice in all sorts of situations. She didn’t need a cloak or ring or anything fancy like that. Just the ability to disappear when she did something stupid or said something stupid or found herself on a date with someone stupid. Poof. To just disappear and walk out of the room. Or in this case get to her feet and limp out of the cage.
Yeah, in this case invisibility might not be the answer. Invisibility wouldn’t solve the problem of her fantastically disgusting garlic breath. The dog could definitely smell that and the fresh scent of the peppermint shampoo she’d borrowed from Julia. Maybe it could even smell the blood pooling under her skin where she’d whacked her knee falling down. Or come to think of it, the blood on her palm where she’d scraped off all the skin catching herself before her nose hit the cold pavement of the garage.
She’d have to hold her breath too. It would hear her hyperventilating. Or maybe it wouldn’t hear her over the sound of its own low growling.
Even if she were invisible it could probably feel her getting up and backing away. It was so close Kissy could feel the wet heat of the dog’s breath through her knit hat. Wrong day to wear the hat with kitty cat ears.
So invisibility wasn’t the solution. How about if she just kept lying there? Maybe the dog would think she was dead. Already, the growling was sounding more hesitant. Sure, it was cold on the ground. But she was protected by jeans, a full length server’s apron, and the cutest red wool pea coat she’d just found on sale at that new shop on the square. Plus the kitten cat cap which covered her peppermint flavored long black hair braided down her back for this big night.
Did dogs like peppermint? She heard the dog sniffing the air in breaks between the terrifying growls.
Maybe she could just do a reverse army crawl and back out of the cage. Except she wasn’t sure her knee could do any kind of crawling. Plus she’d have to find a way over that trip bar at the bottom of the door.
Why did the mayor have a six foot by nine foot cage set up in his garage with a dog inside? She’d never heard of the mayor having a dog. Certainly she would have heard about him having a hundred and fifty pound Landstrider. The dog looked like it hadn’t had a bath or hosing down since it was resurrected from the tar pits. Kissy had mistaken it for a muddy blanket heaped in the corner of an empty cage when she’d blithely opened the door.
The cage door was open. Kissy had tried to back up and re-latch it when she saw the dog unfold itself. But in her panic, she’d tripped on the weird bar crossing the doorway at ankle height and tumbled into the cage. The door was still open. Soon the giant cross between a wolfhound and a bear would discover this. Sure, she was sprawled out between it and freedom, but Kissy was only five foot four. Which was for once a good thing. Any dog worth its salt would totally pick freedom over such a measly not to mention noxious meal.
But the dog didn’t notice or didn’t care about the open door. The dog stood drooling in front of Kissy, its breath sounding like the engine of a muscle car.
She’d have to get her own breathing under control if she didn’t want to pass out from lack of oxygen and so she tried to calm down. She knew she couldn’t just keep lying there. Her forehead was starting to freeze to the cement and it felt like maybe she’d shattered her knee. She had entered the house from the back door and the kitchen door had shut behind her when she’d come out to the garage. No one would hear it when the dog tore her to shreds. Kissy was on her own.
She raised her head and came face to chest with the dog. She tilted her head back and found herself staring into a cavern of tonsils guarded by two rows of sharp white teeth bared to the gums. The dog’s ears were pinned back against its head and its rear legs were crouched and ready to pounce. From this angle, Kissy could see it was definitely a boy with all his boyness still attached. His slitted black eyes were barely visible behind a mass of gray fur that reminded her of the crystal gray of Tim’s eyes.
“How about I call you Timothy?” she murmured with a hopeful smile.
The dog’s lips curled back further and he bent forward till she had to shut her eyes against the heat of his growl.
“Okay. Killer it is,” she squeaked.
Two
A hush fell over the small crowd gathered in the largest conference room in town hall. The long table and rolling chairs had been moved out to make room for three poker tables. Now, at five o’clock, two of the tables had been pushed against the walls and a velvet rope kept the crowd from mingling too close to the final players. They’d been chatting in hushed tones but now everyone stilled. Even Kissy stopped pouring drinks behind the bar near the doors. Red Logan covered his remaining chips
with one hand and peered at Mayor Sutton over his sunglasses. The mayor had just raised the bet to ten thousand dollars, the exact amount Red had left.
Five people remained in the tenth round of the first annual Winterfest Poker Tournament and it looked like the field was about to be culled again. Two of the final players were no surprise as they’d been playing a Tuesday night poker game for years. The mayor and head councilwoman were extremely familiar with each other’s style of play.
Mayor Rory Sutton sat back in his chair, calmly waiting for Red’s decision. His thick gray hair set off a smooth, youthful face. He was a deceptive man in many ways and that made him very hard to read at the poker table. He was also a hard read in the gubernatorial race. He’d told Tim to vote for the other guy. Even so, the race was heated and the state had assigned bodyguards to the candidates. Because Sutton planned to spend the entire evening safely within the town hall, he’d managed to convince his protection to take the night off.
Head councilwoman Patrice Coldman should be an easy read. She was an easily bated white woman who dressed impeccably with the perfectly dyed up-do of a professional politician. But though her mood alternated between confrontational and aggressively flirtatious, her brown eyes rarely showed anything but superiority and none of it seemed in any way related to her cards. She might have a tell involving a caress of her silver Greek cross necklace or she might just really like the bauble. Of everyone in the room, she seemed least interested in this little showdown. Her gaze roamed over the spectators, disdaining nearly all.
Their dealer, Police Commissioner David Lee was also a regular at the town hall Tuesday night games. He wasn’t competing because the benefit game was his baby. He’d been wracked with guilt that so many people had died in the Parkside housing project fire only a few weeks earlier. He’d visited the projects enough times as a detective that he knew how unsafe the living conditions were. He should have done something. So, he’d proposed a high stakes poker tournament. A quarter of each entry fee was going to help the displaced families. The man had even paid the entry fee for several projects residents to play. He’d been dealing Five-card draw for over eight hours with only one break for lunch. Normally an impeccably tidy man, his jacket was draped over the back of his chair, armpit stains be damned. His white uniform shirt had lost its crisp and he’d had a dried bit of ketchup on his chin since lunch. But thanks to the high and tight he’d sported since his Navy days, his hair looked perfect. He waited out Red’s decision looking down at his clasped hands so he could rest his eyes without anyone noticing.
Trevor Bagwell’s seat at the final table was a surprise. Trevor was a mild mannered bald man dressed in worn chinos and a plaid button down which he admitted had been picked out by his husband of seventeen years. They owned The Coffeeshop on the far side of the square and even though it was the most successful hang-out on the square, no one would have expected either Bagwell to be willing to risk the thousand dollar buy in to this game. Also, with the family-friendly aspects of Winterfest all taking place out on the square, the cafe was guaranteed to be as busy as ever. Trevor sat awkwardly at the table, looking completely out of place. But Trevor had played in Mayor Sutton and Coldman’s weekly game a few times and apparently he’d learned to read them pretty well.
The fourth player had started the game by announcing that she’d been underestimated in every game she’d ever played. Gina Makcharoenwoodhi warned them she was a housewife with no kids and unlimited resources. But it was hard to be intimidated by her pixie face. Crystal blue eyes shone out against her light brown skin. Her delicate hands held the cards like they were made of china and when she liked what she had or was pretending to like what she had, she let out an absolutely adorable little squeak and then covered her mouth with her fingertips and blushed. She blushed whether she was bluffing or not. It was impressive. Her eyes sparkled as they ping-ponged between the mayor and Red Logan.
Red had barely made it to this final table. He played recklessly and had been down to a hundred bucks at one point early in the tournament. Red wore his hair in a multicolored faux-hawk, sported half a dozen earrings in one ear, and never took off his blue tinted sunglasses. He crowed over good cards in his charming Australian accent and tossed his cards face up on the table at the end of every hand. Now he stared at the mayor as he used one hand to combine two stacks of chips. The clickity-click of the clay was the only sound in the room.
“Do it. He’s bluffing.” Police Chief Cal Woodsen had been the sixth and final player at the table but he’d gone all in on the third hand and lost the pot to Trevor’s trio of jacks.
Red cut his eyes over to the chief. The man’s shoulders shook in a quiet giggle and Red decided. He took his hand off the chips and carefully stacked his cards and slid them to the dealer. Nobody missed the fact that he slid them over face down.
It was time for Red Logan to start playing for keeps.
Three
The town square was swarming with people. A wide cross-section of the population had come out for Winterfest. While the adult party was isolated to town hall, the family-friendly party had taken over the entire square. The cobblestone streets bordering the grassy commons and separating the park from the shops had been cleared of snow. White lights were strung on the trees and the shops were all decorated in bright colors.
The gazebo had been hosting musical and variety entertainment groups since noon. All three high schools had sent bands and choirs and Avi Kee’s old beat, Topside High School’s art department had set up flats surrounding and lining the inside of the gazebo. The kids had used multiple mediums; spray paint, latex, watercolors, chalks, and even three computer monitors to create a graphic novel panel by panel as festival goers watched. A small crowd followed as they worked on each panel but most came to visit the improvised art after the kids had finished and retreated for complimentary hot chocolate at The Coffeeshop.
Avi’s acapella vocal band, GinNtonix was due to perform at nine o’clock. Each of the five members were busy helping out with different aspects of the festival but they’d made some time to meet and discuss their set list. They gathered on the pedestrian walkway bordering the pond on the North end of the square. The five singers started talking with so much energy that they drew stares from the folks folding paper boats at the water’s edge.
Avi was used to being stared at. He was a very large mammal with skin the color of a starless night. He kept himself in fighting condition though no one would notice his muscular chest beneath the ugly Christmas sweater the GinNtonix had decided would be their costumes for the evening.
They’d been talking for only a few minutes when Avi noticed their percussionist, Kevin was staring vacantly into the water. Avi barely listened himself as Scout ran through the plans for their half hour set. Scout, they all agreed, had been a Labrador retriever in an earlier life. He was blond, bouncy, and talked a mile a minute at all times. No one ever objected to his plans. The set list would be written down and posted in the gazebo for reference during their performance which meant Avi could focus on his other job.
He was again collecting payment and proof for his friend Tim. His friend Tim who killed people for a living. Tim was the Killer with a Conscience. He claimed he only killed bad people. Thus the proof he insisted his clients provide. Avi was a cop. He was suspended thanks to the last job he’d helped out on, where they’d saved two kids and a dozen women from a vicious man. In theory, he hated what Tim did. In practice, Tim had helped him get some small revenge on the people who had killed his little brother when trying to stop their club drug ring the legal way had only gotten Avi in hot water with Internal Investigations.
“We don’t go on until nine. Are we even gonna have any audience by then?” Kay, the group’s only woman broke Scout’s rhythm, holding up her phone. “My sister says they’re showing It’s a Wonderful Life for free at the metroplex at nine.”
“Don’t worry,” Mitch, their little red-headed tenor, assured her. “Avi’s kids from Topside a
nd my theater brats have been talking us up and tweeting non-stop all night. Plus my divas have obliterated the metroplex sidewalk with flyers and sandwich boards. We’ll have a crowd.”
“My kids are working the square and it looks like the poker tournament will be finishing up just before then so I think we’ll be okay,” Avi added.
He spotted one of his kids on the square, pulling the entire garbage bag out of a wrought iron can. He knew Conner from an accidental explosion the kid had caused by adding homemade thermite to a baking soda volcano in his first chemistry project of the school year. He watched as Conner dug through the trash and separated some bottles and cans into a white garbage bag sitting beside five black industrial bags pulled from other garbage cans around the square. Avi saw him toss a clean fast food bag in with his recyclables and then twist the top of the white bag. He pulled a new liner from the bottom of the wrought iron can, adjusted it, and then flipped the lid shut.
As the kid transferred recyclables from the next trash can, Avi saw him move the fast food bag into his backpack. After another can, Conner dragged all of the black garbage bags to the park services guy enthralled by the panels of the graphic novel. He set his backpack on the ground and helped the uniformed worker lift all the garbage into his big rolling dumpster. Conner shook his hand and walked away with the white bag of bottles and cans and a box wrapped in brown paper.
Avi had been watching and he hadn’t seen the kid pull the last transfer.
“Scout, we trust you. It all sounds good.” Mitch interrupted their loquacious baritone. “I’ve got kids performing soon and I need to go help them get ready. Okay?”
“Hold on.” Avi had one eye on Conner as he approached a uniformed police officer patrolling the square. He needed the officer to know where he was. The easiest way was to cause a scene. “I’d like to just run through Wrecking Ball once if we could.”
Killer on Call 6 Book Bundle (Books 1-6) Page 26