Tiger's Eye (A Stacy Justice Mystery Book Three)

by Barbra Annino

  Making my way to center field, I finished the icy cold brew and tossed the cup toward the back woods, where I would retrieve it after the inning. The lake was just beyond the forest and I could hear splashing and screaming.

  But not the screams of playful children.

  It was a man’s scream.

  A terrified scream.

  I spun around to face the infield, but it seemed that no one else heard the cries, not even Thor, whose ears were perked and pointed toward the plate, where Cinnamon was gearing up to bat.

  Had I imagined it?

  I looked back toward the giant oak tree that stood at the edge of the park. There, lounging on a thick bough, was a sleek white tiger with ebony stripes. She had piercing eyes the color of the Caribbean Sea and she aimed her gaze right at me. Her whiskers flickered and her tail slapped the branch once, punctuating her presence.

  Before I could process what I was seeing and the meaning behind it, Parker yelled, “Stacy!”

  I whirled to see Thor charging my way and a high fly targeting my head. I dodged left just in time to miss the full impact of my two-hundred-pound dog as he leaped into the air to make the catch. He tagged me only with his back legs, which was enough to knock me down, but not enough to knock the wind out of me, thankfully.

  Thor sauntered over to me, ball in his mouth, and lowered his neck. I grabbed his collar and pulled myself up. He looked at me proudly and I praised him.

  Then Cinnamon screamed, “Dammit, Thor, no more rides in the new convertible for you!”

  Thor whined and moped back to the pitcher’s mound, depositing the ball at Parker’s feet. My boss patted the dog’s head, picked up the ball, and wiped it off with his shirt.

  When I looked back, the tiger was gone.

  Chapter 2

  “A hot dog at the game beats roast beef at the Ritz.”

  —Humphrey Bogart

  Despite the short-stop’s valiant effort, we lost 10–2. As promised, Thor and I made our way over to the grill and I bought us each a hot dog. One with sauerkraut, one with mustard. I’ll let you figure out whose was whose.

  I grabbed a water and a beer (for myself) at the neighboring tent, hydrated the dog, and made my way over to a weathered picnic table already claimed by Birdie and the aunts. En route, I spotted Cinnamon accosting a clown near the cotton candy station so I walked over to see if I could help. The clown, not my cousin.

  Her voice was raised, her face twisted in anger. “Listen, Bozo, I said I don’t want a freaking balloon. I don’t care what animal you can turn it into. Now get out of my way before I tie your nuts in a knot.”

  The poor guy was about Cin’s height, which was to say he was slightly taller than a member of the Lollipop Guild. He looked to me for help.

  “How much?” I asked.

  “It’s only five dollars. It’s for the kids.” He had a nasal voice and watery eyes. Not to mention a big red nose.

  “I’ll give you ten dollars to stay twenty feet away from this woman at all times.”

  We made the deal and Cinnamon gave the guy an Italian hand gesture.

  It wasn’t her fault, really. Cinnamon has had a great fear of clowns ever since she was robbed by one in New Orleans on her honeymoon.

  The way her husband, Tony, explained it to me, the newlyweds were standing outside of Café Du Monde, about ready to take a romantic carriage ride across the city when a seemingly innocuous clown approached them. He was a smooth-talker, telling my cousin what a beautiful woman she was while distracting her with fast-moving hands and shiny balloons. At the end of his spiel, Cinnamon was up one blue giraffe and down one engagement ring.

  Being recently married and being Cinnamon, she noticed the absence of the ring immediately. A police report corroborated what happened next.

  In her defense, Cin gave the clown one chance to rectify the situation. When he denied all knowledge of the missing ring, Cin literally took the law into her own hands by grabbing the guy’s collar with one hand—nearly lifting him off the ground—and shaking him down with the other. She tore through his apron, tossing tiny scraps of colored latex all over Decatur Street, destroying the seeds of dozens of potential balloon animals. When she finally heard the ring drop, she released the clown and bent down to pick it up. She held it to his face, waiting for an apology or, at the very least, admission of guilt.

  The poor bastard still denied taking it.

  His nose is permanently red and Cinnamon isn’t allowed near the Big Easy.

  “You okay?” I asked her.

  Cin was shaking. “I hate clowns.”

  I hugged her. “Who doesn’t?”

  I handed Thor his hot dog and he lumbered over to a shady spot and sat down to eat. My cousin and I approached our grandmother and the aunts and scooted onto the bench.

  “Anastasia,” Birdie said.

  “Grandmother,” I said.

  Birdie stiffened and I couldn’t help but grin. She was proud of the fact that she was named after the goddess Brighid, keeper of the hearth and fire. She hated being called grandmother as much as I hated being called Anastasia. Especially since my birth name was Stacy.

  “Aren’t you going to congratulate us?” Fiona asked in that sultry voice that made her sound like she should be draped over a piano.

  “You cheated.” I bit into my hot dog.

  Fiona looked shocked. She put a hand to her ample bosom. “Well, that is a terrible thing to say, young lady.”

  Always with the theatrics, these three.

  I swigged some beer. “Okay, maybe not you.” I pointed from Birdie to Lolly. “But you two. I’m almost positive.”

  “Oh, you think you have it all figured out, do you?” Birdie was sitting across from me and she leaned forward. “Perhaps there are things about your family that you don’t know, Miss Smart Aleck.”

  That was the understatement of the year. For instance, until a few months ago I thought my mother had run off and left me at the age of fourteen. Turned out, she was incarcerated in Ireland by some sort of pagan council that abided Celtic law—a wrong I intended to right on the next Samhain when her parole would be considered. And let’s not forget all these years I was under the misconception that my father’s death had been an accident. But with that phone call yesterday—and the vision of the tiger today—now I wasn’t so sure.

  Of course, that wasn’t what Birdie meant.

  “So what’s all this about you three playing on some farm league? And why did I not know about it? I mean, you taught me all about the Celtic triads, the best time of the year for moon magic, how to cleanse a circle with rosemary, and all the other rules of the craft, but no one thought I might be interested in learning how to throw a curve ball?”

  The three of them looked at each other like confused kittens with too many balls of yarn to unravel.

  Lolly adjusted her cap. “It never occurred to us, dear. You were born for bigger things.” She somehow managed to remove the tube top, leaving only her bra to cover her upper half.

  Cinnamon stifled a laugh next to me. I never understood why they didn’t recruit her into their familial coven, but if the Blessed Book was the baseline for all things witchy, it might be due to the fact that her father was my mother’s brother. Geraghty “gifts” were passed maternally, so perhaps Birdie decided that magic wasn’t in my cousin’s blood.

  Not that it provided much comfort. Sometimes I really wished I had a cohort in all this. Especially those days when it felt like it was me against the Geraghty Girls. Which was pretty much every day.

  “Speaking of bigger things,” Birdie said, “what happened in the outfield? You seemed…distracted.”

  They all looked at me. I hadn’t told anyone yet about the mysterious phone call I had received. Not even Chance, my high school sweetheart and current flame, who happened to be there at the time. The caller told me my father was murdered and he mentioned something about tapes. I shrugged it off, thinking it was most likely some nutjob making a prank call.

>   But then I saw the tiger. And that itchy, twitchy sensation was creeping up on me—the one that warned of trouble on the horizon.

  However, it was Saturday, the sun was shining, the beer was cold, and we were celebrating an event that came around only once a year. And with the summer solstice approaching, I knew they would recruit me for projects to prepare for the ritual night.

  Today I just wanted a stress-free zone, so I shrugged and told Birdie I was watching a frolicking pair of squirrels.

  She didn’t believe me and maybe she didn’t press it for the same reasons I didn’t want to discuss it. Or maybe she was high off her victory.

  In hindsight, had I told her the truth right then and there, fewer people might have died.

  Chapter 3

  “I spilled spot remover on my dog. He’s gone now.”

  —Steven Wright

  After consuming our weight in junk food and playing Ring Toss, Shoot the Clown (Cin’s idea), and Balloon Darts, Cinnamon left to go find Tony and I climbed on top of the same picnic table I had shared with Birdie earlier. She, along with Lolly and Fiona, had called it a day hours ago. The old oak was in my line of sight, its gnarled branches reaching out to caress the sky. I stared at it, attempting to conjure up the ethereal tiger, but saw nothing.

  What was she trying to tell me?

  She had visited me once—months ago—via a mirror in Birdie’s house. It was right before I was about to embark on a task given to me by my grandmother. One I couldn’t exactly refuse under the circumstances. A girl’s life was at stake.

  One I would never forget either because before then, I was what you might consider a nonbeliever.

  Now, I guess, I was a bendable skeptic.

  There are things in this world even the brightest minds cannot explain. There is no denying that. I’ve heard it said that magic is science that hasn’t been discovered yet. Somehow, that sentiment was comforting to me.

  What made me uncomfortable was my role in this supernatural realm. Or my grandmother’s perception of my role. Birdie thought (because of something her mother, Maegan, had written in the Blessed Book) that I was the Seeker of Justice for my generation.

  Never mind that there was no explanation for what that meant. Never mind that the passage she extracted this nugget of knowledge from was as generic as a greeting card. Or that perhaps it was a coincidence my father’s surname was Justice.

  Never mind all that. What scared the living hell out of me was that if there was even the slightest chance that this were true—that my calling was to fulfill Old World prophesies and protect sacred truths—then frankly, I sucked at it.

  Sure, I had uncovered some heinous crimes done by horrible people, but what did that matter if I couldn’t save the ones I loved? If this whole Seeker thing really belonged to me, then dammit, I wanted to help those I cared about, not random strangers I never met.

  Maybe that sounded selfish too. But there it was.

  Oscar Wilde wrote, “To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.” That pretty much summed it up for me.

  How could I have lost them both? My mother to the council for a crime she committed to protect me and my father to…to…what? Murder?

  How could I have not seen that coming? If it were true. And if it weren’t, I had still misread the dream about the accident that killed him.

  Either way, I screwed up.

  As I gazed at the sky, feeling bitter and angry with myself, a gust of wind washed through the park, knocking my beer over. It sloshed across the bench and dripped down my leg in a single, narrow stream. I used my headband to wipe it away, tossed it aside, and gazed upward.

  I sighed at the moon. “Am I overthinking this?”

  “Probably,” Chance said behind me and I yelped.

  “Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you.” He slid his arms around my waist and touched his cheek to mine, gently rocking me to the tune of Guns and Roses’ “Sweet Child o’ Mine,” drifting over from the band tent.

  Chance kissed my neck in a way that made my entire body shudder.

  “What are you overthinking, Stacy?” he asked.

  I enveloped his arms in mine and said, “Nothing important.”

  He kissed my neck again, lower this time, and a shiver bolted through my chest.

  “That’s a bright star.” He pointed over my right shoulder.

  “That’s not a star, that’s Venus.”

  “Planet of love, right?”

  “Hmm-hmm.” Suddenly I was so tired I could hardly stand. I leaned into him, let the strength of him carry me, if only for a moment.

  “You want to dance?” he asked.

  “I think I just want to go home, take a hot shower, and crawl into bed.”

  He tilted my face to him and said, “That can be arranged, my lady.”

  I stood and Chance lifted me off the bench. He was wearing a blue sleeveless shirt that matched his eyes and his biceps swelled as he held me in the air. My legs found their way around his waist as I entwined my fingers in his sandy hair. I smiled down at him as he held me up by my thighs.

  “You have sauerkraut in your teeth,” he teased.

  “I probably smell like beer too.” I dropped my head.

  “Wanna know something?” he asked.

  I peeked at him through my bangs.

  “I love sauerkraut and beer.” He kissed me gently and I slid down his body, slowly, enjoying the friction between our bare legs until my feet found the earth.

  “Where’s the big man?” Chance asked, grabbing my backpack. He knocked my cleats against the bench to loosen the dirt and shoved them inside. I was glad I had brought a change of clothes because that polyester uniform would have been hell to walk around in all day.

  I looked around. “Now that you mention it, I haven’t seen him in a while. Derek took him over near the puppet show to play with the kids.”

  Thor loved to ham it up for the neighborhood munchkins. His parlor tricks kept them entertained, and in return he received an endless supply of belly rubs and whatever food fell from their hands. It was a win-win. I called his name and waited for him to lope over to me, expecting him to be spent from an afternoon of overindulgence and exercise.

  He didn’t respond to my calls.

  I looked at Chance. “That’s odd.”

  “He’s probably snoring away on some poor schmuck’s lap. I’ll check the far end near the band and the beer tent and you take the concession stands,” Chance said.

  We separated, each calling my dog’s name.

  I hadn’t realized how many food vendors there were earlier when my cousin and I were eating our way through the festival. Hot dogs, bratwurst, burgers, funnel cakes, popcorn, ice cream, cotton candy, and deep-fried Snickers bars were just a few of the menu items.

  I felt a little nauseous then. I normally don’t eat like a defensive line backer with hypoglycemia, but something about summertime did that to me.

  I kept my eyes peeled for a pony-sized dog everywhere I turned, hoping to spot him snoozing under a tent or sticking out of a garbage can, searching for a half-eaten pork sandwich.

  Neither scenario came to fruition.

  Leo, the chief of police and my former beau, emerged from behind the snow cone machine just then. He was wearing a white T-shirt and khaki shorts that were glued to him because he was sopping wet. The way his nearly black hair was slicked back, he looked like he should be sporting a tommy gun and a zoot suit.

  “What happened to you?” I asked.

  “Dunk tank. By the way, your grandmother has a killer fast ball.” He wrung his shirt out, exposing a hint of chiseled abs and a small tuft of hair that trailed down his navel. “And a mean streak. She must have dunked me twelve times before she ran out of cash.”

  I think Birdie would have preferred it if I were asexual like a tulip. Or a tapeworm. All this nonsense with dating got in the way of her grand plan for me to become some sort of superhero, battling Evil and Idiots so sh
e could have the privilege of adding the juiciest chapter of all to the Blessed Book of the Geraghty clan. Because, you know, my accomplishments were also hers.

  “Sorry about that.”

  He shrugged. “It’s for a good cause.” He looked past me, his dark lashes clumped like stars around his eyes. “Where’s Chance?” he asked, smiling one of those awkward, gritting-your-teeth smiles that you do when you run into your ex and feel forced to make polite conversation.

  I couldn’t blame him for being hurt or angry. Things hadn’t ended badly between us, they just ended, partly due to circumstances, partly thanks to the cruelty of fate. Leo was a great guy—sexy as hell, funny, and kind. But dating a police officer has serious disadvantages when you come from a family of witches and you may or may not have a secret identity that requires you to guard ancient artifacts, protect unclaimed treasures, and occasionally break the law while dressed like Catwoman.

  A girlfriend like that could really ruin the career of a guy in law enforcement. So I had to let him go.

  “Actually he’s looking for Thor. Have you seen him?”

  Leo thought for a moment. “Last time I saw him, some kid was torturing him by making him balance a hot dog on his nose.”

  “How long did he hold out?”

  “About forty-five seconds.”

  “I think that’s a record.”

  Leo laughed. “I’ll help you look. Let me just change. I’ll catch up with you.” He pointed a duffel bag toward the restrooms.

  I thanked him and felt a little sad as he trotted off. I hated to think that I had hurt him. I said a silent prayer to Venus to find someone for him. Someone suited to him the way Chance and I were suited.

  I turned the corner and spotted Derek talking to a woman just outside of the tent where the band was jamming away. I waved to him and he waved me away, turning sideways so he could properly hit on the cute blonde.

  I tapped him on the shoulder. “Excuse me.” He pretended not to hear, see, or feel me.