by J. R. Rain
If ever a kitten was destined to be gay, it was Tinker Bell Jr. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with that.
Footsteps echoed along the tiled entryway, and Cat Peterson appeared in the doorway. She was smiling, shaking her head.
“How did you know her cat ran away?” she asked me, leaning a shoulder against the doorframe. There was a hint of a smile on her face.
“Might be better if you didn’t know.”
She nodded, suddenly somber. “I see.”
I was motionless; she wasn’t looking at me. Suddenly, and with surprising speed, she threw herself into my arms and thanked me over and over again for finding her daughter’s killer. She didn’t let go and I let her hold me and cry on me, and we stood like that for a long, long time.
Chapter Sixty-four
It was a rare spring storm.
Cindy and I were sitting together on my sofa, my arm around her shoulders, looking out through my open patio doors. The rain was coming down steadily and hard, drumming on my glass patio table. In the distance, above the rooftop of the restaurants, the sky was slate gray, low and ominous.
“You like this kind of weather,” said Cindy.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“It’s different. Don’t you ever get tired of the never-ending sunny days?”
“No.”
“Don’t you ever think that it’s nice for the land to replenish itself?”
“Only when you bring it up.”
“Wanna walk in the rain?” I asked.
“I thought your leg hurt in this kind of weather.”
“It does.”
“But it’s nothing like the hurt you’ve been putting it through these past few weeks,” she said.
“I was blinded to the pain,” I said, “pursuing an old dream.”
“You’re not blinded now?”
“No,” I said. “The blinders are off. And now my leg just hurts like hell.”
“What about your dream?”
“The dream was there for the taking. I didn’t take it.”
“Why?”
“People change. Dreams change. Life goes on. If I really wanted it, I would pursue it.”
“So you don’t really want it? Is that because of me? God, I feel horrible.”
“Not because of you. When I was twenty-two, I wanted to prove I could play in the NFL. I wanted to prove I was tough enough. I had no other goals in life, no other conceivable ambition. Then, suddenly, I was forced to rethink and refocus my life, and I discovered that I could live without playing football.”
“But you’ve always been...bitter towards being a detective. Because it was something your father did. It was something that caused him not to be in your life when you were growing up.”
“Father runs a big agency. I am determined never to be that big. But you’re right, I was bitter towards my job. It was not my first choice. But then something happened.”
“You discovered you were good at detecting,” she said. “Damn good.”
“Yes.”
“What about proving yourself in the NFL?”
“Maybe some things are better left unproven.”
“But you think you could have made it?”
“In a heartbeat.” I said. “Wanna go for that walk?”
“Okay.”
I knew she didn’t want to get wet, but she did it for me. We got our coats on. I grabbed an umbrella for her. I didn’t mind getting wet.
Outside, in the rain, we moved slowly along Main Street. The shops and stores were all open, and a trickle of tourists, looking confused at this unprecedented Southern California weather, moved past us. I heard one of them say: “We can get rain at home.”
“Can’t please everyone,” I said to Cindy.
“No.”
“Want some chocolate?” I asked.
“Mmm, sounds yummy.”
We ducked into The Chocolatiers. A massive peanut butter cup for me and a sugar-free almond rocca for Cindy.
“Sugar-free?” I asked, when we stepped outside again.
“You can’t taste the difference.”
“Sure.”
“Plus it’s half the calories.”
We sat down on a bench under an awning and ate our chocolate and watched the rain.
“How’s Derrick doing?” asked Cindy.
“His family is moving east. Hard to have a normal life after being accused of murder. Kid will be looked at differently, no matter how innocent he is. UCLA is interested in giving him a scholarship.”
“Did you have anything to do with that?”
“I happen to know a few people there.”
“So your work here is done?”
I looked away, inhaling deeply.
She reached out and placed her hand on top of mine. It was warm and comforting.
“You’re thinking of your mother,” she said.
I kept looking away. “Her killer is still out there.”
The rain continued to fall. She continued holding my hand. She squeezed it.
“You’re going to find him,” she said. It wasn’t a question.
“I don’t know what I will do to him when I find him.”
“Does that worry you?” she asked.
“No,” I said.
“Then it doesn’t worry me.”
Chapter Sixty-five
Jack was drinking a non-steaming cup of coffee. I was drinking a bubbling Coke. The dining room was empty. A very large teenage boy was filling some straw containers behind the counter. Minutes before closing.
I was toying with the scrap of folded paper.
“One thing I don’t get,” I said, turning the paper over in my fingers, “is why you always blow on your coffee. I mean, couldn’t you just snap your fingers and it would be instantly cool? Or, a better question: how is it even possible that God could burn his lips?”
“That’s more than one thing,” said Jack.
“You’re not going to answer, are you?”
He drank more of his coffee. His eyes were brownish, maybe with a touch of green. Maybe. What the hell did I know? I was colorblind.
“Could you heal me of my colorblindness?” I asked.
“Heal yourself.”
“Heal myself?”
“Sure. I gave you a big brain for a reason.”
“They say we’re only using ninety percent,” I said.
“If that much.”
We were silent some more. I was thinking about my big brain...surely mine was bigger than most, since I was always being told I had a big head. Or were they referring to something else? I held up the folded piece of paper.
“I’m going to open this now,” I said.
“Go ahead.”
“I’ve wanted to for quite sometime.”
“I’m sure you did, but you didn’t.”
“No,” I said.
“Why?”
“Because I wanted to find the answer myself.”
“And did you?”
“Yes.”
The kid behind the counter walked over to us and told us we had five minutes. I said sure. Jack didn’t say anything. And when the kid was gone, I unfolded the paper and looked down at the single word: Dana.
“Lucky guess,” I said.
Jack laughed.
“So why did you come to me,” I said. “Why are you here now?”
“You asked me here.”
“Fine. Now what do I do with you?”
“Whatever you want.”
“I’m thinking about writing a book.”
“Good for you,” said Jack.
“It’s going to be about this case.”
“Would make a good book,” said Jack.
“I want to put you in it,” I said.
“I’m honored.”
“That is why you came to me, right?”
“That is for you to decide.”
We were silent some more. The kid behind the counter was turning off the lights, banging stuff lou
dly so we’d get the hint.
“I feel we’ve only scratched the surface here,” I said.
“That’s why there’s something called sequels.”
“You mentioned something earlier about loving me.”
“I did.”
“So do you really love me?” I asked, a hell of a strange question for one grown man to ask another grown man. Especially a man as tough as myself.
He said, “More than you know, my son. More than you know.” He reached out and put his hand on my hand. Radiating warmth spread through me instantly. “I am with you always. Remember that.”
Something caught in my throat. “Then why do I feel so alone?”
“Do you feel alone now?”
“No,” I said. The lights went out, and we got up together from the table. “No, I don’t.”
The End
To be continued in:
The Mummy Case
Return to the Table of Contents
THE MUMMY CASE
Jim Knighthorse Series #2
The Mummy Case
Copyright © 2010 by J.R. Rain
All rights reserved.
Dedication
To Chuck, thanks for everything.
The Mummy Case
Chapter One
I was doing decline push ups when my office door opened. Decline push ups cause a lot of blood to rush to your head and a fabulous burn across the upper pectorals. They also looked pretty damn silly in a professional environment. Luckily, this wasn’t a professional environment.
Somebody was quietly watching me, probably admiring my near-perfect form or the way my tee shirt rippled across my broad shoulders. Either way, I rattled off twenty more, completing my set of a hundred.
In a distinctive country twang, a man’s voice said, “I could come back.”
“And miss my near-perfect form?”
I eased my running shoes off the desk and immediately felt a wave of light-headedness. Granted, I didn’t entirely mind the light-headedness. I am, after all, a sucker for a good buzz.
The man who came swimmingly into view was wearing a cowboy hat and leaning against my door frame, a bemused expression on his weathered face. He was about twenty years my senior.
“Howdy partner,” I said.
He tipped his Stetson. “So what are those push ups supposed to do, other than cause a lot of blood rush to your head?”
“That’s enough for me,” I said happily. “Oh, and they happen to be a hell of a chest workout.”
“Seems like a lot of trouble,” he said.
“It’s not easy being beautiful.”
“Ah,” he said. “You must be Jim Knighthorse. I heard about you.”
“Lucky you.”
As he spoke, his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down like a buoy in a storm. His white hat sported an excessively rolled brim—completely useless now against the sun or rain. Maybe he was a country music star.
“I was told you could be a cocky son of a bitch.”
“You would be, too,” I said. “If you were me.”
He looked at me and shrugged. “Well, maybe. You’re certainly a big son of a bitch.”
I said nothing. My size spoke for itself. He looked around my small office, perhaps noting the many pictures and trophies that cluttered the walls and bookcases, all in recognition of my considerable prowess on the football field. Actually, all but one. There was a second place spelling bee trophy in there somewhere. Lost it on zumbooruk, a camel-mounted canon used in the Middle East. Hell of a shitty word to lose it on.
“I heard you could help me,” he said finally, almost pitifully.
“Ah,” I said. “Have a seat.”
He did, moseying on into my small office. As he sat, I almost expected him to flip the client chair around and straddle it backward, cowboy-like. Instead, he used the chair as it was originally designed, although it was clearly not designed for someone as tall as he. His bony knees reached up to his ears and looked sharp enough to cut through his denim jeans. I sat behind the desk in a leather brass-studded chair that was entirely too ornate for its surroundings. The leather made rude noises.
Ever the professional detective, I kept a straight face and asked for his name.
“Jones,” he answered. “Jones T. Jones, to be exact.”
“That’s a lot of Joneses.”
“Well, yes,” he said, blushing slightly. “It’s not really my name, you see. It’s sort of like a stage name. You know, a gimmick.”
“So you’re an actor?”
“No, I own a souvenir shop in Huntington Beach. But I’ve acted as the spokesperson in my own commercials.” Ah. It came to me then. I’d seen Jones before, late at night on the local cable circuit. Usually right before I passed out in a drunken stupor. Damn cheesy commercials, too, many involving what appeared to be a rabid monkey. Sometimes Jones and the monkey danced. I was embarrassed for Jones. “Maybe you’ve heard of it,” he continued. “Ye Olde Curiosity Shoppe.”
“Heard of it?” I said. “Hell, I spelled old and shop with extra e’s and p’s up until the fifth grade. My teacher, Mrs. Franks, thought I was Chaucer reborn.”
He laughed. “I wanted to change the name when I bought the store a number of years ago, but there was a big public uproar.” He cracked a smile, and I realized that he enjoyed the big public uproar. “So I gave in to pressure and kept the damn name. I regret it to this day.”
“Why?”
“No one can find us in the phone book...or even on the internet. They call us and ask: Are we under Y or O? Is it Ye or The?” He sighed and caught his breath, having worked himself up. “I mean, what were the original owners thinking?”
“Maybe they were English.”
He shrugged. We were silent. Outside, in the nearby alley, a delivery truck was backing up, beeping away. I was one of the few people who appreciated the warning beeps.
“So what can I do for you, Mr. Jones?” I asked.
“I’d like to hire you.”
“Zumbooruk!” I said.
“Excuse me?”
“Exactly.”
Chapter Two
“You know about Sylvester the Mummy, then?” asked Jones.
“Still dead?” I asked.
“As a doornail.”
Sylvester the Mummy was one of Huntington Beach’s main attractions—ranking a distant third behind waves and babes—and currently resided at the back of the Ye Olde Curiosity Gift Shoppe in a cozy polyurethane case for all the world to see. Sylvester had been found in the California deserts over a hundred years ago near a ghost town called Rawhide. Since then, he’d been passed from museum to museum, exhibit to exhibit, until finally coming to rest at Ye Olde Gift Shoppe in Huntington Beach. Wouldn’t his mother be proud? Although his identity is unknown, most historians figure Sylvester had once been a cowboy. Which, I figure, means he probably once owned a horse and a six shooter, ate beans from the can over an open campfire and sang lonesome songs about loose women. That is, of course, until someone put a bullet in his gut and left him for dead in the middle of the Mojave Desert. Experts figured the old boy had mummified within 24 hours due to a rare combination of extreme desert heat and chemicals in the sand. A true John Doe, he had been named after the very miner who discovered him, which I always found a little creepy.
“What about him?” I asked.
“Two months ago, as a publicity stunt, I hired a young historian fresh out of college to look into Sylvester’s background. You know, generate some interest in my little store. Of course, I didn’t really think the historian would find anything on Sylvester. But that wasn’t the point.”
“The point being to generate interest in your little store.”
“Yes, exactly.”
Ah, exploiting the dead.
“Go on,” I said.
Jones shifted, suddenly looking uncomfortable, as if his tight jeans were giving him one hell of a wedgie. “The historian—a kid really—provided me regular reports. He did original re
search, digging through old records, even traveling out to Rawhide once or twice to interview the town historian.”
He stopped talking. I waited. I sensed something ominous. I call this my sixth sense. Catchy, huh?
Jones’ expression turned pained. The mother of all wedgies? “Then the reports stopped, and I didn’t hear from him for a while. Shortly thereafter, his mother reported him missing. Soon after that, the sheriff’s department found him dead.”
“Found him where?”
“In the desert. Near Rawhide.” He took a deep breath. “And just this morning I received word from the San Bernardino Sheriff’s Department that his death was being officially ruled an accident. They figure he got lost in the desert, ran out of gas and died of thirst.”
I sat back in my chair and rested my chin on my fingertips. Sweat had appeared on Jones’s forehead. His flashy showmanship was out the window.
“I assume you disagree with their findings,” I said.
He thought about it.
“I suppose so, yes.”
“Why?”
He reached up and unconsciously rolled the brim of his Stetson, a nervous habit, which now explained why the thing looked like a Del Taco Macho Burrito.
My stomach growled. Lord help me.
“It’s hard to say, Knighthorse. It’s just a gut feeling I have. The kid...the kid was smart, you know. A recent college graduate. I was impressed by him, and not just by his book smarts. He seemed to have a sensible head on his shoulder; street smarts, too.”
“Too sensible to get lost in the desert.”
“Yes. Precisely. That’s exactly why I’m here.”
“That,” I said, “and you feel guilty as hell for sending a kid out to his death.”
He looked away, inhaled deeply. “Jesus, Knighthorse. Put it that way, and you make it seem like I killed him.”
“So what do you want me to do?”
“I want you to look into his death. Make sure it was an accident.”
“And if it wasn’t an accident?”
“I want you to find the killer.”