We still haven’t pinpointed what triggers my possession, and it hasn’t happened again since an incident under the Hawthorne Bridge, but that meant nothing. Whatever lurked inside me had no schedule and no warning when it made an appearance. But so far, we have a lot of x’s on the calendar to mark the days since Trixie’s last possession.
“Trixie,” Coop pressed. “How do you feel?”
I leaned in to her to whisper, “Well, I don’t want to smash any brick walls or leap tall buildings.”
“Are you making a funny?”
“I am,” I said with a grin, twisting my sore neck on my shoulders to ease the aches after spending long nights sketching potential designs for tattoos.
Because I had to joke, or I’d curl up in a corner and give up. I refuse to give up. I want to know what this thing wants from me, and what that relic allegedly belonging to the archangel Gabriel has to do with it. I know this possession has something to do with that statue.
Coop threw her head back, revealing her slender throat, opened her full mouth wide, and fake-laughed. She was clearly hellbent on nailing down laughter today.
I eyeballed her until she was finished, crossing my arms over my chest. “Can I be honest?”
“I would expect nothing less of you.”
“Are you still watching Dynasty?”
Coop sighed, tucking her hair behind her ears. “I am. Joan Collins does that laugh all the time when she’s going to do something hideously deceptive to poor Crystal Carrington—her greatest foe. She’s amazing. But I’ve watched it over and over and I just can’t seem to get her laugh right.”
I sighed. I mean really, where do I begin to explain the nuances of a joke and subjective humor? Today was not the day.
“Stop watching Dynasty and just be yourself. Be the Coop everyone loves, even if she doesn’t laugh very often. Though, if you feel like laughter is necessary, maybe a little less devilish glee would help.”
“You still haven’t answered my question, Trixie. How do you feel? Do you feel stressed or displeased?”
“I don’t feel possessed, if that’s what you mean.”
And that’s what she meant. But if she were already stressed about learning to smile, and Knuckles’s friends coming to pay him a visit, and life in general here on Earth, I wouldn’t have her worrying about me.
Her finely arched eyebrow rose. “Do you mean it?”
I wiggled my pinky finger at her. “Pinky swear.”
Coop stared at me, her gaze blank. “I don’t understand.”
I grabbed her stiff, unyielding pinky and wrapped it around mine. “This is a pinky swear.”
“Is it like an oath or a vow? We have to be careful about those things, Trixie.”
Laughing, I shook my head. “It’s not like that at all. Children do it sometimes when they make a promise they truly mean. It’s like sealing the deal.”
“But you’re not a child. You’re much too old to be a child. You have a wrinkle by your right eye. Children don’t have wrinkles.”
I sighed. That was also true. Likely, the wrinkle had come from demonic possession and having to explain pinky swears.
“How about I explain pinky swears and mansplaining later? For now, I have to go get that coffee before Knuckles flips his lid.”
“Trixie?” Knuckles’s voice boomed from behind me, his feet shuffling toward us from the back of the shop. As I watched him approach over my shoulder, I took one of many moments I’d had recently to appreciate how perfect the shop had turned out.
The royal blue couch with throw pillows, the funky colorful walls, the wood-framed pictures of tattoos Knuckles and Goose had done, the tattoo stations, neatly laid out with chairs and equipment, all made our new space perfect.
Turning fully to face him, I smiled as he approached, his face red, his eyes questioning. “What’s up? And where’s Goose?”
Goose, a.k.a. Barney Twilly the Third, is the newest addition to the Inkerbelle’s crew. He was tall and lanky, grizzled and mostly somber in demeanor. He’d recently turned his life around and become sober after a six-month-long stint in rehab.
More importantly, he was a close friend of Knuckles, who’d vouched for not only his superior talent, made better by his sobriety, but his hard work to become clean and stay clean after years of hard drinking. And we’d decided, if he was a friend of Knuckles, he was a friend of ours.
Knuckles hitched a beefy thumb over his shoulder, his vivid sleeve tattoo flashing in the early evening sun pouring in from the door behind Coop. “He’s back there making sure there are fresh paper hand towels in the bathroom.”
Goose was fastidious about the upkeep of not only his station, but anywhere he could keep his hands busy. He claimed organization and order helped keep him clean, and who am I to tell a man he can’t scrub a toilet if it soothes him?
“Do you need me to grab the coffee? You’ve been lollygaggin’ over here for ages. Fester just texted me and said there’s another batch of bikers heading this way.”
Fester Little owns the vacuum repair shop, Suck It Up, right up the way from us, and he’d been over at Betty’s place, sipping coffee and watching the ride. The participants appeared to be slowing down a bit, mostly riding by in small groups with longer breaks in between.
According to Delores, once the ride was over, that was when the fun began and it became one big party. We’d decided to stay open late just for the occasion, hoping to cash in on the fun.
To look at Knuckles, I’d almost think he was as nervous as we were about his clients coming in from LA. His client list wasn’t just vast, it was treasured. He treated these people as well as he treated family, and in his words, he couldn’t wait to show off Coop’s insane talent to his friends.
That he wanted everything to be perfect for their arrival made sense, and as payment for his never-ending generosity, we wanted it to be perfect, too.
Perfect meant getting that freshly ground specialty coffee from Delores at Betty’s. She had the perfect blend for this particular group of clients Knuckles planned to entertain.
“Nope, I got this. Why don’t you guys watch the bikers, and I’ll be back in a jiff.”
Knuckles’s broad, cheerful face went crimson. “Because they’re naked.”
I giggled. Oh, indeed they were. We’d seen the lot of them at the beginning of the route just a couple of hours ago as they’d prepared to jettison off, their dangly bits swinging in the wind. There were lots and lots of butt-ox, as Coop would say.
I patted his arm, my hand covering his flushed skin momentarily. “Are you a little shy about all this nudity, Knuckles?”
He cleared his throat and rocked back on the heels of his worn cowboy boots, driving his hands into the pockets of his leather vest and blustering a reply. “I’m not. But you should be. You were a nun, young lady.”
Coop patted his back with a thump in her unique way of showing sympathy. “It’s just skin, Knuckles.”
“Yeah,” I teased, grinning at him. “It’s just skin.” Though, I have to admit, their nudity unnerved me a little, too. I don’t know that I’ll ever be that free with my body. But I’ll heartily applaud their mission—with my clothes on, that is.
He scoffed, ignoring our jokes. “Are you going to get that coffee or not, Trixie girl?”
“I am. Anything else, sire? A suckling pig, mayhap?”
He chuckled, his white teeth flashing when his lips moved into a warm smile. “Knock it off, goofball. I just want things to be nice for my clients, that’s all.”
I tweaked his fleshy cheek and sighed. “I know you do. That’s why we love you so much. And now, I’m off. See you in a bit.”
As I swung back around toward the door, straightening the strap on my purse, Coop was there in front of me again, once more blocking me from leaving.
“Coop! What gives? I have things to do. You heard Knuckles. His guests will be arriving soon. We don’t want un-caffeinated guests, do we? Remember we talked about good customer service?�
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“Yes. You said the customer is almost always right, with few exceptions. But that’s not what we’re talking about now. So please, I asked you to close your eyes, Trixie,” she repeated.
“I know, but why?”
She crossed her arms over her chest and widened her stance. “Because you can’t see what’s outside the door.”
What the frickety-frack? I looked up at her in utter confusion. “Okay, Coop. What the what, friend? Why can’t I see what’s outside the door?” I attempted to scoot around her, ducking and dodging, but Coop was too quick for a mere mortal like me.
“Trixie Lavender, I said don’t go outside!” she almost shouted, making me jump.
I hopped, trying to get a glimpse of what was beyond the glass door, but I couldn’t see anything around her supermodel stature other than the backsides of a small group of bikers riding by.
“Coop!” I warned, becoming frustrated. “I have to go. Now, please let me pass!”
“I will not.”
“Fine,” I said, making my body go a little loose as though I were going to back off—until I saw her face relax.
Then I faked her out by scooting around her and pushed open the door with a grunt.
And then I fell.
Hard.
Over the prone, unmoving body.
The prone, unmoving, naked body.
A male naked body, if you’re wondering.
Coop stuck her head out the door and scowled, using a finger to shake admonishment at me. “See?” she said in a distinct neener-neener-neener tone. “I told you not to go outside, didn’t I, Trixie Lavender?”
Chapter 3
I crashed to the ground with a hard grunt, smacking my right hip on the hard sidewalk as I did. Instantly, I scrambled to roll over, and instead found myself face to face with the man who lay crumpled on the ground, his blue eyes sightless and glassy, his white-blond hair glued to his head from perspiration.
Panicked, I used my palms in an attempt to lift myself upward, but the strap of my purse had wrapped around me, tangling up and twisting around my waist.
As I tried to untangle myself and avoid the man, the very naked man, on the ground at the same time, the palm of my hand leaned on something sharp like glass, cutting my flesh with a scratchy jab.
“Ow!” I cried out at the stinging pain, instantly pressing my palm to my thigh to thwart the bleeding.
Out of nowhere, I felt a hard tug on the leg of my overalls and heard the familiar, playful growl of my favorite talking dog. Trying to sit up, I used my elbows, and was almost there until Jeff jerked my leg so hard, I flopped back down on the ground as he shook the fabric of my pants with his teeth, yipping and snarling.
“Jeff! Knock it off!” I bellowed at him, yanking my leg back and lifting it high to avoid hitting the poor guy on the ground.
Clearly, Jeff didn’t hear me, because he let go of the leg of my pants and went for my backside, sniffing and grunting, mimicking the behaviors of the dogs in the videos we’d shown him on YouTube so he could learn how to be an authentic canine.
As evidenced with his overzealous snorts, we were still a work in progress.
“Jeff!” I hissed, huffing a breath. “Staaahhp!”
Immediately, he backed off, sniffing his way toward me with his wet nose until his muzzle was almost at my ear. “Ix-nay on the e-bay un-way ith-way the og-day?” he whispered in Pig Latin, one of his favorite forms of communication (like I said, he sometimes behaves as though he’s twelve).
“You are an ogday! You can’t be un-way with the og-day if you already are an og-day!” I whisper-yelled back. “Now, ock-knay it off-nay!”
“Trixie!” I heard Higgs shout from above me. “Jeff! Down, boy! Down!” Hands, strong and sure, slipped under my armpits, scooping me up off the ground and standing me upright, but my foot got caught in the straps of my purse, now around my ankles, and I stumbled, knocking into his tall frame.
He caught me as we careened into the front of the store, sandwiching me between the hard wall of his chest and the brick facade. We were so close, his cologne wafted to my nostrils.
Which was appealing in a laundry-fresh way, but whatever.
He looked down at me, his dark eyes searching mine as Jeff stood by his leg, panting. “You okay, Trixie? Are you hurt?” he asked, lifting a hand to brush away the hair stuck to my lips.
“She’s okay. Him, not so much,” Coop commented over Higgs’s broad shoulder, pointing in the direction of the ground.
We dispersed instantly, me grabbing at the strap of my purse to secure it around my torso and over my shoulder again, and Higgs rushing to the injured man’s side. We both fell to our knees simultaneously, Higgs pressing two fingers to the man’s neck as I circled his beefy wrist and felt for a pulse, trying to keep my eyes from straying to all points southern.
Our eyes met and Higgs shook his head, creating a lump in my throat. The man was gone. Thus, I closed my eyes and sent up a prayer his soul would find safe passage to wherever he landed.
Knuckles stuck his head out the door and in a somber tone said, “Police are on their way, Trixie. I told them it wasn’t an emergency. Am I right?”
Higgs nodded to Knuckles as I looked over my shoulder and mouthed a thank you to him before rising, pressing my stinging palm to my thigh, my brain whirring with the visual of the scene before me.
“Let me go get Jeff’s leash and get him under control, I’ll be right back,” Higgs said, leaving me an opportunity to talk to Coop who stepped over the man to join me.
Spitting more of my hair from my mouth, I latched on to her upper arm and pulled her to a portion of the sidewalk away from Higgs’s ears. My eyes wide in disbelief, I asked, “Coop! What the heck happened? This man is dead! Why did you spend all that time keeping me from going outside when he was lying on the ground, before finding out if he was injured?”
She blinked her gorgeously fringed eyes at me, her gaze blank. “I didn’t know he was dead, Sister… Er, Trixie. I thought he was just resting. When he got off the bike, he was breathing pretty hard.”
My eyes went wider and my mouth fell open. “Coop, how could you not see he was dead? Look at him. He’s all twisted up like a pretzel with his eyes wide open! Nobody rests with their eyes open!”
As I pointed to the man, my eyes strayed to the position of his body after I’d tripped over him. He was partially on his side, one arm tucked under him while the other sprawled out on the pavement.
One leg curved almost unnaturally behind him and the other was bent at the knee, supporting his bulky but muscled body. He wore a neon-orange pair of flip-flops, still on his feet, and an ID bracelet I couldn’t quite see.
Coop placed her hands on her hips and lifted her chin. “I’m telling you the truth, Trixie. I saw him ride up on his bike and get off. Then he sat down. I thought he was just tired from the ride, so I didn’t check to see if he was all right because he was sitting upright when I last looked. That’s when you wanted to go get coffee for Knuckles, but I didn’t want your tender eyes to see the naked man in front of our door. So I kept you from leaving the shop. That’s why I told you to close your eyes. But I promise you, he was very much alive when I last looked at him.”
Okay, in Coop’s black and white take on things, I suppose her explanation made sense in the most rudimentary of ways. She wanted to protect me from naked men.
That seemed to be a concern for everyone. Nuns have seen naked bodies before, you know.
But forget the naked body. Something else occurred to me. “You do realize the police are going to be here any second, right? And that you have to keep your head on straight and tell them the absolute truth?”
Coop nodded. “I am always truthful.”
I inhaled and tried to keep my eyes off the body, but it felt like he was everywhere. Maybe that was just because he was naked. Yet, I couldn’t see anything but him, lying on the ground half on his side, his eyes glassy.
“Are you sure you didn’t see any
thing else? He didn’t look like he was in distress when he got off his bike?”
Coop crossed her arms over her chest and shook her head. “He didn’t look like he was in distress. His cheeks were very red, but I figured he was just overheated from riding his bike.”
The sound of sirens blared their warning cry, cutting through the dusky purple of the evening as the sun prepared to set. “Are you okay, Coop? Will you be all right to talk to the police?”
This, after all, was the third dead body we’d happened upon in just a few short months. I wasn’t sure if that was affecting Coop, because I couldn’t tell what did or didn’t affect her most of the time. Her stone face didn’t lend to reading her emotions. I mostly had to go on instinct. But if some of the half stories she told me about Hell were true, she’d seen plenty of death.
“I’m fine, Trixie, but shouldn’t you be taking pictures of the body? You know, like Stevie told us to do?”
Our mentor/ace crime solver, Stevie, had left an indelible impression on Coop, and to be frank, me, too. She’d taught us many things about a crime scene and was the one who’d sparked my interest in mysteries. But the real question—was this a crime scene? Did it warrant taking pictures?
Somehow, a naked dead body was very different than a clothed dead body. I felt a little dirty even considering taking pictures of this poor man when he was naked as a blue jay.
“Not every dead body is a murder victim, Coop. Sometimes people die of natural causes,” I said as I scanned the area around him.
Nothing surrounding him looked out of the ordinary other than the tire on his bike was a little crooked. Nothing at all. He’d dropped his bike down the sidewalk about couple of feet away, the red, white, and blue streamers shooting from the padded handles in a puddle on the ground right next to a green water bottle, resting in a divot in the pavement.
There was no blood. He didn’t look at all injured. I couldn’t see any marks on him from a weapon. Personally, I was leaning toward heart attack.
“I still think we should take pictures. Just in case,” Coop remarked over her shoulder as she wandered off to see what Higgs, who’d returned with Jeff on his leash.
Hit and Nun (Nun of Your Business Mysteries Book 2) Page 4