Her mom was so friggin’ wrong.
You know how Dad is, he never talks about things that hurt him. Like he never talks about you anymore. Those words broke her heart.
She lay there feeling the night ease by and then she remembered something else Marla had said. He said you reminded him of his brother. He said he got cold and became difficult. Then he died. Marla’s words kept flowing through her head as if they were important. Della suddenly bolted up when she realized why. Did he mean cold literally? Or cold as in distant? Could her uncle have been . . . a vampire? Did he fake his own death to save his family from knowing the truth?
The susceptibility to the vampire virus ran in families. And she knew her cousin, Chan, was a vampire. Only he bordered on being rogue, making it hard for her to have any kind of a relationship with him.
But her father’s twin . . . if he was at all like her father, he would be a stern man, but a man with principles. He would be a rule follower to the point of being a hard-ass. He wouldn’t be rogue. If . . . he was like her father.
But how would she know? How could she find out with nothing to go on? Obviously her dad wouldn’t tell her. Nor her mom. And she suspected Marla had told her all she knew.
Questions started forming in her head. What was his name? Where had they been living when he went missing . . . or when he died? She accepted she could be wrong. Her uncle could have really died.
A memory from the past suddenly started tapping at her brain. A book. An old photo album. Her dad had pulled it out years ago to show them a picture of his great-grandmother. She remembered the old leather cover and she recalled her father had put it in that drawer beneath his liquor cabinet in his study.
Was it still there? And if so, could it possibly contain a photo of her dad’s twin? Maybe a photo with his name? She stood up, clenching her fists. She had to look. Glancing at the clock, she saw it was four. Her parents didn’t wake up until six.
Taking a deep breath, she quietly walked out her bedroom door, down the steps, and moved into her father’s study. It was his room, his private space. Her father was a private man.
She hesitated and swallowed a lump of emotion. Violating his space felt wrong, but how else was she going to get answers?
She twisted the doorknob and stepped inside. The room smelled like her father. His aftershave, and maybe hot tea with special herbs with a hint of the expensive brandy he sipped on Sundays. Memories of them spending time in here together tiptoed across her heart. He’d helped her with calculus sitting at that desk. He’d taught her to play chess with his love of the game, and after that, at least once a week, he would bring her in here to play. He usually beat her. He was good. Though a couple of times she suspected he’d let her win just to make her happy. He might have been strict, and even a hard-ass, but he’d loved her. Who knew his love had been so conditional?
There were no more games now. No more father-daughter time. But maybe, just maybe, if she was right, she might find a man who was as good as her father. A man who would understand the difficulties she faced. A man who might care about her now that her father had turned his back on her.
She knelt down in front of the cabinet. If she recalled correctly, the book was in the back behind her father’s favorite brandy. She pulled the brandy out and reached deeper in the cabinet. When her hand touched the smooth, dry-feeling old leather, her heart beat a little faster.
She pulled it out, sat on the floor and opened it up in her lap. She needed a light to make out the images. She remembered her dad used to keep a flashlight in his desk for when the lights went out. She stood up, opening the drawer quietly.
She found the flashlight, but it was what else she found in the drawer that had her breath catching: the picture of her and her dad playing chess at a tournament. At one time he’d kept it on the shelf. She looked up at the bookcase where the image had once rested. The spot was as empty as she felt.
Suddenly more determined than ever to find her uncle, she went back to the floor.
She brought the book on her lap and opened it up. She turned on the flashlight and shined it at the book. The images were old, faded, and even with the light she had to squint to make them out.
Mixed into the book were some old photos of her mom’s family. She continued to flip through the album, turning the pages carefully, seeing faces that somehow looked familiar even though she didn’t know them. In the shapes of the faces, or cuts of chins, she saw bits of her parents and bits of herself in these people.
Almost to the end, she found a picture of her grandmother and her dad with another boy that looked just like him. She pulled back the plastic flap and carefully pulled the image out. Thin from age, it felt as if it might tear. She held her breath and gently peeled it off the album, praying that on the back she’d find names. When she turned it over she saw the writing. Her heart paused in mid-beat as she read: Feng and Chao Tsang with mother. Her father’s name was Chao. Feng must have been her uncle’s name. The image appeared to have been taken in Houston, which meant her uncle would have been here when he’d been turned . . . or killed. But if he truly had been turned, he could still be here. In Houston. Or at least in America.
She carefully tucked the image into her pajama pocket. As she went to put the book away, she saw another picture tucked behind the flap in the back. She pulled it out. It was a group of kids, two boys and two girls. The picture was grainy, but when she looked harder she thought it was her father and his twin and two girls. One of them looked like her aunt. She turned the photo over, but no names were written on this one. Slipping the picture back, she put the book up, and was replacing the brandy in the cabinet when the light in the room flashed on.
“Shit!” she muttered and turned, completely shocked that for the second time tonight someone had walked up on her. What was up with her hearing? She expected, or maybe hoped, it would be Marla again, but her hopes were futile.
Her father, anger in his eyes, stared down at her. “So now you have resorted to stealing your father’s brandy, have you?”
His anger, even his accusation, she could have handled. It was the disappointment in his eyes that had her wanting to take a running dive out the window. She longed to get as far away from him and this life she’d once loved but had now lost.
She didn’t. She did what she always did with her parents. She stood up and simply let them think the worst of her, because the truth would have hurt them more.
Excerpt from Murder, Mayhem and Mama
Read on for a sneak peek at Christie Craig’s
Murder, Mayhem and Mama,
now available in trade paperback
at Amazon or in e-book wherever
books are sold
Cali McKay’s mama isn’t ready to pass over to the “other side” yet. Her unlucky-in-love daughter needs her now more than ever. Before Mama can chain-smoke her way to heaven, she’s gotta make sure Cali’s ex deadbeat boyfriend doesn’t get her daughter killed.
Cali lost her mom to cancer. Detective Brit Lowell lost his partner to murder. Now he’s in the mood to take down some dirtbags, and Cali’s ex just happens to be a dirtbag leaving a trail of dead bodies behind him. Can Brit trust this beautiful woman to help take down her ex? Can Cali look past this sexy cop’s hard exterior to trust him with her heart? Can life get any crazier when Mama starts meddling from the grave? Only one thing is for sure—none of it will matter, unless they catch a killer before the killer catches them.
Prologue
“Do you want to die, old man?” One of the four ski-masked men jammed the cold barrel of a gun against Farley Goldstein’s throat.
Farley stared into the dark eyes peering out of the mask. Between jolts of panic, he remembered asking himself that very question this morning. Did he want to die?
“Open the safe or I’m gonna blow your head off.” The armed stranger latched onto a handful of Farley’s starched shirt.
The gunman slammed Farley against the wall. He slid to the floor, pain vi
brating through his head. As lights exploded behind his eyelids, fear clawed at his chest—not fear of death, but fear of dying.
The flashes hadn’t stopped when the biggest assailant stepped forward. “Easy. He knows we’re serious. Don’t you, ol’ man?”
Farley nodded, but he couldn’t seem to talk. The shattering of glass echoed as the other two men swung baseball bats against the locked display cases filled with the most expensive pieces of jewelry. Twisting his wedding ring around his knuckle, Farley thought about his wife’s ring that he always carried in his shirt pocket.
The meaner guy with fat fingers crouched down and screamed, “Open the effing safe!”
When the assailant slammed Farley against the wall the second time, his hearing aid squealed. The whiteness that seemed to come from his brain exploded again. He stared into the sheet of light. The shapes started taking form. Fat Finger’s lips were moving, but Farley didn’t hear the words.
Then he saw her. She appeared out of nowhere. Like a. . .
“Wow.” She stood looking at the case of diamond rings. Farley reached up to touch the ring nestled over his heart. Beth, his wife, had come to take him home. Oh, how he’d missed her these last few years. But his image cleared, and he realized the redhead wasn’t Beth.
The woman looked up at him. “I like the chocolate diamond. I’ve always been a chocoholic.”
Holding a cigarette, she turned and focused the big fellow and frowned. “Weasel.” She blew smoke in his face. “They say second-hand smoke can kill you. I hope they’re right.”
The big guy waved a hand in front of his face and looked around the room in an odd way.
“You’re not going to hurt my girl.” After a second, the woman turned to meet Farley’s eyes again. “I may not look like I can take him on—” she waved her cigarette in the air, “—but nothing pisses a mama off more than some nitwit going after her kid. I’ll neuter his butt when he’s sleeping. He’ll wake up and be a nutless wonder.” She moved closer to Farley, walking in her high heels, her hips swayed, and the bracelets dangling on her wrist jingled as she moved.
Farley just stared. Something wet oozed down his brow, sweat or blood, he didn’t know which. “Who are you?” She didn’t belong with these guys.
“Who do you think I am?” Fat Fingers screamed.
The woman knelt and touched Farley’s hand. Oddly, the attacker didn’t even look at her. Her touch sent a wave of warmth through him. “Just a ‘not ready.’ I have someone’s balls to collect before I . . . dive into the light, do my last tango, or make the big leap into the hereafter. Or whatever it is they call it.” She smiled.
“You’re dead?” he asked.
“Say what?” one of his attackers asked.
“Yup. Kind of sucks, doesn’t it?” answered the woman. Pursing her lips, she spoke around her cigarette. “But I heard when I cross over, it’ll be different. And don’t worry, your sweet Beth’s waiting on you. But first, I need a favor. Open the safe and then . . .”
Farley listened and then opened his eyes. Had he fallen asleep? The woman was gone. Had he been dreaming? Only imagined her? Was she an angel? But what kind of angel smoked and talked about cutting men’s balls off? He watched as one of the other men lunged forward.
A different guy swung a bat and hit the wall over Farley’s head. “Let me talk to the old geezer.”
The sheetrock above Farley’s head crunched. White particles, appearing almost like snow, rained down on his face. Dragging a deep breath into his tired lungs, he smelled cigarette smoke. While he couldn’t see the odd woman anymore, he felt her presence. And for some reason he didn’t feel so alone. He blinked and tried to remember what she needed him to do.
The baseball bat crashed into the wall again.
Oddly enough, he wasn’t afraid anymore.
Chapter One
“Cali Anne, your alarm went off twenty minutes ago, and that naked weasel in bed with you cut it off.”
“Thanks, Mom.” Cali McKay rolled over in bed. She buried her nose deeper into her lavender-scented pillow and tried to ignore the roar and grind of Hopeful, Texas’ Monday morning traffic filtering through her bedroom window. Sleep offered escape. Escape from—
“Did you hear me?”
The four-finger touch against Cali’s back sent panic shooting through her sleep-dazed mind. She popped up on her hands and knees, air hitching in her throat. Gasping, she stared over her shoulder. Nothing. No Mom. Of course, no Mom.
“What is it?” a masculine voice asked.
She looked at the weasel—er, Stan—stretched out next to her. His black hair lay scattered across his brow.
“Just a dream.” Still positioned as if offering horsey rides, she saw Stan’s gaze zero in on the scooped neckline of her nightshirt. Her girls were no doubt making an appearance.
His violet eyes went from casual-sleepy to wanna-get-laid in a nanosecond. She flipped over and plopped on her butt.
“Bad dream?” he asked as if guesstimating his odds for getting lucky.
And from the smirk in his eyes he had the odds all wrong.
“Not happening.” She adjusted the nightshirt to non-cleavage level, and blinked at the red-illuminated numbers of the clock. “Crap, I needed to be up twenty minutes ago.”
“Kids love it when their teachers are late.” He inched closer as if he hadn’t heard her not-happening comment. His calf hair crinkled against her knee, and his tongue flicked inside her ear. A move that had even her liver shriveling up and screaming yuck.
She really needed to tell him she didn’t like that. But telling men what she liked and didn’t like in the sex department was like asking a new boss for a raise, or telling a stranger he had a blob of spinach in his teeth. It just didn’t feel right.
“Can’t be late.” She leaned out of tongue range.
“Then skip work.” He caught the hem of her nightgown and finger-walked his way up. Past the knee, past the thigh . . .
“No.” She grabbed his wrist and jack-knifed out of the bed.
“Do you know how long it’s been since we had sex?”
Halfway to the bathroom, she pivoted, stared, and decided the relationship was too new to be having this conversation. That meant it was also too new for her to be waking up with him. He’d been here for three weeks now. She couldn’t remember for sure how long he’d told her it was going to take for his new apartment to become available. But three weeks was too long, wasn’t it? Or had that been a lie?
Oh, goodness, she hated early morning epiphanies.
“It’s been forever since we’ve done it,” he snapped.
She blinked. “Four days. We did it last Thursday.” Before the call from the hospice nurse.
“And that doesn’t seem like forever to you?” He yanked off the blanket. Naked and aroused, he stood up. And at six foot plus, a lot of man stood there, too. His penis jutted out and bounced. Once. Twice.
How could men do that? Just prance around, penis bobbing, with no concern whatsoever? A man’s privates were not eye friendly. Well, not when you were late for work and sex held about as much appeal as a pap smear.
Stan groaned. “It isn’t normal.” His Mr. Wiggly lost some of its oomph.
She tipped her chin up, swearing not to look at it again, and anger stirred inside her. Anger at Stan. Anger at herself for letting this thing with Stan get so out of control. Why hadn’t she already asked him about his apartment? Oh, yeah. She’d been too busy dealing with her dying mother.
Then came the anger at her mother for refusing the last sessions of chemo. And that was the anger that hurt the most. The chemo would have given her another few months.
Stan continued to stare. “Why don’t you want to have sex?”
Maybe because funerals are not an aphrodisiac? She bit down on her trembling lip. Crying in front of him felt wrong, but she’d had sex with him. What did that say about the relationship? When had crying become more intimate than sex? What did that say about the sex they�
�d had? Not a good sign. “It’s been a bad week,” she said with sarcasm.
“For Christ’s sake, Cali. She died. You didn’t.”
His callous words burrowed so deep she stumbled back. The baseball bat he’d left leaning against the wall banged to the floor. She watched it roll under the bed. Was a four-day reprieve from sex too much to ask when one’s mother died? She didn’t have the handbook to know. Didn’t want to know. All she wanted was a shower and to get away from the naked weasel and the—she looked one more time—limp penis in front of her.
• • •
Detective Brit Lowell stared at the dog-eared file amongst the other litter on his desk. Until the mold was scraped off Hopeful’s Homicide Division’s ceiling, the entire unit had temporarily moved into the main precinct. Brit slung a Styrofoam cup into the metal trash can. They had cases to solve and higher-ups were worried about a freaking fungus. Right now, he’d take his chair and his office—with the mold—over being stuffed in this broom closet.
“Go home, Lowell,” someone said as he passed an office door.
The grit that lined his eyes reminded him he’d been here too long. He hadn’t adapted to the graveyard shift. It might help if he went home and slept during the day. He seldom did. Go home or sleep.
He curved his shoulders back in the pitiful desk chair. Then, knuckle-locking his fingers behind his neck, he tried to work out the kinks. The kinks hung on. The stress had hunkered down in his shoulders for the long haul. As had the grief.
Damn, he missed Keith. Partners on the force for two years, they’d seldom agreed on anything except that they each would have taken a bullet for the other. But Brit hadn’t been there when the bullets were fired.
“Hey.” John Quarles, his new partner, freshly transferred from another unit, walked into the office and tossed one file on the desk while he clutched another two.
Divorced, Desperate and Daring (Divorced and Desperate Book 6) Page 33