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Deja Moo: A Perfectly Proper Paranormal Museum Mystery © 2018 by Kirsten Weiss.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
First e-book edition © 2018
E-book ISBN: 9780738753928
Book format by Cassie Willett
Cover design by Kevin R. Brown
Cover art © Mary Ann Lasher-Dodge
Midnight Ink is an imprint of Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Weiss, Kirsten, author.
Title: Deja moo / Kirsten Weiss.
Description: First edition. | Midnight Ink : Woodbury, Minnesota, [2018] |
Series: A perfectly proper paranormal museum mystery ; #3
Identifiers: LCCN 2017045336 (print) | LCCN 2017051526 (ebook) | ISBN
9780738753928 | ISBN 9780738750361 (softcover)
Subjects: LCSH: Women detectives—Fiction. | Murder—Investigation—Fiction.
| Paranormal fiction. | GSAFD: Mystery fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3623.E4555 (ebook) | LCC PS3623.E4555 D45 2018 (print)
| DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017045336
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To Alice
one
I aimed the flashlight beneath the hood of my vintage pickup and frowned at the tangle of wires.
The night was cold and still, aside from the occasional metallic squeak of my feet on the chrome bumper. No breeze rustled the dying vines in the nearby vineyard or stirred the bare branches of the apple orchard on the other side of the road. Stars blazed brittle and cold, undimmed by the lights of nearby Sacramento.
Rubbing my arms, I regretted my wardrobe choice. My jeans, Henley, and electric-blue down vest weren’t enough for winter in central California. I undid my ponytail, letting my wavy brown hair fall around my shoulders for warmth.
I tugged lightly on a cable leading to something I couldn’t name. Yep, it was still attached. So why had my truck died?
True, the red pickup was over fifty years old. But my dad had babied it like a prize heifer. After my dad died, my now-ex boyfriend Mason had made sure the truck continued running like a dream.
I hopped off the bumper, thudded hard to the uneven ground, stumbled, and winced. The drop would have been lighter if I’d ever been able to lose those last ten pounds. But blue eyed and freckled, I seemed doomed to be shaped like my central European peasant ancestors.
Something rustled in the vineyard. Giving a little jump, I turned my flashlight in that direction. The unsteady beam elongated the shadows of hunched and twisted grapevines, their gnarled arms reaching.
Shivering, I turned back to my pickup. I’d promised to help my mother guard San Benedetto’s most sacred bovine—the Christmas Cow—and I was an hour late. Every year, a committee of representatives from local government, the Ladies Aid Society, and the Dairy Association built a thirty-foot straw cow, and every year, someone set it on fire. Well, nearly every year. It got run down by an RV once. Now people placed bets on the cow’s fate.
Twin headlights appeared on the arrow-straight road.
I swallowed, remembering every single urban legend about bad things and dark crossroads. Striding to the driver’s side of my truck, I opened the door and tried to remember where I’d put my phone.
The headlights grew larger.
Movements jerky, I scrabbled in my purse on the passenger seat. So what if the road was deserted? San Benedetto wasn’t the scary big city. I was safe. Totally, totally safe.
The driver was probably a farmer on his way home. Or a tourist who’d waited to sober up after too much wine tasting before getting in his car. It wasn’t a psycho killer armed with an ax and creepy clown mask.
“Totally safe,” I muttered.
The car roared closer, its lights blinding. I could tell by the wide-set headlights that it was big, a sedan with ample trunk room for bodies.
The car slowed. The driver had spotted me.
Heart rabbiting, I turned my purse upside down on the seat. A wallet, breath mints, a candy wrapper, museum brochures, and my phone tumbled out. My phone skidded sideways, fell to the floor, and bounced beneath my seat. Stooping, I rummaged for it.
A window whirred down. “Maddie?” a man asked.
Phone in hand, I jerked upright and gasped with relief. “Detective Slate?” Jason Slate was one of our local cops, and a good one.
“What’s going on? Car trouble?” He unfolded himself from the car, his shadow long on the asphalt. Tall, dark, and handsome, with broad shoulders and narrow hips, Detective Slate stood somewhere over six feet tall. He was in a suit, so I guessed he’d just gotten off work on the wrong side of midnight.
And even though I knew he wasn’t going to dismember me and fertilize the vineyard with ground-Maddie, my heart beat more quickly. I had a crush on the African-American cop.
“The engine died. I was about to call my mom,” I said, my cheeks warming. “And then a tow truck.” It wasn’t like I went running to mommy every time something went wrong.
“Is she guarding the cow tonight?”
I bumped against the open truck door. “Yes, and I’m late.” My mother did not tolerate late.
Slate grinned. “No one’s been able to really explain that tradition to me. What does a straw cow have to do with Christmas?”
“It’s Swedish.”
“So I’ve been told, and why Swedish?” he asked. “San Benedetto was founded by Italians.”
“Because of the great Swedish influx of 1908. That’s when the Jorgensen family arrived.”
“One family makes an influx?”
Leaves rustled on dry earth and I glanced at the vineyard. “It did in 1908 San Benedetto.”
“Now I know you’re pulling my leg.”
“Nope. Serious. It was a really big family.”
“Did they force-feed local history to you in grade school?”
If they had, I couldn’t remember it. “I researched Swedish Christmas traditions as part of my Paranormal Christmas exhibit at the m
useum.” The phone buzzed in my hand and I checked the screen. “That’s my mom now. Do you mind?”
“Go ahead.”
“Hi—”
“Madelyn, this is your mother,” she said, terse. “Don’t come. I repeat, do not come.”
My scalp prickled. “What—?”
“The cow is under attack.”
“Attack?” My grip tightened on the phone. “What’s happening?”
Slate straightened. “Maddie?”
“Oh my God. The gingerbread men!” she shrieked, and the phone disconnected.
“Mom? Mom!” I shouted into the dial tone. Oh-my-God-oh-my-God-oh-my-God. My mom is never flustered. She’s known for always being perfectly, terrifyingly in control right down to her ironed jeans. But her voice had held an unmistakable thread of panic.
“What’s happening?” Slate asked, his tone hard and brisk.
“The Christmas Cow’s under attack. My mom’s there!”
“Get in.”
But I was already sliding into the passenger side of his sedan. The attackers were probably trying to set the cow on fire. What if my mom tried to stop them or attempted to put out the flames herself ?
Slate revved the engine. Spitting gravel, we tore onto the road. He grabbed the radio between us and shouted numbers to the dispatcher.
I buckled up and grasped the dashboard, straining forward as if that would make us go faster.
He flicked a switch and a siren wailed. “There are always two people on guard, aren’t there?” he asked.
“Usually. But my mom didn’t think the other guard tonight would be much help, so she asked me to stop by.” It was nearly two a.m., the end of my mom’s shift.
“Who’s her partner?”
“Some guy from the Dairy Association.”
“She’ll be okay,” Slate said. “Those farmers are tougher than they look.”
My fingertips whitened on the dash. “Can you go any faster?”
He accelerated. “And since the cow attacks began … what was it, thirty years ago?”
“It was 1988.” You never forget your first straw cow conflagration.
“Since then, these cow arsonists have never hurt anyone. They’re probably just kids. I’m sure your mom is okay.”
I gasped. Ahead, an orange glow lit the night sky. “The cow!”
My mom had failed, and like my truck, my mom never failed. Had we reached the end times? Had my broken-down pickup been an omen? Not that I believe in omens. Just because I own a paranormal museum doesn’t mean I have to believe in all things supernatural. True, I’d seen some odd stuff at the museum. But nothing I couldn’t attribute to a trick of the light or … something.
The edge of the phone bit into my palm. Hands shaking, I dialed my mom. The call went to voicemail.
We roared through the adobe arch that proclaimed Welcome to San Benedetto. Clouds of black smoke billowed down the street.
We passed the brick bank and the local microbrewery, their windows dark for the night. I glanced at the dash clock. It was two fifteen in the morning, and San Benedetto sidewalks rolled up at eleven. The arsonists had timed their attack well. As usual.
Other sirens wailed, red and blue lights flashing through the roiling smoke.
We screeched to a halt beside the park, and I gaped. The thirty-foot cow was now just a metal skeleton atop a smoldering ash heap.
Firemen piled from their trucks.
A slender figure staggered through the ashes.
I leapt from the sedan. “Mom!” I raced to her. “Mom, are you okay?”
Blue eyes wide, she stared through me. “Gingerbread men,” she moaned.
“What happened?” I clutched her shoulders, assuring myself she was in one piece. Her cropped, silvery-blond hair stood up in places. Her orange safety-fleece jacket was gritty with ash.
Slate jogged across the park to us. “Mrs. Kosloski, are you hurt?”
She gulped, shook her head, straightened. “I’m fine. There was a gang. They shot flaming arrows into the cow. Flaming arrows!” She grasped my wrist. “Arrows!”
“Can you describe the people who did this?” Slate asked.
Anger flashed across her soot-stained face. “Right down to the icing. They were dressed as gingerbread men with candy buttons and … and …” Her lips quivered.
“What?” he prodded gently.
“Santa Claus,” she whispered. “He was involved.”
“No,” I said, shocked. Christmas was my mother’s favorite holiday, and Saint Nicholas her favorite saint. And she wasn’t even Catholic.
She actually had a Santa Claus toilet seat cover. If the seat’s up, Santa covers his eyes with his mittens. When I was a kid, the wealth of tinsel and glitter in our house made the holidays magical. As an adult … heck, I still loved it.
“What will the children think?” My mother clutched Slate’s arm. “There must be a way to …” She shook her head. “No, we won’t be able to keep Santa’s involvement out of the papers, not with the webcams.”
“Webcams?” The detective’s golden-brown eyes narrowed.
“Webcam,” I said. “Singular. Leo helped them rig one this year so other townsfolk could help guard the cow from their computers.” My assistant at the Paranormal Museum was versatile.
“And the video feed is recorded?” Slate asked.
“It’s on three-second intervals,” I said.
“I’ll need to see that video,” he said.
My mother buried her head in her hands. “It’s probably all over the Internet by now,” she wailed. “What will the children think?”
“How many attackers were involved?” Slate asked.
“It’s hard to say. They were all moving so quickly, and it was dark. I think there were four gingerbread men plus Santa.”
“Where’s the guy who’s supposed to be helping you guard?” I asked.
“Bill.” Her lip curled. “Since he’s president of the Dairy Association, he thinks he’s too good for guard duty.”
“But where is he?” Slate asked. “He didn’t go after the arsonists, did he?”
She motioned vaguely at the park, the burnt metal skeleton, the gazebo. “I don’t know. We agreed to guard opposite sides of the cow. I had the street side, and he had the creek. And then I was surrounded by laughing gingerbread men and flaming arrows were flying everywhere. It happened so fast.”
“Thanks,” Slate said and walked toward the creek.
My mother and I looked at each other, then followed him past the gazebo.
Firemen showered water on the ashes. A jet of water hit a white canvas sign and sent it flying to the ground.
“I knew we shouldn’t have built the Christmas Cow this year,” my mother said, edging around a park bench. “This always happens. And the worst of it is, I really think people look forward to the fire more than the cow!”
I knew they did, but I patted her on the back. “It’s okay.”
“No, it isn’t. San Benedetto has changed, Madelyn. Murders. Flaming arrows!”
“At least we haven’t had a murder with a flaming arrow.”
“That isn’t funny.”
“No.” I sighed. “I’m sorry.”
Slate shuffled sideways down the creek bank.
“Do you think Bill went after the miscreants?” she asked me. “I hope he’s not hurt.”
I shook my head and watched Slate pick his way down the uneven slope. The creek ran low in December, but its bank was filled with prickly bushes that plucked at the detective’s suit. I turned toward the gazebo. “Which way did the gingerbread men go?”
“Everywhere,” she said. “They scattered. Laughing. As if arson was a joke!”
“They were probably kids. To them, a giant flaming cow is funny. And no one got … hurt.” I cocked my he
ad. A dark pile of rags lay slumped over the rear gazebo steps. Dread slowed my breath. “What’s that?”
My mother’s face paled. She hurried forward. “Bill?”
I trotted to catch up, then stumbled to a halt.
A middle-aged man lay sprawled on the gazebo steps, his eyes wide, staring. An arrow stuck upright from his chest.
two
Dead. A man was dead. My brain tilt-a-whirled, my stomach twisting. Getting a grip on myself, I raced to the top of the gully and stumbled over a loose rock in the darkness. Slate’s flashlight beam bobbed on the opposite side of the low creek.
“Detective Slate!”
The light swiveled, hitting me in the chest. “I found tracks leading across the stream,” he said. “I think they go to the high school.” He sloshed back across the creek. “What did you find?”
“Bill Eldrich,” I said, voice splintering. “He’s … he’s dead.”
“Where?” Bent low for balance, the detective ran up the slope toward me.
“The gazebo.” I nodded in that direction.
My mother had backed away from the body. Two firemen in helmets and sturdy coats knelt beside the lump on the gazebo steps. I rubbed my chest.
Slate strode past me to the gazebo.
I stood paralyzed. The creek splashed against the rocks below. Radios crackled. A man shouted.
I dug into my down vest and pulled out my cell phone, called Leo.
After a few rings, my museum assistant picked up. “Maddie?” Loud music blared in the background.
“Hi, Leo. You’re not in a bar, are you?” My sole employee wasn’t yet twenty-one, but he was on his own in the world. I couldn’t help worrying about him.
He laughed. “I get enough mothering from Mrs. Gale. And no, I’m not in a bar. I’m at a party. What’s up?”
“The cow burned down.”
“No way! Hold on.” He shouted something, and there was the sound of cheers and whooping. “I always miss the action,” he said into the phone. “Were you there? Did you see it go up?”
“No, but my mom was. The police want to see a copy of the webcam footage.”
“Oh,” he said, sobering. “Is your mom okay? She wasn’t hurt, was she?”
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