by Renee George
“True story,” Chav said, “and they sure know how to ruin a perfectly good party.”
Dom spread his hands. “Well, if it’s a party you want...”
Selena, who had been waiting patiently for our orders, giggled.
I stood up. “There isn’t room at this table for another chair. Agent Tartan and I will take the one Mr. And Mrs. Smart just left.”
Selena’s smile grew tight. “I’ll get it cleaned up for you two.” She looked at the deputy. “Should I make it for three?”
I said, “yes,” while Dominic said, “no.”
Eldin shook his head. “You two go on. I’ll finish lunch with Sunny and Chav.”
After we sat at the new table, a small one near the kitchen, I sipped my coffee and glared at Dominic.
He ordered an iced tea then turned to me and said, “What?”
In a quiet shout, the kind that’s all about tone without volume, I said, “What top secret information did you learn that Eldin couldn’t hear?”
“Other than what’s in the files, there’s nothing new to learn.”
“But the victim is definitely a therianthrope?”
“They’re rabbit shifters.”
“That explains the five kids and another on the way. Though, we have a woman in town, a deer shifter, who would give those rabbits a run for their money.”
“You mean Ruth Thompson.”
I assessed him again. “I get you spent a week here a couple years back, but damn, you really paid attention.”
“Ruth is a friend of Chav’s.”
A knot formed in my throat. “Just how well did you get to know Chavvah Trimmel?”
“As well as any man could with a jealous werewolf breathing down his neck.”
I snorted. “So not as well as you’d have liked.”
Dom winked at me, and the knot in my throat tightened.
“Do any of the victims have ties to Peculiar? I really don’t see how any investigation here is going to produce a lead.”
“Actually, there is one thing that ties them all together.” He leaned forward. “They were all at the Tri-State Council Jubilee here in two summers ago.”
“When did you find this out?” Because if it was sooner than the past four hours I was going to be unhappy.
“I got the information when I was driving here from Springfield. You know Wilhelmina Boden, your dad’s new deputy?”
“Oh, yeah, the red-head engaged to Brady Corman.”
Dom’s eyes darkened. “That’s her. She was head of security for the Tri-State Council before her move to Peculiar. She managed to get her hands on a complete list of all the people who attended the event. She gave your dad and me a copy.”
“Did you find out if there are any more killings in this same vein prior to the last three?”
He shook his head. “Not yet.” I noticed for the first time how tired he looked around the eyes.
“We should get to the interviews with the Blonde Bear owners and staff. Mr. Lieberman’s life may depend on it. Though I don’t know what we can learn here. Strangers stick out like sore thumbs. I think Blondina and Roger would have told my dad if anyone around here fit the bill.”
“That’s just it.” Dom rubbed his chin. “I think it’s someone who lives here.”
I nodded, not wanting to agree, but there was no other explanation. “We need to start a list of people who could leave town without drawing suspicion.”
“Agreed,” Dom said. “And we need to do it in a way that doesn’t alert the unsub.”
In a town of less than two-thousand people, my partner was asking for a whole lot of impossible, but there were other things to consider with this criminal.
“This guy is smart. Organized. So, let’s narrow it down by skilled employment or white-collar work.” I planted my elbow on the table as another thought occurred to me. “This killer is real ballsy. He takes his victims outside their homes and returns them. That takes a lot of confidence.”
I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned to see Sunny Haddock staring down at me. Her eyes were glazed, and her very worried-looking best friend stood behind her.
“What is it?”
Chav shook her head. “I’ve never seen her like this.”
With a blank stare in my direction, Sunny said in a monotone voice, “Duck when you see the yellow man. Step over the crack. Skipped stones on the lake. Beware the lying owl. Falling glass. Death.” Her voice grew even more hollow. “Death strikes at twelve.” She blinked, her pupils flexing to focus. “What in the world? That’s weird.”
I let out a noisy breath I’d been holding. “You’re not kidding.”
Chapter Six
“You can’t honestly tell me you believe in psychics?” I scanned the meeting room at City Hall full of nodding heads starting with my dad and ending with the mayor and his sketchy wife. In between, Chavvah Trimmel and Doctor Billy Bob Smith watched me with a certain amount of amusement. The only person in the room who acted as if they might be even the tiniest bit on my side was Dominic.
My dad walked around the ten-foot by three-foot table separating us. He put his hands on my shoulders. “Look, kiddo. I didn’t think it was possible either.” He shrugged. “At first. But Sunny here has a gift, and once you see it in action, it’s hard to deny.”
“You sound like one of those nut-jobs they interview on the Aliens in History program, Dad. Jesus.”
“I love that show,” Sunny said brightly. She pointed to her husband. “Babe loves it too. Especially that Nina Pappadapolous.”
“She does know how to stroll into a pyramid with authority.”
Sunny smirked. “Yeah, it’s the stroll that makes her so fascinating.”
The mayor, un-mayorally, grabbed his wife into his arms and kissed her passionately.
Chavvah groaned. “Get a room you two.” She snapped her gaze to the doctor whose eyes had suddenly turned predatorially on her. “Keep it in your pants, wolf. At least until the wedding.”
I whistled loudly, and everyone went silent. “Can we discuss this whole psychic thing seriously for one moment?” My tone was terse, but I didn’t know why. Therianthropic men were prone to these kinds of displays with their mates as the mood beset them. I, myself, had witnessed my father kiss my mom stupid more than a couple of hundred times during my childhood and since. My only explanation, at least the only one I could admit too, was that I was jealous I didn’t have someone in my life lowering my I.Q.
Mayor Trimmel ended the kiss with Sunny. Her cheeks were red and her eyes glazed. For a second, I worried she was going to start yammering about the yellow man again. But then she smiled.
Nope. She wasn’t going into a trance. Just happily dazed by love. The familiar twist of jealousy curled my stomach. “Look, Nicole. I don’t need you to believe me. I’m not trying to pull a fast one on you or extort money. In other words, I’ve got no skin in this game. You can listen to whatever I said to you, or you can choose to ignore it. It doesn’t matter to me either way.”
Chavvah cleared her throat. “You said ‘Death strikes at twelve’, Sunny.”
“Oh.” She squinched her nose then shook her head. “Maybe you should listen to that part. It sounds pretty serious to me.”
“You think?” my dad interjected. He turned his back on me, a maneuver he’d used my whole life when he wanted me to know he was “good and done” with whatever we were discussing, and addressed Sunny. “Do you remember anything about your vision?”
She sighed. “One minute I am happily eating my veggie burger and scarfing on steak fries, and the next minute I am standing at Nicole and Dom’s table. I felt the usual light-headedness and tingling that happens when a vision is coming on, but it’s never been like a sleep-walking thing. Usually, you know,” she pointed at the carpet, “I end up on the floor. And,” she added, “usually, I see the vision as if I’m living in it. Like it’s real. But this was different. No walkthrough. It was more like a blur of pictures, and I didn’t stay on a
ny image long enough to get a clear look. I’ll be damned if I can explain my ramblings. I don’t remember saying any of those things.”
“Just to be safe, I think I ought to assign a deputy to you, puddin.”
“Da-ad,” I whined. “Ix-nay on the uddin-pay.”
Dominic raised a brow at me. “I’m fluent in Pig Latin.” He leaned in conspiratorially. “F.Y.I. I can also spell, you know, just in case you were planning that tactic in the ef u tee u ar e.” His breath on my neck made me shiver.
“Got it.” I shifted focus by blurting, “All the victims have a tie to Peculiar. They attended the Tri-State Council Jubilee when it was held here.”
Chavvah groaned. “The gift that just keeps giving.”
“How did you figure that out?”
“I have an, er, contact in the Council.”
Sunny grinned. “You had Willy call the new security chief, didn’t you?” She pointed at Dom. “Oh, yes, she told me all about your torrid little affair a few years back.”
Jesus. Dom had dated Chavvah and Willy Boden. For a guy who wasn’t from Peculiar, he sure got around. “We think the killer is from here.”
“It has to be someone who travels for a job or leisure,” Dom addressed my dad. “Is there any way to get a list of people who fit this profile?”
My dad’s shoulders slumped. “Believe it or not, I don’t know everyone in town. Not even some of the folk who have been here before I was born. There are less than two-thousand residents in town, but the more rural areas have probably a thousand or more. Some people only come to town when they need supplies. It won’t be easy.”
“What about you, Billy Bob?” Sunny asked. She turned her attention to Doctor Smith. “You treat almost everybody around here.”
Doc’s silver eyes narrowed to slits. “I can’t divulge confidential patient information.”
“Technically, we don’t need a warrant to access your patient files,” Dom said. “HIPAA rules afford law enforcement access when we are trying to identify a suspect. Besides that, the Tri-Council doesn’t recognize the privacy of therianthropes during murder investigations. It boils down to this: This killer is drawing unwanted attention to a therianthropic community. We don’t want humans to get more involved.”
Doctor Smith nodded. “Only if there is cause. You don’t have cause to look at all my patient records. I’m sorry, but none of my patients jump out as killers to me. If any of them did, I would tell you. And if you narrow it down to a couple of suspects, I’m happy to cooperate, but until then, I’m not going to let you go on a scavenger hunt of my files. I want to help but not like this. I’m not sure anyone in this room would want the police or any stranger going through their private medical matters. It’s too invasive.”
“I agree with Doc,” Chavvah said. No surprise there. “What about that stupid city survey we had to fill out last year?”
“Oh!” Sunny nodded. “I know exactly the one you mean. It got pretty damn personal. At one point, I thought it was going to ask for my bra size. It had quite a few questions about employment, which is exactly what you all need. Maybe the mayor,” she touched her husband’s shoulder, “can ask Dovey Michaels, on the down-low mind you, if anyone has any jobs that require a lot of travel.”
Mayor Trimmel put his arm over Sunny’s shoulder, but he addressed the lot of us. “Dovey takes her job as the city’s Budget and Management Director very seriously. I’m not sure she’ll give me any private information about our citizens.”
“I think we all know that Dovey has a sweet tooth for the boss.” She slapped her husband on the butt. “Just smile and shake that ass, honey. That woman will give you anything you want.”
Babel chuckled. “There’s only one woman I want anything from.”
“I find your devotion touching.” Sunny put her hand on his chest and raised up on her toes to kiss his cheek. “Now, go flirt your way into Dovey’s drawers.” When Babel raised his brow, she added, “Her file drawers.”
The young mayor laughed. “I guess I’ll go sweet talk a bureaucrat.”
Sunny elbowed him. “You’re a bureaucrat. A bootie-licious bureaucrat, at that.” She smacked him on the bottom for emphasis.
I interrupted their cutesy banter. “Maybe I should go talk to her. Dovey used to babysit me when I was little.”
“You’re still little,” Dom muttered.
I flashed a smile that was all teeth and quietly said, “Dynamite comes in small packages.”
“I bet the explosion is spectacular,” he said in the same hushed manner.
Chavvah crossed her arms. “You do realize we’re all shifters in this room, and we can hear you.”
“Not all of us!” Sunny exclaimed. “What did I miss?”
I took a second to latch onto the one part of her exclamation that didn’t put the focus on me. “What do you mean by not all of us?”
Her pert mouth formed an “O”. She covered it with her hand. “Oops.”
Dom cocked his head sideways at the mayor’s wife. “Sunny is...Are you a human?”
“I like to think of myself as...” She threw up her arms. “Oh, who am I kidding? In a few years when I start looking my age, it’s not like I’m going to be able to keep it a secret.”
“You have got to be kidding me,” I said. “This is a therianthropic community. No humans allowed. No humans are supposed to even know about us.”
Dom put his hand on my shoulder. The warmth of his fingertips pressed into my skin. “You can’t think that there are no humans who know about us. There are integrators all over the world who have mated cross-species. I just didn’t expect to see it here in Peculiar.”
I glared at my dad. “Me either.” How had mom managed to keep it a secret? That woman couldn’t keep her mouth shut about me starting my period when I was sixteen. How in the world had she kept quiet about this?
“I made her swear to silence,” my dad said as if he could read my mind. “Your mom wanted to tell you, but we both agreed that this was too important for everyone to know about.”
“So, the town doesn’t know.”
“Only the town council,” he said. “The Johnsons, the Thompsons, the people in this room, and my deputies. We discussed it when she first moved to Peculiar and agreed to keep Sunny’s secret, and that we would never speak of it in public or private. It was the only way to assure she could stay in town without interference from therians who would insist she leave, and also from the Tri-State Council, who, as you know, would investigate us to Hell and back if they found out.”
I didn’t know why the secret felt like a betrayal, but it did. I’d been gone from Peculiar for almost a decade, but this was the first time it hadn’t felt like home.
“You can’t tell anyone,” Chavvah said.
She moved toward me, but Doc Smith put his hand out. “Nic won’t tell a soul.” His gaze darkened as it pivoted to Dominic. “How about you, Agent Tartan? Will you be reporting Sunny to the council?”
“Truthfully, I like Sunny, but I don’t know. I am duty bound to the council even more than I am to the FBI. However, I won’t do anything rash, and whatever I decide, I will give you all a heads up.”
Babel Trimmel growled, his lip curling with anger. It was Sunny who stopped him by placing herself between her husband and my partner. “It’s all right, babe.” He snarled but stayed put. She smiled at Dominic. “Right now, Dom has more to worry about than me.” She walked over and took his hand. After a moment, she gave it a single, satisfied pat. “Dom will make the right decision.”
The whole room seemed to sigh in relief. Except for Dom. His shoulders tensed and his jaw flexed. “Yes,” his said tightly. “I will.”
The door flung open to the room. Eldin Farraday stumbled in, sweaty and out of breath. “You are not...going to...believe...this,” he said through labored pants. He held up the evidence baggy with the loyalty card. “We have partial matches on three prints other than the Messers.”
“The FBI database came up cl
ean,” Dom said. “No matches.”
“We have a local database,” my dad said. “Eldin here is a computer whiz. He set it up a few years back so we could do local searches. Really, it’s all we need.”
Eldin, who’d finally caught his breath, nodded. “And you are not going to believe who the prints belong to, Sheriff.”
My dad waved his hand at Eldin. “Go on, now. Don’t bury the lead, son.”
“Gary Davis, Mallory Evans, and Darrel Tolliver.”
I cringed. The names told me exactly why Eldin was so excited. “God, I hate Hume’s Day Preppers.”
Chapter Seven
I had plans to meet Eldin for dinner at six-thirty. It would give me a chance to talk to the Messers about the preppers since we hadn’t been able to talk to them at lunch. I shivered as I thought about the TSS. Those people were cah-razy from way back.
I jumped at the knock on my bedroom door. “Come in, Dominic.”
The door opened. Dom led with his head, his dark mop of curls brushing his forehead. When his eyes pivoted up to meet mine, I sighed. Damn, the man was gorgeous with a capital G. “How’d you know it was me?”
“Maybe I’m a little psychic, too.” I smirked when his eyes widened and shook my head. “I used my deductive skills. Mom would have just walked in, and my dad always announces himself when he knocks. Since you didn’t barge in or announce yourself...”
“And I’m the only other person in the house...”
“Exactly. It doesn’t take a mentalist to put it together.”
“What is your take on the whole Sunny Trimmel thing?”
I shrugged and pulled my hair back, acutely aware of Dom’s gaze on my neck. “I don’t know. My dad has a good sense of people. If he trusts her, I’m inclined to do the same, but this whole psychic business... I don’t know. It just sounds far-fetched.”
Dom nodded. “Maybe. But let’s keep an open mind for now.” He pointed to my bed. “Can I sit?”
“Be my guest.” I took a seat at my vanity and tried not to imagine what Dom would look like stretched across my pink comforter without clothes on.