by Jim Heskett
The Holler Thief
Jim Heskett
Contents
Offer
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
A NOTE TO READERS
I’LL BE RIGHT BACK: A Short Story
Books by Jim Heskett
About the Author
Offer
See Harry and Serena’s origins in the Layne Parrish series. Want to get the exciting prequel thriller novella Museum Attack for FREE? It’s not available for sale anywhere. Check out www.jimheskett.com for this free action-packed book.
1
Harry Boukadakis didn’t know if the paladin and the dragon would play well together, but he was running out of shelf space. He’d have to risk it. The ornate creature, a hand-painted bronze Sapphire Dragon, had held a coveted spot on his shelf behind the desk. It had been that way since Harry had rented this space in the Eureka Springs strip mall.
For weeks, the boxes had sat in the office, mocking his procrastination. Harry would come to work, stare at the boxes, and then pivot his head and ignore them for the rest of the day. This morning seemed like the time to break that inertia, and Harry had made the space look almost like a normal, grown-up place of business.
He had finally retrieved the other trinket box out of storage, and he had to find a suitable place to display Sir Pointy Sword. The miniature wore golden plate armor delicately detailed with a tiny paintbrush. He carried a longsword across his back, with a devilish smile on his minuscule face. Sir Pointy Sword took no guff and gave no quarter. That was probably why the Dungeons & Dragons character had survived to reach such a high level.
“Let’s see how this goes,” Harry said as he set the paladin knight on the shelf. He angled them away from each other, just in case.
Harry adjusted his eyeglasses and crossed his small office space nestled in the strip mall between the nail salon and the Alcoholics Anonymous meeting room. The nail salon people treated Harry much the same way his higher-status peers treated him in high school, like an invisible creature. But, unlike the passive bullying of eye rolls and backhanded compliments of teenagers, the nail salon employees mostly ignored him. It didn’t wound Harry the way it did back then; one of the few benefits of middle age was the gradually lessening of his ability to care what others thought. Sometimes.
Harry didn’t know much about the tenants on the other side, but the AA people liked to congregate out front with their little coffee cups, and they seemed friendly enough. Friendlier than the nail salon people, for sure. He’d noticed the way the salon employees' eyes would narrow at his hands, judging his dirty nails and unkempt cuticles.
The clouds had parted outside to reveal a deep blue sky, lighter at the horizons. A stubborn half moon hung low, despite the hour. With an AA conference in town over the last couple days, the meetings next door had swelled with tourists. The nail shop business didn’t seem to have been affected as much.
He saw an advantage to being neighborly with the operations on either side of his office, but didn’t feel the need to push that agenda this morning.
“One thing at a time, Boukadakis,” he said as he struggled to locate an itchy spot on his back with the fingers of one hand. Harry scooted the dragon over a touch so he had enough room on the shelf for his framed license. This little piece of paper had cost him a lot more than the money to take the test. It had cost him two years of his life.
After an intensive program similar to an internship, a hefty series of fees for various things, and a laborious board exam, Harry Boukadakis was now a licensed private investigator in the state of Arkansas. He liked keeping the license here, not only for potential clients to see, but also to remind him. Not that he could forget those twenty-four grueling months, but sometimes, it didn’t feel real. The license proved to him that he deserved to be here, doing this work.
He found only one other item in the box: a 9mm bullet. A gift from an old friend.
Harry set the bullet on the shelf next to Sir Pointy Sword, then he retreated into the kitchenette to pour a fresh cup of coffee. He had no cream or sugar, and he sipped the bitter drink as he stared out the window. The liquid brought a wince to his face, but he could feel the effects of the caffeine from the first swallow.
“Everyone has to make sacrifices in Eureka Springs,” he mused to the empty room in a gravelly, weather-beaten tone. “Even hardened private eyes like Harry Boukadakis have to drink coffee black sometimes. Just another thankless part of the job.”
But after the next sip, he put it away. The lack of cream and sugar was part of his weight loss strategy, but the black coffee was a little too gross to handle. He’d felt that initial hit, and maybe that would be enough to keep him moving for a few hours.
Harry set the coffee among the hundreds of loose papers and folders on his desk. He strode over toward the window, studying this slice of the small town as the caffeine activated and he felt a droplet of sweat cascade down his back.
The strip mall ran along a curved and hilly street, a couple blocks east of downtown. Harry’s office sat between the hotel district and the central business part of town, so he could spend quite a bit of time people-watching, since so many traveled on foot here.
He took a few seconds to watch a family strolling down the street. Mom, Dad, little girl. Despite the early hour, the little girl had an ice cream cone, two scoops held loosely in one hand as she skipped along between the two grownups. The cone twisted in her fidgety hand, like a rock star onstage dancing with a microphone.
Harry knew it was going to happen a second before it did: the higher of the girl’s two scoops of ice cream shifted and then plummeted to the ground. When she saw this, her face turned to horror, and she wailed loud enough Harry could hear her all the way across the parking lot.
“Yep,” he said, nodding as he narrowed his eyes in faux-seriousness. “Sorry, kid. I know the feeling.”
Harry thought of his son. One day in particular, over a dozen years ago. Living on the east coast, he and his wife and their child spending a day at an amusement park in Virginia. Harry and his wife had bought ice cream, too, but they’d all eaten them too fast to worry about the sticky fingers of melting dairy. One of those banal memories that surfaced every few months for no good reason. It would dance in his head and make him think of good times before fading, like always.
He picked up the coffee and forced it down his throat, despite the heat and the bitter tang. He ne
eded the motivational juice this morning, for sure. As long as he told himself he had to do it, drinking the boring beverage seemed less like a choice, more like habit.
As Harry observed the town through his office window, he saw the convenience store door open across the street. The little gas station and shop was at the edge of the parking lot containing this strip mall. It was one of the few businesses that had the same name as when Harry used to visit Arkansas in his younger days. Everything else seemed changed.
A large man exited the gas station, and Harry recognized him. The newest tenant of the strip mall, the barber at the east end of the building. He was different in Eureka Springs for two main reasons… he was Black, and more unusual, he was a hulking beast of a man.
Harry watched him stroll out of the convenience store with a bottled tea in one hand and a plastic bag of objects in the other. The man stopped, then he set the bag down to free up a hand to draw his phone from his pocket.
For some reason, Harry thought he knew this man. His face seemed eerily familiar, and it burned at him, but he didn’t know why. He wanted to snap a picture and try a reverse image search, but with the blinds open, he didn’t want the man to notice. Snapping pictures of people without their knowledge never looks innocent, even if that’s true.
Harry turned away from the window for a second to set his empty coffee mug on the desk when he heard something. A crack, a crash, maybe an explosion. Crinkling glass, down toward the other end of the strip mall. Like flicking a switch, the outside had gone from relative peace to chaos in an instant.
Harry dropped the mug and raced out the front door as fast as his stubby legs would allow. First, he saw the barber across the street, mouth open, bottled tea slipping from his fingers. Staring at his barbershop. The plastic bottle of tea bounced on the ground and then rolled back toward the convenience store.
Harry and the barber took off at the same time, two husky bodies jiggling in the morning sun. Both on a course toward the loud sound. Harry raced along the parking lot to see glass everywhere out in front. The nail salon people huddled by their front window to watch, mouths agape, but none of them came outside.
“No, no, no!” the barber said as he skidded to a stop a few feet away from Harry. The big guy leaned over and planted his meaty hands on his knees, sucking in breaths. Massive shoulders heaving up and down.
“What happened?” Harry asked, and then he felt stupid for spouting such an obvious question. He took a few steps back so he could see around the edge of the strip mall, in the hilly, wooded open space behind it. He saw nothing of interest, just ground damp from a recent rain, and a couple of squirrels chasing each other around the trunk of a tree.
The barber, with a frown so dismal it would make a unicorn weep, stepped over the broken glass inside his barbershop. He turned in a slow circle, the frown deepening by the second. When Harry took in the despair on the man’s face, he felt a white-hot pang of sympathetic anguish.
“I’ve been robbed,” the barber said.
2
While the barber watched in horror at the shattered glass of his business’ former front window, Harry jogged toward the end of the strip mall. With a hand to his temple to shield the morning window glare, he surveyed the open space behind the strip mall. An awning ran around the edge of the building, providing shadow to a narrow sidewalk. A small grass patch flanked the sidewalk, and it led to an open space filled with trees. Beyond that, parking lots, streets, lots of little passageways to provide escape out into the complex nest of Eureka Springs.
Whoever had broken the glass had apparently made a lightning-quick getaway. Someone who either knew this neighborhood or had made an escape with a suspicious amount of luck.
Harry turned back toward the scene with his phone out. “I’ll call the police,” he said as he stepped over broken glass to enter the barbershop.
With a broom in hand, the barber turned toward Harry, his eyes flicking toward the phone. For a moment, his eyes seemed almost yellow. Then the man bit his lip and his gaze darted around, as if running through his options. “No, thanks.”
Harry tapped the button to end the call. “I’m sorry; I think I misheard you. You don’t want to report this?”
“No police.”
Harry tried to avoid physically raising his eyebrows, but he did think it was curious. There were several broken bottles and mirrors everywhere. Someone had done a rapid smash-and-grab and had not been careful in the process. At least hundreds—maybe thousands—of dollars’ worth of damage.
“You’ll get a lot further with your insurance claim if you have a police report to back it up.”
The barber swept and flashed a grim smile that was at once both wistful and ironic. “Yeah, I won’t be making an insurance claim, either. You have to have insurance to do that.”
Harry could see the despair rotting the man’s face. To him, this was no different from a tornado or some other random act of God. At least, that’s what Harry assumed. He had a hard time reading the big guy’s facial expressions.
“I’m sorry this happened,” Harry said.
“Yeah, me too. You have an office in the building, right?”
“Harry Boukadakis,” he said, stepping forward to shake.
For a second, the barber stared at the waiting palm, seemingly unfamiliar with the custom. After a brief hesitation, he shook. A meaty hand encompassed Harry’s, but a shoulder-dislocating handshake did not follow. The grip was actually rather weak.
“Kemba Wood.”
When Harry touched the man’s hand, he remembered where he had seen him before. “You played football?”
Kemba nodded. “College at Texas Tech, four years with the Rams, four years with the Dolphins, until an ACL tear ended my career.”
Harry wasn’t a football aficionado, so those individual team stints meant little to him. But he did remember seeing Kemba in a commercial for the Red Cross once after a hurricane had decimated Miami. Harry had flashes of the commercial: Kemba slogging through knee-high water, kicking in a door to save a puppy, nodding at the camera.
“Can I ask why you don’t want to call the police, Kemba?”
The guy shook his blocky head as he swept glass, brown jowls jiggling. “You may not. I appreciate your concern. Really, I do. I’m not trying to be rude, but I’d like to move on and not make a big deal out of this.”
Harry kept his face flat as he put his hands on his hips. “No offense taken. I know this must be a weird time for you right now. Do you have another broom? I can help.”
Kemba shook his head. “I just have the one broom. Thanks, Harry, but you don’t need to do anything. I can handle the cleanup by myself.”
Then Harry’s eyes landed on a framed art print on the wall near the back. A poster-sized version of the original Dungeon Master’s Guide cover.
“You play D&D?”
Kemba paused his sweeping and offered Harry a meager smile. “Since I was fifteen. I was hoping to get a game going local, instead of playing with my old friends over the internet.”
Harry produced a business card from his pocket. He didn’t tell Kemba it was the first card taken from a box of one thousand. “I’ve been running a tabletop game and have a small crew, one night a week. We’ve been looking for new players. It’s hard enough to find a stable of committed and fun people in a large city, so in Eureka Springs, you kinda have to take what you can get.”
Kemba took the card and studied it. “Private investigator?”
Harry beamed and prayed Kemba wouldn’t ask him how long he’d been on the job. He didn’t. Instead, the distraught man only said, “When I get some free time for a game session, I’ll give you a call.”
Then he turned away from Harry, and the private eye slinked back out of the barbershop.
Harry sat at his desk, organizing loose stacks of pages. He didn’t sort and file them, but he did make them look a little more orderly. Not that he was expecting guests or potential clients, but it seemed like the kind of thi
ng a responsible business owner would do. And, thinking that, a flash of cold dread climbed up Harry’s spine. He now owned a business. Not a partnership or anything; him alone. Harry had done a lot of scary things in his life, but this might be the topper on the cake.
Outside, a car pulled up, out of view of his office windows. He closed his eyes and listened to the car idling before it shut off. It had a purr with a slight grumble, like a car nearing the end of its oil change cycle. Definitely a newer engine, though.
“2018 Toyota Camry,” he said to the room, then he stood and leaned over to spy through the window to see the car. He was nowhere close on the make and model, but he was pretty close on the year, so he felt okay about that. And since he already recognized the car parked in front of the nail salon, he went back to his tidying.
A few seconds later, the front door of his office opened. The bell jingled. Harry looked up to see a woman about his same height, but probably half his weight. She was sinewy and athletic and had eyes as black as her hair. Brown skin, high cheekbones, arched eyebrows. He wanted to ask her if she dyed her hair, because when he had been her age, he’d been picking out the grays for a few years already. But obviously, Harry wouldn’t ask.