by Amy Boyles
I patted her shoulder. “First of all, calm down. Pretty sure Pig doesn’t have herpes. I don’t think she stayed on the farm long enough to catch swine herpes or whatever they might have. Even if she did, we would know it by now.”
I shook my head in disbelief. “Why are we even having this conversation? It’s a pig and it’s herpes. I don’t know if the two can mix, but that’s the least of our problems. The real issue right now is that you are suggesting I eat after her—a pig. That I pull food from her bowl and put it in my mouth. I don’t care about herpes. I care about the gross value of this entire conversation because I’m pretty sure that number is way high—like, off the charts.”
Rose sniffed. She threw her shoulders back in a way that I can only be describe as self-righteous and glared at me. “If that’s not good enough for you, you can come up with your own chocolate.”
“That’s fine by me,” I said.
Rose started to walk away and stopped, glaring at me over her shoulder. “But I’m not going to share whatever I find in there.”
“It’s all yours.”
I followed her into the kitchen. She stopped by Pig’s bowl. “You’re in luck. It’s empty.”
“Thank goodness,” I mumbled.
Seriously, Rose and that pig had a bond that was just about a little too crazy for me. Just a touch. Letting an animal lick your face was one thing, but eating after them was enough to make me vomit.
I noticed the back door was open. I pointed to it. “Did you leave the door like that?”
“Like what?”
I nodded toward it. “Open. What else?”
“I thought you meant those smudges on the window. Sometimes I place my hands on them and think really hard about meeting the perfect man and I imagine he’ll appear just outside the window and then I press my lips to the glass and I kiss it.”
“Oh. Wow.”
There were no words. Just absolutely no words.
She shook her head. “No, I didn’t leave it open.” She twisted from side to side. “Where’s Pig?”
I pilfered the cabinets in search of chocolate. “No clue. Maybe she let herself out after eating all the chocolate because she got an upset stomach.”
Rose waved away my theory. “Definitely not. That animal’s got a stomach made of iron.” She shook her fist to demonstrate. “It’s just like that.”
My eyebrows shot to the ceiling. “Sure.”
“Let me just call her back.” Rose stepped outside. “Pig! Pig! Where are you?”
My search was going badly. Desperate for some thinking food, I said, “House, is there any chocolate here? Anywhere?”
The cabinets shook. I stepped back just in time to avoid getting smacked in the face by one of the doors. “Come on,” I mumbled. “Give me chocolate or give me death!”
A cabinet shot open and a bag darted from the hole, aimed at my stomach. I bowed over and caught the bag by hugging myself.
“Thanks! You’re the best, House. Mmm. Semisweet morsels. Someone really knows how to make a girl happy.”
I tore into the bag, scooped out a handful and ate the rich, velvety goodness. No, I wasn’t about to be ladylike and dump some in a bowl. I had to sort through a web of thoughts.
Mama stuck with Thorne being interrogated. Watts with his crazy room. I scoffed. Watts with his crazy self, period. The guy was a murderer. There was no doubt about it. Now all I had to do was prove it.
“Enjoying yourself?” Eugene asked.
“Shut it. This helps me.”
The skull rocked side to side. “If you say so.”
Rose’s shrill voice caught me by surprise. “Charming!”
“Ah!” I dropped a handful of kisses on the floor and clutched my chest. “You scared me to death. What is it?”
“I can’t find Pig anywhere.” Rose fisted her hands and pressed them to her cheeks. “I just don’t know what could have happened to her. “Is she lost? Did she meet a boy pig and they’ve gone off together?”
I opened my mouth to say something and then shut it again. I highly doubted that Pig had suddenly become trampy and had run off with a male swine—a bull? Were male pigs called bulls?
Why was I even wasting brain cells wondering that?
My first priority was to calm Rose. “I’m sure she’s fine. I’m sure we’ll find her. Let’s go outside and start calling. We’ll see her soon.”
Rose looked like she’d been hit over the head with a two-by-four. She stood paralyzed in the center of the kitchen. I took her hand and rubbed the soft skin of her arm.
“It’s okay. Breathe. We’ll find her.”
We’d just started toward the door when a letter zipped inside the kitchen. What looked like gold pixie dust trailed behind it like glitter.
There was something so nice about it. So warm and inviting. “What’s that?”
Rose shook her head. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s about Pig.”
I rolled my eyes because there was no way that letter was about Pig. I mean, come on. Why would a letter with a golden tail be about our potbellied swine?
Since I was closest, I dropped my hold on Rose and plucked the letter from the air. “Let’s see what this is about.”
I ripped it open and read:
I have your pig. You should have figured that out by now. I know what you saw in my house. You tell anyone what you know and the pig dies. Meet me tonight at my house and we’ll make a deal. But if you don’t head my warning and you tell the cops, the pig dies.
I’m not sure what will happen to you.
—Watts
“Well, he spelled ‘heed’ wrong,” I said.
Rose choked on a sob. “He has her. Watts has Pig.” She snatched the note and crumpled it in her hand. “That…that…that bad guy. Why I oughta—”
“We oughta not do anything,” I said. “Other than what he wants.”
Surprise filled Rose’s eyes. “What? Why?”
“Because this might be our chance. It’s two against one, Rose. We can take him and maybe get him to confess to killing Frankie. All we have to do is go along with it.”
Eugene cleared his throat. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”
I glanced at my chest. “What?”
“Technically, it’s three against one. I’m here to lend my services because y’all are really gonna need me. That Watts guy is crazy.”
I took Rose’s hand. “Are you ready for this?”
The look of fear in her eyes shifted to one of determination. Suddenly Rose thrust out her chest. Her lower lip trembled. “Watts Pugh better be ready, because when I’m finished with him, there won’t be anything left.”
Chapter 23
As much as I wanted to wait Watts out and make him sit until midnight for us to show up, I didn’t want to risk anything happening to Pig.
Rose would kill me if the animal got hurt, and I’d never forgive myself.
“Do you think he’s going to try to kill you?” Eugene asked after I parked the car.
I frowned. “Probably. But that’s not exactly something I want to think about.”
“Death isn’t that bad,” he said. “You could get lucky and wind up like me, a shrunken head dipped in silver.”
“I forgot you used to be alive.”
“Yes. I think that’s why I picked up talking so fast, even though I still can’t remember the meaning of many words.”
Rose adjusted the black beret on her head. “Are you two ready? I can’t stand to be here while I know my poor little piggy is trapped by that maniac.”
I released my grip on the steering wheel. “Okay. Let’s go.”
Rose and I had debated bringing Broom but ultimately decided against it. The object’s presence would probably only irritate Watts and make the entire situation a thousand times worse.
Lucky for us Watts didn’t know about Eugene. We considered the skull to be our ace in the hole. If we got in a desperate situation, Eugene would help us, he’d promised.
J
ust to guarantee it, I’d made sure Eugene understood simple words and phrases like help and get him.
We were all set.
I rang Watts’s doorbell and waited. Fear spiked up my back and I shivered. I hated everything about this—coming to the man’s house at night, standing on his front porch—all of it.
Before I had more time to explore everything I detested and the depths of my dislike, the doorknob turned and the door slowly creaked open.
A hole of darkness unfurled before us. It also smelled funny—strange, like fresh furniture had just been uncovered or something. The smell was hard to place, but I knew it was familiar.
“I don’t like the looks of this,” Rose whispered.
“Me either. But what choice do we have?” I took a deep breath. “I’ll go first. Stay close.”
As I crept inside, the first thing I noticed was the floor. It wasn’t the carpet like it had been earlier today. It sounded like tarp. The flooring crackled and rippled like plastic.
The strange smell came from that.
Cold dread washed from my head to my feet. Why would Watts put tarp down unless he intended for something to be messy—like our deaths?
“We need light,” I murmured.
A glowing ball of light formed in Rose’s palm. She glanced around the room and gasped.
It took a moment for me to see what had rattled her. Watts stood on the other side of the living room. Under one hand he held Pig. In the other he held a spear made of ice.
The spear was pointed directly at Rose and myself.
“Put the pig down,” Rose demanded.
“Not until you both lower your hands. I don’t want any magic coming from you—no funny business.”
“But we need light,” Rose said.
“Toss the ball in the air,” Watts demanded. “Let it hover there. On your side. Not near me.”
Rose did as he requested. The three of us stared at one another.
This was it. My moment to get Watts to confess. “She rejected you, didn’t she?”
Watts’s head snapped in my direction. I could practically hear the tendons pop as his neck tightened. “What are you talking about?”
“Frankie. She rejected you, so you killed her.”
“Frankie never rejected me.” He peered at me as if seeing me for the first time. “Are you joking? She wanted me. All those years of following her and worshipping the woman from afar had finally paid off.”
He settled Pig on the ground. “We were going to be together. It was finally going to happen, and then she was murdered. Killed by someone who didn’t admire her beauty the way I did.”
Anguish filled every line of his face. “What a waste. What an absolute waste.”
He started to sob but choked back the tears. “And then the two of you went snooping around in my house. You’re going to tell the cops, aren’t you? Tell them what I did. You’ll ruin me. Ruin my life if people discover that I watched Frankie. I can’t have that. I can’t have it at all.”
Suddenly Pig chomped down on Watts’s wrist. Watts screamed. He tossed the spear at us. Rose threw up her hands, and the spear turned into a fountain that spewed water on our heads.
A camera that had been set up in one corner of the room started clicking. I stared at it in disbelief and realized what Watts was doing—he was taking pictures of us.
This guy was so weird.
Rose pointed her finger at Watts, and a rope of water wound around him, tying him tightly.
“Charming, go and call the police. This man attacked us! Get them over here, now!”
As I moved to the door, Rose called Pig. “Piggy, come here. Are you okay? Did that mean old man hurt you?”
Pig gave little snorts that sounded like chirps of happiness. Good. At least one of us was okay.
I headed outside and pulled my phone from my pocket. I slid my finger over the bar to turn it on, but nothing happened.
“Crap,” I grumbled.
“What is it?” Eugene asked.
“It’s dead. The thing is fried from the water.”
“So what do we do now?”
I tapped my foot on the ground and picked through my choices. Hop in my car and go to the jail?
That was out. I couldn’t leave Rose alone with Watts. I glanced over my shoulder at the house. My muscles turned to tense strips of stone as the seriousness of the situation weighed on me.
I had to figure out a way to help Rose, and I had to do it now. A car driving down the street stopped. A window buzzed down and Vic Blass popped his head out.
“Charming, you okay?”
Relieved, I dashed across the street. “Vic. I need help. Watts Pugh attacked me and my great-aunt. She’s got him tied up, but I need to call the police. Or drive there. Or something.”
Vic popped the door locks. “Hop in. My phone’s at the house. It’s only a couple blocks away.”
The great weight of tension dissolved as I scurried around the car and slid inside. “Thank you so much. I don’t know what I would’ve done if you hadn’t shown up.”
Vic gave me his thousand-watt smile. “Oh, I’m sure you would’ve come up with something. A woman like you is very resourceful.”
His tone held a bitter undercurrent. I studied his face, looking for a hint of anger or resentment, but Vic just smiled on, seeming not to pay attention to anything other than the road.
He stopped outside a small brick house that looked like it didn’t hold any more than four rooms. “Here we are.”
“Great. I’ll follow you.”
Eager to get in, I practically zipped from the car and up the stairs while Vic took his time. Did he not hear what I said, that we’d been attacked? Why was he being so pokey?
I waited impatiently while Vic fiddled with his keys until he found the right one. The smell of liquor trickled up my nose, and I realized what was going on—Vic was trashed.
Trashed and driving. I’d be sure to mention that to Thorne when I got ahold of him.
“Here it is.” Vic smiled as he brandished the key. “I knew I’d find it.”
I grabbed it from his hand. “And here we go. Let me just do that. It’ll be faster.”
Vic rocked back, giving me room to stick the key in the slot, turn it and open the door.
Vic snapped on a light. Sparse furnishings spotted the room—couch, TV, chair, basic man-pad decor.
“Nice place,” I murmured to be polite. I don’t know why I said it, but it was one of those things. You walk into someone’s house, and to be nice you mention that the house is great.
But for some reason my compliment backfired. Vic’s eyes narrowed. One side of his mouth pulled up into a sneer. “I used to have more, but I fell into a funk.”
My gaze darted around the house as I searched for his phone. “I’m sorry,” I said without much passion.
I had an actual emergency and didn’t have time to discuss with Vic about how he fell into a deep depression for whatever reason.
“It happened after Frankie dumped me.” Vic sighed and slumped onto a chair. “It was bad. I couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, and I stopped showing up to work. So I lost everything I had.”
I craned my neck, glancing around the room. “I’m so sorry, but about that phone…”
He waved me toward the kitchen. “In there.”
“Thank goodness.” I rushed over to it and was about to pick it up when a large brown bug crawled out from beneath it.
I squealed.
“Oh, don’t mind them,” he said.
The brown bug looked familiar. A black stripe zipped down the brown roach’s back. I gasped and shut my eyes tight.
Oh dear Lord. I’d done it now. I’d walked directly into the house of the killer. I lifted the phone from the cradle and started dialing.
That was when Vic’s fingers slammed down on the switch hook, ending the call before it was even made.
I backed away from him. “What…what are you doing? You said I could use the phone.”
I shuddered. How disgusting. But there was no time for me to contemplate Vic’s unhygienic companion.
Vic sneered. “I was going to let you use the phone before you realized what I’d done. Sorry you had to see my little friend, but now you know my secret.”
I scoffed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. What secret? You like bugs? Lots of folks like bugs. Granted, I don’t know any of them, but I’m sure they do.”
Vic shook his head. “That’s not what I’m talking about and you know it.”
I nonchalantly peeked around him, gauging how far it was to the door. When I saw it, my hopes withered. While I’d been busy with the phone Vic had silently closed and latched the door locked.
Crap.
I was stuck.
With a killer.
Things didn’t look good for me at all.
From atop Vic’s shoulder the cockroach swiveled its feelers. Vic cocked his head back and peered at the creature.
“I agree with you,” he said to the cockroach in a baby voice that made me shudder from the sheer creepiness of it. “This gal’s not going anywhere. She knows our secret, and we can’t let her escape.”
Chapter 24
Before I could argue, Vic shot me with a stream of water. Ropes of liquid grabbed each of my arms and legs. The water hoisted me into the air, and my body pulled in four different directions.
I screamed in agony.
Vic threw out his hand. Water gushed from his open palm, a great deluge that covered the walls, making me feel like I was inside an aquarium.
“That should soundproof the room,” he said, amused. “Now you may scream all you want. Scream! Scream! Scream! No one can hear as you’re ripped apart.”
“You killed Frankie,” I said through great waves of agony. “Because she broke up with you?”
“More than that,” Vic confessed. “Because she broke up with me and I wasn’t one of her chosen soul mates,” he spat. “Whatever that means. All Frankie ever wanted was to be adored. Eventually I realized that.”