by Catie Rhodes
I took out my phone again and scrolled through the pictures I’d taken of Tanner over the course of our short relationship. I got stuck on the one we’d gotten a fellow tourist to take on the ferry from Galveston Island to the Bolivar Peninsula. Tanner had one arm hooked over my shoulders, and we were staring into each other’s eyes, laughing.
I’d made a mistake. Story of my life. And now I had to sit here in front of a bridal shop mourning it. Screw that. I started the truck, backed into traffic, and cruised to the other end of the small downtown.
An older one-story building caught my eye. The awning was shaped into long diamonds. Inside each diamond was a neon letter. They spelled Phil’s. Another sign on the window read "Home of Phil’s World Famous Monkey Burger!"
Gross as it sounded, my stomach rumbled. I whipped into the parking lot. Soon as I opened the truck’s door, Orev scrambled over me and took flight. I let him go and walked across the parking lot to the diner. A cowbell clanged when I opened the aluminum framed door. People turned to stare. I pretended not to see and walked inside.
The sign over the counter said "Order Here," so I stood in line behind a blond woman with her two kids. The kids wanted dessert more than hamburgers. A minor skirmish ensued. By the time it was my turn, I’d had plenty of time to study the menu. My stomach had stopped rumbling and started roaring.
"What’s a monkey burger?" I asked the cashier, who wore a nylon uniform that looked like it probably forced your skin to sweat.
She snorted. "You know how many times I gotta answer that every day?"
I shrugged and shook my head. "’Least one more, I guess."
She sighed. "A monkey burger is two hamburger meat patties, grilled onions, a slice of ham, and ranch dressing. Meal comes with one side and a drink.”
“Why’s it called a monkey burger if…” I began.
She held up one hand to stop me. “The burger is named for Phil’s daughter. When she was little, Phil called her his little monkey. This is her favorite kind of hamburger. So it’s a Monkey Burger.”
I might have asked if Phil’s Monkey Burger was really world famous, but the look on the cashier’s face suggested she’d had just about enough questions from me. I kept my questions to myself and ordered the monkey burger meal with onion crisps just because they sounded good and an unsweet tea with half lemonade.
The clerk took my money and gave me a big plastic number. "Set this on your table. We’ll bring it out to you."
I chose a booth at the back of the diner and took out the picture of the woman holding the book to look at while I waited. Someone in this little nowhere town probably knew who she was. All I had to do was figure out how to find them.
I’d seen a sheriff’s office on the way into town. They might be able to help, especially if the woman with the book did something awful, but they also might take offense to me poking around in the county. I’d dated the sheriff of a little nowhere county for a while. He could be a real prick when he thought a stranger might be nosing around.
One narrow building in the downtown had claimed to be a library. They’d have back issues of newspapers. But unless the librarian knew the woman in the picture, it would be a needle in a haystack search. For the first time since I’d told Brad to leave his sister out of it, I wanted to call Mysti Whitebyrd. She’d help with no questions asked. But she also might come to Devil’s Rest. If I lost this game with Mohawk, she’d die before she let him take me.
I sat in my booth, watching people come and go, and wanting to scream in frustration. My time was running out, second by second, and I was no closer to finding the book than when I’d started hours ago. The woman I’d been standing behind in line used her phone to take a picture of her young son with ketchup smeared on his face. That gave me an idea.
Image searches. Someone might have uploaded this very image online with an explanation of who the woman in the picture was and what she did. To find it, all I had to do was run an image search. I should have thought of that to begin with.
Before I could get out the picture Mohawk had given me, a woman wearing the same type of uniform as the girl who’d taken my order appeared at my side. She set down a plate holding the biggest burger I’d ever seen, a separate basket of crispy fried onion pieces, my drink, and a squeeze bottle of ketchup.
My mouth began to water. Eat now. Mess with the picture later. I thanked her and dug in.
As I ate, I realized it had been over twenty-four hours since my meal of Natchitoches meat pies. Tanner and I had chosen to enjoy each other the night before instead of having supper. Hungrier than I thought possible, I polished off the hamburger, most of the onion pieces, and got a refill on the tea and lemonade.
Remembering my plan to do an image search on the picture Mohawk gave me, I cleared back my plates and wiped the smears of grease off the table. I set out the picture and stood to get the right angle hovering over it. The waitress came back to bus the table.
"You were hungry." She picked up the plates. "Sure you don’t want some dessert? We got…" Her gaze fell to the picture, and the smile faded from her face. "Damn it. Can’t you people leave well enough alone?"
I glanced down at the picture. Its mere presence was obviously some kind of social faux pas in Devil’s Rest. Normally I’d have been embarrassed enough to sweat bullets. Not this time. Relief nearly turned my muscles to jelly.
"You know who this is?" I tapped the edge of the picture.
She rolled her eyes at me and shouted over her shoulder. "Phil? Phiiiiiil? We got another one."
A fiftyish man with swarthy skin, a big, fleshy nose, and a stained paper apron covering his clothes came out of the kitchen. "What is it?"
"This one’s got a picture of Loretta Nell." The waitress reached for the picture, but I snatched it up. No telling what she and Phil would do to it, and it was the only clue I had.
Phil watched me slide the picture into my bag with narrowed eyes. He punched one stubby finger at me. "You people are a disgrace to the human race. What happened here happened a long time ago."
Every instinct begged me to cower and apologize. These people had seemed nice enough before the waitress saw the picture, and the hamburger had been delicious. But the last couple of years had taught me something. Once you shit in a bed, it will always be a bed that’s been shit in.
There was no way I’d win Phil over, get him to buy me a cup of coffee, and tell me a story. Right now, I could do one of two things. Get all the information I could or run.
"What happened a long time ago?" I asked.
A lady with a hairspray halo twisted in her seat and snarled worn teeth at me. "You know good and well what you came here for."
I shook my head truthfully. A little tendril of fear worked its way through me. I had fucked up, and this little scene could go a lot of different ways, none of them any good.
Phil grabbed me by the arm and tried to pull me away from the table. I pulled out of his grasp and snatched up my bag. This pissed Phil off. He grabbed me under one arm, held me off balance, and marched me toward the door. The other customers forgot their meals and yelled encouragement at Phil, a few of them clapping.
My fear grew legs and ran rampant, showing me images of what a crowd like this could to do me. If they hurt me bad enough, I wouldn’t be able to look for the book. I staggered along, trying not to fall, and prayed I could make it to the parking lot and relative safety.
Then someone stuck out their foot. I went sprawling. Phil’s painful grip was the only thing that kept me from face-planting on the floor. I tried to regain my footing, but with Phil yanking me along, the best I could do was take big clown steps the rest of the way to the door.
The waitress held it open so Phil could sling me onto the rough asphalt. I’d been thrown down enough to know to roll with it and not try to catch myself. One elbow got a good scrape, but I ended up on my feet.
Phil charged toward me, teeth bared in fury. I held up both hands, already reaching for the power of the mantle.
It crackled against my skin and warmed the black opal.
"Stop right there, Phil." I spoke as calmly as I could, given my elbow had already started to drip blood onto the parking lot.
Phil took one more step, but then he seemed to sense something. Fear widened his eyes for a flash, but then they narrowed again in rage. "My momma was one of the ones killed by those pieces of garbage. You axe me, ever’ one of them motherfuckers got exactly what he or she deserved."
The waitress spoke from the door. "Your kind coming here, stirring shit up, disrespects the people of this town."
Both Phil’s and the waitress’s eyes blazed crazed fury in my direction. Several faces crowded the plate glass windows.
I backed toward my truck, hands up, mouth shut, and magic at the ready. I recognized the look in their eyes. This kind of zeal couldn’t be talked down. Couldn’t be reasoned with. But it could escalate into something deadly.
The people who’d burned down my grandmother’s house and tried to beat me and my friends to death had looked just like this. Possessed. Wild. Ready to drink blood and howl at the moon.
Heart trying to lodge in my throat, I opened the door to my truck, barely holding my magic at bay. It was so close to the surface, I’d have to release it in some way or it might make me sick. Before I could get the door closed, Orev swooped inside. He cawed at me. Hurry.
“I agree,” I said and started the truck.
My phone buzzed with a text message. I reached to take it out of my bag, and my concentration slipped. The plate glass window of Phil’s exploded outward.
I put the truck in gear and backed out in a big hurry. Phil, esteemed inventor of the World Famous Monkey Burger, ran after me for a few hundred yards, screaming obscenities and shaking his fist.
It wasn’t until I was passing the Devil’s Rest city limits sign that I realized I’d gotten not one but two really good clues to the identity of the lady in the picture. Her name had been Loretta Nell, and she’d been involved in murder.
I did a U-turn and drove back through Devil’s Rest, toward the only lodging I’d seen.
3
The Devil’s Rest Guest Houses consisted of two facing rows of pastel painted cabins separated by a narrow concrete lane. Each cabin had its own carport, and the sign outside advertised free internet. Even if it was slow as molasses in January, I’d still be able to research Loretta Nell. Just knowing who she was and what happened could go a long way toward figuring out what happened to the book.
I parked in front of a church next door and took out my phone. Sure enough, Devil’s Rest Guest Houses Wi-Fi signal showed up. Bingo. I tapped on it.
A box popped up. It read “Enter Your Password.” I groaned. Of course they wanted a password. Otherwise everybody and their dog would be using their signal to surf.
I took a closer look at the pastel cabins. Might be a nice place to rest and set up home base. Get a hot shower that lasted more than the five minutes the RV hot water heater allowed.
I moved the truck into the Guest Houses’ parking lot. The first cabin was marked "Office." I went inside. The smell of disinfectant and flower-scented air freshener hit me, and the idea of a warm shower and a bed with clean sheets began to sound as necessary as the internet.
A woman with a curly cap of iron-colored hair raised her head, took one look at me, and shook her head. "You ain’t staying here. Get out of our town."
The flat way she said it rocked me. Gossip traveled faster than the bullet train here in Devil’s Rest. In the couple of minutes it took me to drive to Devil’s Rest Guest Houses, someone had called this old bitch and warned her I might be coming. No use arguing.
Skin burning with humiliation and indignation, I backed toward the door and pushed it open one-handed. I turned and came face to face with a beanpole of a man. Thin lips set in a snarl, he held a short handled hatchet in one hand.
He leaned around me to speak to the woman at the desk. "She giving you problems, Mama?"
"Better not be." The woman fixed me with a steady glare, magnified by her thick-lensed glasses.
I shoved past the guy and hurried to my truck, glancing often over my shoulder, and burned rubber out of the Devil’s Rest Guest Houses. Once it was out of sight, I slammed the flat of one hand into the steering wheel.
Whatever killing Loretta Nell had done in this town had marked it. But it also must have been pretty famous if people came here on pilgrimages. It must be all over the internet. To hell with it. I didn’t need a motel room to research. I whipped onto the shoulder and dragged my phone out of my bag.
A message from Tanner hovered at the top of the screen. "Let me know you’re okay."
I squirmed again over the way I’d acted and unlocked the phone’s screen. No bars and no service. It figured. I put the phone down and pulled back onto the sun-bleached highway.
I drove away from Devil’s Rest, remembering the map had shown another town not far south. I’d drive a few miles and see if I came to it. Right past the few businesses on the outskirts of town, I spotted a sign that made me slow down.
Old-fashioned as sock hops and ducktails, the red sign’s white letters, each overlaid with a strip of neon, read Devil’s Slumber Inn. Underneath the name the word "Vacancy" flashed, almost invisible in the bright sun. The sign’s orange arrow pointed toward a one-story L-shaped row of rooms with orange doors. I crept into the empty parking lot, shoulders tensed.
This could turn out just like things had at the Devil’s Rest Guest Houses. There could be some Brylcreemed golden oldie waiting to chase me out. Town like this, the locals probably didn’t have much excitement. Today must’ve been a kind of Mardi Gras for them.
The Devil’s Slumber Inn didn’t look like much. It was the kind of place where Mysti Whitebyrd would take in the clean, rolled-up bedspread she kept in the trunk of her Toyota sedan and exchange it for the motel’s. The guest houses would probably have been immeasurably nicer, but I was running low on options. The town I remembered seeing on the map might be ten minutes or an hour away. With no phone service, there was no way to find out.
The red neon sign on the motel office’s glass door flashed “Open.” Underneath hung a hand-lettered sign that said "Clean Rooms. WIFI for guests only, so don't ask." Only one way to find out if they’d rent me a room. I sighed and climbed out of the truck. Orev hopped out and took off flying.
"Don’t go far. They might not let me stay," I called after him. The bird kept going. I went inside the motel’s office.
An electronic bell dinged, and someone yelled, "Just a minute."
The voice had come from an open door at the back of the office that led down a dimly lit hallway. Probably a small apartment for the owner or caretaker.
I picked up a faded brochure advertising a nearby spring-fed lake. All the people pictured wore outdated clothing and hairstyles. Stuff from before I was born. The hair on the back of my neck rustled, warning me again something was very amiss in this little hidden hamlet of hell.
A young guy hurried into the office holding a thick sheaf of printed pages. He set them down on the counter and squinted at me. "You don’t look like a roadhouse chippie."
I drew back from the assessment.
Laughing, he held up one extremely pale hand speckled with fine, dark hair. "Sorry. Miz Hester, the owner of the guest houses, already called to warn me you’d be coming by. She told me you had trashy, long black hair and wore eyeliner like a roadhouse chippie."
I did a slow burn. Prejudice based on what I was—a psychic medium—had dogged me my entire life, getting worse when my witch powers began to manifest. I’d almost been killed for being something I couldn’t help.
Nasty people like Miz Hester needed a lesson in compassion. Part of me wanted to march back over there and give it to her. But Mohawk’s book and the ticking clock attached to it took precedence. The guy settled his stormy blue eyes on me and quirked his lips in a smile that probably got him laid often.
"Good thing for you I don’t shar
e Miz Hester’s desire to rid this town of nosy-rosies. Making enough money to keep this place open is more important to me." He leaned forward, eyes still fixed on mine, and said, "Plus, I think you’re hot."
I took a step back, a little repulsed by this odd guy and his overt come-on. "You’ll rent me a room?"
The smile again, this time accompanied by a wink. "Sure, why not?"
I dragged out my brand-new credit card.
He shook his dark head. "Cash if you’ve got it."
I hadn’t thought to stop by a bank, which limited my cash reserves, but I nodded.
The guy quoted me a price that was neither cheap nor expensive, and I paid for two nights. Once he had my cash, he held out one hand for me to shake. "Name’s Dwight Carr, owner and operator of the Devil’s Slumber Inn."
We shook. Dwight’s hand was cool and dry against mine and stronger than I’d expected. Something wasn’t right about this guy, and it wasn’t just the come-on. I pulled my hand away, resisting the urge to wipe it on my pants.
"You let me know if I can be of service. And I mean any service." He slipped me a raunchy wink.
I bit back a smile. The young women who came here to find out about Loretta Nell probably kept Dwight in free ass. Well, he wouldn’t be getting a piece of mine. But I did have a question for him.
"Actually, you can help me. What do you know about this Loretta Nell person?" I watched Dwight’s face carefully for the flash of anger I’d seen on the other residents of Devil’s Rest.
Dwight’s smile only broadened. "Only if we can play some show-and-tell. I want to see the picture you flashed at Phil’s Monkey Burger, the one that caused such a ruckus."
I hesitated, overcome with an irrational fear that Dwight might take the picture from me and rip it up. But my time was running out. Showing him seemed the only way to move forward. I slid the picture out of my purse and set it on the counter, thumb and forefinger holding it to the worn Formica. Dwight tried to take the picture. I shook my head but offered no explanation.