Private Eye: A Tiger’s Eye Mystery (3 page)

“
Y
ou can’t go
around punching people in the front yard,” I yelled, practically tripping over my own feet to get to them.

Jack got there before me, with that spooky tiger speed of his, and jumped in between the two of them, but I could tell he was having to fight the urge to laugh. “Would it be better in the backyard?”

“Not what I meant, and you know it,” I hissed at him, grabbing Aunt Ruby’s arm before she could do any more damage. “Uncle Mike! A little help here?”

My poor uncle was still standing by the car, utterly flabbergasted, to use one of his own words against him.

My aunt was still struggling with me, and I was completely out of patience. “Ruby Callahan! Do you want Shelley to see you acting like a lunatic…
redneck
?”

That stopped her cold. She tossed her head and yanked her arm away from me.

“Shelley is still at school, and then she has a play date at her friend’s house,” she said haughtily. “And I owed Leona that. We can go inside and eat lunch now.”

Leona rubbed her jaw ruefully, and to my complete shock, nodded. “Yeah, she kind of did. Long story. Can we go inside now? I could really use some coffee.”

“Still no sugar, heavy on the cream?” Ruby asked her.

“I try to use a lighter hand on the cream these days. Cholesterol,” Leona told her, and then both of them headed toward the porch of the beautiful old farmhouse, chatting about coffee.

Like old friends.

Or at least like two women who didn’t want to kill each other.

Mike walked up to me and folded his arms while the three of us watched the two women in varying degrees of surprise.

“Will wonders—”

“If you say ‘never cease’, I’m going to ask Aunt Ruby to punch you next,” I warned my uncle. “Now start talking. What the heck was that about?”

He shook his head. “Nope. Not getting in the middle of that one. How about we get something to eat? Full bellies make for calmer minds.”

“I’d appreciate a little more information and a little less ‘sayings from the embroidered pillows’,” I muttered, but I followed him into the house, because, of course, he was right.

Jack perked right up, as if my life wasn’t turning into a bad joke right there in front of him. “Do you think there will be pie?”

Now I wanted to punch
him
. Aunt Ruby was rubbing off on me.

By the time I dragged my unwilling butt into the house, the coffee was brewing and Aunt Ruby was setting out sandwich fixings and slicing homemade bread. And there was pie—which Jack had already managed to sit next to—fresh blueberry and apple, from the looks of it.

“I won’t lie and offer any false condolences for that rat bast—Tess. You’re finally here. Wash your hands and offer your grandmother something to drink,” my aunt, the boxing champ instructed me.

“I’m not
five
. You don’t have to tell me to wash my hands,” I said with exaggerated patience.

“Tess, don’t be smart with your aunt,” Leona said.

My mouth fell open and I looked from one to the other. “You…she…I…”

I gave up and washed my hands. Jack snickered at me until Uncle Mike pointed a finger at Jack and then the sink, and the terrifying predator, ex-soldier, and shapeshifting tiger sighed and got up and washed his hands.

He nudged me with his shoulder. “Do they still send you to bed without any supper when you’re bad?”

His eyes were gleaming with amusement, and a tiny bit of perversity nipped at me. Because he was making fun of me, because my aunt suddenly thought she was Rocky Balboa, and because I was tired of the whole stupid situation.

Also, I was rich now. I had twelve thousand dollars burning a hole in my metaphorical pocket. Rich people could get away with stuff.

So I leaned closer and whispered: “Sometimes I like being bad.”

Then I snagged the dish towel, wiped my hands, sauntered to the table and grabbed the blueberry pie and pulled it over to my side of the table, leaving Jack making weird choking noises at the sink.

We managed to get through sandwiches (one each for me and Uncle Mike, one-half each for Aunt Ruby and Leona, and six for Jack) and pie (pretty much the same proportions, except Jack also finished off half a gallon of homemade peach ice cream and six chocolate-chip cookies.

By the end of the meal, we were all too busy watching Jack eat his weight in lunch to remember what we were talking about.

“Now I remember why I liked Owen so much,” Uncle Mike grumbled, grabbing the pie plate before Jack could get the last sliver of apple.

“You never liked Owen. You thought he was boring,” I protested. “You were rude to him.”

“Only when he started talking. That boy could wrestle a story down to the ground and choke the life out of it,” Uncle Mike said, sliding the last of the pie onto his plate. “And then resuscitate it long enough to murder it all over again. He’d be useful in the zombie apocalypse. He’d bore all the zombies to death.”

“That is so unfair. He was a nice man,” I said hotly.

“He was a dentist,” my traitor of an uncle said.

“He was a
nice
dentist.”

Jack grinned at me. “He was very nice. That story he told us about the antique dental equipment gave me chills.”

“I hate you all.” I slumped down in my seat and put my head on my arms on the table. “
Hate
.”

“Dentists are useful to have around,” Leona said helpfully. “If you get a tooth knocked out the next time Ruby goes ape-shit with her boxing lessons, you’re all set.”

“Language. And I would never
strike
the
child
,” Aunt Ruby snapped, and just that quick, we were off the subject of my ex-boyfriend and back on whatever had caused the Hatfield and McCoy back in my pawn shot.

“She’s not a child anymore,” Mike finally interjected, sounding as calm as if unknown grandmothers showed up every day at his house. “And maybe we’d better get this all out on the table, so we can get on with whatever it is you want.”

“I’m right here,” I pointed out, to the zero people who were paying any attention to me.

“I’m here to get to know my granddaughter. Maybe give her the guidance she clearly needs, if she’s dating dentists when there’s a hot tiger sitting right next to her,” Leona said, pointing at Jack with one well-manicured fingernail.

“Leona,” I groaned, clutching my head.

Jack raised his hand, which should have looked ridiculous but somehow didn’t because—see above—
hotness
. “Also sitting right here,” he said mildly, but he was smiling. “And thank you, Mrs. Carstairs.”

“Call me Leona, dear,” she said, patting his other hand. “We’re going to be family, after all.”

“That’s about enough out of you,” Aunt Ruby said, standing up and leaning over the table.

“Over my dead body,” Uncle Mike said, glaring at Jack, who smiled at him like…like…oh crap, like a cat who’d gotten into the
cream
.

Argh.

Leona flinched, but Ruby was only reaching for the empty carton of ice cream. I saw the smug smile on her face at Leona’s reaction, though.

“You’re starting to scare me, Rambo,” I told her, but she didn’t even look a little bit sheepish.

“You tell her, Ruby,” Leona said tiredly. “You’re obviously dying to do it.”

Jack stood up. “I think this is a family thing—”

“Sit down,” all three of them told him at once.

It was a little bit funny. Not funny ha-ha, but funny peculiar. I could feel a headache coming on, and I wasn’t the one who’d been sucker punched, except for metaphorically, by the whole “you have a grandmother and here I am” thing.

Jack raised one eyebrow, probably because nobody had tried to tell him what to do in the past ten years, but he sat down.

Uncle Mike stood up and poured coffee for everyone, and then he told Leona that she’d better get on with it.

“But where do I even start?”

“At the beginning’s usually good,” my uncle replied.

She laughed a little. “Hard to argue with that.”

“So, you’re my mom’s mom,” I ventured, still unwilling to say the word “grandmother.”

“Yes.” She twisted her pearls and looked at me out of those eyes that were so much like the ones that stared back at me in the mirror every day. “She was our only child. Trey—your grandfather—wanted a boy, but once I realized what a horrible person he was, I refused to have any more children with him.”

Aunt Ruby scowled at her. “But you didn’t leave him.”

“No, I didn’t leave him. Or, actually, I left him dozens of times. But he always tracked me down and brought me back. The last time I left him, he told me that he’d take Kate away from me, have me proven mentally unfit and toss me in a psychiatric institution if I ever tried it again.”

Aunt Ruby’s tiny gasp was almost drowned out by the quiet growling sound that Jack was making. He caught me looking at him and stopped, but not before reaching across the table and taking my hand.

Uncle Mike stared pointedly at our clasped hands, but Jack bared his teeth in something too scary to be a smile. “Don’t make me start collecting antique dental equipment and telling you about it, old man.”

“That’s just evil. I never liked this boy, Tess.”

“Suck it up, buttercup,” I retorted, grinning. I was weirdly content, for some reason that didn’t make any sense at all. Just sitting in my family’s kitchen, hearing about my horrible grandfather, holding hands with my—okay, I admit it—
hot
tiger.

Leona and Aunt Ruby both started laughing at Uncle Mike’s disgruntled expression, but then a phone rang, blaring out a Katy Perry ringtone, and everybody looked at me.

I shrugged. “For once, it isn’t mine.”

Leona sighed and started digging around in her teal-with-silver-accents Michael Kors bag that I immediately lusted over. “I forgot. Ned put that on my phone. Just a moment, please. He’s at the Black Cypress RV Park getting settled.”

Jack and I blinked at each other, and he let go of my hand. (In the privacy of my own mind, I pretended I’d been getting ready to let go first. Sadly, I didn’t believe me.)

Anyway, Leona so didn’t look like the type to be traveling by RV. If they made RV limousines, maybe, but staying in the RV park?
So
no.

“Hello?” Leona said into the phone with enough warmth that we knew Ned wasn’t her chauffeur. Hmm.
How
long ago did good old grandpa die?

“Yes, she can stay here,” Aunt Ruby said in answer to the question Uncle Mike hadn’t asked yet.

Jack jumped up out of his seat so fast he knocked the chair on the floor, in plenty of time to catch Leona when she started to slide out of hers.

“They killed Brenda,” she whispered, and then she started to shriek.

I
f you think
you’ve ever heard a truly horrible sound in your life, let me assure you:

No, you have not.

Not unless you’ve heard a banshee let loose full throttle in your kitchen.

I once read a newspaper article, back when Jeremiah was still alive and subscribing to twelve different papers in three different languages, that said scientists had done a study to determine the worst noises on the planet. I remember a metal knife scraping a glass bottle was in first place, as the very worst.

I’ll
never
forget that, because my best friend Molly and I tried it out at the bar once. Sure enough, those scientists were absolutely, totally right. That hideous sound made us want to climb out of our skulls.

Worst. Sound.
Ever
.

Until now.

A banshee wail was a thousand knives scraping a thousand bottles, played in counterpoint to jackhammers, fingernails on chalkboards, and the tortured shrieks of demons burning in hell. I didn’t want to burn in hell; I just wanted to escape it. Tears were running down my face from the pain and pressure on my eardrums, and I bent double, covering my ears, unable to move, even though I desperately wanted to. I wanted to run. I wanted to vomit.

I wanted—
oh, no, oh, no, oh, no.

Jack
.

His superior tiger hearing had to be killing him right now. I looked up, wincing, and saw that he was clenching his jaw so hard it was amazing it didn’t shatter. But damn, he was hanging in there, still holding Leona, while that gut-wrenching sound went off right next to his head.

“I can take her, Jack,” Uncle Mike said. His face was set in grim lines, but he didn’t seem to be in actual pain, like Jack was. “Ruby, get out.”

Aunt Ruby opened her mouth like she was going to start arguing, not than anybody would have heard her, anyway, and then she just nodded and ran for the door to the back porch. Before I could follow her, the sound changed dramatically.

It. Got.
Worse.

Knives on bottles.
Ha.
Damn scientists. What did they know, anyway? I was busy wishing that those stupid scientists were around to hear this, when Leona’s wail impossibly took on an even more oppressive ululating quality. The noise was now so bad that my knees were trying to give out underneath me and my brain was screaming inside my skull. To complete the cherry on the cake of my freaking day, I could actually
feel
the burning acidic path of my lunch coming right back up my esophagus, and I was sure that I was going to hurl in my aunt’s kitchen for the first time since senior year, when Molly and I discovered peach schnapps.

Jack flinched and eased Leona into Mike’s arms and then put his hands over his ears and headed for the door.

“I’m sorry, Mike,” Jack said, or at least I think he said, from my non-existent lip-reading talent.

Mike just nodded and started patting Leona’s back.

I couldn’t take anymore, either. I ran, and I didn’t stop running until I was all the way over to Bonnie Jo’s horse pasture. She was crouching over at the far side of the field, looking as wild eyed as a horse that old could get.

“I know just how you feel,” I told her, taking deep gulps of air and trying not to yark all over the fence. I couldn’t hear Leona anymore, but that might not last.

“So. This is not a time when I’m happy to have tiger hearing,” Jack said, walking up and leaning against the fence. “Any idea who Brenda is?”

I smacked myself in the forehead. “I forgot all about Brenda, I’m ashamed to admit. All I could think about was getting out of that house.”

Bonnie Jo suddenly stood up straight, shook herself all over, and started ambling over to us, and Jack breathed a sigh of relief.

“She stopped. It’s quiet in there now, except for your uncle talking to her. We should go back.” He closed his eyes and sighed.

“I know,” I said in a small voice. “My family. Sorry about all this. Nobody would blame you if you wanted to bail on this whole situation. I know you have painting or cleaning stuff to do at Jeremiah’s.”

Jack shook his head. “No. Your family is a little bit nuts—”

“A
lot
nuts.”

“A lot nuts, but they’re
your
family and
you
were Jeremiah’s family. So that’s all there is to it.” He started back to the house, just expecting that I’d follow him, I guess.

“Really?” I stuck my tongue out at his back. “That’s all there is to it? Does everybody just sit and roll over when you give orders?”

He laughed—a low, sinfully delicious laugh—and nodded, never looking back at me. “You’re getting your canines and felines mixed up, but basically, yeah. Everybody except you and Quinn. I guess I’m just drawn to difficult females.”

I couldn’t help smiling, just a little. Quinn was the fierce (and human!) warrior woman who’d run the North American rebellion against the vampire takeover with Jack before he got sick of fighting the same fight over and over, and before she married some scary-dangerous Atlantean high priest guy.

I was pretty sure Jack had been in love with Quinn, but he seemed to be getting past that, considering the way he’d been sorta, kinda flirting with me.

I didn’t know what to do with any of it, so I pushed it into the cluttered box in my mind labeled “Deal with This Later” and followed Jack into the house.

Leona was huddled in a chair, her hands clutching a mug of coffee, and she wouldn’t look at us.

Ruby glared at me and Jack as if it were our fault. “Don’t you two blame her. She can’t help it.”

Jack held up his hands in silent protest, and I rolled my eyes.

“Aunt Ruby, nobody is blaming anybody. We need to know what’s going on, though. Who is Brenda? How did she die? What should we do?”

“We need to head to the RV park,” Leona said, barely above a whisper. “I’ll explain on the way.”

I nodded and grabbed my bag.

The house phone rang, and Aunt Ruby grabbed it. “Hello?”

I didn’t catch much from her end of the call, but when she hung up, she was frowning.

“That was Martha. I completely forgot that I’d promised to pick her up from the hospital. She’s getting released from her hip surgery this afternoon, and Mike and I were supposed to drive her home and get her settled, and I’m staying with her until tomorrow morning when her son gets into town. I can try to find somebody else—”

“No,” Uncle Mike said. “You know how she is. She’d be hysterical if plans changed at this late hour. Tess, Jack, are you okay to go with Leona on your own?”

He’d said “Tess” first, but my uncle was looking at Jack. I didn’t waste time being annoyed. When an overprotective uncle finds a shapeshifting ex-soldier to watch out for his trouble-prone niece, there’s not much doubt he’d take advantage of it.

“Men,” I muttered.

Aunt Ruby smiled a little and gave me a quick hug, and then Jack and I gathered up a still-stunned Leona, and in minutes we were on the way to the Black Cypress RV Park.

N
obody asked me
, but if they had, I would have told them that the last place to build an RV park was at the edge of a swamp.

Jack pulled into the drive between two carelessly planted hedges of Azaleas, which were already blooming in a riot of early color and flowery perfume. But the faint scent of rotting vegetation was competing for dominance, and the combination of the two was slightly nauseating.

Rows of shiny RVs and rusty old camper trailers shared the park, and I didn’t see any empty spaces. Oddly enough, the place seemed to be full.

I was surprised. “Who knew that camping in Dead End would be so popular?”

“Looks like some people live here full-time,” Jack said, nodding toward one of the RVs that had a built-on deck.

“We’re in the back on the right, the silver-and-black American Allegiance,” Leona said.

“The one with all the flashing lights around it, I’m guessing,” Jack said dryly, but Leona just nodded.

My friend Susan Gonzalez, former deputy and now sheriff, was already there, which made sense, since murder was a major crime. She was a few inches shorter than me and a few years older, and at only a couple of months into the job, she was the best sheriff Dead End had ever had. I could see Deputy Kelly, too, climbing out of his car. He was a slender guy with red hair even more vivid than mine, a boatload of freckles, and the overall look of a kid playing dress up in his dad’s uniform. I’d seen him in action though, and I wouldn’t underestimate him again.

A swarm of people in all varieties of sunburns and flip-flops were crowded around, talking and gesturing excitedly at each other. A dozen paces away from the crowd, as if protected by some invisible barrier, Susan was talking to a tall, well-dressed man with silver hair. Leona caught sight of them and started trying to open the truck door.

“Wait till we stop,” Jack said, pulling over to the side of the road and parking.

Before I could even get my seatbelt off, Leona was out the door and running toward the man.

“I bet that’s Ned,” Jack said.

“She seems pretty attached to Ned, seeing as how her husband just died,” I said slowly, trying not to sound judgmental but not sure how I felt about a possibly adulterous grandmother.

“From the sound of things, I hope she had a dozen Neds,” Jack growled.

We got out of the truck and headed for Susan, her deputy, and my…Leona.

Susan’s dark brows drew together when she saw us approach. “Tess? What are you doing here? Don’t tell me you’re caught up in this, too.”

I didn’t take offense at that, because Susan had been a huge help to me when black magic practitioners had been trying to kill me recently.

“I’m not always in the middle of the bad stuff,” I told her, reaching out to shake her hand.

“Shepherd,” Susan said calmly, nodding at Jack.

“Gonzalez,” Jack said, inclining his head in turn.

I rolled my eyes. “Come on. Somebody tell me what’s going on. My…Leona, Leona Carstairs, got a call and she said ‘they killed Brenda’ and then she went kind of crazy.”

I didn’t see a need to mention the banshee thing. I had enough notoriety in Dead End already without that.

Susan held up a hand, and then told Deputy Kelly to get all the looky-loos to disperse before turning back to us.

“Your Mrs. Carstairs is friends with the deceased, then?” Susan’s face was grim. “I’m going to have to interview her, too.”

Jack frowned. “This damn town sure gets more than its share of dead bodies, doesn’t it?”

For an instant, Susan’s shoulders sagged, but then she took a deep breath and snapped back into perfect law enforcement posture.

“Too many,” she agreed, and then Doc Ike walked out from between the two nearest RVs toward us.

Doc Ike was the county coroner and only doctor in Dead End. He had a giant beak of a nose and a tiny, receding chin, plus he was bald and liked to wear colorful ball caps. The whole effect was Angry Toucan.

He claimed to be in his sixties, didn’t look a day over eighty, and he was mean. Aunt Ruby and I had been driving into Orlando to see a female doctor since forever.

Ike stomped over to us, glared up at Jack from his five-foot-nothing height, and snorted. “Damn civilians at my crime scene.”

Jack looked down at him and said nothing.

“Well?” Susan asked him. “What do you think?”

“She’s dead, all right,” Ike said, shifting his old, black medical bag from one hand to the other.

Susan’s lips tightened, but she didn’t punch him, so at least some of the women in my life were showing some restraint today.

“And?” she asked instead, with admirable patience.

“And she’s
dead
, what do you want? Back of her head smashed in, blood and hair on the trailer hitch next to her,” he snarled.

So maybe it was an accident. Not that it still wouldn’t be sad and awful that she died, but the idea that there was another killer in Dead End wasn’t making me happy at all.

“Do you think she fell?”

The words had barely left my lips when Doc Ike transferred his scowl to me. “Not that it’s any of your business, young lady, since
pawn shop owner
isn’t a law enforcement job, but what the hell. No, I don’t think a fall killed her. The injury is far too severe for that. She may have fallen and hit the trailer hitch after somebody took a baseball bat to the back of her skull.”

I flinched, and Jack started to make a very low growling sound, which still raised the hairs on the back of my neck, even though I
knew
he wasn’t going to kill and eat me.

Doc Ike reacted like somebody had shoved a gun in his face. His beady little eyes widened as much as they could, and he stumbled back a couple of paces.

“Jack,” I warned him, putting a hand on his arm. “Quit scaring people.”

“Damned shifters,” the doctor snapped, glaring at both of us. “Can’t trust them as far as you can throw them, and who the hell can throw a shifter? The government should lock up the whole lot of you.”

Oh no, he did not.

I got right up in his stupid toucan face. “Look, you bigot, Dead End is not going to put up with your—”