Dead Eye (A Tiger's Eye Mystery Book 1) (15 page)

“Yeah, about that. That’s why I stopped by. I hear Jack is in town. Why isn’t he calling me? Where is he?”

A new voice broke into the conversation. “That a very good question. Where is Mr. Shepherd?”

Startled, I swung around to see Agent Vasquez standing behind us. “How did you get in here? I didn’t hear the bell.”

“I’m P-Ops. We have our ways.”

I rolled my eyes. “Right. Whatever. Dave, this is Agent Vasquez, from the FBI. Agent, this is Dave Wolf, a good friend of mine.”

They shook hands. The agent didn’t try to shake mine again. Apparently he knew better by now, or he just didn’t want to know what his future death might look like.

“What happened to your face?” The agent had quite an intense “scary federal agent” vibe and his accent became more pronounced. “Who hurt you?”

“I ran into a car. I was boxing. A vinegar-soaked thug attacked me.” I smiled brightly, and they both flinched. (I needed to work on my smile, clearly.) “Two truths and a lie.”

Dave shook his head. “So, Agent Vasquez—”

“Dave Wolf, son of Eleanor, father of Zane, master carpenter, boyhood friend to Jack Shepherd,” Vasquez recited. “He hasn’t contacted you?”

Dave folded his arms across his chest and frowned. “Don’t you want to know my shoe size? Or what I had for breakfast?”

“Ten and a half, and waffles or pancakes,” Vasquez said.

“Whoa. Dude,” Dave said slowly, his face turning pale.

Vasquez laughed. “Sorry. Not magic, just good observational skills. Your shoes look like they’re the same size as mine, and you smell like syrup. I just like to play the spooky P-Ops card sometimes.”

I wasn’t buying it. “So, you’re not really spooky?”

“Oh, I’m spooky. In fact, I’m married into a family of witches whose pet basilisks turned my last partner into a stone statue.”

I blew out a breath. “Of
course
you are. I never would have guessed anything else.”

A
customer came
in, and I quickly wrote him up for two hundred dollars for his antique pocket watch. It was the third year in a row that he’d brought the item in for pawn in January, I noticed, and I smiled at him. “Paying for Christmas presents, Mr. Newton?”

“You know it. We went a little crazy on the kids this year,” he said, grinning cheerfully. “I’ll be in next month with a payment.”

When Mr. Newton left, I walked over to where Agent Vasquez was talking to Dave, probably getting him to give up all his dark secrets. Not that Dave was the type for dark secrets; he was a pretty open guy. Jack, on the other hand…

I seriously had to quit thinking about Jack.

“What’s up, Agent Vasquez?”

“Alejandro, please.” He smiled at me, and I briefly wondered if P-Ops was hiring based on gorgeousness these days. Because, wow. Dave apparently had the same thought, because his eyes got huge, and I could almost hear his lonely heart go pitter-pat.

I leaned over and whispered in his ear. “He just said he’s married, remember?”

Dave’s gaze darted to the agent’s left hand, and of course Mr. Spooky noticed.

“I am, but I’m flattered by the interest,” he told Dave, ratcheting up the Charming Meter.

I snorted. “Yeah, yeah, you’re flattered. Flattered, spooky, and incredibly nosy. So why are you really here?”

Dave winced. “Tess, that’s pretty harsh. I’m sure the man is just doing his job.”

“Right. But what
is
his job? Why is he here, when he has no jurisdiction?”

“Well—” Alejandro began, but I ruthlessly cut him off.

“Why does he keep showing up in my pawnshop?”

“I—”

“Why does he want to talk to Jack so badly?”

“I want to talk to Jack too,” Dave said. “I don’t know why the fed does.”

The fed gritted his teeth. “Ms. Callahan—”

I threw my hands in the air. “Oh, please call me Tess. Aren’t we all friends here? And by friends, I mean that
I
have the ability to sell you a stuffed alligator, and
you
have the ability to lock me up in a deep, dark, Black Ops site for the rest of my life. So, we’re really on equal footing, aren’t we?”

Alejandro looked at Dave. “She watches a lot of TV, doesn’t she?”

“I get that a lot,” I admitted.

Dave could tell that I was about to lose my patience. He turned to Alejandro. “Why
are
you here?”

Alejandro gave us his Serious Special Agent face. “This stays between us.”

I shook my head. “I don’t agree to that. Whatever you tell me, I’m going to tell Jack.”

“You couldn’t just agree and then go behind my back, like most people do?”

“She’s very honest,” Dave said.

“I’m a terrible liar. What would be the point? Let’s just get it all out in the open.”

Alejandro considered us for a moment. “If I tell you this, will you convince Mr. Shepherd to call me?”

“I’ll give him your number and ask him to call you, but I couldn’t even convince him to get out of my bedroom, so I don’t know what luck I’ll have,” I said, not realizing the effect that my astonishingly poor choice of words, combined with the bruising on my face, would have on both men.

“Did he hurt you?” Alejandro’s eyes turned to ice.

“I’ll kill him,” Dave said, leaning forward on the balls of his feet. “I can’t believe Jack… I’ll
kill
him.”

“What? No! He didn’t—no. He came and got me and made me soup. Then he slept on my floor as a tiger,” I explained. “To protect me, in case the guy came back. Come on, Dave. You know me. Do you think I wouldn’t be pressing charges against the person who did this if I knew who it was?”

I shook my head and walked back into the office to get some bottles of water out of the mini-fridge. Everybody needed to cool down a little bit.

When I walked back out into the shop, Dave was leaning against the jewelry case, and Alejandro was examining a Native American dreamcatcher on the wall.

“It’s from a Chippewa tribe, and the claim is that it has a nightmare trapped in it,” I told him. “It can be yours for the low, low price of five hundred dollars.”

Alejandro frowned, and whatever lurked in the shadows in his eyes chased the flippancy right out of me. “I have all the nightmares I could ever need, Ms. Callahan.”

“I’m sorry.” I handed him a bottle of water. “Look, please just say what you need to say.”

“Have you heard of the Blood Moon?”

“You mentioned it the last time you were in here. It’s a total lunar eclipse,” I said.

“I said that?”

“Hey, I have internet,” I told him.

Dave spoke up. “I guess it’s supposed to be a big deal magically, right? Melody always said Shelley would have a special life since she was born on the night of a Blood Moon.”

Alejandro and I both stared at Dave.

“You knew Shelley’s mom?” I was surprised, again, at how the same names kept coming up in weirdly interconnected ways.

He nodded, sadness in his eyes. “We were friends. Mom tried to set us up, back in the day, before I came out, before Melody had her daughter. We used to laugh about it when we saw each other around town. Shelley and Zane were in the same class last year too, but she hasn’t been back to school since her mom died.”

I hadn’t even thought about the fact that yesterday had been a school day when she’d been in the shop. Wasn’t truancy a problem? I
knew
those Kowalskis were a bad foster family for Shelley. But skipping some school after her mother died probably wasn’t enough of a reason to get her away from them, either.

Alejandro’s face was grim. “The Blood Moon is magically important. Certain dark rituals, when conducted on that night, will become massively more powerful than they would normally be.”

“But that’s black magic,” I protested. “We don’t have any black witches in Dead End. You have to go clear to Miami to find black magic, according to Mrs. Kowalski.”

“We’ve heard rumors that something big is happening somewhere in the southeast; we’re just not sure exactly what or where.”

“That’s pretty vague,” I pointed out, and he nodded.

“Frustratingly so. I learned that Mr. Shepherd was here in Dead End, though, and I thought I’d combine two trips,” Alejandro said. “I just stopped by today to ask you to pass along my message to him.”

“Sure.”

“Thank you. I’ll be on my way now.”

“Good luck with that Blood Moon thing,” I said.

He nodded. On his way out the door, he patted the gun case. “Nice selection here, but the real prize is in the sheriff’s office. Did you ever see the nickel-plated .41 caliber Colt Thunderer that the sheriff owns? He claims it was the gun that Doc Holliday carried at the O.K. Corral.”

The agent’s eyes gleamed with the pure appreciation of a true collector. Under other circumstances, I’d try to sell him a gun or three. But, reeling from the bombshell that Alejandro didn’t even know he’d just dropped, it was all I could do to keep a level smile on my face.

“Is that so? Fascinating,” I said. “Have a nice drive.”

Dave scratched his head. “But, Tess—”

“Wish the nice agent luck, Dave,” I said, smiling through clenched teeth.

“Good luck, nice agent,” Dave said, looking puzzled.

Alejandro’s sharp gaze fixed on me for a second, but then he just nodded. “Thank you. I look forward to hearing from Mr. Shepherd. I need a new partner.”

I didn’t move until I heard his car drive off, and then I sank down onto the stool behind the counter. “Yeah, I bet he does. Lost his old one to a basilisk accident, after all,” I said bitterly.

Dave walked over and peered down at me. “Tess, isn’t that gun—”

“The one that Jeremiah swore he’d never sell? The one Sheriff Lawless wanted so badly?” I nodded. “Yeah. So how did he get it?”

*

A few hours
later, I was still thinking about that damn gun. Eleanor had come in for the afternoon shift, and I’d driven straight home to catch up on some nice, ordinary chores. Cleaning the bathroom was normally my least favorite chore, but I’d set to with a will today, glad to be out of the public eye and free of answering questions about how the other guy looked.

After an apple, crackers, and Tylenol snack, and a quick text to Owen to tell him I needed a rain check, I’d played “chase the amazing ball of yarn” with Lou, which was one of her favorite games. Now she was taking what was probably her seventh or eighth nap of the day while I dusted furniture, sorted through mail, and wondered how exactly the sheriff had convinced Jeremiah to sell him that gun.

Jeremiah had
adored
that Colt. Told the story of Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, and the O.K. Corral to anybody who’d shown the slightest bit of interest in it. Sworn to me that he’d never sell it. Then out of the blue one day, I’d noticed it was gone. I’d asked about it, figuring that he’d sent it out to be restored or something, and Jeremiah had gotten a strange look on his face and said he’d sold it to a collector in Europe. He wouldn’t tell me anything else about the sale, and I wasn’t doing the books at that time, so I’d figured it was none of my business.

It had bothered me, though. More than I’d even realized, I guess, because the idea of the sheriff having it was driving me nuts. Could he have killed my boss for the gun? No, that didn’t make any sense. Jeremiah had sold the gun months before he’d died.

I threw in a load of laundry, drank some water, and fired up the vacuum cleaner, no closer to any kind of epiphany than I’d been earlier, but with a significantly cleaner house. Lou opened one eye and gave me a disgusted look. She hated the sound of the vacuum.

“Sorry, kitty, but when a girl’s gotta clean, a girl’s gotta clean,” I told her, and then I went back to singing at the top of my lungs about my pocketful of sunshine and how people needed to shut up and dance with me. I was spectacularly bad at singing, but it helped me think. And clean. And probably scare off hot guys, small children, and grizzly bears. My secret weapon—the deadly “can’t carry a tune with a bucket” trick. I should have tried it on my attacker the night before.

“I’ll be happy to shut up and dance with you, if you’ll quit making that sound,” Jack said from right behind me, making me shriek and jump about a foot in the air.

I turned off the vacuum and glared at him. “What the heck? You can’t sneak up on a person. Especially a person who was just attacked from behind.”

“Oh damn. Tess, I’m sorry. I didn’t think about that. I knocked, and when it sounded like you were in pain, I just came in.” He looked really remorseful, so I forgave him on the spot. Except for the part about my singing which, though true, was a little bit hurtful.

“Who are you to judge? Can tigers even sing? Or is it all
growl, snarl, I’m going to eat your face off
?”

He grinned at me, taking in my Saturday afternoon cleaning clothes with a slow sweep of his gaze from the top of my ponytailed head to the bottom of my bare feet. I was wearing an old pair of cut-off denim shorts and a threadbare Garth Brooks concert t-shirt. Luckily, I was wearing a bra, because the appreciation in his eyes was making my nipples pointy.

No, no, no.

“I have stuff to tell you,” I said briskly, all business. Definitely not thinking about getting sweaty with my new business partner. Nope.