Dead Eye (A Tiger's Eye Mystery Book 1) (21 page)

“The provenance,” I said. “That’s the record of ownership. It helps prove authenticity. I know he had extensive documentation on the origin of the gun—newspaper clippings from the time period of the O.K. Corral and things like that. He showed them to me often enough.”

“He doesn’t have them anymore. Maybe he sold them to the sheriff along with the gun.” He slid the sugar box back and proceeded to dump out the tiny packets of jam and start building a tower with them.

“Did you find anything interesting at all?”

“Not really. Jeremiah was the opposite of a packrat. He had a big shredder in his office, and he clearly used it extensively. It was half full of paper, and his filing cabinets were neat and organized.”

I nodded. “I noticed that when I went in with Mr. Chen to look for the papers he needed for the estate, and to determine what Jeremiah’s final wishes were.”

Jack’s hand jerked, knocking the tower of jam over, and he started building it again. “Thank you for that, by the way. I’m sorry I wasn’t here to take that off your shoulders.”

“I was happy to do it for him,” I said honestly.

I glanced around the room while Jack built Mount Jam. More than a few people were staring at us, which didn’t really surprise me. But a lot of them were giving Jack really dirty looks, and that did.

When Lorraine came back to the table with our salads, I asked her about it.

“Oh, that blowhard Lawless was in here this afternoon, stirring up trouble. He was hinting really broadly that he suspected Jack of having something to do with that poor girl’s death. I tried to set him straight, but he told me I was just a waitress and didn’t know what I was talking about, so I spit in his lemonade,” she said, smiling so broadly I was afraid her false teeth would fall out.

“I kind of love you right now, Lorraine,” Jack said, grinning right back at her.

“You hush that talk. I’m at least ten years too old for you.” Lorraine—who was seventy if she was a day—winked at him and headed off to her other tables.

“So, nothing at all in Jeremiah’s office that might give us any clue as to why all this is happening?” I started moving croutons to the side of my salad, out of my way.

“You don’t like croutons?”

“Bread’s evil cousin,” I told him.

Jack gave me his “there’s something seriously wrong with you” look, but then he shook his head. “No. Nothing at all. There was one thing that I found odd, but I don’t know how it could have had anything to do with his death.”

“What was that?”

Lorraine and a helper showed up with our plates of food just then, so we waited until they unloaded everything onto our table and left.

“Jeremiah had a framed photo on his bookcase of himself with Melody and Shelley Adler at SeaWorld. Did you know anything about that?”

I slowly put my fork down, staring at him. “He what? He took them to SeaWorld? No, I never knew anything about that. I knew he liked the two of them—Shelley, especially—but nothing like that. And if he kept a photo of them, the day must have meant something special to him. I never noticed it when I was in his office with Mr. Chen.”

Jack finished the chicken on his first plate, slid the mashed potatoes and corn from plate one onto plate two, and set the empty plate aside, all without breaking stride in our conversation. It was quite impressive, really.

“He mentioned her a few times to me when I called, now that I think about it. I didn’t really pay any attention,” Jack said.

“Maybe he had hopes that when you came back to settle down, you’d settle down with Melody, and you could all become one big happy family,” I said, trying to think it through rationally. “He did like to tell me how much he wished he could have grandchildren one day, and how much he would spoil mine.”

Jack looked flabbergasted. “Me and Melody Adler? I can’t even imagine that he would think that it was a possibility.”

By the look on his face, he seemed intrigued with the idea, though. I stabbed my chicken perhaps a touch too violently, because Jack’s eyes widened.

“Moving on to exploding heads,” I said.

“You really are a strange woman, aren’t you?”

“Why do you say that?”

He pointed to his plate, and I rolled my eyes.

“Okay, fine. If you’re going to be squeamish, we can wait and talk about exploding heads over pie and coffee,” I said, shrugging.

Jack shook his head. “Ruby would be so proud.”

“Shut up and eat your chicken.”

W
e didn’t have
any major epiphanies during pie and coffee, unfortunately, except the knowledge that Beau’s still had terrific pie.

“It had to be black magic,” Jack finally said, putting into words what neither of us had wanted to say before.

“But why? Why him? Unless maybe he killed Chantal, and somebody was getting revenge? But if that’s the case, why would they wait until he was in jail to do it?”

“Unless they didn’t know where he was until then,” Jack pointed out. “He’s a biker. He travels around. Pretty handy to wait until he was confined in a cell to cast an exploding-head spell on him, don’t you think?”

I could feel my face scrunching into a grimace. “I don’t think the word
handy
should ever be used in the same sentence with
exploding-head spell
.”

“You might have a point. Any thoughts about what we do next?”

“I think we need to go talk to a witch and find out how this all works, but I don’t particularly want to go see Mrs. Kowalski and get caught up in any stupidity with Hank or Walt.”

“Do you know any other witches around Dead End?”

“Actually, I do. A woman I went to school with. She cuts hair at Sassy Shears, but they’re closed on Mondays. I know where she lives, though, with her husband and daughter out on Birdsong Road. Are you feeling up for a drive?”

Jack stood up and tossed enough money on the table for our dinners and a substantial tip, but I was ready for that. I handed some of his money back to him, and replaced it with my own. “I can buy my own dinner, Jack. It’s not a date.”

I started to regret my word choice when he got a speculative gleam in his eyes, but thankfully he let it go. We waved goodbye to Lorraine and headed out into the cold evening air.

“I’m going to follow you there, because I have plans for later this evening,” Jack told me. “I found some former military guys who live out by the swamp. I’m going to buy a case or three of beer and take it up there and see what I can find out.”

I swallowed a slight twinge of hurt that he wasn’t inviting me along, but he must’ve noticed the expression on my face.

“Tess, these are not guys who would talk to me if you were there. They probably wouldn’t even come out of their houses if you were there. Just let me do this, and I’ll head over to your place afterward.”

I shivered and zipped up my jacket. Jack wasn’t wearing one, of course. He never did. Eating three chicken dinners at a time must keep a person’s body temperature up.

“Actually, if you don’t mind, I’d like to go to Jeremiah’s. Maybe there’s something I can find that you missed. It’s a long shot, but it’s worth a try.” I didn’t want to offend him, but I probably thought more like Jeremiah, after all those years of working with him at the shop.

Jack nodded. “That’s a great idea. So let’s head out to see the witch—”

“Delia Roth, not ‘the witch,’ please.”

“And after we see Mrs. Roth, we’ll split up and see what we can find on our own.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

I noticed he sped away from his parking space before I could back out of mine. He was learning.

*

Delia Roth and
her family lived in a small, pink house. That’s how I knew where to find her. She’d cut my hair before, and we’d chatted about a little bit of everything, as you do at the salon, and she’d mentioned living in a little pink house on Birdsong Road. The
only
pink house on Birdsong Road, she’d added, laughing. Delia had been cheerful in high school, and she’d grown up to be a cheerful adult. She enjoyed her life and her job, and she showed everyone pictures of her cute little daughter all the time. Just a normal, happy wife and mother in every way, except for the fact that Delia was a witch.

I’d asked her once when she’d first realized she could do magic, and she’d paused, holding a strand of my hair in one hand and her scissors in the other, and looked at me in the mirror.

“Do you know, that’s the first time anybody ever asked me that,” she said slowly. “I’d like to say it was something showy, like I turned my pet cat into a pony, but that’s not true. I just had a feeling that developed over several years that there was something different about myself, and I was right.”

She hadn’t seemed offended by my question, so I’d thought it was okay to ask her to explain. “Different how?”

“For me, it’s a case of feeling like I’m more in touch with nature than other people seem to be. More in tune with the Earth. I know that sounds all touchy-feely, but I don’t know how else to explain it. I can feel the magic of the seasons when they change, and I delight in it. It fills up a tiny, dark place inside me with light and sound and air.”

She’d paused then, and laughed. “Sometimes I can make magical things happen, of course, or I wouldn’t be classified as a witch. Small things. Positive things. But mostly, it’s just a matter of feeling all my senses opened to the natural world in a way that normal people—non-witches—don’t.”

She’d changed the subject then, so I’d let it go, even though I didn’t fully understand. I figured it was like my visions. I’ve never been able to properly explain them, either.

The minute I stepped out of my car at Delia’s house, I felt it. An oppressive silence. The air itself had a dark, greasy feel, as if we were walking through a kitchen that nobody had cleaned in months. I suddenly realized that it was peculiarly silent for dusk, as well. I didn’t hear any birds singing, or even the chattering of insects discussing their evening plans. It felt wrong. Like some kind of dead zone.

I wanted to get out of there with every fiber of my being.

Jack pulled up behind my car. After he removed his helmet and swung his long leg over the bike, he sniffed the air. Then he made the same face that I could tell I was making.

“My tiger side feels like his fur is standing straight up. There is something wrong about this place.”

I shuddered. “I know. I feel like I’ve brought a knife to a magic fight, except I don’t even have a knife. You don’t happen to have a spare, do you?”

Jack gave me a look. “I never carry knives. Tiger, remember?”

He held out one hand, and his fingers shifted into claws right in front of my eyes.

“I didn’t know you could do that,” I said, relieved and a little bit freaked out too. “Let’s go see Delia and get this over with. I want to get out of here.”

We walked up to the house, and the spooky feeling climbing up my spine intensified until I could feel my shoulders hunch up around my ears, and I forced myself to relax. The place was dismal. The grass in the yard was dead, and there were a few toys scattered about, overturned and abandoned. Delia’s pink house wasn’t even pink anymore. It was a sort of dull rose gray, and it looked tired. Faded. As if the house itself had succumbed to the menace in the air around it.

I took a deep breath, pretended I was a brave person, and marched up to knock on the door. No answer.

Jack, still in the yard, took a few steps and glanced around the side of the house. “There’s a car over here under the carport. A little yellow VW. Is that hers?”

“It must be. Her husband’s a big guy; I doubt he drives a small car like that.”

“That doesn’t mean that the whole family isn’t out somewhere in his car,” Jack said.

He had a point, even though it was a disappointing one. But as I turned to step down off the porch, the curtain in the front room twitched.

“I think she’s in there.” I knocked again.

Still no answer.

“Delia, I know you’re in there,” I called out. “I just want to talk to you. If you don’t open the door, I’m going to sit on your porch all night until your husband comes home.”

It was an empty threat, because the three ice water refills that I’d had at Beau’s were already working their way through me, but Delia didn’t know that. I heard the sound of multiple locks being unlocked, and she opened the door and stepped out on the porch.

“You shouldn’t have come,” she said in a hopeless voice, and the sight of her was so shocking that I couldn’t even speak.

Delia was maybe a few years older than me, but she appeared to have aged twenty years and lost thirty pounds since I’d last seen her. Her glossy hair—always her pride and joy, which made sense, since she worked in a hair salon—was dry and ragged and had three inches of dark roots showing. Her face was terribly pale, as though she hadn’t seen the sun in months. And her eyes were dark holes of despair, set too deep in her gaunt face.

“If she finds out I’m talking to you, she’ll kill me too,” she whispered hoarsely. “She’s out of control, and I can’t escape. I sent my family away to my husband’s parents up in Montana. I had to keep them safe. But she won’t let me leave, because she needs me for tomorrow. You have to go away, Tess. Get out while you still can.”