by Ann Charles
Doc held my hand while I steamed up the windows. When I ran out of gas, we strolled over to the Lead police car that was parked off to the side of the lot. The vehicle looked like it had been driven through a steel-brush car wash, with deep scratches in the metal at imp-height all along each side and across the back bumper. One of the tires was missing a big, bite-sized chunk of rubber, too. A peek at the undercarriage made me cringe. The vehicle had been partially disemboweled. Smashed, scratched—even shredded—metal pieces and parts that Doc pointed out by name dangled, dragging on the ground.
Crikey! If the imp was capable of inflicting that kind of damage on a car, I was beginning to understand why Dominick was more than a little concerned about me not making the bugger a top priority on my to-be-caught-and-executed list.
On our way to Jones’ Taxidermy, Doc and I grabbed a couple of turkey sandwiches at the Piggly Wiggly grocery store. We were working on the last few bites when we pulled in the shop’s drive.
“Look,” I said, pointing at the red dually pickup sitting near the front door. “Reid’s here.”
Doc parked next to it. “Coop must have caught a ride with him.”
The only other vehicle around was a white Ram truck with an enclosed trailer hitched to it near the shop’s back door. “That must be Garth’s truck, then.” I pointed at it and popped the last of my sandwich in my mouth, licking a dollop of mayonnaise from my thumb.
Doc nodded. “He mentioned something the other night about needing to take a finished stag and a few other pieces over to a hunting lodge in Wyoming.” He handed me a napkin from the grocery sack. “I wonder if he needs some help loading that up today.”
The shop’s front door opened and Cooper strode out. I knew better than to think he was being a gentleman when he yanked open my door, letting the cold inside. “Parker, you’re late.”
“So is he,” I said, thumbing at Doc. “Bark at him.”
“I can’t. He’s letting me sleep under his roof.” Cooper helped me out of the vehicle, holding my arm to keep me steady. “Watch out, it’s icy here.”
I frowned up at him. “Who are you and what have you done with the real Cooper?”
Doc joined us in front of my SUV. “Natalie spent the night with him again,” he reminded me, burying his hands in the pockets of his leather coat.
“Ohhhh.” I snickered and elbowed Cooper like we were old chums. “Are you singing happy songs in the shower these days?”
“Shut up, Parker.” He scowled at Doc. “And you—don’t encourage her.” He scanned the hillside behind us, adding in a lowered voice, “Now let’s get this walkthrough done before Hawke catches wind that I have you two up here again and pitches a fit.”
I grinned. “Like a dying duck.”
His gaze locked on me. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Don’t ask,” Doc told him. “We stopped and checked out the car at Gold Diggers’ garage on the way here. That’s why we’re running late.”
“What do you think?” Cooper looked to me for an answer. “That has to be your imp, right?”
“I think it needs more mead.” I’d said the same thing to Doc as we’d driven away from the garage. “And it’s not my imp.”
What was it lately with everyone using the possessive pronoun when it came to bullshit in which I had zero fault? All right, so maybe I had a teeny bit of fault when it came to the imp, but I wasn’t the one who let it out of its cage.
Cooper scanned the hillside again. “I don’t suppose the little bastard left behind any clues that we can use to find it.”
Since I was one of the few people around that could see the imp thanks to my Executioner DNA, Cooper had to rely on me to be his eyes on imp-related crimes.
I started to shake my head, but then shrugged instead.
One blond eyebrow lifted. “What’s that mean?”
“It left something behind for your Johnny Law pals, but it’s not really a clue.”
“What was it?”
I tried to hold in my grin, but it seeped out at the corners of my mouth. “A pile of imp crap on the hood.”
He leaned back on his heels. “Are you fucking kidding?”
“Yeah, I am. I couldn’t see anything more than you could today.”
He pulled his coat back and showed me a pair of handcuffs secured to his belt. “Don’t push your luck, Parker.”
I snorted at his threat. With my best friend keeping Cooper company between the sheets, I had an almost unlimited supply of get-out-of-jail-free passes now. “I’d like to know what the driver of that car did to piss the imp off, though,” I told him and Doc.
“You think it had motivation to vandalize?” Doc asked.
“I hope it did, because if that was just a random act of violence, we could have some serious problems heading our way until I can figure out how to catch the slippery hellion.”
“Christ, Parker.” Cooper huffed out a steam of breath in the cold air. “What’s next? Flying monkeys?”
A shrill cackle escaped from my throat before I could lasso it in, scaring a pair of woodpeckers from a nearby tree. “Probably, and my sister would be leading the troupe.”
Followed by an irate nephew and my “old man’s” kid.
Cooper scowled at Doc. “What’s up with her?”
Doc put his arm around my shoulders, pulling me into his side. “She talked to her mom on the way here.”
“Are Blake and Hope okay?”
Cooper’s familiarity with my parents earned him a hard glare. “Has my mom been calling you?”
“No, but she’s sent me a few texts since I got back from Arizona.”
Dear Lord. My mother spent one Christmas with my cohorts and now she was practically making friendship bracelets for them.
“They’re fine,” Doc told him. “But Violet’s sister checked in recently. There’s a slight problem with cleaning up the mess she made down in the Caribbean.”
“There usually is when illegal acts are involved.” Cooper crossed his arms, taking the wide-legged cop stance that came as naturally as breathing for him. “What’s the deal, Parker? Are you going to be extradited to some tropical island? That would certainly save me a shitload of headaches, especially if this other trouble of yours followed you south.”
“I’ve got your shitload of headaches right here.” I held up my fist under his crooked nose.
Doc grabbed my hand and pulled it into his coat pocket, warming it with his. “The wedding didn’t take,” he told Cooper, and then made quick work of explaining my current location stuck way upstream on the left bank of Shit Creek.
“It could be worse,” Cooper said, leading the way to the front door a couple of minutes later.
“How’s that?” I asked, dreading his answer. Being a detective, he probably knew more about what was legal and what wasn’t in this situation.
He shrugged. “Honestly, I don’t have a fucking clue. But Nat says I have to be less hostile toward you, so I was trying to find something good to say.”
“Seriously? That’s your version of cheerleading?”
“Yep. The next time you talk to Nat, make sure you tell her that I was trying to be nice, but you kept threatening bodily harm.” He opened the door and ushered us inside.
Jones’ Taxidermy still smelled the same as it had the other night—musty with a dose of chemicals. I looked around at the stuffed animals. They weren’t so spooky in the daytime with the bright lights on overhead. Someone must have fixed the power.
Several of the pieces that had been bitten were missing, except for Dorothy the camel. She just had a towel draped over her injury.
Reid was leaning against the counter next to the cash register. His thick canvas coat was unbuttoned and his stocking cap pushed back off his forehead.
“Hey, Sparky,” he said when he saw me, holding his hand out. “I have a present for you.”
I joined him at the counter, taking what he offered. It was a glass eye.
“Boy, you sure know how to make
a girl feel special.” I held the smooth, domed glass up to the center of my forehead and closed my eyes, speaking in a witchy voice. “Magic eye, don’t make me plead. Tell me how last night’s date went for Reid.”
Reid laughed. “That was pretty clever.”
“You should hear her make up nut-shrinking spells on the fly,” Doc said from behind me.
Cooper grunted from somewhere nearby. “Or not, especially if Hawke is around.” The floor creaked off to my side. “Hey, Nyce. Come check out how sharp the tusks are on this javelina.”
“Did you run into one of those down in Arizona?” I heard Doc ask as he moved away from me.
“Well, Fire Captain Martin,” I said, opening my peepers. “Let me hear it. Tell me how you think supper went with my aunt.” I set the glass eye down on the counter. I didn’t need any souvenirs from this place. My memories would be plenty.
“Zo was a wonderful host.” He scratched absently at his jaw. “Ox loved her cooking and she had him laughing quite a bit. She took him out to her workshop and showed him some of her pieces, even offered one to him.” While his words were all about good vibrations, the tension lines crisscrossing his forehead foretold a not-so-happy ending.
“I heard my kids terrorized him sufficiently.”
A smile chased the tension lines away. “Addy and Layne were wonderful. They made Ox feel at home right from the beginning, dragging him by the hand down to meet Elvis.”
So, if Aunt Zoe were to ever marry Reid, that would make Ox my step-cousin, wouldn’t it? “Doc and I need to meet your son. How soon until he heads back to wherever he came from?”
“He’s heading south in a few days, but he’ll be moving here for good in a couple of weeks. That’s why I wanted him to meet Zo. To break the ice, you know.”
Oh, some ice was broken all right. Leaving a big hole to dump Reid into the bottomless lake below.
“Sure. Of course.” I hid my squeamish concern about Aunt Zoe’s reaction to last night’s ending by picking up and pretending to study the glass eye in my hand. “What kind of eye is this supposed to be? A cat’s?”
Garth Jones walked out from the back hallway, interrupting us. He was wearing a leather apron that reached clear to his knees and a face shield flipped up. His fat, old bull terrier, Beau, waddled along behind him.
I’d never been so glad to see a taxidermist in my life.
He zipped behind the counter and took a seat on the stool next to the register. Beau just dropped on the floor at the end of the counter, his tongue flopping out, as if he could go no farther at the moment.
“Hey, Martin.” Garth leaned on the counter. “I haven’t seen you since last month’s fire extinguisher checkup. How’s that old snowcat treating you?”
“We’ve had some fun playing in the snow in that girl, haven’t we, Sparky?”
I thought back on the trip down to my parents on Christmas Eve. Reid had come to the rescue in the midst of a blizzard, carting a snowcat load of us down out of the hills into Rapid City. “It’s a burly baby.” I patted Reid’s shoulder. “Not even a blizzard could slow it down.”
“Why do Reid and Willis Harvey call you ‘Sparky’?” Garth asked me.
Reid chuckled. “Because for a while there, wherever there was a spark around town, there was usually a ‘Parker,’ too. The nickname ‘Sparky Parker’ was born down at the station and spread from there.”
I looked at Garth. “I only had a hand in one of the fires, though. And that was an accident.” I hadn’t meant to knock over the candle in a room filled with mummified little girls coated in lighter fluid. The memory of that flame-filled house of terror still made me shudder.
“Hello, Mr. Jones,” Doc said, joining us. He held out his hand for a shake. “Thanks for letting us stop by for another look around in the daylight.”
“My pleasure.” Garth pumped his hand a couple of times. “I’m a little worried about that long-legged critter coming back around while I’m in Wyoming.”
Cooper joined us at the counter. “We’ll take good care of the place while you’re gone, Jonesy. I already talked to a couple of officers scheduled to work tomorrow night. They’re going to come by every hour to check your locks and shine a light in the windows. You know, the usual patrol business.”
Garth’s relief shone on his face. “Thanks, Detective. And tell your crew that I truly appreciate their diligence.”
Cooper glanced at Doc before replying. “Will do. I’ll even check in once or twice myself and make sure everything is locked up tight.”
“Thanks. I’d hate to have that son of a bitch return and do more damage to poor Dorothy.” His gaze fell on me and he cringed. “Sorry about the language, Ms. Sparky.”
I waved him off. “Tell me, have you had any other trouble with trespassers or weird sounds out in the trees since Wednesday night? Anything that set off Beau?”
We all looked over at the bull terrier now snoring on the floor. Beau’s feet twitched several times, probably chasing a Nachzehrer in his sleep. I wish I only had to chase them in my dreams.
“Well,” Garth said, scratching behind his ear, “I thought I heard some ruckus going on out here last night while I was putting the finishing touches on that stag in my workroom, but it turned out to be a pair of raccoons trying to get into my garbage cans for a late-night snack.”
“You want some help loading that stag into the trailer?” Doc asked.
Garth’s face lit up. “By golly, I’d love to have some extra muscle. I put my back out a few months ago and it still twinges somethin’ fierce when I lift the heavier pieces around here.”
“Coop and I will help you get everything loaded before we leave,” Doc said, looking at Cooper, who nodded.
“In the meantime,” Cooper said, pulling a small notepad from his coat pocket. Ugh, I knew that pad well, along with the Deadwood Police Department’s obsession with clicking pens. “We’ll sniff around out here to see if we can figure out a motive for the B&E.”
“Sounds good,” Garth said. “You guys feel free to touch anything in here. Just be careful around ol’ Dorothy. She’s not as tough as she used to be.”
I looked around at the different animals frozen in attack poses. “Okay. Sure.” I tried not to let my grimace come to the surface.
Garth started to walk away, but then turned back. “Martin, when you’re ready, come take a look at the work the electrician did on my breaker box so you can check it off on your inspection sheet.”
Reid nodded. “I’ll be there in two shakes.”
After Garth left the room, we spread out under Cooper’s direction, each of us looking for something that might give us a clue as to why that Nachzehrer would have come to the taxidermy shop in the first place. The bites out of the stuffed critters were self-explanatory in my opinion after seeing the sharp set of teeth on those ugly bastards. This place was basically a big room full of chew toys.
I checked my cell phone to make sure I had no calls from work or home. I didn’t, so I stuffed the phone back in my coat pocket and moved over to an open display case near the door. A fox sat on a lower shelf, stuck for all of eternity in head-lowered pose. I slowly reached toward it, curious if the fur on the tail was really as soft as it looked. The glass eyes looked so real, as if it would start snapping its jaws at me any minute now.
“Hey, Parker.” Cooper had prowled up behind me.
I stepped back in surprise, coming down on his foot.
“Christ!” He bumped me aside, making a pained face. “What is wrong with you?”
“Me? You’re the one sneaking up on me in a room full of creepy dead animals. Didn’t you learn your lesson last fall in Mudder Brothers’ basement?”
His sneaking up behind me that night had resulted in the notorious nose-breaking headbutt.
He glared at me. “I came over here to show you this.” He held out a small, square wooden case with a brass hook latch.
I took it from him, inspecting the box. It looked like some kind of …
Just open it.
With a flick of the brass hook, the lid flipped open.
It was a compass. And an old one, judging from the fogged glass and what appeared to be a hand-painted compass rose underneath. “Where did you find this?”
“It was on the shelf next to the peregrine falcon over in the corner.”
I looked in the direction he indicated, spying the bird, frozen in mid-dive. I’d give Garth this—he was very good at modeling the animals in authentic poses.
“I think it’s mahogany,” he said, touching the wooden lid. “But look at the markings under the glass.” He took out his flashlight and aimed the light on the compass face.
I read clockwise: Norden, Osten, Süden, Westen.
“That’s German,” Cooper said, shutting off the light.
He took the compass from me and flipped it over. There was a word carved into the box surface.
“What’s that say?” I asked.
“How should I know?” Cooper said. “I don’t speak German.”
“But you knew the other words.”
“No, I knew Norden was German for north from watching documentaries on World War II. Common sense said that being it is a compass, those are cardinal directions.” He pointed at the numbers written below the carved word. “That, I believe, is a date.”
“1807?”
“I think it’s 1801.”
“You think this compass was made in 1801?” At his nod, I added, “And maybe this German word is the artist’s name?”
“Or the owner’s.” He shrugged, latching the compass closed. “It’s just a guess, but it might be a clue.”
I pointed at the small, mahogany case. “I thought we were supposed to look for clues with only our eyes, not our hands.” That was what he’d told me down in the basement of that haunted jail last night.
“That’s true for you. The rules are different for me.”
“Why?”
“Because I’ve been a detective longer than you’ve had kids.”
I wrinkled my nose. “I like your set of rules better.”
“Too bad, Parker. You need to put in more time before you can get your detective badge.”
“So, Mr. Super-Sleuth Detective, why might Garth have an early nineteenth-century German compass sitting on a shelf next to a dead bird? Could it just be a collector’s item?”
