by Alyssa Day
The chimes over the front door sounded, and she shook her head. "Nothing. I'll tell you later. Time to get to work."
But it was Susan, not Mr. Holby, who walked in the door just as my phone rang.
"Hey, Susan. Have a donut. Coffee's on too." I reached for my phone, surprised to see Mr. Holby's face on the screen.
"Hello?"
"Good morning, Tess. I'm calling to say that we're having some logistical problems here. Both of our buses are in the shop unexpectedly, so we're going to be coming through tomorrow instead of today, if that's okay?"
"I hope it's nothing serious?" The GYST tour ran on a shoestring, and I imagined fixing mechanical issues on those buses wasn't cheap.
"Not too serious, luckily. One bus is having routine maintenance, but the other is running choppy, and I'm not going to get out on the road in a faulty bus with a couple dozen senior citizens." He chuckled. "Not that I'm a spring chicken myself."
"You'll never get old, Mr. Holby," I said, smiling. "Take care. We'll see you tomorrow."
I looked up to see Eleanor waving frantically and pointing at herself. "And Eleanor says hi."
"Tell her hello. See you in the morning, kiddo."
We hung up, and I sighed. "Well, you may as well take one of these boxes of donuts back to the office with you, Susan. I won't be needing it. The GYST buses are in the shop, so they're not stopping by until tomorrow."
Susan smiled, but her expression was strained, which told me she had a lot on her mind. "I don't know, Tess. If I take donuts, does that make me a cliché?"
"If you don't take them, Jack will eat them all."
"I'll take them, I'll take them. Being a cliché doesn't scare me."
When the three of us had mugs in hand—coffee for me and Susan and tea for Eleanor—we turned to a more serious subject.
"Have you learned anything? Gotten any fingerprints?" I groaned when I realized what I'd said. Asking about fingerprints from the cut-off finger just sounded awful, for some reason. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean—"
"What is going on now?" Eleanor aimed a narrow-eyed stare at both of us. "Fingerprints for what?"
Susan nodded, so I briefly sketched out what had happened.
"That's horrible!" Eleanor put her mug down on the counter with a hand that shook slightly. "Tess, you poor thing. I don't know why these awful things keep happening to you."
The pawnshop door opened again, but this time it was Jack. He nodded to Susan and then grinned at Eleanor and held his hands up.
"Don't shoot!"
She put her hands on her hips. "Jack Shepherd. That was one time. And I quit carrying my gun to work."
"That's a relief," I muttered.
Susan just shook her head, wincing.
Jack walked over and hugged her. "Glad to see you again too, ma'am. But am I the awful thing that keeps happening to Tess that you were talking about?"
She blinked. "How—"
"Superior tiger hearing," Susan drawled, rolling her eyes. "Look. I do have some news, and I'm only telling you this now, where Eleanor can hear it—"
"Hey!" Eleanor looked indignant. "What do you mean—"
"You're one of the biggest gossips in town, and we all know it," Susan said, but not unkindly. "Anyway, we had to put out a BOLO—"
"That's Be On the Look Out," I said, secure in the massive knowledge I'd gained from years of dedicated mystery novel reading and true crime show watching.
"Right." Susan took a deep breath and put her coffee mug down. "Tess, the finger belongs to a woman named Ann Feeney who went missing from Jacksonville last week. Any chance you know her?"
All three of us shook our heads.
"I can check my records to see if she's ever bought anything here, but you know I'm just now getting computerized, and Jeremiah did a lot of cash business. Is she old? Young?"
"I'll look in the files," Eleanor said, heading for the back room. We had a couple of file cabinets of Jeremiah's old transactions, filed alphabetically, for the most part. Usually by last name, but sometimes by first name or even by object. My former boss, Jack's late uncle, hadn't been a stickler for paperwork—it's hard to top the frustration of spending an hour searching for Jane Smith's pawn records under J, S, and even C for computer and then finally finding it in L for laptop.
"She's twenty-five," Susan said. "I've got a county-wide search going on right now, and I've put out the word statewide plus called the feds. We're going to find her. I just hope it's not too late."
"P-Ops?" Jack pulled out his phone. "Do you want me to call Alejandro and see if he can lend a hand?"
The P-Ops, or Paranormal Operations division, of the FBI had far more resources than we had in Dead End, and one of their special agents was a friend of Jack's and had become a friend to me and my family too, after he'd helped us with Shelley's adoption.
"I already tried," Susan said. "Alejandro is out on another case, but they put me in touch with someone in his office who's going to look into this and give me a call back this afternoon."
I suddenly remembered the expert Susan had told us was coming to town. "What about the magical resonance expert? Can she do something with the finger?"
"She had a family emergency, so we had to reschedule. We boxed the skeleton up and put it in the evidence locker for now."
I made a face. The thought of the skeleton just hanging out in the jail gave me the creeps.
"What can we do, Susan?"
"I was hoping you'd thought of something—anything—that might give us a clue as to who might be fixating attention on you."
I shook my head. "I wish I had. The only thing we came up with is Brigham Hammermill the Fourth, and he died a couple of months ago."
Susan raised an eyebrow. "Who?"
I filled her in on Brig, and Jack told her what he'd discovered.
"We didn't want to bother you with it if it turned out to be nothing, and it did, so…" I shrugged.
Susan nodded, but she didn't look happy. "In the future, maybe tell me about any suspects you come up with, and let us do our job."
Jack gave her a flat stare. "We had a personal stake in this one, considering it's Tess that this lunatic has taken such an interest in."
She sighed. "Yeah. I get that. But, still, at least let me know too, okay? We have resources you don't."
"Andy was going to go look at the grove of palm trees," I said, interrupting them before they started to arm wrestle over jurisdiction or something equally ridiculous. "Nothing there?"
"Unfortunately, no. Just a lot of tree stumps where they got carried away harvesting for the festival." Susan's phone buzzed, and she headed for the door. "Call me if you think of anything, Tess. And Shepherd? You too, okay?"
"Same right back at you, Sheriff," he said.
She paused but then nodded and pushed open the door, answering her phone as she went. "Gonzalez."
Now that it was just me and Jack in the shop, memories of the date and the kiss flooded into my brain, and I could feel my cheeks heat up.
Jack grinned. "You have the most amazing tendency to blush that I've ever seen."
"Argh. It's embarrassing. I'm a grown woman."
"I remember," he said, his eyes flashing with heat. "What are you doing tonight?"
"Very busy. I have that thing to do." I avoided his gaze and picked up the discarded mugs. I wasn't quite ready for another date with Jack until I had time to analyze my feelings and discuss them with Molly.
"That thing?" He followed me into the back. "What thing? And you have donuts you didn't tell me about?"
"Um, the thing. Take an entire box of donuts, if you want. Susan forgot hers."
He took the box I shoved at him and then pinned me in place with a steady look. "What thing are you doing tonight, Tess? Will you be with other people? Somewhere safe?"
"She has plans with me," Eleanor said from her place at the file cabinets. "We have a date to, ah, do goat yoga."
Both of us turned to stare at her.
&nbs
p; Jack spoke first. "What the heck is goat yoga?"
She bit her lip and looked everywhere but at him. "You know! Goat yoga. We saw it on the news and wanted to try it out, right, Tess? It's that thing where, ah, the goats do yoga. And we watch! Right. Goat yoga."
I closed my eyes. This was not helpful.
"Repeating the phrase 'goat yoga' over and over does not explain to me how goats do yoga or why you'd want to watch such a thing," Jack said dryly.
"No, Eleanor," I said. "Remember, the baby goats run around and do cute things while we do the yoga?"
Jack looked at me, then at Eleanor, and then back at me.
"You're making this up."
Now I was on safer ground. I Googled, and then held out my phone to show him the video. "See? Goat yoga?"
Jack watched a few seconds of the clip, his eyes widening. "That's one of the most ridiculous things I've ever seen. They have this here? In Dead End?"
"Sure, absolutely, we're going tonight right after work, see you later, we have plans to make," Eleanor said, practically babbling.
This was pitiful. If I ever committed a crime, Eleanor would not be one of my alibi witnesses.
"Jack," I said firmly. "Busy. Work and then goat yoga. Go do some detective things."
His eyes were filled with laughter. "But I want to go too. I like goats."
"We're not eating the goats!" I had a sudden vision of Jack, in tiger form, chasing a bunch of baby goats around a yoga studio, and I almost couldn't keep a straight face.
"Eating them makes more sense than doing yoga with them."
He wasn't wrong, exactly, but I didn’t have time to debate the issue. First, I needed to find out what was going on with Eleanor, whose face was bright red. She looked like she was going to start crying, and she would be horrified to cry in front of Jack.
"Okay, whatever, let's discuss it later." I gestured to him to follow me.
When we were back in the shop, he frowned down at me. "Is she okay? Do I need to call Dave?"
Jack and Eleanor's son Dave had been best friends in school and had rebuilt their friendship recently.
"I think she's fine. I'll find out what's going on."
He nodded and flicked the end of the ponytail I wore to work. "All right. I'll be in my office catching up. Let me know if you need anything."
Before I could reply, customers walked into the shop, so I just smiled my thanks and moved to greet them and then answered some questions about a set of china that was displayed in the front window. When I turned around, Eleanor was at the cash register, calm again, and Jack had disappeared through the connecting door from my shop to his office, the headquarters of Tiger's Eye Investigations.
After that, we had a steady stream of customers, buying, selling, and pawning, for the next three hours. When we finally had a lull, I put my hand on Eleanor's arm.
"What's going on? And don't tell me we're going to goat yoga. If I wanted to hang out with goats, I could go to Uncle Mike's barn."
She took a deep breath and then blew it out. "Bill is cheating on me with some hussy, and we're going to stake out his place and spy on him."
"What?" I needed a moment to digest this. "Bill? Mr. Oliver? What? And who's 'we'?"
"You, me, and Lorraine," she said, her face determined. "We're going to catch him red-handed."
I leaned back and gently banged my head against the wall.
"Eleanor."
"Yes?"
"I changed my mind. Let's go to goat yoga."
10
"Okay, I need more than 'some hussy' to go on. What are you talking about?"
Eleanor drew in a deep, trembling breath and brushed an imaginary speck of lint off the front of her blue Dead End Pawn polo shirt and then smoothed nonexistent wrinkles out of her blue and white capri pants.
"Well, I saw her. With him. Last night."
I waited. There had to be more. Bill Oliver was a very reserved, very nice, older gentleman who'd spent months coming in to pawn his stuffed Jackalope—I know, don't ask—as an excuse to see Eleanor before he'd finally worked up the nerve to ask her out.
He was smitten. So there was no way he was cheating on her, let alone with a hussy. He'd probably faint if anybody even slightly hussyish started a conversation with him.
"How did this come about?" I got out the broom. While we were slow, I might as well sweep up. Keeping the shop clean was a daily task.
Eleanor started dusting shelves. "Well, I was supposed to have dinner with him last night at his place. He was making roast chicken."
"Nice!" I grinned at her. "Sounds like he's a good guy, if he's cooking for you."
"That's what I thought," she said darkly. "But he called and said he needed to postpone. So I happened to drive by his place later—"
"Just happened to drive by, huh?"
She raised her chin. "Exactly. And what did I see?"
"Um, the hussy?"
"The hussy! Bill was on the porch hugging a very pretty woman who was probably half his age! He never even saw me!" She sniffled, put the duster down, and reached for the box of tissues we keep behind the counter.
"Eleanor, I'm sure—"
She blew her nose, loudly.
"I'm sure there's a reasonable explanation for this. Bill Oliver is crazy about you. What did he say when you called him?"
Silence.
"Eleanor?"
She avoided my gaze.
I sighed, emptied the dustpan, and put the broom away. "You didn't even try to have a simple conversation to clear up this misunderstanding?"
"No! Not when the 'misunderstanding' was standing there in her tight jeans hugging him right out on the porch in broad daylight! I have my pride, you know." The bright red spots on her cheeks told me that she was in no way, shape, or form planning to be reasonable about this. "I did the only possible thing I could do in a situation like this."
I was afraid to ask.
She glanced at the door to Jack's office and lowered her voice. "I called Lorraine, and we made a plan to stake out his house tonight after dark. You're coming too, in case we need to do anything stealthy. Our knees aren't what they used to be."
Lorraine, who ran Beau's Diner with an iron hand, was in her seventies. Eleanor was in her late sixties. I was being recruited for a senior-citizen stakeout on one of my own customers.
"That is the craziest thing I've ever heard."
"So. You're in?"
I sighed. "I'm in."
Not long after noon, Jack opened the door from his office.
"Are you up for lunch, ladies?"
There were only two customers in the shop, college girls from the University of Central Florida who were spending the day 'exploring the quaint towns around the city,' as they'd told us. Eleanor and I had nodded with straight faces, and now I was ringing up their purchases of two Dead End Pawn T-shirts and one adorable little taxidermied mouse playing the world's tiniest violin.
Both of them turned to look at Jack, and the taller one, who was all dark hair, dark eyes, and long, tanned legs, made a little mmmmm sound.
"Absolutely," she said, in what I'm sure she thought was a sultry manner.
Eleanor grabbed my wrist when she caught me reaching for the baseball bat I keep behind the counter.
Jack laughed. "Sorry, wrong ladies."
The girls took their bag and wandered out slowly, casting flirtatious glances at Jack the whole way. Jack, though, was watching me and seemed entirely unaware of this, which was a quality I appreciated in a man I was dating.
Oh, boy. Until that moment, I hadn't framed it in words.
I was dating Jack.
We were dating.
A wave of warmth washed through me. I might have to deal with a dangerous stalker, but at least I didn't have to face it alone. Jack was on my side.
"No lunch for me," Eleanor said. "I'm only working until two today, so I'll stay here while you two go. I brought a sandwich, and we have plenty of donuts for dessert."
"Are yo
u all right, Mrs. Wolf?" Jack's perceptive gaze was trained on her reddened eyes, where the evidence of her difficult night was clear.
"I'm fine, Jack. Allergies are acting up, that's all. I'm sure looking forward to that goat yoga," she said, attempting a smile. "And I've told you a thousand times to call me Eleanor now. You're all grown up now and not that boy who ate five servings every time you came to eat supper with me and Dave."
"Yes, ma'am," he said, grinning.
She shook her head, her smile turning into something real. "Go ahead and get out of here before all the tables at Beau's are full"
I went in the back and washed my hands and then followed Jack out to the parking lot.
"Are you coming back to your office or should I drive separately?"
He stopped and thought for a second. "Actually, I might have a case. I need to go talk to someone who left a message on my office voice mail while I was gone."
I knew better than to ask about it—Jack was a stickler for confidentiality, which I appreciated. I was the same myself. I'd never discuss who came into my shop and pawned what, not even to Uncle Mike and Aunt Ruby. People deserved their privacy.
Beau's Diner, our little town's only eat-in restaurant, was hopping. It smelled like french fries, burgers with sautéed onions, and clogged arteries. In other words: delicious.
Jack had evidently called ahead, because Lorraine waved us over to our favorite table by the window. Lorraine ran the diner like her own personal fiefdom, which it practically was, since she'd worked there for around fifty years. She was maybe five feet tall, had short silver hair, and wore a pink, heavily starched uniform with her bright white orthopedic shoes.
"Good thing you got here," she told us, her eyes twinkling. "I almost had to wrestle the Peterson brothers to keep them out of your seats."
She bustled off, and I waved to Mr. and Mr. Peterson at the next table and smiled. They owned and ran Dead End Hardware and were very nice old men beneath their outward gruffness.
They waved back.
"Thanks for the pie, Tess. Best pie I've had in years," Emeril said. "Nice to see you back in town, Jack."
"Nice to be back," Jack said.
Harold gave me a hopeful look. "If we bring the pan back, will you bake us another one?"
