Tiger's Eye (A Stacy Justice Mystery Book Three)

by Barbra Annino

  Hopefully some good would come out of this disastrous weekend. The thought that perhaps I may have at least saved an innocent dog from Goddess knows what gave me some comfort.

  Some. Not much.

  I was edgy, anxious, and I didn’t know where to focus that energy. My office wasn’t exactly spacious, but I stood up and paced it anyway after I sent the piece to Parker. What next? It was driving me absolutely crazy that there were no leads in my father’s death. There was no proof that it was murder, but surely the messages, the visions—the dead men talking—weren’t all for naught.

  The sun shone through the window brightly at this time of day and my attention was drawn to the far wall where the three muses sword hung. The gift from Birdie was embedded with tiny crystals that refracted the light brilliantly, splashing miniature rainbows across the wall.

  I shuffled over Thor and put my hand on the hilt, receiving an instant static shock. I yanked away for a second. My eyes were drawn to the inscription on the blade. The Divine lies in these three: Justice, Knowledge, Mercy.

  I gripped it with both hands and flipped it over to read the back.

  Follow your instincts. Trust in your power. Defend your honor.

  I set off to do just that.

  I grabbed Thor’s travel bag and loaded it into the car. Thor hopped into the backseat and I rolled all the windows down. Then I drove to Muddy Waters coffee shop on Main Street. They had a great selection of premade salads and sandwiches, and since I had other plans for my lunch hour, I didn’t want to waste it waiting for my food to be prepared.

  The veggie panini looked good in the glass case so I chose that along with a couple of bottles of water. Iris was already there helping with the lunch crowd. I was just about to pay her when I heard Cinnamon call my name.

  I turned to see her sitting at a round glass table supported by old Singer sewing machine stands. She was sitting next to Brian from the Hell Hounds and, I assumed, his band members. My cousin waved me over.

  I pasted a smile on my face, recalling the image I received when I shook Brian’s hand. “Hi there.”

  Cinnamon said, “This is my cousin, Stacy.”

  Brian said, “We met yesterday. How are you feeling?”

  The question came with concern. There was no malice that I could measure from him.

  “Fine, thanks.” I held up my sandwich bag. “Just getting a quick bite.”

  Cin said, “Why don’t you join us?”

  A woman with a skull tattoo on her back and a shock of white hair with trails of black running through it was sitting in front of me. She didn’t turn around as she said, “You should.” She put her hand on Brian’s knee, indicating that he was her property.

  “Actually, I can’t.” I tilted my head toward the door. “Thor’s waiting for me.”

  Brian said to one of his bandmates, “Man, you have to see this dog. He’s as big as a horse.”

  The guy was somewhere in his forties with spiky hair that I guessed hadn’t changed since Billy Idol dominated the rock charts. His eyes were red and hazy as he said, “Yeah, I remember a big dog right before the gig.” He nodded as if the event had happened in years past rather than a few days ago.

  A fourth band member pulled up a chair and nodded at me. He looked more like an accountant than a rocker. “These bathrooms here are cleaner than any I’ve ever been in.” He unscrewed the cap on a bottle of Perrier and sipped.

  I wanted to stick around just to get some information, but Thor was waiting for me and I had at least one other stop to make before I went back to work. Plus, it was only a matter of time before Leo caught up to me.

  “How long are you guys in town?” I asked.

  “We’re taking off tomorrow,” Brian said.

  Cinnamon said, “They’ll be playing again tonight. Stop by the bar.”

  I said I would and hurried out the door.

  Leo texted me just as I pulled past the thick wrought-iron gates of the cemetery.

  We need to talk.

  I texted back. K. Be there ASAP.

  I powered the phone off, stuffed it in my pocket, and grabbed a blanket from the trunk.

  Thor and I followed the meandering gravel path past a statue of the Virgin Mary holding baby Jesus. The headstones near the front of the grounds were so old the names and dates had weathered away from years of being battered by rain, snow, sleet, and hail. Some of the stones had partially crumbled into the earth. Others, mostly those from the last few decades, were carved from shiny marble or heavy granite. Fresh flowers had been sprinkled throughout the landscape—roses, daisies, gladiolas. Occasionally I came across a grave with a potted palm or a fern. Remembrance offerings from loved ones.

  It took ten minutes for Thor and me to reach my father’s gravesite.

  It was easy to spot when we did because the regal tiger was sprawled across it. As we grew closer, she melted away.

  “No, wait! Mom!”

  But it was too late. She was gone.

  I didn’t know how my mother was transporting her spirit guide to me from the Old Country, or if she was somehow sending me the illusion of one, but when I saw the ghostly beast there, I knew that my mother was attempting to communicate with my father.

  Had she succeeded?

  And if she had, what was she telling him?

  Thor sat down next to me, leaning just a bit, and panting.

  “Come on, boy.”

  There was a towering oak nearby and I set his dishes up beneath it, then filled them with food and water. He got busy slurping up the refreshments and I shook the blanket out and laid it on my father’s resting site. I pulled out a penny and placed it on the smooth, gray stone. My offering.

  “Hi, Dad. I know I haven’t visited in a while.” I unwrapped the sandwich and took a bite, searching for the words. The vinegar dressing was both bitter and sweet gliding down my throat. “I guess it seems silly to sit here because I can talk to you anywhere, really. Birdie says the departed are never far from us.” Clouds tumbled in overhead, offering a bit of relief from the heat. “Then again, Birdie says a lot of things.”

  A cardinal fluttered past and landed on the neighboring tombstone. His crimson head stretched toward the sky as he sang into the wind. I stared at him for a moment, thinking that his life was beautifully simple and wishing I had that kind of peace. The peace from knowing that you could always find shelter from a storm by building a sturdy home. That your family would be safe as long as you kept an eye out for predators.

  Except there were always predators.

  “I need your help on this one, Dad. I need your guidance to find out what happened to you.” I considered for a moment dipping into my herbs and crystals and casting a spell to call him. But a cemetery is filled with a full spectrum of energy—good, bad, mischievous.

  Evil.

  Sacred burial ground is a powerful source for enchantments and I wasn’t confident that my state of mind was sturdy enough to contain the charm to just my father.

  The last thing I needed was a park full of dead people hitching a ride home with me.

  I nibbled at my sandwich again, wrapped up the remainder, and put it in my satchel.

  Wild nettle grew along a nearby fence line. I picked some of that, thanking the gods for planting it there, and dusted it all around my father’s resting place for protection.

  I waited for a sign that he was near. A whisper in the wind. A butterfly passing over the penny. Any indication that he could communicate with me.

  None came.

  Finally I stood, cleared the space, and cast a second circle of protection all around me.

  On my knees, I made a triangle with my hands and brought them to my chest. After several deep breaths, I closed my eyes and imagined pushing out all the thoughts. The brain chatter formed into visual words with legs, the images became photos, and I took a wide-brushed broom and swept it all aside. I tossed my emotions on top of the pile—love, anger, fear, sorrow—one by one. Next, I pictured a large door at
the edge of my mind. When I opened it, all the clutter tumbled out. I slammed it shut and locked it with a big brass key.

  The last step to opening up completely to whatever may come was several more tapered breaths.

  Then I waited.

  A few minutes later, my dad walked into the white room of my mind’s eye, a folded newspaper tucked under his arm. He sank into a large brown leather chair. Seconds after, another man stepped into the room, younger. He sat in an identical chair across from my father and produced a beer bottle, which he uncapped. Then, out of nowhere, that damn Chihuahua bounded into the room, but before I could shoo him out, the trance was broken by the piercing ring of my stupid cell phone.

  My eyes popped open. I reached into my bag, about to answer the call. Then I remembered.

  I had turned it off.

  I checked the screen.

  Black as ink.

  But still ringing.

  Chapter 22

  I was still on my knees when I lifted the phone to my ear.

  “H-hello?”

  The reception was scratchy, like an untuned radio dial.

  “Dead men tell no tales.” Mr. Scoog’s voice.

  After that, the same voice from the call the other day. “Your father was murdered.” He repeated it over and over again until I couldn’t stand it any longer.

  I screamed, dropped the phone, and danced away from it.

  Right out of my circle of protection.

  Uh-oh.

  They came at me not in a wave, but in pockets. Clusters of people—spirits—grouped together by I don’t know what. Families? Time of death? Hair color?

  The first to reach me was a blonde woman in a beaded black flapper dress with so much kohl eyeliner I wondered if she used actual coal. A man wearing a fedora stood next to her looking confused. The woman seemed a little drunk.

  “Listen, doll,” she said, rushing at me. “Tell my great-great-granddaughter that I’m proud as all get out!”

  The man said, “And how!” Then he looked around and added, “Say, where’s the hooch?”

  Oh, this was not happening. “I, I don’t know your great-great-granddaughter.”

  The woman waved her arm. “Sure you know her, honey. You live here in town, don’tcha? Everybody knows everybody in this backwater burg. Isn’t that right, Dash?”

  Dash had wandered off already, apparently looking for the hooch. Thor was fighting his way through the crowd, trying to get to me. He learned quickly that his impressive frame and go-to intimidation tactics would not work on this bunch.

  “Name’s Fontaine, honey, Monique Fontaine!” She sauntered off in search of Dash, her beads clicking together with every sashay of her hips.

  Oh no. No. No. This was not in the cards. I did not want to be bound by some ancestral oath to deliver messages all over town to descendants of the deceased.

  I backed up into the circle of nettle and bumped into a fluttering, nervous energy. A waif of a man was chewing on his nails and sputtering at me. His black hair fell over his eyes and he had a rope around his neck.

  “I didn’t mean to do it. Please tell my mother I didn’t mean to do it. The chair slipped. I was…trying to…you know…” He made an obscene hand gesture and I almost vomited.

  Two Civil War soldiers, one Confederate, one Union, were standing right behind him, patiently waiting their turn. The Confederate soldier said, “Sir, you are frightening this woman. Kindly step aside.”

  The small man turned on him like a rabid animal and both soldiers drew their swords.

  “What battalion are you from?”

  The hanged man scattered to the wind.

  “Ma’am, we have but one request,” said the Union soldier. He flicked his eyes to the Confederate soldier. “My brother and I would like to know who won the battle.”

  My voice was shaky. “I don’t know which battle you are referring to, but I can tell you who won the war.”

  Their eyes grew large. Neither could have been over eighteen years old when they died. They looked at each other for a split second and both tightened their grips on their weapons.

  “But only if you promise to stop fighting.”

  Reluctantly the swords found their way into the sheaths.

  “The North.”

  The Union soldier jumped up and down and said “Ha!” to his brother.

  The Confederate soldier looked defeated. So I said, “I’m pretty sure Grant was hung over when Lee surrendered. He was also covered in mud, his uniform was rumpled, and he hadn’t bathed in a while by all accounts.”

  “Undignified swine,” said the teenager in gray. They both marched off.

  There was a commotion in the crowd behind me as a fistfight broke out.

  “Stop that!” I yelled.

  Thor charged toward the hoopla and a man with a goatee held his hands up. “Not again!” he screamed and ran the other away.

  The man he was fighting said, “It was a Rottweiler got him last time. Serves him right for breaking into that house in the first place when the kids were home. Hit an empty pad, that’s what I always say.” Then he lit a cigarette and said, “Listen, I got a job for my cousin—”

  A large black woman in a housecoat with a yellow scarf tied in her hair cut him off. “Not in my house, son.” Her voice carried a Southern twang. “God-fearing people go before scumbags.” She had at least a hundred pounds on him. Maybe two.

  “You don’t even live here,” the man protested.

  She didn’t? I thought.

  She moved forward with the determination of a mother bear, parked her hands on her generous hips, and stared him down.

  He shrugged and said, “I got time.” The man leaned against a headstone and puffed on the smoke.

  The large woman turned her attention back to me. “Darlin’, I want you to tell my grandnephew to get his butt back to law school. His grandmomma is all up in arms about him quittin’ and she won’t stop prayin’ and yappin’ to me. I got things to do, you know? Just cuz I’m dead don’t mean I aint livin’. Can’t be called to her side every time she needs a favor, but then again, Maybel was always a drama queen. Do you know that one time she—”

  “Pardon me, but what is his name?”

  The interruption perturbed her, but the energy in the air was growing hostile and I didn’t want another argument to break out. Although I couldn’t believe I asked the question, because I certainly had no intentions of following through with the request.

  She smiled and said proudly, “Derek Meyers. Fine-lookin’ boy and smart as a whip! Won the state spellin’ bee back in…”

  I stopped listening. Derek had been in law school? Well, this kept getting better and better. Geez, I really hoped there was no penalty for not following through with these deliveries. I mean, what the hell was I supposed to say? Hey, Derek, you know what the world needs? More lawyers. I certainly couldn’t tell him the truth. Although he did have an aunt in New Orleans who was a voodoo priestess. Maybe I could just tell him she called to relay this message.

  “Got it,” I said.

  “Hmm-hmm.” She adjusted her scarf, nodded, and faded into a mist.

  That was when I spotted a group of children playing tag a car’s length away. A thin woman with long, straight hair stood in the center of them looking like a wild animal caught in a trap.

  Something about her eyes drew me to her.

  Thor followed and the kids swarmed the dog, squealing with delight, galloping all around him and high-fiving each other. Of course, the big ham welcomed the attention.

  The crowd was multiplying around me, shouting requests, and my nerves began to bubble. I centered my focus on the woman, trying to block the noise, but I could feel a vein pulsating in my forehead.

  The stench of burned rubber mixed with something metallic seeped from her.

  She didn’t meet my eyes as she spoke. “I heard it, you know. Just before.” Her hands fidgeted with the buttons on her floral blouse. “But there was no time.” Her voice was
shallow and a sob escaped her throat as the tears fell.

  My heart twisted into knots at the pain she must have felt.

  “I don’t know what went wrong. It wasn’t supposed to be there.” She looked at me questioningly. “I stopped. I did, I know I did.” Her eyes were raw with emotion.

  I nodded in empathy.

  “But the kids”—she trailed her gaze to them, watched as Thor joined in the chase game—“they were singing some stupid song. ‘Old MacDonald,’ I think it was.” She called to one of the little ones, told him not to climb a tree. “It was the first day of school, so I thought, let them have fun. Just be kids.” She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, shook her head, and said, “It wasn’t supposed to be there.”

  “You’re right,” I said. “It wasn’t. It was a new route they were trying.”

  Her eyes fell on me and there was a spark of hope behind the moisture. She wrinkled her brow. “Really? Because I stopped, I swear I did. I looked, but I didn’t see it. Do they know that?” She searched my face for an answer. “The parents, I mean. Do they know I stopped?”

  “They know. It was an accident. That’s all. Just an accident.”

  She nodded, looked down at the well-manicured grass. “So senseless. So much lost and for what?” Her shoulders sagged with the weight of her burden.

  “One good thing came from it.”

  She looked at me skeptically. “What could that possibly be?”

  “After the accident, the town got a grant from the state. The Federal Highway Act of 1973 urged every state to inspect each crossing, but it was a slow process. The accident allowed for the town to be granted the funds to install gates, bells, and flashing lights.”

  “Really?” A small smile crept across her face. “Do you think that helped?”

  “It saves lives.”

  “Oh.” She looked at the children. “That makes me happy.” She turned and suddenly threw her arms around me. “Thank you,” she whispered.

  The electricity of her touch jolted through me like lightning. Her entire life and death flashed before my eyes, and when she finally released me, I felt as if I had just taken a shower with a toaster.