“Uh, I live here,” I said, pointing toward the store, “and good morning.”
Johnson looked at the door to my shop, and then he looked me up and down. I was standing there in my pajamas. As obliquely as a man like him can manage, the Sheriff asked, “Whose door did you come out of?”
“My own,” I said, an edge coming into my tone. “What is your point, John?”
He regarded me calmly. “My point is that this is . . . what . . . the second or third dead body for you this summer?”
“Hey!” I said indignantly. “I am not to blame that some whack job serial killer left bones around for people to trip over. And, may I remind you that solving that case won your department a citation for excellence from the state police? All I did was walk out my front door to get the paper. Instead, I found Chase staring at a dead man. That kinda got my attention.”
The Sheriff didn’t say anything for a minute; he just rolled his omnipresent, reformed smoker’s toothpick from the left side of his mouth to the right. “Reckon it would at that,” he said finally. “Guess you didn’t get to drink much of that coffee before you dropped it.”
“You guess right,” I grumbled crossly.
Smart men have the sense not to get on a woman’s bad side before she’s had her morning coffee, especially when they’re asking her if she just committed a murder.
Sheriff John Johnson is a smart man. He laughed.
“Fair enough.” he said, “I’ll let you go get another cup as soon as you tell me if either of you knew this feller?”
“For heaven’s sake, John,” Chase said, “it’s Fish Pike. Everyone in town knows him.”
“Fish have any connection to either one of you?” Johnson asked.
Chase hadn’t asked me to lie about knowing Fish, just to make sure we didn’t give away any details that would suggest a real connection. Something told me it wouldn’t look right if I didn’t admit what I was about to say to Sheriff Johnson.
“Mr. Pike used to drink coffee in our espresso bar until we had to ask him not to come back,” I replied.
Beside me, I felt Chase stiffen, but he didn’t say anything.
“Why’d you ask Pike to stay out of your store?” Johnson asked, a note of interest coming into his voice.
“He was kinda crazy,” I said, making it sound as if I was reluctant to speak ill of the dead. “Mr. Pike liked to play chess, but he kept getting into fights with the other old men who sit and drink coffee all afternoon. He wouldn’t calm down, so we invited him to drink his coffee somewhere else.”
To my immense relief, Johnson nodded, blowing out a long, exasperated breath.
“Sounds just like Fish,” he said. “You weren’t the first folks to throw him out. Fish did like to start fights. Looks like this time he tangled with someone he couldn’t handle.”
We all turned to regard the body. Fish looked like he lost a fight alright, with a circle saw.
The Sheriff pushed his hat back on his head. “Damn,” he said expressively. “If I didn’t know better, I’d swear a mountain lion got a hold of him. Those gashes look like claw marks.”
“Well,” Chase said smoothly, “I don’t think a panther dragged him into town and left him there on the bench.”
“Wouldn’t say so,” Johnson agreed, “and most mountain lions don’t leave handwritten notes tacked up with knives.”
The Sheriff was so fixated on the body, he didn’t notice the way the color drained out of Chase’s face at the words “mountain lion.” We both knew those marks very well could have been made by a panther, but we couldn’t tell the Sheriff that, or share with him that Fish Pike’s grandfather, Jeremiah Pike, had been a werecat, just like Chase and his father, Festus.
In the elder Pike’s case, however, there was one significant difference. Jeremiah broke with tradition and married a human, violating one of the biggest taboos of werecat society. The children of that union were regarded as halflings. As they grew older, each one went slowly mad because they couldn’t make the change into panther form. The instability continued into the next generation, and in Fish’s case became worse after the recent death of his wife, Martha Louise.
Obviously, there’s a whole lot more to that story, but I didn’t know any of it that morning.
“Any idea what the note means?” the Sheriff asked.
“None,” Chase replied.
“Me either,” I said.
“Well,” Johnson said, “standing here speculating won’t get us anywhere. Let me wake up my deputy. We need to process the scene and get the body to the coroner. You’ll both need to give official statements.”
“Can I go put that coffee on now?” I asked. “And can Chase come with me?”
“Yeah, sure,” Johnson said absently, leaning closer to Fish to get a better view of the gaping slashes. “I’ll be in to take your statements later.”
Chase followed me inside the store. I closed the front door, and together we watched as the Sheriff stepped off the sidewalk, opened the trunk of his car, and took out a roll of yellow crime scene tape like the kind they use on TV.
“I think you better get Tori up,” Chase said softly. “I’ll go through the basement and get Dad.”
“Dad’s already here,” a voice said from the vicinity of our feet. I was so rattled I jumped a foot, glaring down at the scruffy yellow tomcat who had come sneaking up on us.
“Festus,” I said, “don’t do that!”
“Can I help it if you humans can’t hear paws on a hardwood floor?” he grumbled. “If you washed your ears out every now and then they might work better.”
“Whatever,” I said. “Just freaking announce yourself already.”
“I just did,” Festus said, jumping up on the windowsill and peering out at Sheriff Johnson. “Dang, John needs to push the milk bowl away. He’s getting a gut on him.”
“You’re a fine one to talk, Dad,” Chase said. “Did you see?”
“First, I smelled,” Festus said, “then I saw. It’s Fish Pike, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Chase said, “he was mauled . . . by one of our kind.”
Festus arched his back and flattened his ears. “Then we’ve got a transient,” he said.
“A what?” I asked.
“You don’t know anything about the werepanther social structure,” Festus said, “and I don’t want to have to tell this twice. Make your coffee, get Tori, and come into the storeroom.”
Before I could ask him who the heck made him the boss, Festus jumped back down, flicked his tail in our direction, and limped off.
“His manners may be lacking, but he’s right,” Chase said, starting after his father. “Get Tori.”
I went to the door of Tori’s micro-apartment and knocked lightly. After a second or two, I heard scuffling feet, and Tori opened the door wearing pajamas emblazoned with pink flamingos. She blinked at me blearily.
“Hey,” she said, “did I get my days mixed up. This is Sunday isn’t it?”
“Yes,” I said, “but we have a problem.”
She arched an eyebrow. “When don’t we have a problem?” she asked.
“Fish Pike is sitting dead out on the bench in front of Chase’s store clawed up with a dagger in his chest,” I said.
Both eyebrows went up at that.
“Okay,” she said, “so we have a big problem.”
“Chase and Festus are in the storeroom. Apparently this is some werecat thing,” I said. “I’m going to make coffee. Sheriff Johnson is out front working the crime scene. He’ll be coming in to talk to us in a little while.”
“Give me five and I’ll come help you,” Tori said, disappearing back into her apartment.
When she re-emerged wearing a t-shirt and jeans, I was measuring out ground coffee. “You want to run upstairs and throw some clothes on?” she asked.
“Yeah, thanks,” I said, handing her the scoop. “And this stuff is not going to do it for me. I need something high octane.”
“You and me both,”
Tori said, flipping on the espresso machine. “I’ll make us the real thing.”
I ran upstairs and changed, getting back downstairs in record time. Tori handed me a huge, steaming latte the instant I walked into the espresso bar. Darby, our faithful brownie, was with her, bearing an equally huge platter of doughnuts.
“I’m not going to ask how you managed that, Darby,” I said, snagging one with chocolate icing, “but thank you.”
“You are welcome, Mistress,” he said.
He started out with the doughnuts but stopped when I called to him. “Darby, when you deliver those, would you please go down to the basement and tell Colonel Longworth what’s going on? You two stay down there until we join you.”
Beau is now our in-house ghost, except he isn’t so ghostly these days. We’re telling people he’s my “uncle” from Tennessee. More on that later.
“Yes, Mistress,” Darby said, hurrying off toward the storeroom.
Casting a nervous glance at the front door, I called out softly, “Myrtle? Are you there?”
Silence.
Raising my voice slightly, I tried again. “Myrtle?”
Still nothing.
“What the heck?” Tori said.
Going with “the third time’s the charm,” I said sharply, “Myrtle!”
A three-note trill sounded over my head.
Finally.
“Are you here in the store?” I asked.
This time, the notes played a little tune. Red River Valley.
Okay. That answered that question. She was in Shevington, our second home that exists in a separate stream of time. Just trust me on that one for right now, okay?
“Can you tell if our mothers are safe?” I asked urgently.
To my immense relief, the positive trill played again.
At that question, Tori looked up sharply. “Why wouldn’t our moms be safe?”
“Chase thinks this has something to do with our relationship,” I said, “which means . . . ”
“Someone could be after your mom and Festus,” Tori finished for me.
“Exactly,” I said, watching as she put her cup, a mug for Chase, and a bowl for Festus on a tray.
As we started toward the storeroom together, Tori said, “Is it just me, or are we having a really long summer?”
A Cabin High in the Mountains
A pale circle of light cast by a small camp lantern illuminated the center of the cabin where a man sat hunched over a makeshift table. He found the weathered gray board lying in a pile of rubble outside along with the two five-gallon buckets it now spanned. The same mound of junk yielded up his chair, a rickety wreck he tightened up with his multi-tool and pliable wood shims cut from a sapling.
He was following the rules. His rules.
Always have the tools you need.
Make do with the materials on hand.
Create a routine.
Call it home.
Take it with you wherever you go.
That’s how he’d traveled for years with just what he could carry on his back.
Not just traveled — lived well on the contents of his weathered, sturdy pack.
He chose every item it contained thoughtfully. He never had much money, but he didn’t allow that to be a problem. That was a rule, too.
Never think of yourself as a poor man.
Oh yes, and keep a record.
He checked the can of chili warming over the tiny alcohol stove. It needed just a little more time.
Flipping open the side pocket of the pack, he took out his notebook and pen, opened the book to a blank page and began to write in precise, careful strokes.
First the date, then the notation.
“Fish Pike - mercy killing.”
There. That was done. Once a thing is written down, it’s true. So now, it wasn’t murder. It was mercy.
He could eat his supper with a clear conscience.
Extinguishing the flame, the man carefully removed the can and stirred the contents with his spoon.
His spoon. He liked that.
No one else ever had or ever would eat a single bite with his spoon.
Chewing rhythmically, the man thought about what he’d done.
Fish was a crazy, unhappy old man living alone in a house that was nothing but a moldering monument to his dead wife.
Now, Fish Pike would be famous. The town would talk for years about how the old man showed up dead in front of the cobbler shop.
And before long, they’d be talking about how Chase McGregor was found the same way. Clawed up. With a dagger in his chest.
That one would go into the book as an act of justice.
His boss might have other motivations, but he killed for virtue.
Not being able to use the same sgian-dubh again as his signature bothered the man. He hated to think of a good blade lying forgotten in an evidence bag, but there was no helping that.
The blade had a message of its own to deliver. The Sheriff wouldn’t get it, but the McGregors would.
2
Before we go any farther, you have to understand about Festus and my mother, and, well, about Chase and me.
Parents don’t ever lose the ability to shock their children.
It was one thing to find out mom is a witch, too, but the idea that Festus, a carousing, smart-mouthed bad boy was carrying a torch for her?
Mind altering.
Don’t get me wrong. Mom is attractive — dark-haired, petite, bright blue eyes — but for most of my life, I’ve known her as an excitable, nervous woman. I mean, seriously, people, she puts plastic over her upholstery.
Festus is an alley cat. I’ve seen him passed out drunk on a pool table after too many rounds of the werecats’ favorite drinking game, Red Dot.
He’s a thoroughgoing old scoundrel and nothing like my father.
You want to know how conventional my parents are? That Sunday, they were coming home from a fishing convention in Houston.
For the record, Mom doesn’t fish, and Dad can’t stop. We’re talking intervention level fishing here. Jeremy Wade, the River Monsters guy, is Dad’s idol. I think Mom tolerates the endless local fishing trips because she hopes it’ll keep Dad from hopping an airplane to some remote jungle location to angle for a critter big enough to eat him.
My Dad is also the only person I know who claims to have fishing dogs. Six of them he takes with him to the river. Together, he and those worthless mutts catch a lot of fish, but they also do a lot of snoring on the bank.
I’m just saying.
Look, let’s be honest here. From my perspective, dating a werecat is kinda . . . hot.
So the idea of my mother and a werepanther . . .
La la la la la la la.
Excuse me while I douse that mental image in brain bleach.
Such a thing would never even have occurred to me until the night of the big fight with Brenna.
We were all in Shevington when things went bad back at the store. Beau managed to get a message to me, and we started back. When the portal opened up, there was my mom, and Tori’s mom, Gemma, right in the middle of a magical firefight with Brenna.
Yeah, they’re both witches.
Anyway, before I could even process what I was seeing, Festus jumped through the opening, changed into a mountain lion in mid-leap, and joined the fray — with Rodney, our resident rat, and Darby following close behind. Then the portal slammed shut. It felt like an eternity passed before Moira, the Alchemist in The Valley, and Myrtle managed to get it open again.
By then, the fight was over and Mr. Smug Paws Festus called us all “slackers.” At first, I attributed the macho act to Festus being full of himself after a night of carousing at The Dirty Claw. Then I realized he hadn’t jumped through the portal just to fight Brenna.
The only thing Festus cared about was getting to my mother.
I spent the next several days running over all the logistics of werecat relationships in my mind. For one thing, their magic repels every other kin
d of magical abilities. Even if they marry a human, it all goes wrong. Fish Pike was living . . . well, dead . . . proof of that. The children can’t shift, but the longing for the change shatters their minds.
Then there’s the matter of age.
Werecat metabolism gives them a lifespan of about 200 years on average.
I think I handled it pretty well when Chase informed me he’d be 87 on his next birthday, especially considering I’ll turn 30 this fall. It helps that we look the same age, but there’s still a 57-year gap.
Lifespan isn’t something I worry about, which is good because a witch’s longevity is tied to the extent of her powers. Mine are still growing. Aunt Fiona told me one time that if you’re alive, you’re still dying. We all are. Some people just take longer to get to their own funerals.
I concentrate on living in the moment I have, not counting the ones I might not have.
Festus was born in 1905. He’s 110, but that’s not what makes him cranky. In 1936 a wizard named Irenaeus Chesterfield lamed Festus with a bolt of lightning. Over the past ten years, arthritis has set in.
Moira tried to help Festus. She can mend broken bones with magic, but none of her attempts to give Festus a new hip joint worked. When he shifts, the damage comes back. If he had a human hip replacement, he could never shift again. That’s a price he refuses to pay. Festus may be mixing his feline metaphors when he growls that, “a leopard can’t change his spots,” but I get it.
Festus won’t give up his true nature just to save himself a little pain and inconvenience.
He lives as a house cat because it’s easier to get around on three legs when you weigh roughly 14 lbs. I saw Festus once in human form. He looks like I imagine Chase will look in another 25 years.
As Festus once pointed out to me, living as a house cat has other advantages as well. He can’t very well lounge in the sun on the bench in front of the cobbler shop as a mountain lion, and the old rascal does like to get his ears scratched by cute young chicks.
I tried to put the whole thing about my mother out of my mind. After all, it wasn’t any of my business, but then I found myself alone in the lair with Festus.
That’s the area just to the left of the staircase when you come down into the basement. The space looks like it belongs in an English country manor, complete with wood paneling, floor-to-ceiling bookcases, oriental rugs, a massive work table, and a collection of leather wingback chairs.
Witch on First: A Jinx Hamilton Mystery Book 4 (The Jinx Hamilton Novels) Page 2
