“Probably,” Janis agreed. “But it felt … I don’t know, more personal than that.”
Scott’s brow laddered in thought. Janis watched him gaze past the empty dining room and out the front window, where J.R. was moored to a parking meter. The poodle stared back, paws shifting in anticipation.
“So, what’s our next move?” she asked.
“We talk to Detective Buckner. The police station’s only a few blocks from here. I’m sure Spike has already ditched the shirt, but the fact that I saw it on him should give the police enough ammo to investigate him and his friends, search their places for the other stolen stuff.”
“And then maybe we can start enjoying our vacation?” Janis suggested.
But as her gaze fell to her wax-paper-lined basket, empty now save for a puddle of pink grease, she sensed two things. First, that their troubles were only beginning. And second, like ill-fated stars, they were becoming aligned with whatever bad things were going to happen in Murder Creek.
By the time Scott and Janis left the bar-and-grill, a late-afternoon mist had begun to roll in from the Gulf. It wrapped around the strips of two-story brick buildings and floated along empty streets. Scott thought it made the downtown, with its hand-printed FOR SALE signs and sagging pennants, look even more like the ghost town his mother feared it was becoming.
The damp mist also carried a scent like rotting fish.
Maybe that’s the town’s problem, he thought, wrinkling his nose. Bad case of B.O.
He led Janis into view of the white-painted town hall building. Across the street stood a post office and, beside it, an adjoining building that housed the police station. A cruiser was parked out front, nose-in.
When J.R. saw that he was being led to another parking meter, he braced his paws against the sidewalk and pulled the leash taut. Scott opened the Styrofoam box with his half-eaten burger and set it beside the meter. J.R. scampered up and snapped into the meat, allowing Scott to get him fastened.
“Ready?” he asked Janis, suddenly unsure himself.
Janis hesitated slightly, the line of her jaw shifting, before she nodded.
Scott held the door open and followed Janis inside. The air in the police station smelled stale, like it had been trapped from a previous decade. The small reception area, which featured a desk and several chairs along the near wall, was empty. Scott called down a hallway.
“Hello?”
Shuffling sounded, and a moment later the face of an elderly man appeared from a door off the hallway. Light reflected from a balding pate and round glasses. A bushy gray mustache concealed his mouth.
“Yes?” he asked in a mild, muffled voice.
“Is, um, Detective Buckner here?” Scott asked.
“He’s out on a call,” the man responded, stepping into full view. He was short and round, his tweed jacket straining where the button was fastened above his beltline. “Something I can help you with?”
“And you are…?” Janis asked.
“Oh, apologies.” The man waddle-shuffled forward. “Name’s McDermott. I’m the chief of police.”
“Then you can definitely help us,” Scott said, shaking the man’s offered hand.
For the next several minutes, Scott explained who he was, how he had arrived in town with his parents that day to find their beach house broken into, and how, not an hour later, he and Janis had run into someone wearing one of his father’s stolen shirts. As Scott spoke, Chief McDermott beckoned them back into his office and got them seated in a pair of padded chairs that faced his desk.
When Scott finished, Chief McDermott blinked behind his lenses and pawed through the piles of folders and papers in front of him. His small office was almost nothing but piles of folders and papers, and in no apparent order. Chief McDermott eventually found a notepad and pen.
“Can you describe the boys?”
“Well, the one who did most of the talking had blond spiked hair and…”
“Say no more.” Chief McDermott raised a hand. “That would be David Dacula. Which means the other three were Paulo, Duane, and Markus.”
“So you know them?” Scott asked, a delicate hope taking root.
“Rotten bunch of fruit, if ever there was. Got files on them this thick.” He spread his liver-spotted hands two feet apart. “Course all that’s going into the new computer system, which I don’t know the first thing about.” He grunted toward the corner where more piles of paperwork teetered around a monitor. “Anyway, we brought them in for questioning when the break-ins started, oh, back in October.”
“And?” Scott asked, because the police chief seemed prepared to stop there.
“And they claimed to know nothing about them. Nothing linked them to the crime scenes, so…” Chief McDermott opened his hands.
“You had to let them go,” Scott said, his hope disintegrating.
“Well, what about his father’s shirt?” Janis asked.
“Yeah, troubled bunch of kids,” Chief McDermott said, seeming not to have heard her. “Tried straightening them out when they were younger, but I’m afraid their only progress was from bad to worse.” His sleepy eyes flickered with duty. “But you say this David was wearing your father’s shirt? I’ll send Buckner to pay him a visit.” He jotted something down.
The balled-up muscles in Scott’s neck let out. “Thank you, sir.”
“Anything else I can help you with?” Chief McDermott spoke with the contentedness of a grandfather relaxing in his favorite plush chair beside the fire, a varnished pipe in one corner of his mouth.
“As a matter of fact…” Scott began.
Don’t you dare, Janis warned.
“ … my friend here was wondering if you’ve come across any strange or unsolved murders in the past couple of years. Ones involving punctures to the neck, blood letting, that sort of thing.”
Chief McDermott chuckled affably. “Sounds like the young lady has seen one too many Tales from the Crypt.”
Janis glared at Scott.
“Nooo,” Chief McDermott said, stretching his short arms to the sides, then lacing his fingers behind his head. “Hasn’t been a murder in the Creek in almost thirty years. After a night of boozing, a man shot his wife and fled town. He’d been a fine citizen before that. Tragedy how drink can pickle a man’s good sense.”
“Well, thank you,” Janis said, standing. “I assume you’ll keep us updated?”
“Course.” Chief McDermott rose with them. “I’ll have Detective Buckner stop by your place tomorrow.”
Scott felt a pinch in his side as they stepped out into the hallway. “You are so dead,” Janis whispered.
“Oh, hey,” Chief McDermott called from behind them. “You asked about punctures to the neck and blood letting. Matter of fact, we had a case of both just last week. Gruesome affair.”
Scott stammered as he spun. “Wh-who?”
“Not who,” Chief McDermott said. “What. A fox terrier that belonged to the Smoot’s. They tied him to his doghouse for the night. Come morning, both jugular’s were punched. Not a drop of blood left inside him.”
At that moment, a shrill scream sounded from outside, quickly falling to a retching series of whimpers.
It took Scott a moment to recognize the source. “J.R.!”
He and Janis raced up the hallway, Scott’s heart slamming the backside of his sternum.
“Well, good night,” Chief McDermott called after them, the dog’s cry not having penetrated his poor hearing, apparently.
Outside, J.R.’s red leash was coiled around the parking meter. At the end of a cochlear trail of urine, J.R. was shivering in a ball, eyes rolled up, teeth snapping at the air.
Scott lifted J.R. and cradled him to his stomach. “What’s going on, boy?” He felt the fur around his neck. “No blood,” he told Janis. He shot his gaze around. A block away, the mist swallowed a slender silhouette.
“Hey!” Scott shouted after it.
“Wait,” Janis said, “over there.”
; Scott spun and followed her finger toward the faint sound of laughter. Motors started up with a blatting roar. Four headlights appeared like phantoms through the mist. Seconds later, the mist blew apart, and David, Paulo, Duane, and Markus blasted past, black dusters flapping around them.
Scott stumbled back a step.
As David trained his pale blue eyes on him, something cold shuddered through Scott. He held J.R.’s shivering body tighter.
David flashed a fang-toothed grin and shot ahead into the far dispersion of mist.
For several blocks, laughter trailed the roar of their motorcycles like wickedness itself.
5
The next morning
“He claimed he found it on the roadside,” Detective Buckner explained, setting the folded black shirt on the Spruels’ kitchen counter. For Mr. Spruel’s sake, Janis hoped someone in the department had laundered it first.
“After that, he and his friends decided to be difficult, so we brought them in,” the detective continued. “We’ll hold them for the next twenty-four. That will give us time to carry out a search of their place. I expect the warrant to come through sometime this morning.”
“Well, it’s nice someone is finally trying to get to the bottom of this,” Mrs. Spruel huffed.
Across the table, Janis watched Scott’s cheeks turn pink with embarrassment.
“Hey, Buck,” Mr. Spruel said around wet smacks of syrup-drenched waffle. He was about halfway through a towering stack. “Why don’t you stay and join us for breakfast. It’s not deep fried and doughnut shaped, but who knows?—you might develop a taste for it. Har-har-har-har!”
Scott’s cheeks deepened to rouge.
Detective Buckner smiled politely. “Thanks for the offer, but I need to go check on that warrant.”
As Mr. Spruel showed the detective to the door, Scott’s mother cut up her sausage link with savage thrusts, her knife blade squealing against the porcelain plate. “Can’t believe it took you two stumbling on those delinquents to get something done around here. No wonder the town’s gone to seed.”
“The police questioned them back in October,” Scott said defensively. Janis caught herself feeling a similar protectiveness toward the good-natured Chief McDermott and his department.
“Well, not thoroughly enough,” Mrs. Spruel shot back.
Scott’s eyes met Janis’s as he took a plaintive bite of his scrambled eggs—Do you see what I have to deal with?
Janis hid a smile behind her glass of OJ.
When she’d woken that morning, sunlight had been streaming through the window of the guest bedroom. She sat up and squinted into the warm bath of light. Listening to Scott snore in the next room, she sensed that they had turned a corner, that whatever dark forces had been gathering were already dispersing. The detective’s visit seemed to be confirming that.
Hey, Janis thought toward Scott, at least your creatures of the night are getting their just desserts.
He nodded reluctantly, then smiled back at her.
“Stanley!” Mrs. Spruel cried as her husband returned to the table. Scott winced from the shrill sound. “We’re going downtown this morning. I want to have a word with that mayor. If he’s at a loss for how to attract visitors and business to Murder Creek—and he apparently is—then he’s going to get an education on the subject, whether he wants one or not.”
“I’d love to,” Scott’s father replied, fixing his napkin in his shirt collar, “but the metal detector’s all charged up. Gonna take her down to the cove and back. That’s where I found your anniversary gift last year.”
It was a child’s bracelet, Scott informed Janis.
“Oh, for pity’s sake!” Mrs. Spruel exclaimed. “Don’t you even care about our investment?”
Janis thought Mr. Spruel looked far more interested in his waffles. She peeked over to where Mrs. Spruel’s pressed-together lips were beginning to tremble. Before Mrs. Spruel could erupt, Janis spoke up.
“We’ll go with you,” she said. “Scott and I.”
Scott’s fork clattered to the plate. She could feel his stare in her peripheral vision.
What the frick…?
Hey, she thought back, that’s what you get for telling the police chief that I was the one interested in vampire activity. Anyway, it might be kind of fun.
Yeah, as much fun as a root canal.
Mrs. Spruel nodded once. “That will be fine,” she said.
Janis eyed Mayor Walpole from a hard wooden chair in his office. If Chief McDermott had a twin, the mayor was not it. Where the police chief was portly, the mayor was tall and lean. Where the police chief sported a bushy upper lip and a wreath of mussed hair, the mayor was clean-shaven, his hair thick and comb-swept. And where the police chief was mild mannered to the point of sleepiness, the mayor hummed with nervous energy.
He tugged at the throat of his white turtleneck, touched his thin frameless glasses, steepled his fingers, and made subtle adjustments to the pen and blotter on his vast desktop—all within the space of a few seconds.
“Now, Mrs. Spruel…” He had to wedge his words between her sharp pause for breath. She’d been assailing him for the last ten minutes. “We’ve put a dedicated sales tax on the last several ballots, for just the kinds of projects you’re talking about, and they were all voted down. We’re at the will of the citizenry here—a democracy, not a dictatorship.”
His tittering laugh was false and anxious.
“Well, maybe you need a lesson on messaging,” Mrs. Spruel told him. “I wasn’t named Realtor of the Month this August and September past without knowing a thing or two about messaging…” And off she went again.
The mayor’s lips twitched.
You were right, Janis thought toward Scott. This isn’t fun. This is like watching a rabbit being tortured.
Scott made an I-told-you-so face and stood to roam the office. Janis followed him, noting another difference between Chief McDermott and Mayor Walpole. Where the police chief’s workspace had looked like an excavation site, paperwork piled everywhere, the mayor’s was glossy and immaculate, everything in its place. Scott stopped before a wall of mounted certificates and plaques.
“Hey, you know Latin,” Scott whispered, pointing to one of the plaques. “What’s that say?”
Squinting, Janis pretended to translate: “Don’t mess with red-heads.”
“Oh, yeah?” Scott flicked her ear.
Janis grabbed his hand and twisted it behind him.
They were regressing back to their nine-year-old selves, which was fine with Janis. In the last year and half, they had grown up so fast, their lives becoming so serious—often too serious. Flipping a leg up behind her, she kicked Scott in the butt, then sidestepped before he could retaliate.
They moved past the closed door of the office, where parcels of mail sat in a wire basket on a small table. Janis caught wedges of return addresses, one from a fishing association, another from some sort of cattleman’s group. The powerful constituents of a small-town mayor, she thought.
“You ran on vision, for Pete’s sake!” Scott’s mother exclaimed behind her.
“Now, Mrs. Spruel…”
Check it out, Scott whispered telepathically.
Janis craned her neck and found Scott standing in front of a portrait of the mayor’s family. It looked to have been painted from a photograph—one of those front-yard shots where the father and boys wear white slacks and identical Izods (red in this case) and show their gritted teeth, while the mother, in a blouse and relaxed smile, appears to be the only sane one.
They’ve got a J.R., too.
Scott pointed to a nervous-looking poodle clamped between the thighs of the youngest of the mayor’s four sons.
Janis nudged up beside him. I’m just glad yours is okay now. He really gave us a sca—
“Hey, please don’t touch that!”
They spun to find Mayor Walpole standing behind his desk, a hectic color filling his cheeks. Mrs. Spruel, who’d been cut off mid-sentence
, looked from the mayor to Janis and Scott in annoyance.
“I paid extra for the glaze,” the mayor explained. “It’s resin based, so it smudges easily.”
“Oh, sorry,” Scott said, backing from the portrait.
“Yeah, sorry,” Janis added, even though neither of them had actually touched it.
Mrs. Spruel sighed loudly. “If you two are going to make nuisances of yourselves, why don’t you run along, let the mayor and I finish our business.” She fished a hand into her purse, unsnapped a wallet, and came out with a pair of five dollar bills. “There’s a hobby store around here somewhere.” She rounded on the mayor. “There still is a hobby store, isn’t there?”
“Yes,” he said, sinking back into his chair.
“Here.” Mrs. Spruel rattled the five-dollar bills toward them.
Janis didn’t think it would do any good to remind her that, as Champions, she and Scott earned more than her and her husband combined. She accepted the money and tucked it into the front pocket of her jeans.
“Nice to meet you,” she said to the mayor.
“Yeah, and sorry again about the painting,” Scott said.
Mayor Walpole nodded, the excitement in his eyes already disappearing beneath a fresh tide of helplessness. He opened his mouth, perhaps to wish them a pleasant rest of their time in Murder Creek, but Mrs. Spruel was anxious to resume their meeting.
“And then there’s this growing crime problem,” she exclaimed. “No self-respecting mayor would…”
“Oh, boy,” Scott muttered as he ushered Janis from the office and closed the door behind them.
Outside the town hall building, Janis squinted up at a dazzling blue sky while Scott freed J.R. from a bike rack bolted beside the front steps. The sunlight that had awakened Janis that morning shone higher and harder, as though determined to burn off any hidden vestiges of yesterday’s gloom. Janis removed her jacket and knotted the sleeves around her waist.
“You know, your mom actually has a point,” she said.
“Besides the one on the tip of her tongue?”
XGeneration (Book 5): Cry Little Sister Page 3
