Skin Walk (A Lacey Fitzpatrick and Sam Firecloud Mystery Book 2)

by Melissa Bowersock

  “Wow,” she said. “A full service breakfast bar.” She eyed him again. “What brings on this sudden bout of solicitous behavior?” she asked. She crossed her arms and stared at him expectantly, the food and coffee untouched.

  Sam sighed. “Come on, Lacey. Get something to eat. Do you want coffee? There’s tea, if you’d rather.”

  She stood her ground and glared at him.

  Sam turned away and poured two cups of coffee. Carrying both, he breezed right past Lacey to the dining room table, where he took a seat. He set the two cups of coffee down and tapped the chair next to him.

  “Lacey, sit,” he said.

  It was obvious he was going to do this—whatever it was—his way. She gave up her stubborn stance in the kitchen and followed him to the table, but she wouldn’t touch the coffee.

  “What’s going on?” she demanded.

  He toyed with his own cup. “Lacey, we’re a target here,” he said carefully. “It’s dangerous. I want you to go back to L.A.”

  Of all the things she might have expected him to say, that was not one of them. She gaped at him, her mouth open.

  “Close your mouth,” he said with a smile. “You’ll catch flies.”

  She snapped it shut. “Go back to L.A.? I’ll do no such thing. There’s been a murder here. We need to solve it. That’s why we’re here. That’s what we do.”

  Sam was already shaking his head. “No, it’s too dangerous. I want you to go. I’ll figure it out by myself.”

  Lacey gave a cynical laugh. “Ha! You’re going to interview people? The original strong, silent type? I don’t think so, Sam. You need me. You know I can appeal to people, I can get them to talk. You can’t do that.”

  He dropped his gaze down to his coffee cup. “No, not like you do, but…”

  Lacey recognized the opening and jumped in. “So you need me. I’m staying. I’m an ex-cop, remember? Homicide division. I’ve hunted down more murderers than you know. I’m staying. That’s all there is to it.”

  She nodded once, putting a very emphatic period on her last statement, then pulled the coffee cup over. The matter settled—at least in her mind—she took a sip of the hot, refreshing liquid. She needed that way more than she needed Sam’s sweet but totally unnecessary protection.

  Sam hunched over his own coffee and sipped it silently. Lacey felt a twinge of guilt. She appreciated his concern, and knew some men could get their feelings hurt when their macho impulses got shut down as decidedly as his had been. She tried to even out the playing field by giving up some ground.

  “So what’s the plan for today, boss?” she asked. “You lead and I’ll follow. Anywhere except back to L.A.,” she qualified.

  He shot her a glance, half agreement, half exasperation. “What I was thinking,” he said, “was that I ought to go see Lou, my cousin’s ex-wife. Even though they split up years ago, she still lost the father of her children. That seems a logical and low key way to start.”

  “Because we’re flying under the radar, right? Not going in like Ghostbusters this time, but just as a concerned family member?”

  “Right,” he acknowledged.

  Lacey grinned at him. “You come up with that all by yourself, Mr. Firecloud?” she asked. “Because that’s good. Very good. Couldn’t have done it better myself.”

  Sam seemed to struggle with awkward embarrassment, but even with his copper skin, the faint red glow across his cheeks was visible. “Shut up,” he muttered, but Lacey could see he was pleased.

  “And I’ll just be the sidekick,” she said. “I was going to say the comic relief, but I don’t think I’ll be cracking too many jokes.”

  He regarded her silently. She recognized that look, when the wheels were turning in that Navajo brain. She waited.

  “Since we won’t be broadcasting the real reason why we’re here,” he said, “some people might speculate about why you’re here with me.”

  Ah. She got it. “You’ve never brought a woman out here before?”

  “Just Christine,” he said.

  Lacey nodded. Of course his wife—now ex-wife—would have come with him for family visits. Now living in L.A., Sam was too far away to run home on weekends with any casual girlfriend—if he even had those. He’d never mentioned any romantic relationships.

  “Well,” she said, shrugging. “People can think what they want. It won’t bother me if it won’t bother you.”

  He watched her for a moment, but she only returned his stare with her clear, steady green eyes.

  “Okay, then,” he said. “We’re all set.” He arched an eyebrow at her. “Now will you eat?”

  She grinned. “Sure. What’ve you got that’s good?”

  ~~~

  As they walked out of the house and headed for her car, Lacey was suddenly ambushed by two squirming furballs that seemed intent on knocking her off her feet. The larger one looked like a German Shepherd mix, maybe with some Belgian or even Malamute tossed in. He was long-haired and solid, and felt like he weighed a hundred pounds when he leaned against Lacey’s leg. The smaller one was a Heinz 57, a slender white dog with brown patches, a short, flat coat and a long, whiplike tail. Both wanted nothing more than her undivided attention.

  “Okay, you guys, settle,” Lacey said, patting one with each hand. She glanced up at Sam. “A little help, here,” she said. “Can you get these guys to sit, at least?”

  Sam chuckled. “No way. These guys get no training whatsoever. That’s Bear, the big guy, and Sugar is the little female.”

  Sugar Bear, Lacey thought. Easy enough to remember. She gave them a few more pats and then tried to shoo them off.

  “Okay, Bear, Sugar. Off you go. Go do whatever dogs do around here.”

  She held up both hands to indicate no more petting was forthcoming. After a few seconds of fruitless tongue-lolling, tail-wagging expectation, the two dogs glanced at each other and took off together at a run.

  “So,” Lacey said, wiping loose dog hair from her hands to her jeans, “you want to drive, since you know where we’re going?”

  “Sure.”

  She tossed him the keys, but before she climbed in on the passenger side had a sudden thought. “We’re not going anywhere like the road to Ben’s house, are we?” She stared at him across the roof of the car.

  “Nah.” He dropped out of sight, settling into the driver’s seat. “Regular roads,” he said as she sat next to him. “But keep your seat belt on, just in case.”

  She was pretty sure he was kidding, but the sly sideways grin wasn’t totally reassuring. She pulled on her belt, which she would have done anyway, but gave it a tug to make sure the arresting mechanism was working.

  Now that she was seeing Tuba City in the daylight, she realized it was a busy little town. A couple of nice hotels that looked fairly new, a high school, and the usual smattering of fast food restaurants, convenience stores and gas stations. Although the day was cold, the sky was crystal clear and of a brilliant azure that Lacey could not remember ever seeing before.

  She was glad to note that Sam took them down paved streets for the most part. Once they passed through several blocks of town, he turned off on a road that changed from pavement to dirt, and up ahead was another of those small collections of houses in a loose group. These homes were primarily mobiles, mostly single-wides but a couple of double-wides. Sam pulled up next to a single and parked the car.

  Lacey wondered if he might give her some words of instruction, but he simply tossed the keys to her and led the way to the front door. They climbed the three wooden steps and he knocked.

  The door was opened a crack and held there for a moment, then flung wide.

  “Sam?” The woman’s voice was both excited and disbelieving.

  “Hi, Lou,” he said. He stepped inside and Lacey saw him almost completely enveloped in a corpulent bear hug. Over his shoulder, dark eyes peered at her in surprise.

  “Come in,” the woman said. She stepped aside so Lacey could enter and stood expectantly.r />
  “Lou, this is a friend of mine, Lacey Fitzpatrick. Lacey, my cousin’s ex-wife, Louise Firecloud.”

  “Hello,” Lacey said. She took the woman’s hand and shook it warmly. “I’m glad to meet you. And I’m very sorry about the loss to your family.”

  Lou was a large woman, tall as well as heavy. Her long black hair hung straight down on either side of her round face. By the uncertainty in the dark eyes, Lacey guessed she still wasn’t quite sure what to make of Sam’s sidekick.

  “Thank you,” she said. “Come in, sit down. Can I get you anything?”

  Sam took the lead, settling on a dark couch that had seen better days. Lacey sat beside him. “No, we’re fine, Lou, thanks. We’re just out visiting Grampa for a couple days. Heard the news, though. I’m sorry. That was a shock.”

  Lou lowered her large frame into a scuffed recliner. Her eyes darted from Sam to Lacey and back again, finally settling on Sam. “Yes, it was,” she said.

  “How are the girls doing with it?” he asked.

  Lou heaved a sigh. “Okay, for the most part. They have their moments. Amanda was the most upset. I guess some kids at school said some things. Kids can be so thoughtless, you know?”

  Lacey made a mental note, and wondered if Sam would ask more about that. He didn’t.

  “Yeah, they can be,” he agreed. “And Vanessa?”

  “She seems fine. She’s going to NAU in Flagstaff now; did you know?”

  “I think I remember hearing that,” Sam said. “Does she like it?”

  “Loves it,” Lou said. “She’ll be home in a couple weeks for Christmas.” She swung her gaze to Lacey. “This is Vanessa’s first year in college, and Amanda’s last in high school,” she explained.

  “So they’re both figuring out what they want to do,” Lacey surmised with a smile.

  “Well, trying to,” Lou amended. “What do you do?”

  Uh oh, Lacey thought. No time to come up with a good lie. “I’m a private investigator,” she said.

  Lou’s eyes narrowed slightly and she looked back at Sam. Then her eyes opened wide. “Hey. Are you the one who worked with Sam on that serial murder? The young girls?”

  Busted, Lacey thought. “Uh, yeah. You heard about that, huh?”

  “Are you kidding? Gabe was showing that little story in the paper to anyone who would listen.” Her eyes narrowed again. “So what are you doing here?”

  Lacey swallowed and turned to Sam. Your play, she thought.

  Sam leaned back against the couch cushion and crossed one scuffed cowboy boot over his other knee. “Checking into… the death,” he said cautiously. “Grampa had a bad feeling about it.”

  Lou didn’t seem surprised. “What are you thinking?” she asked.

  Sam shrugged. “Not sure yet. But I was wondering… Do you know of anyone who had it in for him? If he’d received any threats or anything?”

  Lacey watched Lou’s eyes and thought she saw them harden slightly.

  “Threats? No,” Lou said. She looked down at her hands in her lap, idly rotating the turquoise cuff bracelet on her wrist. “You know him. He wasn’t a fighter. Got along with everyone.”

  “Yeah, he did,” Sam agreed. “Had he had any health issues lately? Been sick at all?”

  Lou looked up, not at Sam or Lacey, but off into space. “No, I don’t think so. Amanda did say something about him getting more forgetful, even a little confused at times, but he did just turn fifty. She’s been teasing him about early-onset Alzheimer’s.” She laughed.

  “All right. Did he still live out at the hogan?”

  “Yeah.” Her eyes cautioned Sam. “He was buried there.”

  Sam nodded. “Okay, thanks. How are Modesto and Felicity?”

  Lacey felt the mood switch to small talk as Lou and Sam did some catching up. Modesto, she found out, was Harlan’s brother, Felicity his sister. How many cousins did Sam say he had? Twelve? And he’d lost track of how many second cousins, and yet the murderer had to be a family member? She was beginning to feel overwhelmed by the odds.

  Not to mention the fact that they weren’t supposed to mention Harlan’s name, nor bandy it about that they were investigating. How in hell were they supposed to gather any information that way? Telepathy?

  She was jarred out of her deliberations by Sam slapping his thighs with both hands. “Well, we’ll let you get on with your day,” he said. “We’ll see you again before we leave.”

  “You better,” Lou warned with a smile. “Amanda will want to see her favorite uncle.” She heaved herself up out of the chair and shambled toward the door. Sam and Lacey followed.

  Just as Lou was opening the door, Lacey was struck by a unique display on the wall. She stepped closer and realized it was a large bird wing, feathers spread into the shape of a fan.

  “Is that… what I think it is?” she asked, pointing.

  Lou showed no hesitation, just took the wing down off the hook it hung on. “It’s the wing of an owl,” she said. “I use it for smudging.” She illustrated waving the wing like a fan, as if she were wafting the clean scent of sage through the air.

  “It’s… beautiful,” Lacey said, thinking it was also a bit grotesque. She could appreciate the delicate patterns on the feathers, but thought she’d prefer a paper fan.

  “Thank you.” Lou hung the fan back on its hook and saw them to the door. “Nice to meet you,” she said to Lacey. She hugged Sam and said something in Navajo. He smiled, nodded, and responded in kind. Lou closed the door behind them after they stepped out onto the wooden stairs.

  Lacey hunched her shoulders as they walked to the car, feeling a peculiar jangling in her mind. She climbed into the passenger seat and sat there, staring dumbly out the windshield.

  There was more there than Lou had said; she was sure of it.

  “Hey,” Sam said in a low voice. “Earth to Lacey.”

  “Huh?” She turned to him. “What?”

  “Keys?” he asked.

  “Oh, yeah.” She dug the keys out of her purse and handed them to him. “Sorry. What did you make of that? Anything weird?”

  Sam started the car and put it in reverse, backing until he had room to make a u-turn and head back toward the main road.

  “Weird as in…?”

  “She wasn’t telling us everything,” Lacey said.

  Sam nodded. “Yeah, I got that, too. As you know now, we don’t talk a lot about this stuff openly.”

  “But this was different,” she said. “At least I think it was.”

  “It’s possible,” he said. He chewed on his lip as he drove. “Something else,” he said. “The owl wing fan?” He slid his gaze over to Lacey. “SWs—witches—need a bit of an animal’s body to shapeshift. To turn into a coyote, they need some of the pelt. To become a bird, an owl—”

  “They need some feathers,” Lacey supplied. She met his eyes, and the grim intensity she saw scared her. “You think…?”

  “I’m not sure,” he said quickly. “I would tend to doubt it, based on what I know about Lou, but it’s a possibility.”

  The thought that they might have just been sitting down across from a witch gave Lacey the shivers. She suddenly felt the need for reinforcements.

  “Why don’t we go talk to the police?” she asked. “Get their report on the crime scene, what they found? They might have some clues that’ll help us, right?”

  Sam was already shaking his head. “Nope. No point, Lacey.”

  “What do you mean, no point? Why not? I realize we don’t have any hard evidence yet, but they’ll understand what you do, what you got out there, and then the owl-thing last night…”

  “No. They won’t help.” His voice was flat and his mouth thinned into a hard line.

  “Why not?” She turned toward Sam, perplexed and frustrated. “They know about witches, too, right? They believe in them. They’ll understand—”

  “They won’t help,” he said again. “Not because they don’t believe. Because they do.”

  L
acey’s last argument lodged in her throat. “What?” she croaked. “They believe, but they won’t…”

  Sam blew out a harsh breath. “I told you, Lacey, these things are dangerous. No one wants to mess with them.”

  “But… but if we explain to them that it was murder, not just an animal attack, they have to investigate. If there’s been a murder, they have to try to solve it.”

  “It’s been recorded as a casualty only, Lacey. Not a murder. They won’t help.”

  Lacey huddled down in her seat and fumed. How could any police force turn a blind eye to murder? Even if the murderer did pose a threat? That just went against everything she’d ever known, everything she’d been taught… everything she was.

  But, she reminded herself, neither she nor the police forces she knew had ever been faced with a murderer that was supernatural. She glanced over at Sam. His concern was real.

  “All right,” she said grudgingly. “So what do we do? What’s next?” She could cool her jets as long as she and Sam inched forward on their own.

  “There’s something I want to check on,” he said. “Remember when I asked Lou if my cousin had been sick or acting differently?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m wondering if he’d been cursed.”

  “Cursed,” she echoed, realizing Sam was leading her back into uncharted territory.

  “That’s right. I need to go out to his hogan and see if I can find any evidence of that.” As he spoke, he pulled the car up in front of his brother’s house and parked. “I’ll have to take your car, but I need to do something first.” He climbed out of the car and headed for the house.

  “Wait,” Lacey said, barreling after him. “I’m going with you.”

  “Not this time.” He unlocked the door and pushed inside, tossing the car keys on the kitchen counter and disappearing up the hall. Lacey heard him rummaging in the back bedroom. Feeling only slightly devious, she palmed the keys and waited innocently for him to return.

  He did, carrying a bundle of plant material tied up like a very fat cigar. He found a box of kitchen matches above the stove and retrieved the ashtray he’d used last night when he’d burned his note. As Lacey watched, he lit the bundle and blew on the tiny red ember until aromatic smoke began to rise.