by D C Young
That sunrise over the desert had been like the very first I’d ever seen. In some ways, it had been. Experiencing the glow of the dawn through a vampire’s eyes had been overwhelming, to say the least, and there was absolutely no way to describe it in layman’s terms.
Epic… is probably what Tammy would have said.
Although she probably would have thrown a hash-tag in there somewhere, I was sure of it.
The rings had been gifted to me at a particularly difficult time for me. I had been struggling against the ever increasing hold of the demon inside me. She had been gaining strength and the urges she caused were becoming undeniable. But I had to fight them and fight them hard or risk losing whatever little was left of my humanity.
It had been a multi-layered conversation, one that had saved my life as recently as within the past few weeks when a coven of witches had kidnapped me and locked me inside my own mind.
As I finished folding the last of the clothes and placed them neatly in the laundry basket, the doorbell rang. I paused.
I don’t have any appointments today… none until next week in fact.
I’d planned on scheduling anything new that came in, that could wait, for after the New Year. Anything urgent I’d planned to refer to Detective Spinoza. I stood up and clicked the remote to turn the TV off. AT the door, I almost paused to look in the mirror.
No makeup or sunscreen. I chuckled. Old habits and such, I thought as I opened the door and let in more of the radiant Californian sunlight.
Chapter Four
On the front step, there stood a well dressed man. He was absentmindedly brushing down the front of his suit jacket with one hand, while looking out at the blooming Mandeville plants along the white fence. I felt proud for a moment seeing him admire the brilliant colors of the thriving flowers… I’d put those in myself six months ago. In his other hand, he held a briefcase that looked more like a weirdly shaped saddle bag and made of genuine leather.
With the fence no longer serving the purpose of corralling small agile children and pets, I thought I’d set it to a new job of brightening up my front lawn instead of just being a partition between property and street. The plants had grown beautifully with no more help than they received from the twice weekly turning on of the sprinklers and for that I was happy.
The sapphire ring I wore made it so I could stand to be in the sunlight but I was far from regaining my long gone sunbathing days. I planned time in the garden as carefully as a vacation and when I emerged from the house to work out there, I looked like a Japanese tourist; decked out from floppy sun hat to gloves and socks and sneaker.
No flip flops and bare arms for me. No, siree.
“Good afternoon,” I said, trying to get the man’s attention. “May I help you?”
“Sure can!” he said smiling. The southern accent took me by surprise based on his clothes. He sounded like he should have been wearing blue jeans and a plaid shirt, not a bespoke business suit. “Only if I’m speaking to Miss Samantha Moon, that is.”
“You sure are!” I replied matching his enthusiasm. I couldn’t tell if it was his clearly upbeat personality or the beautiful blue aura that shone around him like the sun-repelling gem on my finger. I made to step back and invite him in when I saw something wriggle briefly through his cerulean halo of light… something like a tiny worm… something grim and black. I took a small step back in shock and closed the door a little.
He must have noticed the brief hesitation because he reached out with his right hand and said, “My name is Earnest Cumber. I heard about you and what you do from Miss Lochner.”
“Miss Lochner?” I said, wracking my brain to think who he was talking about.
“Ummm, Dani. Dani Lochner. She’s a really good friend of mine from Savannah… says she met you and your family driving her Uber car.”
“Oh, of course,” I replied. “Of course, I remember Dani! Are you the gentleman she said might contact me about finding some lost property?”
“Sure am!”
Quickly, I searched his glow again for the sign of the dark entity but it was gone. I could only guess that may have something to do with why he was here to see me. I stepped back and invited him in then lead Earnest through to my office. I indicated for him to sit in any of the four client chairs while I made my way around the desk to my new ergonomic desk chair that didn’t make any off the wall sounds like my old leather one did. The air cylinder on the old chair had finally given out and I kept sinking to the floor when I sat down. At my height that was a very disconcerting experience, so I’d quickly replaced it with the help of Amazon.com.
“So. Mr. Cumber…”
“Please call me Earnie, everybody does.”
“Okay, Earnie. How can I help you?”
“Well, just the other day I was talking to our mutual friend Miss Lochner about how my ranch was doing up near Modesto, when I mentioned to her that we lost about a third of our herd recently.”
“Lost? A third?” I asked as I furiously jotted down notes from our conversation. “When you say lost, do you mean they wandered off? And how many heads are we talking about here exactly?”
Earnie raised an eyebrow at my tiny use of ranching terminology, then replied, “Lost as in disappeared... without a single hoof track or trace, Miss Sam. And a third would be just about a hundred and eighty. That’s what we counted as missing anyways.”
A whistle escaped my lips before I could stop it. Depending on breed and breeding, he was probably talking about almost a million dollars worth of livestock vanished into thin air.
“How did they disappear? Were they on their way to slaughter on a truck or something?” The thought of cattle going to slaughter made me think of my food stash out in the garage refrigerator. I shuddered slightly and glanced down at the opal ring on my hand with a smug smile. I’d been able to actually eat my rare steaks at the Mulberry Street Café for a while now instead of just slurping up the blood gravy that oozed out of them. I kept the refrigerator stocked in the garage though… you never can tell.
“No, ma’am. They were headed to the winter grazing pastures we share with a neighboring ranch just east of our stretch. The boys were running them over there on horseback.”
“What happened to them then?”
“Well, ma’am...”
“Please, Earnie. Call me Sam.”
“Okay, ummm, Miss Sam…” I decided to let it slide. I knew it was just the man’s southern sensibility that wouldn’t allow him to address me as anything less than Miss or ma’am even though he himself had insisted that I use his first name. “You see that’s just it, none of my cowboys saw any cows wander off or report anything out of the ordinary happening. But when they got to Blue Corn Ranch the next morning, the cattle were unaccounted for in the count.”
“Do you at least know which ones disappeared?”
“Well, of course I do, Miss Sam. What kind of rancher would I be if I didn’t try to get some sort of a roll call on the herd? It’s a very valuable herd, you know. Very unique.”
“Certainly, Earnie. I didn’t mean to imply the contrary. What were your conclusions?”
“Whoever snatched my cattle, stole all my impregnated cows.”
“Now that’s something,” I muttered as I scribbled on my note pad. Then I looked up at Earnest Cumber’s upset face and asked, “You said the herd was unique?”
“Yes, Miss Sam, very much so.”
“How?”
“The calves these cows are carrying are a new experimental breed the joint ranches have been working on for close to a decade. Experts from Cal Tech have been helping us cross breed these cattle for generations and we all think we finally have a winner in these calves. This new Californian cattle breed is expected to be faster developing, have better muscle tone, be prolific breeders and be resistant all the known diseases and pests. Each calf is projected to be worth as much as their prize winning sires… that’s just about five thousand dollars at birth. However, if the new breed turn
s out to be as successful as we think and becomes established with the Cattle Ranchers Association by the end of the calves first year, each of them is going to be worth double that amount in value.”
A long whistle escaped my lips. I could now understand Mr. Cumber’s predicament. Literally, millions of dollars had walked off and evaporated into thin air somewhere between his property and the Blue Corn Ranch. I had a million questions for Earnie.
Who had done the DNA study?
Who had conducted the inseminations?
Who was in charge of the breeding cows?
Who would stand to gain the most from the herd failure?
Who would lose the most?
The whole thing wasn’t a coincidence. That much I was sure of but these questions weren’t going to be answered so easily. Or so I thought…
“From what I seen and heard so far, Miss Sam, It’s clear to me that you’re the private eye for this case.” He reached down for the leather saddle bag looking case I’d noticed him carrying earlier and pulled out a binder full of crisply printed and neatly punched paper. There were colorful tabs separating the sections of information. He placed it on the table and slid it towards me.
“The other ranch owners will take my word for it that you’ll be up to the job. I only pray you can find our cattle; it would be a huge blow to our enterprise.”
I doubt I was doing even a half decent job of hiding my excitement about the mystery. That and the chance to go upstate for a while. The Valley was such a beautiful place no matter what time of year. I’d seen it mostly at night the last few years as I flew around in my bat form surveying the land or just trying to clear my head.
I pulled the one inch binder towards me and opened the front cover. Turned out I wouldn’t have to grill Earnie for much more information; the paperwork in front of me had all the answers I could possibly need about the cattle in question and their owners, the research being conducted and by whom. In fact, there was a whole section about the Cal Tech scientists and their work on the herd.
I shut the binder and looked up at the cowboy seated across from me. With the pointed fingernail of my right index finger on the binder, I asked, “So does this mean I got the job?”
“I’d say so,” he finally replied.
For a moment we talked about my standard investigative fees and he nodded his approval. Earnie said nothing more; he just reached into his bag a second time and then slid a blank white envelope across the table at me. He sat back in the guest chair he occupied. “That there’s sort of a retainer; for your travel expenses and what not. Your full fee as we discussed will be paid when you’ve solved the case.” He paused and closed the buckles on the bag which was still resting on his lap. “I assume that’s satisfactory?”
I opened the envelope and caught myself from doing a full on jaw drop. Inside it was a banker’s check for ten thousand dollars. “Quite so!” I said.
“Find our cows, Miss Sam and whatever’s left of that money is yours as a bonus!”
Without another word, Earnest Cumber stood up indicating he was ready to leave. I quickly walked around the desk and escorted him through to the front door.
“When can we expect to see you at Blue Corn Ranch, Miss Sam?”
“Give me a couple of days to get all my ducks in a row and I’ll see you bright and early Monday morning.”
“Great. Dress appropriately.”
I smiled and watched as he turned and walked down the driveway back to his huge Dodge Ram pickup truck. I shook my head as I closed the door behind me.
A cowboy in a pickup truck wearing a business suit… only in California!
Chapter Five
Ever since meeting Rennie Telfair, I’d found myself inspired to take some more care when putting myself together to leave the house for an evening of socializing. I had found the man to be an aficionado of entertaining and hospitality in general; something he took great southern pride in, apparently. In his parts of the Carolinas, you were nothing if you weren’t polite and generous and it showed in their generosity and how they welcomed guests; both the expected and unexpected alike.
I still remembered his farewell latter. The one I had received after returning from our beach vacation on Tybee Island in Georgia. We’d had the pleasure of spending a weekend with Rennie at Seagull Point…and what a weekend it had been.
I remembered our first evening there. It was after dinner and I had sent the children off to the dock with the rest of the family. Our host had been in the mood to enjoy a digestif. He’d poured himself some Drambuie and a glass of Sherry for me.
“It will aid digestion…” he began with the same quip that he’d used during our first meeting in Westminster.
“No matter what you’re digesting,” I’d said, completing the sentence.
I laughed as the memory came back to me. We’d become fast friends, Rennie and I. I looked at myself in the bedroom mirror turning slightly from side to side and thought, Mr. Telfair would surely approve. I was wearing a long patterned maxi dress Mary Lou had enticed me into buying at a party one of her friend’s had thrown. The woman was part of one of those network marketing cults; the product of choice, a clothing line emphasizing on comfort as well as trendy prints. It was made of a cotton blend material, perfect for the uncharacteristically balmy evening. Ankle length, brown and gold print and three quarter sleeves finished the garment. It was surprisingly elegant looking; clinging in the right places and flared in the others and made me look taller than I was… always a good thing. For good measure though, I stepped into a pair of brown heels.
The Mulberry Street Café had certainly become our place over the years; Kingsley’s and mine that is. We’d gone there countless times both while dating and as friends. In fact, most of my fondest memories of him had been formed at that table by the window where he would devour his food like an animal while I struggled to spoon the warm bloody juice from my rare steak into my mouth before it lost its temperature.
I remember the night we’d first gone there together. It had been raining and the sidewalk was mostly empty of pedestrians. In California, rain always had a trickle-down effect, keeping people both from their usual activities and from doing anything out of the ordinary. As a result, the restaurant had been much quieter than normal.
Pablo, the headwaiter, knew me well. He looked slyly at Kingsley, perhaps recalling that my husband was usually the man sitting across from me but he was discreet enough not to say anything. He took our drink orders and slipped away.
“I’m impressed,” said Kingsley, glancing out the window. “Whenever I come here, they seat me in the back of beyond.”
“There’s a distinct difference though; they happen to like me here.”
“Pretty girls get all the breaks.”
“So you think I’m pretty?”
“Yeah,” said Kingsley. “I do.”
Our drinks came. Chardonnay for me and bourbon and water for him. Kingsley ordered shrimp tortellini and I had the usual. Steak, rare. Very rare.
“You can eat steak?” he asked.
“No,” I said. “But I can suck the blood out of the carcass.”
“Now that should make for an interesting show.”
“Yes, well, it’s the only way I can participate in the human dining experience.”
“Well, you’re not missing much,” said Kingsley. “Food nowadays is entirely processed, fattening and just plain horrible for you.”
“Does it still taste good?”
“Wonderful.”
“You’re such an asshole.”
He laughed. I drank some of my wine.
“Are we human, Kingsley?” I asked suddenly.
He had been raising his glass to his lips and suddenly paused about halfway. “Yes,” he said, then raised it the rest of the way and took a sip. He added, “But are we mortals? No.”
“Then what makes us immortal? Why don’t we die like everyone else? What keeps us alive?”
“I don’t know.”
“Not really. Just a working hypothesis so far.”
“Okay, so what is it?”
“I’m beginning to think that beings like you and I hover on the brink of the natural and the supernatural. So, therefore, both sets of laws apply simultaneously. Perhaps the truth is that we are both human...and maybe even something greater.”
“Sounds a tad bit lofty.”
“Do you suspect that we’re something less then?” he asked.
I thought about that. “No. We are certainly not less.”
The waiter came by and dropped off some bread. Kingsley dug in. “You mind?” he asked.
“Knock yourself out,” I said. “So what are we, then? Some sort of supernatural evolutionary hybrid?”
He shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine.”
“Maybe we are super humans then.”
“Maybe. Who’s to tell?”
***
We’d been past those types of conversations for a long time. I’d known for quite a while now the things that made us inhuman, immortal, super… whatever term whichever being wanted to use to describe our unique nature. I wanted to believe that I’d come to terms with the entity inside me after the encounter I’d had with Catalina Caruso’s coven.
Sitting across from him tonight was very different than back then, Kingsley was older and had changed a lot, just as I had. We had gone passed the stage in which we could become more than friends but I think being friends had become quite enough for the both of us. Honestly, he still remained my supernatural sounding board. Whenever I was under the impression that there was more than met the eye in a case, I always talked about it with him. There was a certain insight my werewolf friend could always give that I couldn’t get from a human. For example, Detective Sherbet was an impressive detective. He could unravel even the most twisted of mysteries but he could be compelled and glamoured by a vampire in the snap of a finger and completely forget everything inhuman about the case he had just cracked wide open ten seconds before.
