Chris Rogers's Blog, page 3

Bitch Factor – Chapter 29

Cruising toward home on U.S. 59, Dixie turned on the windshield defroster and counted the days until court would reconvene next Monday, January fourth. Today was Tuesday, her second full day back in town, and she hadn’t picked up a crumb of information linking the accidents that killed Betsy and Courtney Keyes. A squeamish part of her mind hoped she was barking up the wrong tree this time.

The Paynes had not seemed particularly distraught over the loss of their daughters. But then, Betsy’s death had taken place in May, Courtney’s swimming accident in August. This was December. Even after such tragedies, life goes on.

Dixie turned down the defroster’s blast of hot air and turned the radio to a news station. “Colder,” the weatherman predicted cheerily, “with possible freezing rain.” What if she tried her damnedest, yet on January fourth had gathered no new evidence in Betsy’s case? What made her think, anyway, that she could accomplish what Belle’s trained investigators had failed to do? A skip tracer’s job was pig simple — bring the bad guy in for due process. Period.

But she’d been truthful when she told Dann the justice system would work better if its caretakers were more conscientious. She’d seen her share of bad guys over the years; Dann somehow didn’t fit the mold. On the drive to Houston, she’d questioned him ruthlessly, and she believed he was telling the truth — which didn’t rule out the possibility that he was so drunk out of his mind he didn’t know the truth. Yet, in the five days they’d spent together, she hadn’t noticed any usual signs of alcoholism.

If Belle Richards said the jury was ready to convict, Dixie would lay money on it. Assuming Dann’s innocence, Betsy’s killer was still on the streets. And if Dixie turned Dann in, without being convinced of his guilt, her conscience would needle her to her grave. As Barney would say, “The most painful wound of all is a hard stab of conscience.”

Bell had left three messages. So far, Dixie had successfully ignored them, since talking to the attorney now would mean skirting the truth. Sooner or later, though, she’d have to return those phone calls. Sooner or later, Dann would have to face the jury. The clock was ticking. Certainly, no one heard it louder than Dann himself.

He’d been a model prisoner these two days, but Dixie wasn’t fooled. While biding his time, hoping she’d turn up new evidence, he was probably also plotting alternatives. And as the clock ticked on, he’d get panicky. Desperate men couldn’t be trusted.

The pecan grove came into view: rows of trees, stripped now of their foliage, cast long bony shadows in the afternoon light. Closer to the house, the Flannigans had planted live oaks for year-round shade and wind protection. Kathleen’s sporadic interest in gardening had produced seasonal vegetables and occasional flowers, but the beds had long since weeded over. Maybe Dann could clean them out. Maybe he could also stain the rail fence.

She was turning into the driveway when she remembered the Valdez job. Now, before Rashly released Hermie Valdez from jail, was the time to wire the house for sound. It would take only an hour or two. If Dixie hurried, she could pick up the equipment from home, install a few choice pieces at Hermie’s, and still make it to Amy’s on time for supper.

She parked the Mustang in the four-car garage, an old barn that had formerly housed the shelling and packaging machines of the pecan business. Barney had sold the equipment, except for one sheller, when he started sending the pecans to a commercial packager, and now the barn housed a variety of vehicles Dixie found handy at times — a tow truck, a taxicab, a gray van. She’d purchased all three cheap from owners who wouldn’t be driving anytime soon.

Jogging to escape the cold, she entered the house through the utility room, caught a whiff of cooking aromas, and heard Mud’s toenails tick across the kitchen floor. When she opened the door, he was eagerly waiting. She rubbed his ears.

“What a fine guard dog Mud is.”

Mud licked her hand. Then he pranced to the stove and sat down beside Dann, who stood over a burner stirring a pan that emitted the delicious aroma. The man looked totally engrossed.

The homey scene stirred a slew of emotions in Dixie. This kitchen needed someone who enjoyed filling it with the bubble and sizzle of food preparation. It was designed for that. After Kathleen’s death, Barney had lost heart for anything more complicated than scrambled eggs, and Dixie’s efforts had been dismal. She fell into the habit of stopping for carryout every evening. There was something comforting about coming home now to the aroma of good food cooking.

On the other hand, she’d never enjoyed a domestic moment with any man her own age. Not that she was a stranger to long weekends, sleepovers, breakfast in bed — but such occasions had a defined purpose in the dating-mating-compulating game. This situation was emphatically different. Did any of her books on law enforcement define appropriate behaviours for jailors and prisoners?

“You’re early. Dinner won’t be ready for an hour.” Dann toasted her with the spoon. “My specialty, Chicken Piccata.”

“Hmmm. Interesting choice.” How could he know she’d had it for lunch? “But I’m expected at my sister’s for dinner.”

“Oh.”

The spoon sagged in his hand. He looked so disconcerted she wondered if he hoped to win her allegiance with food. Not a bad gambit. She wasn’t hungry, yet her taste buds were harkening.

A pasta pot bubbled on the back burner; a plate with three cooked chicken breasts sat on the counter. Dann looked at the stirring spoon, tasted it, and shrugged.

“Great sauce.” He laid down the spoon, dipped a clean one, and held it out to her.

Mud bolted upright and bared his teeth. A growl rumbled deep in his throat. Dann jerked his hand back, spilling sauce on the stove top.

“It’s okay, boy.” As Mud relaxed, Dixie peered into the pan simmering on the stove. “What are those green specks?”

“Green specks? You mean the herbs? Here, try it.” He scooped a fresh spoonful.

“I don’t remember buying any herbs.” she tasted the sauce, tentatively at first, then licked the spoon.

“We bought the parsley,” Dann said. “But I found tarragon and chives in your garden.”

Dixie stopped licking. “Those weeds out there? How do you know they’re edible?”

“Relax. I’m not going to poison you. See?” He took another sip. “Actually, you’d have a nice selection of herbs and vegetables if they hadn’t been neglected.

“You mean I could’ve been throwing those weeds on on my chicken all this time and it would taste like this?”

“Sure. Of course, you also have a castor been plant. Eat that and you’re dead. The narcissus, too. Easy to mistake the bulbs for green onions.” He picked up a knife and began slicing a chicken breast, his fingers quick and precise. “I noticed the bulbs need dividing.”

Dixie tasted the sauce again. “How do you know what to put in?”| Did everybody in the world besides her know how to cook?”

“A recipe helps, but mostly I experiment with flavors I like — celery seed with green beans, marjoram with carrots, dill or rosemary with chicken.”

“Maybe if I pour some herbs on my steak it won’t taste like boiled chip board.”

Dann made a funny sound in his throat. Dixie wasn’t sure whether he was laughing or choking.

“A touch of herbs,” he said, “adds flavor. “Toughness usually comes from overcooking. How long do you broil it?”

“Broil? I fry it till it’s good and dead, then throw in some flour and milk to make gravy.”

Dann winced. “Keep the pantry filled while I’m here, and I’ll make sure you eat well. Gives me something to do. Otherwise, the only difference between here and jail is the company’s better.”

Dixie finished the bit of chicken and took another small piece. “Mud, I think that compliment was meant for you.”

“Mud’s ears pricked up. He gave a soft bark. Dann chose the largest chicken slice and held it for the dog to eat.

“Hey, don’t feed him that–“

But Mud already had his teeth in it.

“Piccata makes lousy leftovers,” Dann explained lamely.

“Just what I need, a mutt with a gourmet appetite.”

“That whole chicken breast probably didn’t cost any more than his dog food. Look how he’s enjoying it.”

“Of course he’d enjoying it. It’s damn good.” In fact, her untrained palate found it better than what she’d eaten earlier at the famed Garden Cafe.

“So,” Dann said. “Going to fill me in on your day?”

“Dixie licked her fingers and headed for the hall closet where she kept supplies.

“Not much to tell.”

He followed her, Mud padding alongside. After a moment of silence, while Dixie unlocked the supplies closet, Dann cleared his throat.’

“I know you’re not obligated,” he said. “Only I’m sitting here with my stomach in knots wondering when the firing squad’s going to show up.”

Dixie opened the closet door. She could think of no reason to keep Dann uninformed. He’d be less antsy if he thought they were gaining ground.

“I talked to Homicide about getting a look at the police report.” Quickly assessing the closet’s contents, she selected a UHF transmitter, about the size of a cigarette pack, and a receiver. Between the two, she could listen to sounds and conversations in Valdez’s home from as far away as a mile. “The investigating officers didn’t find any evidence your car was stolen, but that doesn’t rule it out. They did note your claim of a spare key hidden under the frame and the fact that no key was found.”

She painted in the details of her day, making it sound more fruitful than it really was, relating her meetings with the Paynes and her phone call to Ellie’s real father, Jonathan Keyes.

“Tomorrow, I’ll stop by Keyes’ office.”

“If he’s a reputable businessman, an architect, what makes you think he’s involved in car theft?”

“I don’t.” Dixie invariably found it easier to do a thing than talk about it. Explaining her abstract method of reasoning out a problem had never come easy, even as an ADA working with an investigative team. But Dann’s question deserved answering. While she considered it, Dixie selected a telephone tap and digitizer, for transmitting phone conversations to a recorder outside the Valdez house. She packed the equipment into a battered metal toolbox with shock-resistant foam padding.

On a shelf beside the toolbox sat her camera.

“Ever take any travel photos?” One of her law professors had told her that every complicated idea could be explained with a simple analogy.

“Snapshots,” Dann said, shrugging it off. “Can’t say I’ve ever done anything as good as that Yucatan shot in your album.”

Dixie sitffened. “You looked through my scrapbooks?”

He blinked, his mouth tightening. “I didn’t see a KEEP OUT sign.”

“And I didn’t realize I’d have to mark ‘hands off’ on all my personal belongings.”

‘Okay, so I had an acute case of indiscretion.” His voice was low and measured. “There’s not a hell of a lot to do around this place.”

“Tomorrow I’ll buy some fence stain. You’ll have plenty to do.”

“Fine.”

Mud, sensing the discord, nosed between them.

Dixie glanced past Dann to the kitchen, which he’d obviously cleaned and polished before cooking the dinner she refused to eat. She knew he was cozying up, hoping she’d start trusting him and let down her guard. But, hell there was nothing secret in the house, nothing dangerous, except ammunition, which she kept in a locked cabinet, and guns, which she carried with her. And her badass-bitch routine didn’t play comfortably in her own home. A long breath seeped out between her teeth.

“Sorry,” she said. “Being a recluse breeds suspicion. I’m not used to having visitors.” She turned back to the shelves, added a VHF beeper for Valdez’s car and a canister of CS tear gas to the other equipment in the toolbox. She could feel Dann watching her.

“What’re you going to do with all that?”

“A side job, in payment for looking at the Keyes file.” Most of the stuff she wouldn’t need. Like the shiv in her boot, it was merely insurance. She started to shut the closet, then saw the Pentax and realized she’d never finished answering Dann’s question about why she wanted to talk to Jonathan Keyes. She picked up the camera.

“When I travel, I like to capture the sense of a place in six or eight shots… buildings, boats, cars, parks and beaches where people gather, close-ups of local people doing things, items that represent the culture — food, jewelry, clothing, whatever makes the area unique. When I’m finished, I know the place I’m visiting as well as my own yard. The photographs paint the entire experience.” Dixie set the camera back on the shelf. “I approach an investigation the same way, which is what I was doing this morning. Trying to capture a true picture of Betsy Keyes and what happened the day she died. Jonathan Keyes is part of the picture. I need to know where he fits in.” Dixie locked the closet and moved into the den.

“Makes sense, I guess.”

She triggered a hidden electronic lock and opened a spring-mounted bookcase to reveal a row of narrow shelves. One shelf held stacks of gun shells. She removed a box of .45s for the semiautomatic and a box of double-aught buckshot for the combat shotgun.

She felt Dann’s interest perk right up at the sight of the ammunition. Not much use to him without guns, even if he managed to break the electronic code — unless he was as handy at making bombs as he was at making Chicken Piccata. With a mental shrug, Dixie relocked the cabinet. Trust was a useful measuring tool at times, but she’d remember to check later for tampering.

In the kitchen, she took a photographer’s vest from the coat closet. The vest’s custom lining would stop a 270-grain shell from  a .357 Magnum. Several of the vest’s fourteen pockets contained items she occasionally found useful — sandwich bags, tape, putty, wire, a glass cutter, a Lock-Aid tool for instantly opening any lock except high security, a pair of binoculars.

Dann held a pocket flap open while she inserted the cartridges.

“This side job looks serious,” he commented quietly. “Should I be worried about you?”

“Worried?” She looked up.

The top of her hair brushed his chin, and she found him studying her, eyes hooded and dark. A weighted silence hung between them. Dixie wasn’t used to having anyone worry about her. Except Amy.

Dann swallowed, as if his mouth had gone suddenly dry. She noticed a web of laugh lines that framed his eyes and thought he must laugh a lot during less stressful times. She knew she should look away, but the concern that filled his gaze was very real. It was also strangely gratifying.

Kidnap victims often developed an emotional attachment to their captors, she’d read. Complete dependency on a person for food, shelter, human companionship and approval created false endearment. Was that happening here? And if so, why was she feeling it, too?

An invisible cord seem to draw them closer.

“What if something happens to you?” Dann said softly.

His voice had the rich sensuousness of dark velvet. She’d noticed it before; now it enveloped her like a plush, warm cloak. She liked the sound.

She also liked the strong line of his chin. And the way his brown hair waved over his ears.

Her chest felt suddenly tight, her breathing shallow. She zipped and unzipped a pocket flap. A strand of hair fell across her cheek.

He reached for it–

Mud’s jaws snapped over Dann’s wrist with the speed of a viper.

Join me right here next week for another Bitch Factor chapter, and if you’re just tuning in, you can find chapters 1-28 below.

Meanwhile, grab a Copy of Slice of Life, another Dixie Flannigan thriller. Here’s a quick, fun preview:

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Bitch Factor – Chapter 28

Dixie was glad to see the word Garden separating Payne from Cafe. Regardless of the spelling, she couldn’t get past the image of hot soup in the lap or ground glass in the burgers — a restaurant dispensing pain as the house specialty. Payne Garden Cafe was a little easier to take.

Parked across the street in the Mustang, she studied the Garden Cafe and Payne Hardware, pondering what she might accomplish by going inside. She wanted to know Betsy Keyes, wanted to know her family, their routines and how those routines might have differed on the day the girl died. She wanted to know Courtney, as well. Dixie wasn’t sure how it would help her determine whether the deaths were accidental, but she needed to fill in the picture.

That Rebacca Payne was creative, she deduced from viewing the cafe’s exterior. Nestled among service stations, dry cleaners, and convenience stores, the Garden Cafe contributed a dash of vibrancy to an otherwise commonplace neighborhood street.

A glassed-in sun porch spread across the front. A terraced bed of herbs and flowers flanked the weathered boardwalk leading to the entry. Among chives, dill and other green edibles, which Dixie recognized by their hand-painted pixie signs, potted poinsettias raised red topknots to the midday sun. In one corner, a stack of flat clay pots and a box of daffodil bulbs bearing a fluorescent PLANT NOW sticker hinted at the yellow blossoms that would spring up in coming months. Dixie liked it.

She entered through a golden oak door embellished with etched glass, a large brass know and a tinkling bell. The dining-room space, surprisingly narrow, boasted eight tables, four booths, a six-stool counter, and a specialty section defined by a few well-stocked shelves.

Right away Dixie noted an array of tiny clay pots planted with the same herbs she’d seen outside. An assortment of Mason jars filled with sauces and dressings bore the “Payne Garden Cafe” label. Two shelves of commercially packaged containers held items Dixie had seen in health-food stores — roots, extracts, bulgur wheat, millet, granola, salt substitute, fructose, spice blends and exotic teas. A framed magazine article beside the specialty section touted the Garden Cafe as one of Houston’s best kept secrets, “a down-home place serving deliciously healthful food at reasonable prices.” Sounded like the best thing since apple butter.

Dixie selected a jar of spaghetti sauce with mushrooms and a package of Italian spices to supplement Parker Dann’s culinary skills and carried them into the dining area.

Taking a seat at the far end of the counter, she looked the place over. Only one table was occupied — a couple who had eyes only for each other — but the lunch crowd wasn’t officially due for another ten minutes.

Then Dixie noticed the nearest booth was also occupied, and a stillness came over her. The youngest Keyes child, Ellie, lay asleep on the padded seat, a gaily crocheted afghan covering her small body. Seeing her, Dixie realized how worried she’d been that yet another accident might have occurred in the Keyes family. Except for a chapped nose, the girl seemed fine. Brown hair tangled around her chubby cheeks, a bright Raggedy Ann doll clutched in her arms, and one bare foot thrust outside the afghan, she looked angelic and vulnerable. On the table beside her sat a Kleenex box and a prescription bottle. According to Belle’s notes, Ellie was barely six, Dixie’s age the first time Tom Scully visited her bedroom. What made a person want to defile such innocence?

Dixie realized as she watched the sleeping girl’s shallow breathing that she’d been revisiting the past much too often lately. She resolved to stop. If she continued to muddle her own childhood problems with the Keyes accidents, she’d never find the truth. As a rule, she rarely thought about the bad years. Too much good had happened in her life to dwell on misfortunes. But the world was filled with casualties of life’s dark side, and if she could save just one child from harm, perhaps the past would redeem itself.

Her breathing fell into rhythm with the rise and fall of Ellie’s chest. Then a mucus bubble formed at one tiny nostril, and Dixie smiled. A head cold was reassuringly ordinary. She plucked a tissue from the box and gently wiped Ellie’s nose, as footsteps sounded behind the counter.

Dixie turned to find a pert twenty-year-old with springy black curls and lashes like paintbrushes. Her name tag said GILLIS.

“Sorry to take so long,” She laid a menu on the counter. “I didn’t hear the bell.”

Dixie had hoped to meet Rebecca Payne, but the mouthwatering aromas issuing from the kitchen suggested the chef was preparing lunch.

“Gillis, I saw your magazine write-up as I walked in. It said to ask for the house specialty.” Dixie hoped it wouldn’t be yogurt or tofu. In her limited experience with “healthful” food, those ingredients seemed overrated and overly abundant.

“Today’s special is Chicken Piccata. Mrs. Payne does wonders with herbs. The Brandied Beef on Sprouted Wheat is good, too.” Gillis placed a white napkin and utensils on the counter. “Oops, there’s the buzzer. The produce truck is finally here. Be right back.”

Dixie studied the menu. After a moment, she heard a rustle behind her and turned to find a pair of solemn brown eyes staring over the top of the afghan. Ellie had pulled it high to cover her nose.

“Hello,” Dixie said.

The brown eyes blinked.

“Bet you’ve got the sniffles. I hat having the sniffles, my nose all runny and sore. Can I get you anything? a glass of water, maybe? Orange juice?”

Blink.

“Hot lemonade? That always tastes good when I feel puny, hot lemonade and raisin toast.”

This time the eyes bounced up and down as the child nodded.

“Good. I hate to eat alone.” Gillis reappeared, as if on cue. Dixie ordered the Chicken Piccata and coffee for herself, hot lemonade and raisin toast for the girl.

“That’s a nice big booth,” Dixie said, when the waitress left to turn in the order. “Think I could join you?”

The brown eyes moved side to side. “I’m kuh-tay-just.”

“Contagious?”

“Got the flu.” She coughed, a deep, phlegmy sound.

“Oh, well. I’m not one bit scared of the flu. Why, I’ve had the flu so many times I’ve lost count. If that’s all you’re worried about, you can stop worrying.”

The child was sitting up now, letting the afghan slip down to her waist. Her round brown eyes looked unconvinced.

“Your mommy tell you not to talk to strangers?”

The nod again.

“Suppose I clear it with your mommy. Then will you consider letting me share your table?”

A bright smile accompanied the nod. When Gillis returned with salad, Dixie handed her a business card with D.A. “DIXIE” FLANNIGAN printed above her telephone number and a post office box. In this case, the D.A. was for Desiree Alexandra — but few people asked. She had a thousand cards printed each year in exchange for a few pounds of pecans.

“Gillis, would you introduce me to this very cautious and slightly contagious young lady, and then ask her mother if it’s all right for us to have lunch together?”

Gillis looked uncertain, but read the name on the card exactly as it was written, introduced the little girl as Ellie, then disappeared into the kitchen.

“Happy to meet you, Ellie. Please don’t call me Ms. Flannigan. I’m Dixie, plain and simple.”

“Hi, Dixie-plain-and-simple!” Ellie piped, breaking into a fit of giggles.

“Whoa! I walked right into that one, didn’t I? Where’d you learn such a good joke?”

“From Courtney.” The light winked out of Ellie’s eyes.

Dixie didn’t want to put a damper on what promised to be a pleasant lunch. She filled the silence quickly.

“I don’t know any jokes as good as yours, but I know the best knock-knock joke in the whole world. You know what a knock-knock joke is?”

Ellie nodded, eyes wide and solemn.

“Want to hear the best knock-knock joke in the world?”

Another nod, a tiny smile.

“Okay, but I think we should warm up to the best. Let’s try this one. Knock, knock.”

“Who’s there?”

“Oswald.”

“Os-wald who””

“Oswald my gum.”

The child’s giggle was high and frothy, like champagne bubbles bursting. “My turn?” she said.

“Go for it.”

“Knock, knock.”

“Who’s there?”

“Awch.” She giggled again, anticipating her own punch line.

“Awch who?”

Giggle, giggle. “God bless you!” Giggle, giggle, giggle.

Dixie whooped, genuinely amused but also hamming it up.

“Okay, are you ready now for the world’s greatest knock-knock joke?”

“Yes!”

“Okay, you start,” Dixie said.

“Knock, knock.”

“Who’s there?”

Ellie looked blank for a moment before she realized she’d been had. Then she grinned. “You fooled me!”

“Yep. That’s me, an old fooler.”

Gillis appeared with a tray. She set the hot lemonade in front of Ellie and Dixie’s meal across from her.

“Mommy said I can join Ellie for lunch?” Dixie asked.

“That’s right, but she did say to warn you that Ellie has a bronchial flu and might be contagious.”

“I already told her that,” Ellie said. “Come on, Dixie, sit down.”

Ellie nibbled at the toast and sipped the lemonade. Dixie put away the Chicken Piccata, which was excellent despite the green specks that Gillis assured her were fresh herbs from the garden outside the door.

Even more than the meal, Dixie enjoyed the company. But she couldn’t help envisioning Ellie’s two sisters alongside her, as they appeared in the Christmas shapshot. According to Rashly, the older girls had a different father from Ellie, yet they looked very much alike and had identical coloring.

“You don’t like your toast?”

“My tummy hurts.”

“Oh.” Dixie touched the back of her hand to the child’s forehead, not sure exactly what she should feel. Warm. Maybe the girl needed an aspirin or one of the little white prescription pills — AMOXIN, the label said. Lord, she didn’t know a thing about kids.

She called Gillis, who said Rebecca had gone next door to the hardware store to take Mr. Payne some lunch. Minutes later, Rebecca Payne appeared with Tylenol and water. Unlike her brown-haired daughters, Rebecca had radiant blond hair pulled back in a ribbon that matched her print dress. She wore a white cook’s apron over a trim figure and stood about five-foot-seven. Not quite pretty, yet attractive, she had a boobed nose and striking bottle-green eyes a bit too close together.

“The chicken was wonderful,” Dixie told her. “Every bit as good as the restaurant critic proclaimed.”

Rebecca’s smile brought her closer to beautiful. “The newspapers have been kind, but I’m not one for false modesty. I serve some of the best food in town.”

She settled Ellie for a nap. As she tucked the afghan around the child’s neck, Dixie noticed that Rebecca’s left hand was missing the first two fingers.

*

Next door, at Payne Hardware, Dixie tried to think of an item she needed at home — garden hose, faucet washers — did people browse in a hardware store? Certainly, that would give her  more time to check out Travis Payne.

 The cowbell over the door rang more insistently than the baby tinkler at the Payne Garden Cafe. The air smelled of sawdust and machine oil. From somewhere near the back, a power saw buzzed shrilly.

Dixie scanned the room for the angry face in the news clip of Dann’s arraignment. The only man in sight was a stout-nosed shopper wheeling an overburdened cart to the register.

“Get out here, Travis,” he shouted over the power-saw whine. “I’m ready to go.”

The whine ceased, and after a moment a sturdy, white-haired man in orange overalls appeared from behind a partition. Travis Payne didn’t look nearly as fierce as his photograph. The two men chatted at the register like old friends.

Sidling in that direction, Dixie feigned an interest in a shelf of clean agents. She picked up a bottle of Tarnex.

“Travis, I can’t see any advantage in that new department you’re adding,” Stout Nose stated.

“The computer center? Got to keep abreast of the times, Tate. You know that.”

Dixie heard excitement in his voice, the same excitement her hacker friends exhibited when discussing their latest passion. Travis Payne had been bitten by the computer bug.

“Pah! A money pit, that’s what it’ll turn into. Who’s going to buy a computer from a hardware store?”

“Lay you odds that department will double what the rest of the store brings in. Double it, just you watch. Soon as it’s completely stocked and I get the word out.”

“That’s what you said when you added the kitchen gadgets. Now you’ve got a truckload of pots and pans gathering dust.”

Dixie noticed a neat yellow sign that marked the kitchenware section. Others advertised plumbing, electrical, and building supplies. A bright blue sign marked the computer area.

“Everybody these days needs a personal computer,” Payne said. “Everybody. Including you, Tate. You can be my first customer.” He had finished ringing up the sale. Now he stacked the merchandise on a cart.

“If I recollect rightly, my wife was your first customer when you put in that fancy decorator section. Rugs, curtain rods, lamps — now I ask you, what kind of hardware store carries such nonsense?”

“It’s called forward thinking, Tate. Look at what’s to come, not what’s past. You’ll see –“

“I know. ‘Soon as you get the word out.’ Well, I won’t hold my breath. Be glad I’m not your business partner.” Payne opened the door and the customer wheeled his cart through, muttering, “Computers in a hardware store. That takes the cake.”

The cowbell clanged wildly as Payne shut the door.

“May I help you, ma’am?” He smiled at her, pale blue eyes twinkling, white mustache defining his bow-shaped mouth, orange overalls tight over his roundish belly. Dixie wondered if he ever moonlighted as Saint Nick.

“I’m trying to decide between these cleaners,” Dixie said.

“Take your time, ma’am. Take your time. I’ll be in the back working on some shelves when you’re ready to check out.” He scurried away, and a moment later she heard the power saw.

Travis Payne had to be ten or twelve years older than Rebecca, Dixie thought as she wandered idly down the rows of hardware, kitchen and decorator items. A man happy in his work, business apparently expanding, his wife’s business written up favorable in the press. The only dark cloud in their lives seemed to be the deaths of two children.

She found a bin full of key holders, including the kind Dann had used to hid a spare key under the chassis of his Cadillac. Payne had sold it to him. He would’ve known exactly where to look if he wanted to steal — or borrow — Dan’s car. For that matter, anyone shopping in the store that day might have observed the sale.

In the new computer area, unfinished shelves covered half of one wall. Sealed boxes of merchandise sat in the middle of the floor draped with a plastic drop cloth. Expansion in progress.

Dixie focused on the Tarnex bottle in her hand. What the hell was this stuff for, anyway? According to the label, it instantly cleaned copper, brass and other metals. Dixie wondered if it would make Kathleen’s copper teapot shine like the one pictured.

She didn’t like admitting it, but her sleuthing skills were producing less than brilliant results. At the moment, her best suspect in Betsy’s death was the salesman who had stayed late talking with Dann at the Green Hornet, the man with a butterfly tattoo. The bar wouldn’t open until late in the afternoon. she could ask Rashly to put out a bulletin with the man’s description, but she was already indebted to the homicide chief for more hours than she wanted to spend. She’d take her chances later with the bartender. Meanwhile, she might as well have a talk with Ellie’s real father, Jonathan Keyes.

Deciding the word “instant,” when applied to cleaning, had unbeatable sales appeal, she carried the Tarnex to the register. Outside, she used the cellular phone in the Mustang to call the architectural firm of Keyes & Logan. Like Ellie, the receptionist had a stuffy nose. She kept saying “excuse me,” then sniffing.

“Mr. Keyes is oud of towd today,” she said. “I can’t give oud his home dnumber, but he’ll be back in the office domorrow.”

Keyes’ home telephone was unlisted. Dixie could get it, but she didn’t like using resources unnecessarily. Tomorrow would be soon enough to meet Jonathan Keyes.

She felt more compelled, at the moment, to check on Dann. He’d been home alone with Mud for several hours. Who knew what mischief he could be cooking up?

Before leaving Spring Branch, though, she might as well visit the scene where Betsy was killed. Finding the corner, she parked, then got out and approached the intersection from the sidewalk, where Betsy had walked. A willow tree grew near the curb, bare limbs stretching over the narrow street. Shrubs with low-hanging limbs encircled the tree in a bed trimmed with bricks. In full leaf, as the limbs would’ve been in May, they could easily conceal an approaching vehicle.

Parker Dann’s house, Dixie recalled, was around the block and two streets away. The most likely route from Dann’s house to the Payne Garden Cafe, Payne Hardware, the Green Hornet or the nearest freeway would pass through this intersection.

She drove to the Paynes’ home address and discovered that it, too, was on the route to Dann’s house. In addition to seeing the girls at the cafe and hardware store, Dann would naturally have met them on occasion walking along the street or playing in their front yard.

At eleven years old, Betsy was probably mature enough to babysit her younger sisters, and with their parents working only a few blocks away, Dixie imagined the three girls spent a lot of time playing at home alone. Dann, a commissioned salesman, would have plenty of free time during the day to get to know the Keyes children, if he chose to.

Dixie didn’t know where her thoughts were leading, but the proximity between Dann’s house and the Paynes’ house troubled her. The fact that Dann was friendly and attractive, with trust-me blue eyes, bothered her even more.

*

The red Frisbee sailed across the yard.

Mud dashed after it, sprang into the air like a corkscrew, and snapped it out of the sky. Parker couldn’t help admiring the dog’s grace. Ugly as a mongrel from hell, and strong enough to tear a man’s arm off, he was actually not much more than a lovable pup. Loved running. Loved attention. Loved chasing after the Frisbee.

Mud lumbered across the yard to where Parker stood waiting.

“Good boy!” He gave the dog a liver treat, his favorite. “What a fine fellow. Yes, sir!”

The treat disappeared in a gulp, Mud all eager to play again. Parker rubbed the dog’s head and patted his side.

“Okay, boy! Let’s go!” He sailed the Frisbee. As Mud ran after it, Parker closed the gap between them. They’d started playing near the porch. Now they were almost to the fence.

Earlier, Parker’d made the mistake of running too close to the front gate. Mud ripped the seat of his jeans with enough snap from those evil teeth that Parker knew the next bite would take a chunk out of his butt. He backed off fast. Now he was taking it slow and easy, and they were almost to the same spot near the gate.

So far, Mud hadn’t noticed.

“The bluebird carries the sky on his back,” Thoreau had written. Perhaps a red Frisbee carried freedom. With enough patience, Parker figured, it might carry him right through that gate, with Mud prancing happily ahead of him.

Parker had slipped the Frisbee into Flannigan’s grocery cart when they went shopping, after the cart was full enough that she wouldn’t notice. At the checkout counter, he distracted her by pointing out the latest Elvis sighting headlined on a scandal rag. If she saw the toy now and asked where it came from, he’d say, “Hell, I thought it was Mud’s. Found it right there in the yard. Think somebody’s kid threw it over the fence?”

“You’re a good fellow, Mud!” Parker gave the dog another liver treat, more pats, more praise, then sailed the Frisbee right up to the gate. “Go get it, Mud! That’s it! Good boy!” All the while running toward the gate himself. He closed the distance that Mud would have to run back, and the dog nearly stumbled when Parker wasn’t where he expected him to be. But then he lumbered happily to Parker’s feet, dropped the disk and panted, pleased as hell with himself.

This time, Parker sailed the disk toward the porch. When Mud dashed after it, Parker stepped a few feet closer to the gate.

“Good boy, Mud! Bring it here!”

The dog raced back and dropped the Frisbee. Then he looked at the gate and back at the porch, as if realizing something wasn’t quite right.

“It’s okay, boy, Yeah, you’re a good boy, good dog.” Parker spent a bit more time on the patting and praising. then he sailed the Frisbee toward the porch.

Mud’s hesitation was so slight, the disk had barely started its downward arc when he caught it. Then the dog stood looking back and forth — at Parker, at the porch, at the gate — holding the Frisbee in his mouth.

He sat down on his haunches and stared at Parker.

“Come on, Mud! Bring it here.” Taking one of the liver treats in hand, Parker offered it invitingly. “It’s okay, boy. Come on.”

Mud looked at the treat in Parker’s hand. He looked at the gate, then dropped the Frisbee, covered it with his big paws, and whined softly.

“Hey, boy, it’s okay. It’s me, your old buddy Parker.” Kneeling, he offered the treat again. “Come on fellow. That’s a good dog. Smart dog.” Smart as hell. “Bring it here.”

Mud looked at Parker’s outstretched hand, Parker sitting low to the ground now, no threat, no indication that the man might cut and run toward the forbidden gate. After a moment, the dog picked up the Frisbee, plodded to Parker’s feet, dropped the disk, and accepted the liver treat, chewing it more slowly this time, as he watched Parker with a wary eye.

They were becoming great friends, all right. Fun was fun, but the dog knew his job.

“You’re a damn good dog,” Parker said, meaning it. He picked up the red Frisbee and decided he’d pushed his luck enough for now.

 Join me right here next week for another Bitch Factor chapter, and if you’re just tuning in, you can find chapters 1-27 below.

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Bitch Factor – Chapter 27

Homicide Division had moved some years ago from the maze of offices in downtown Houston to the Southeast Service Center on Mykawa Road. The idea was to spread out, thereby easing the tension that surfaces under crowded working conditions. Dixie had known Benjamin Rashly as an overworked homicide sergeant sharing a desk and chewing Tums as if he owned stock in the company. Now, as a lieutenant of Accident Division, he didn’t belong in his old office, but he hadn’t broken the habit of dropping by.

When she popped in at eight o’clock Monday morning, he sat scowling down at an arrest report in a thick folder.

“Hey, Rash. Got time to talk?”

He held up a hand for silence.

Now that she was no longer with the DA’s office, getting Rashly to part with information on a police case was like trying to sweet-talk water from a well. On the drive over, she’d racked her brain for something she could trade for a look at the Keyes file. Official reports were public record. What she wanted were the bits and pieces that never made it to the official reports.

Rashly’s white hair was thinning on top, revealing a pink spot about the size of a silver dollar. He’d gained a few lines in his square face over the years and some extra padding around his middle. Not bad at all, though, for his age, which she guessed at mid to late fifties, same as Carla Jean’s. What a world of difference between this vital, active man and her wasted mother. Knowing it did no good to rush him, Dixie poured a cup of coffee from a pot on a table outside the door, then settled into a gray plastic side chair. His office walls had been recently painted, sky blue, a nice change from dingy beige. The smell of solvent evaporating from the uncured paint made her coffee taste worse than usual. When he finished reading, he leaned on a fist and peered at her over his gold-rimmed glasses.

“What do yo make of this?” He turned the file so she could see a yellow arrest sheet on a Hermie Valdez. “Three priors. One for accessory to felony theft, for which Valdez served six months, and two for harboring a know felon — her boyfriend, Alton Sikes. Both times, the cases were acquitted.

Dixie felt uncomfortable discussing anyone harboring a criminal when Parker Dann was probably showering at that very moment in her guest bathroom.

Rashly pushed the arrest sheet aside to show her a memorandum from the DA’s office.

“Twice Sikes is arrested and breaks loose. Twice Valdez hides him out — “

“Your men have a little trouble holding on to this guy?”

“Give me a break, Flannigan. We’re talking three years apart here, and Sikes is damn good with that jujitsu crap. Anyway, he serves nine months on the first burglary theft, gets out, goes back to his old ways, only he’s moved up to robbery, knocks off three Kroger grocery stores. This time he serves eighteen months, and learns how easy it is to pick up fifty, sixty bucks at an automatic teller. Must’ve robbed thirty people first week out. Waits till a customer gets cash from the ATM, then waltzes up with a .38 Special and takes the money. Half the time, the victims don’t file a report because the fifty they lost isn’t worth the hassle.

“This last time, though, Sikes picks a guy who just took three hundred dollars from the machine so he and his wife could drive to Austin. Their daughter’s working on a doctorate at UT, and she’d taken sick. Sikes steps out with his .38. Eichorn, that’s the victim’s name, knows he can’t get any more money from the machine because three hundred’s the limit for twenty-four hours. Sikes must’ve been hopped up on something, because he doesn’t hesitate, pumps four shots into the man’s belly, nearly cuts him in half. Mrs. Eichorn, who’s been sitting in the car out of sight, hears the shots and comes screaming around the corner. Sikes shoots her, too.”

“Both dead?”

“Both hanging on. He won’t make it. She will. Her testimony will convict Sikes–hell, it’ll bury the bastard–but first we have to find him. We know Valdez is hiding Sikes. It’s what she always does. I say, convince her she’s going down with him this time and she might talk.” Rashly stabbed the memorandum with a short, blunt finger, the nail surprisingly well manicured. As a homicide sergeant, he had chewed his nails, Dixie recalled. “How do we convince Valdez to roll over when the DA won’t use her priors in court?”

“Not won’t, Rash, can’t. Valdez’s lawyer apparently got the judge to disallow any reference to previous convictions. Not as easy as it sounds, actually. Nevertheless, the DA has to prove guilt in this case, regardless of past behavior.”

“Same kind of chickenshit you used to pull on me, Flannigan.”

She knew better than to take that bait. Rashly had never believed they were on the same side. Dixie refused to prosecute until she was personally convinced a suspect was guilty–then she wanted every piece of ammunition she could find to get a maximum sentence. While she never violated the disclosure rules, she danced plenty close at times, holding key bits of evidence to present at the last moment, when the defense felt confident and had dropped their guard. She hated plea bargaining. The guilty belonged behind bars, so the rest of the world could sleep easier.

“What are you doing here, Rash? This isn’t your case anymore.”

Rashly had worked himself to a wrath telling his story. He was flushed and short of breath, his head thrust forward in a familiar belligerent cant.

“I opened this case. I’ll see it closed.”

“You really want this guy,” Dixie said.

“I hate creeps who prey on weakness. This couple, they’re knocking on sixty-five. Woman’s barely able to talk but still worried about her daughter–“

“What do you think would happen if you let Valdez go?”

“Let her go?”

“Who is it you really want, her or Sikes?”

“Sikes, of course, the shooter. I don’t give a damn about Valdez.” He narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. “We let her go, she’ll be bustin’ a gut to contact Sikes and tell him what a fine ruse she pulled on the HPD. But she’s not stupid enough to lead us right to him.”

“You can’t use the kind of surveillance devices that’re needed.”

“Meaning you can.”

“I’m a private citizen. What I hear and pass along is fair game.”

“Not if it’s obtained illegally.”

“When have I ever done anything illegal?” They both knew they were dancing dangerously close to violating Valdez’s right to privacy. In Texas, evidence gained illegally, even by a private citizen, was inadmissible. But Dixie wouldn’t be gathering evidence. “Remember the Balsam case?”

As a young ADA with limited surveillance funds, Dixie had frequently used local talent. Take a kid fresh from his first juvenile arrest, get him to help out on a case. He wouldn’t turn on his friends, naturally, but adults and outsiders were fair game, and he could usually round up a few buddies to help out–cheap. Balsam, a reluctant key witness, had disappeared. Patrol units were cruising his usual haunts, but he hadn’t surfaced; yet Dixie felt certain he hadn’t left town. Then she remembered Balsam’s obsession with fitness. She obtained some passes to local health clubs and gave them to a recently paroled kid she’d pegged as salvageable. He and his buddies were beginning to develop some impressive pecs when they spotted Balsam on the bench press. A few years later the kid asked Dixie to write a letter of recommendation when he applied to the Police Academy.

“Valdez won’t make a move to contact Sikes,” Dixie told Rashly, “unless she’s convinced you aren’t sitting on her doorstep.”

“Hell, we don’t have the man power to sit on her doorstep.”

“I’ve got real keen ears, Rash.” As well as some new electronic bugs she’d been dying to try out.”

“Let me get this straight. We release Valdez, after much moaning and complaining so she won’t glom it’s a trap. Then we back off until we get an anonymous tip to Sikes’ whereabouts.” Rashly stroked his smooth-shaven chin in contemplation. “He’s not out on bail, so there’s no bounty. Why would you do it?”

“Would you believe I think bad guys should be locked up?” When he rolled his eyes, she amended, “Would you believe I’d trade it for something I want?”

“Sounds more like it. What’s the trade?”

“Information. A hit-and-run case last May, just after you moved over to Accident Division. Victim was a child, Elizabeth Keyes. I want to know what’s in the file that wasn’t put out for public awareness.”

He scowled. “You thinking to get a private dick’s license now?”

“Just something I’m looking into for a friend.”

“Must be a damn good friend.”

She shrugged.

“It’s a closed case,” he said. “I’d have to get the file from Records. Might take a while?”

“Did you work on it?”

“Not personally, you know how it is around here once you get promoted to a desk job. But I was cognizant.”

Dixie smiled at his unlikely jargon. “Then let me pick your brain. You can get the file for me later.”

“Pick my brain? Jeez, Flannigan, I hate that expression. Sounds ghoulish.” He scooped up their empty coffee cups and headed out the door.

While she waited, Dixie flipped through her recollection of Belle’s case file on Dann. Betsy had walked to school alone that morning because her two sisters were ill. The investigating officer sketched a map of the route the girls walked every day, which took them within a block of Dann’s house and three blocks of the Green Hornet. Spring Branch was an old neighborhood. Fast-food chains, small office buildings, and retail stores lined the main streets, with residential areas tucked in behind. The girl’s parents, Rebecca and Travis Payne, owned the Payne Cafe and Payne Hardware. Rebecca had been employed as head chef at one of the city’s elite restaurants before she married Payne and opened her own place next door to her husband’s business.

Rashly returned with two cups of steaming coffee. An aroma of Middleton’s Cherry Blend pipe tobacco followed him into the room. Went out for a smoke, Dixie figured, to think over her offer.

“What do you want to know?” He handed her the coffee, then stood over her, one elbow resting on a tall gray file cabinet. Dixie eyed the drawers. The Keyes report wouldn’t be here at Homicide, but downtown, in a cabinet just like this one.

“There’s one angle your guys briefly touched on but didn’t follow up,” Dixie said. “The possibility of Dann’s car being stolen–“

“Yeah, we thought about that, especially it being a Cadillac. There’s a bunch we’ve been trying to catch nearly a year now, steals high-profile cars–your Mercedes, your BMW, your Cadillac–sells them in South America, transported in cargo containers booked as carpet shipments. Roll the stolen vehicle to the back of the boxcar, fill the front with carpet. Inspector looks in, everything’s copacetic.”

“Sounds like a good lead. Why didn’t your men take it any further?” From the beginning, the cops had focused their investigation on Parker Dann. His prior arrest for driving while intoxicated hadn’t helped him any.

“What lead? Dann didn’t report his Cadillac stolen. Nobody reported seeing anyone messing around near his car. Nobody’s fingerprints in it besides his own and the boy who cleans and waxes it. And no other vehicles in the neighborhood were stolen that night.”

“Maybe it was an amateur. Stole the car, hit the girl, panicked, and put the car back where it came from.” Might as well see if the idea sounded as weak to Rashly as it did to her.

“You’re reaching, Flannigan. How many amateurs would remember to wear gloves? This was May, not December. Dann’s prints were all over the steering wheel. Anyone wiping their own prints off would’ve wiped his off, too.”

Dixie sighed. The case against Dann was looking tighter and tighter. “I noticed the girl and her parents have different surnames.”

“Mother’s been in and out of divorce court a couple times. Married again last year. Before that she was married to an architect. The youngest kid is his, but he adopted two from the woman’s earlier marriage, then fought her in court for custody of all three kids. Lost, of course. Single male, what the hell did he expect?

That would be Jonathan Keyes. “You check him out?”

“What’s to check? Respectable businessman, partner in a big architectural firm downtown. Like most divorced fathers, he gets the kids every other weekend and alternating holidays. His weekend happened to be the one before Elizabeth Keyes was killed. The girls stayed a few days extra to attend some blowout his firm was having. He dropped them off at home the night before the accident. Get the inflection on that last word, Flannigan? This was not a homicide.”

“Did you know one of Betsy’s sisters was killed in a swimming mishap in August?”

“Not in my jurisdiction.”

“Camp Cade, near Conroe. You didn’t hear about it?”

“No reason I should. An accident, not even in this county. Our case was closed by then. You see a connection?”

Dixie shook her head. “Must be hard on the family, though, losing two children like that.”

“Flannigan, why are you digging into this case? It’s a done deal.”

“Like I said, just–“

“I know, a favor for a friend. Well, tell your friend, Belle Richards, that you’re on a short leash fooling around in police business.” he picked up the Valdez file and quickly copied something on a notepad. “On this other thing, we never discussed it. I might’ve mentioned we’d like to know where Sikes is holed up, but I have no knowledge of any actions you might take on your own.” He ripped off the sheet he’d been scribbling on, folded it, and handed it to Dixie.

“A posted reward would help that story hold up.” Rashly was blowing smoke about not having access to Betsy’s file. He could call up the computer version with a few keystrokes. The HPD had issued computers to every patrol unit and required officers to log their reports daily. But then his name would be logged in. He might have to answer questions about why he was looking into the case at this late date. “You know, Rash, a skip tracer isn’t likely to finger a suspect without something in return.”

“What the hell happened to our deal?” His jaw thrust forward.

Dixie got up to go. “Hey, the deal hasn’t changed. You let me know the minute Valdez is released and I’ll be on her like dirt on a doormat. Your old homicide buddies can make the Sikes collar and get some good press. Only, I may have to work the surveillance in between paying jobs. A reward could hurry the results.”

Rashly heaved an agitated sigh. “I’ll see what I can do. But listen, Flannigan, don’t drop your guard. Valdez is tight with Sikes. It never ceases to amaze me what some women will do for the love of a man.”

“Rash, you’re getting downright romantic.”

Outside his door, Dixie unfolded the scrap of paper with Valdez’s address and telephone number. She stuffed the note in her pocket. In exchange for the time she’d have to spend putting a tracer on Valdez, she hadn’t gained much. But a deal’s a deal. Maybe there’d be more in the case folder.

And Rashly had mentioned something about Jonathan Keyes that set a ref flag waving in Dixie’s mind. The evening before Betsy’s death, Keyes had taken all three girls to a party. The next morning, the younger girls stayed home, conveniently sick, leaving Betsy to walk to school alone.

Join me right here next week for another Bitch Factor chapter, and if you’re just tuning in, you can find chapters 1-26 below.

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Bitch Factor – Chapter 26

Sunday morning came and went in a blur. After pounding the pillow until well past ten, Dixie took Dann to breakfast and then to the grocery. They bought a carload of food, things like ginger root, which she couldn’t imagine eating, and parsley, which she thought was used only as plate clutter.

By afternoon, the smells from the kitchen convinced her Dann knew what he was doing — pasta with shrimp, coffee made from freshly ground beans, and homemade pecan pie. He’d found her pecan stash in the pantry, the fifty-pound bag she saved out of each year’s crop, and had spent the morning shelling pecans while she slept. She didn’t have the heart to tell him about the automatic sheller in the barn.

“So,” he said over coffee. “We get started first thing tomorrow?”

He had shaved, and she was still getting used to his new face. He looked younger, friendlier, less sinister.

Mud lay with his muzzle on Dixie’s foot, faking sleep. She could feel his gentle pulse thrumming up her leg. Comforting.

Dann sat across from her in the breakfast nook, a diner-style booth barney had built after Dixie and Amy went off to college.

“Forget that ‘we,'” Dixie told him. Legally, she was treading a fine and hazardous line between illegal restraint and harboring a criminal, proving she could get in plenty of trouble without Dann’s help. “Your part is to stay put and fix whatever’s broken.”

He rose abruptly and carried their coffee cups to the counter, his face turned determinedly away from her. “Show me something that’s broke. I’ll fix it,” he said curtly. He took a long time refilling their cups. Then his broad shoulders relaxed and he turned, set the cups on the table and settled back into the booth. “Meanwhile, I cook and keep the place picked up, right? So you can concentrate on finding evidence to clear me. That’s our deal.” His voice had lost its edge. He gazed at her with wide-eyed innocence.

The high-backed benches were padded in imitation leather, cadet blue, exactly the color of Dann’s eyes. She hadn’t realized until now that his eyes were the same shade of blue as Barney’s.

True blue. The color of loyalty, royalty and robin’s eggs.

Trustworthy blue.

Barney had been trustworthy, but Dann was still a suspect in at least one killing. Dixie couldn’t afford to forget that. She looked at his mustache instead of his eyes. Definitely the mustache of a scoundrel.

“There’s no guarantee I’ll find anything,” she said. “Or if I do, that it will help your case.”

“Can’t blame me for hoping, can you?” He wiggled his eyebrows.

Dixie hated that. When he wiggled his eyebrows, she couldn’t help grinning.

“Hope is okay. But writing down everything you can remember about that night would be even better.”

He groaned. “We’ve already been over it –“

“And the tenth time around you remembered something important.”

“The salesman with the butterfly? Think he might be important?”

“You never said he was a salesman.”

“I didn’t?” Dann frowned, thinking about it. “He asked questions about selling, but like he didn’t have much experience. Said he was working on a big deal.”

“You said the Hornet was full of computer techies that night. Was he one of them?”

“No, he was talking land… or development… or something. Is that where you went last night, to talk to Augie?”

“Your friend wasn’t working last night.”

“Where the hell was he? Augie always works on Saturday. Big tip night.”

“Sick with the flu, according to his replacement.”

“That’d be the day man. Luke. So that’s all? You were gone half the night–“

Dixie slammed her cup down. “Cripple that horse, Dann, and walk it by me real slow.”

“What?”

“You’re here because I have a soft spot for justice. And because I think maybe justice is being thwarted in your case. It’s my call. This is my house. I’m not in the habit of reporting my every move.”

For an instant his blue eyes flashed anger, then he blinked it away and looked embarrassed. “Sorry. Your personal life is none of my business.”

 Personal? He thought she was out with a lover? She felt a flush of color rise in her cheeks. This situation was getting damned complicated.

Mud had jumped to attention and stood watching them beside the table. Dixie patted the dog’s side to reassure him.

“Okay, here’s what I found out. There were no local car theft rings working Spring Branch the night before the accident — which doesn’t rule out a solo–“

“Someone just picking up wheels? That’s possible, isn’t it?”

“Possible,” Dixie said, not believing it.

“Gets in a hurry. Tears around a corner and boom! Hits the kid. Then he’s scared. maybe drives around, realizing how much trouble he’s in. Sneaks back. No cops yet, so he parks the car in my driveway and beats it on foot.”

“Possible.”

Dann studied her face, and she could see some of the hope go out of him.

“We have other angles to work,” she said. “We have the guy with the butterfly tattoo, and we have all those techies to check out.”

The blue eyes brightened a bit. “We do, don’t we?”

Yeah. And only six days to find a lead that Belle Richards hadn’t found in seven months.

*

After dinner, Dixie marshaled her resolve for a duty she could no longer put off. Christmas gift in hand and embittered feelings firmly set aside, she visited her mother. The Flannigans had always encouraged Dixie to forgive and forget.

Your mum’s no saint, child, Kathleen had told her. She’s your blood mother, all the same, and you’ll do right by her. We can’t let wrong beget wrong, can we? Remember the good times. Remember she had a hard life. Kathleen had combed Dixie’s hair with her strong fingers. To whelp a child sweet as you, a mother can’t be too bad, now, can she?

The first few years after her adoption, Dixie had lost track of Carla Jean completely. Then the year she graduated high school, a card came, “To my darling daughter on Graduation Day,” postmarked Dallas. After that, Dixie received a postcard once a year, usually from somewhere in Texas, but once as far away as Phoenix. The cards stopped abruptly about the time Dixie joined the DA’s staff.

The next communication was from a hospital. Carla Jean had been found wandering along Interstate 10, bruised, bleeding, and confused. She’d been riding with a friend, she told the paramedics who picked her up. The friend was angry, and Carla Jean told him to stop the car and let her out. He opened the door and shoved her; her head hit the pavement. By the time the ambulance reached the hospital, she’d slipped into a coma. She never told anyone who the “friend” was. On an ID card in her mother’s handbag, Dixie was named as next of kin. Two weeks later, Carla Jean awoke from the coma remembering nothing about the accident and only bits and pieces of the past. Her motor skills were drastically impaired, but after a while she recovered enough to manage a walker. The doctors were encouraged. Then little by little, she lost all the ground she’d gained, along with her speech.

Now she lay in an oversize baby bed with chrome rails to keep her from falling out. The nurse had dressed her in a pink gown and brushed her thinning hair, gathering it back with a pear-encrusted comb.

Carla Jean’s green eyes sparkled as they had when she was young, but there was no depth to them. The doctors said she wasn’t blind or deaf, but she no longer responded to people in the room. She could eat when someone fed her, soft foods, which required no chewing. She could hold her hand up if someone raised it, and she wouldn’t know to put it down until someone lowered it.

“You want some juice, Mama? It’s apple, your favorite.”

Dixie held a straw to the withered mouth, watched the liquid slowly climb to the top, watched the neck muscles work to swallow. She hated seeing her mother like this. In the old days, nobody could cheer up a room like Carla Jean. And during the brief weeks following the coma, when she had seemed most like her old self, she’d brought joy to the entire hospital, turning the simplest gathering into a party.

Carla Jean had spent her whole life dancing from one party to another, waiting for her dream lover to show up. She needed people, hated being alone. Dixie wondered now if her mother was alone in her mind. Or had her imagination created a dream world filled with love and laughter and handsome men?

“Your hands look dry, Mama. Let’s put on some lotion to soften them.” Dixie opened the Christmas package she’d brought and poured creamy perfume-scented liquid into her own hand to warm it, then rubbed it gently into the papery skin. “You always had such pretty hands.”

She hated believing that Carla Jean knew some of her men friends had visited Dixie’s room.

“Mama doesn’t notice things,” Dixie had told one of the older girls at Founders. “She’s kind of dreamy, always imagining these wonderful things are about to happen. Then when they don’t, she gets onto another idea, forgetting the first one, as if it wasn’t important, anyway.”

“Sure, hon, you go on believing that,” the older girl replied. “But I’ve seen women who flutter their eyelashes and wiggle their butts at anything in pants, then play dumb like they’re oh, so innocent. Won’t take honest pay for sex, like that makes it dirty or something, but it’s all right if a man drops a gift on the dresser afterward, a token of affection. Some men give especially nice gifts for kiddie poontang.”

Dixie wasn’t sure Carla Jean ever really understood she had a daughter. She treated Dixie more like a sister, was barely seventeen when Dixie was born. Only fifty-six now, but looking eighty-five. Had she ever come close to finding her white knight? Or could no man measure up?

“You want to eat now, Mama? The nurse brought some nice vegetables.” When Dixie touched the spoon to Carla Jean’s mouth, the thin lips remained closed. Dixie coaxed with a slight pressure of the spoon but got no response.

She buzzed for the nurse, then gathered up her coat and gloves. As she was about to turn from the bed, Carla Jean blinked. A tear slid from the corner of her eye.

Dixie grabbed a tissue and blotted the moisture away. Then she snatched a couple more tissues for herself and hurried from the room.

Join me right here next week for another Bitch Factor chapter, and if you’re just tuning in, you can find chapters 1-24 below.

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Bitch Factor – Chapter 25 (find 1-24 below)

At half past midnight, after depositing Dann and Mud at her home in Richmond, Dixie turned the Mustang into an alley behind a four-story abandoned brick building at the edge of Downtown Houston. The night was still, clear and unnervingly quiet. No sign of the snow that had thrilled Ryan on Christmas Day.

She slipped the car into a niche between two buildings, then trod gingerly among broken bottles and other trash to a back entrance, where a rusted padlock sealed the door. The lock hadn’t been opened in years. Fingering a small black button at the bottom edge of the brick, Dixie watched a double bay door slide silently upward. The room inside was as dark as an oil slick on a moonless night.

Visiting the Gypsy Filchers’ headquarters was like visiting another planet. They were only available between midnight and dawn. With first light, they’d be as gone as smoke in the wind. And no matter where they set up shop, the place took on an otherworldliness similar to nothing Dixie had ever experienced. Their short-circuited youth seemed to heighten their imagination and resourcefulness, like the lost boys from Peter Pan.

Stepping into the dark building, Dixie waited for the door to close completely, then swept the walls and floor with a penlight, instantly setting off a rustle of activity among the ancient newspapers, empty oil drums and wooden pallets that littered the floor. Her light caught a pair of tiny red eyes before it swept past to what she was looking for: an ancient hydraulic elevator with a hand-lettered sign that said OUT OF ORDER.

Using the penlight, she located a small rusty wall panel, which she pushed aside to disclose a twelve-digit keypad. She tapped in a code. Moments later, a soft hum started the car downward.

Electricity pirated from a building down the block enabled the team to operate the elevator and other equipment. Blacked-out windows, machinery that ran smooth and quiet, and a schedule enforced with military precision had enabled them to work undetected from this location for almost a year.

The elevator doors yawned open, revealing a cubicle even blacker than the surrounding room. Dixie flashed her light across the walls and floor. She didn’t want to step into an open shaft. She was scarcely inside when the car started upward. Halfway between floors, it jerked to a halt. Dixie experienced a momentary panic. Was the mechanism faulty? Was someone playing games? But the car started upward again and moved smoothly to the top floor. When the doors opened, she found herself squinting into a halogen spotlight.

A gangly young man shared the spotlight with Dixie — stringy blond hair, freckles, and a double-barreled shotgun aimed straight at her chest. Beyond the lighted circle, everything was dark.

“It’s okay, Gabe.” The voice came from the darkness. “Let her in.”

The overhead fluorescent lights flickered on. Across the room, Brew, a sandy-haired kid just past his teens, slouched behind a computer desk, a telephone at his ear and a keyboard in his lap. He held up a finger, which Dixie interpreted to mean “just a moment,” then continued tapping out a string of characters. Her gangly escort disappeared.

She glanced around the warehouse. Packages of disposable diapers lined one wall, rising four feet high in some places, higher in others, as if some packages had been removed. Near the diapers were piles of toys and a rack of clothes. Boxes of food and other neatly stacked merchandise lined another wall. The desk and a few chairs occupied a corner.

“You don’t see a thing, Flannigan,” said a voice behind her, a woman’s voice, slick with loathing. “Keep your eyes to yourself.”

“Hello, Ski.” Dixie forced a smile as she turned to face the female member of the Gypsy Filchers’ management, a willowy platinum blonde with delicate features and deadly hands. She wore tight black jeans, black boots, a black turtleneck shirt. Dixie had never seen her dressed in anything else. Ski wasn’t her real name, of course. The team had taken street names so long ago they probably didn’t remember their birth names.

Ski sailed a seven-inch stiletto at a regulation dart board, burying the point in the bull’s-eye, then planted three more blades beside the first, thunk, thunk, thunk.  The center of the board had taken so many hits already that the cork was spongy. One of the knives fell out to land on a rubber mat, apparently placed beneath the board for exactly that purpose.

Dixie watched the girl bend double, as only the young-and-supple can, to scoop the knife from the mat. She plucked the other two from the cork. Whirling abruptly, she sailed a blade past Dixie’s right ear, so close the air sang. It took all Dixie’s nerve not to flinch.

Ski hefted another knife and aimed.

“I could take out your left eye from here — or the right one — I’ll let you choose.”

“Frankly, I’m partial to both.” Dixie allowed a broad grin to spread across her face. “I have a strong attachment, you might say.”

A mean little smile hovered on Ski’s lips. She feigned a throw, and when Dixie remained unblinkingly steady, the smile turned sour. Then Ski let the knife fly, and it sliced the collar of Dixie’s jacket.

Sauntering to the desk, the girl stood behind Brew, her hand on his shoulder as if marking territory. He mumbled something into the telephone and winked at Dixie.

“Whatever you’re peddling,” Ski said, “we don’t want any.”

“Peddling? As I recall, I’m usually on the buying end of our negotiations. Where’ Hooch?”

Dixie had met Brew and Hooch, the third and oldest member of the Filchers’ management team, four years earlier when the local police charged them with stealing a delivery truck full of goods from one of Houston’s successful grocery-store chains. The truck driver identified Hooch as a passenger in a car he saw tailing him, but none of the stolen goods were found in Hooch’s possession, and seventeen homeless people swore he was helping them erect a lean-to on the afternoon of the hijacking. Dixie had gotten a tip that the groceries were distributed in great haste t0 the homeless community, where they quickly  disappeared into hungry bellies. As a caring human being, she could sympathize, but as an ADA, she had a duty. In the end, by mentioning the line of homeless people outside her office, ready to swear to Hooch’s whereabouts at the time of the theft, she convinced the store owner to endorse a lenient sentence of deferred adjudication. The store got some favorable publicity and the Filchers were scared into staying clean — for a while.

Right or wrong, Dixie believed the three kids and their gang of cast-away teens caused fewer problems with these Robin Hood heists than if they turned to less discriminating crime. Maybe they were even doing a little good, so she’d left them alone — but included them in her information network.

From the beginning, she’d hit it off with Brew and hooch, but Ski was a different story. Something dark in Ski’s early years her skewed her thinking. With a vengeance bordering on psychotic, the young woman despised all authority figures, and even though Dixie was no longer with the DA, Ski maintained Dixie would turn them in as soon as she no longer needed their services.

Dixie watched her now, knowing that without the Flannigans’ rescue she herself might have turned out as bitter.

“Dixie!” Brew hung up the phone, wheeled his chair around the desk, and pulled her close in a powerful bear hug. His legs had been crushed in a playground accident before he was school age. To compensate, he spent hours each day developing upper-body strength. “Been too long, Dix. Hope you got our invitation.”

Ski plucked her throwing knife from the wall and drifted into the dark recesses of the warehouse.

“Invitation?” Dixie had picked up the mail when she arrived home but hadn’t sorted it.

“Our New Year’s Eve bash. You have to come. It’ll be a gas. Hey!” He spun the wheelchair around the desk. “I’m glad you’re here. You can preview my new magic show for the day-care tours. Watch this.” Reaching over the desk, he pulled a huge storybook onto his lap and opened it.

“Once upon a time…” he read with grave emphasis, “there were lee pittle thrigs.” Three fat rubber pigs popped up to peek over the top of the book. “The first pittle thrig built a haw strouse.” Brew snapped his fingers and a handful of straw appeared.

“The second pittle thrig built a hig twouse.” A bundle of twigs popped out of his shirt pocket, into the air, and rained all around him. “But the third pittle thrig worked lard and hong, building a brouse out of hicks.

As Brew turned a page in the storybook, a brick appeared in his other hand.

“How’d you do that?” Dixie said.

“Great, huh? How about the spoonerisms? Think the kids will understand?”

“With the visual aids, sure they will.” And if the kids didn’t understand, they’d love the show anyway. When Brew turned on his showmanship, he was a regular Pied Piper. Kids followed him everywhere. “But, Brew, I need–“

“Wait till you see the wig wad bolf, all clangs and faws–“

A furry puppet popped over Brew’s shoulder, baring its fangs and claws. Dixie laughed. But after seventeen hours on the road, she was tired and needed some answers. “Brew–“

“I know. You didn’t come downtown for kid stuff.” Grinning, he laid the storybook down. The fat little pigs disappeared inside it. “What’s happening?”

He scooped two sodas from a foam cooler beside the desk and tossed one to Dixie.

“Last May,” she said, popping the aluminum pull tab, “there was a hit-and-run killing in Spring Branch, a girl on her way to school.”

Brew nodded. “The dude that did it is on trial right now.”

“If he did it. Something doesn’t feel right about the case. I’m wondering if anyone was working the area that night. Maybe picked up the car, hit the girl by accident, then returned the car to throw the investigating officers off track.”

Brew shrugged. “Eight months is like forever. Who remembers what went down eight months ago?”

“People who keep good records. People with long memories who hear stories from other people who can’t keep their mouths shut.”

He shrugged. “Won’t hurt to ask.”

Picking up the phone, he pecked out a number. When it answered, he turned away from Dixie to speak privately. Taking her cue, she strolled across the room to a pile of toys and rooted around until she found a rubber ball. Bounced it a few times on the concrete floor. Pop. Pop.

She head the elevator hum. The doors opened and Hooch stepped out. It took him all of five seconds to spot her.

“Say, I knew there be a dang good reason to stop here, my main squeeze paying a visit.”

He wrapped his enormous arms around Dixie, lifting her off the floor to plant a substantial kiss on her cheek.

Hooch looked like something out of a horror movie. He stood six-four and weighed 240 without an ounce of fat. His face had never been handsome, but before it was nearly sliced in half by an ax blade, it might have been bearable. The jagged scar crossed the inside corner of his right eye, the bridge of his nose, and the left side of his mouth, where the ax had split his jaw, displacing some teeth and severing nerves and muscles necessary for smiling. Now Hooch only smiled on one side; the other remained frozen in a toothy sneer. Most who saw him preferred he didn’t smile at all.

“If Lissie hears that ‘main squeeze’ bullshit, you’ll be needing a patch for the other eye.”

His grotesque grin spread across half his face.

“Lissie got selective hearing. She don’t hear nothing she know I don’t want her to hear.”

“Hooch, you might convince somebody else you’re a mean mother, but I know you too well.”

He chuckled. “Danged if you don’t. Say, girlfriend, you see the stuff for the Casa?” He waved an arm toward the wall of diapers and toys.”

“The hospice for kids with–“

“Yeah! We took over a whole truckload of toys and clothes. Diapers, too. Save these for later, you know, so they wouldn’t be overstocked–“

“Or get suspicious about where they came from.” The Casa took care of children under six who were HIV positive. The Gypsy Filchers had a special soft spot for kids. Many of the team’s “charities” were homes for abused or sick children, But Hooch didn’t like to think about what happened to HIV kids when they disappeared. The only time Dixie had ever seen him violent was when a boy he’d grown attached to was returned to his abusive parents. Brew, Ski, and Hooch — they would never say whether the names parodied the old cop show team, Starsky and Hutch, or were further bastardizations of slang terms for beer and whiskey, brewsky and hooch — had slipped into the house after everyone was asleep, captured the abusive couple in their bed, and threatened to carve them into dog food if any member of the team ever saw so much as a bruise on the boy again. It seemed to work for a while. Then the child was admitted to the emergency room with multiple fractures. That same night, the couple disappeared, leaving their home and car behind. Dixie never knew whether they vanished on their own or with a strong suggestion from a big, scary black guy.

“I’ll bet the president of Kimberly-Clark would be proud to learn their missing truckload of Huggies is so hugely appreciated,” she told Hooch. “I hope you sent a thank-you note.”

“Don’t we always?”

Dixie felt someone slip up catlike beside her.

“Hooch,” Ski said, “you make that pickup?”

“Like clockwork. Being unloaded as we speak.”

“Good. I need the truck for a delivery.”

“The truck be all yours, Ski. Need any help?”

She seemed to think about that for a moment, eyeing Dixie all the while. Although the trio acted like brothers and sister, Hooch was the only one Dixie had ever seen with a date, and Ski was fiercely possessive of both men.

“Yeah, I do need your help,” she said.

“Then let’s be doing it.” He ruffled Dixie’s hair as he turned to go. “You, girlfriend. Don’t be so scarce.”

“Good to see you, too, guy.” Dixie looked back at Brew, who was still on the phone. He waved her over.

“–forget it,” he said into the phone. “We’re even now. Thanks for the help.” He wheeled around to face her and tapped a pencil on the desktop.

“I’m not sure this is what you want to hear,” he said. “Nobody was working that part of Spring Branch the night the girl was hit. Nobody professional, that is. We can’t rule out amateurs or someone passing through town.”

“If it was somebody passing through town, we’re sunk.”

“Yeah, well an amateur would either freak out and skip town with the car or dump it far from the accident. He wouldn’t calmly drive back and park it where he stole it, then trip away into the moonlight.”

“That’s how I see it, too.”

“Does your man have enemies?”

“I don’t think he stays in one place long enough to make anybody hate him. No family in town, no close friends.” But Dixie knew that a person could make enemies without being aware.

Before leaving, she promised to attend the New Year’s Eve party and forked over fifty dollars to send some teens to a big-screen pay-per-view bowl game. Yawning, she looked at her watch. As a skip tracer, she attracted strange friends who kept strange hours.

Arriving home at three A.M., she found a single light burning in the kitchen and a note propped against a plate of brownies on the table.

Your cupboard’s bare. I found four eggs, shortening, some flour and sugar in the canisters & a partial can of cocoa, hard as brick until I beat hell out of it with a tenderizing mallet. I threw out the fuzzy green stuff in the fridge. God knows what it was before it started growing hair. 2 of the eggs I scrambled and ate. I used the other 2 in the brownies. Eat these, they taste fine. You owe me breakfast. — Dann

Dixie studied the brownies, lifted one from the pile and took a hesitant bite. It was good. In fact, it was excellent. Her can’t-fail box type invariably came out tasting like cardboard.

She eased open the guest-room door to find Dann snoring and Mud curled up on the floor beside the bed. The dog raised his ugly head, yawning.

“Good boy,” Dixie whispered. Mud lowered his chin across freshly manicured paws and winked out. The vet would no doubt send a whopping bill for the extra days of kennel service.

Dixie considered what to do about breakfast. Taking Dann to the local cafe and supermarket in Richmond should be safe enough, with Mud along. If Dann liked to play chef, she’d buy whatever he needed. Home-cooked meals had been damn scarce since Kathleen died.

Cooking meals might also keep Dann too busy to cook up trouble. She could count on Mud to take Dann’s leg off if he tried to leave the yard, but a desperate criminal with too much idle time might eventually outwit even the World’s Best Watchdog.

Join me right here next week for another Bitch Factor chapter, and if you’re just tuning in, you can find chapters 1-24 below.

Meanwhile, grab a Copy of Slice of Life, another Dixie Flannigan thriller. Here’s a quick, fun preview:

 

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It takes both rain and sunshine…

It takes both rain and sunshine to make a rainbow. Within ever family and every great friendship, rain happens, and if we hang in there the sun peeks out again. This is a day to celebrate the love we have for life, country, and for one another. Let’s do it.

Bitch Factor – Chapter 24

December 27, Houston, Texas

Ellie waited until her mother’s bedroom door clicked shut, then switched her nightlight back on. she didn’t like sleeping in the dark anymore.

Shivering even under the extra blanket Mama had brought, she pushed the covers around Raggedy Ann’s chin and hugged her close. She wished she could go back to camp and find the lucky penny. Maybe if she hadn’t lost it, the bad thing wouldn’t have happened to Courtney.

She missed Courtney.

She missed Betsy, too.

Scrunching a corner of the pillowcase, she wiped her nose and eyes. Mama said the aspirin would make her feel better. Ellie wished it would hurry. Her tummy hurt and her head made pounding noises in her ears. Betsy would day, “Don’t think about feeling bad, think about something nice.”

Like The Nutcracker. That had been better than nice, the most beautiful thing she ever saw.

In her new red shoes from Daddy Jon, Ellie’d felt really grown-up. Daddy Jon called her his special lady.

She didn’t have to call him Daddy Jon. He was her real father, not a stepfather like Daddy Travis. But Betsy and Courtney always called him Daddy Jon, ’cause he wasn’t their real father.

Ellie wished Betsy and Courtney could see The Nutcracker. Together, they could act out the parts — with Ellie as princess. She was better at playacting that either … of her … sisters.

Her rotten … stupid … sisters.

Rotten … stupid … mean …

Why did they have to go away and leave her?

Ellie wiped her eyes. She wished the bad thing had happened to her first, so she wouldn’t feel so alone.

“Achoo!” She wiped her nose, then grabbed a tissue for Raggedy Ann.

Her head wasn’t making those loud noises in her ears anymore, and she didn’t feel so shivery. But her stomach hurt something awful.

Turning on her side, she tucked an arm around Raggedy Ann and wriggled her feet up under her nightie. She would ask Daddy Jon where to get another lucky penny. Maybe then the next bad thing wouldn’t happen.

Join me right here next week for another Bitch Factor chapter.

Meanwhile, grab a Copy of Slice of Life, another Dixie Flannigan thriller. You can see a quick, fun preview in the video below:

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Paradise Cursed – Chapter 28

Brushing her teeth with the door open, Dayna watched her sister. For at least ten minutes, Erin had sat on her bunk gazing into a hand mirror. Now she touched her lips as if remembering a taste she couldn’t quite get her mind around.

Weird.

“Narcissistic much?” The wisecrack came out of nowhere, and Dayna instantly wanted to take it back. Erin wasn’t at all self-absorbed. Since their parents’ death, she’d been the greatest big sister anyone could want.

When she didn’t answer, Dayna rinsed her mouth then sat down on the bunk beside her.

“Thanks for singing with me. We got some laughs, especially when you put your arms around Cookie on the final note.” When she still didn’t answer, Dayna said, “Cookie promised me five-hundred dollars if you’ll go to bed with him. I said you’ll knock on his door before midnight.”

Still no response. “Erin!”

“He kissed me,” Erin whispered.

“Who? Oh my god, the captain? Woohoo! I knew he was hot for you.”

“It’s not…” Whatever she said next was swallowed by the rain hitting the bulkhead and their tiny porthole. Then, “Every since he kissed me, I’m in his head.”

“What, like you can hear his thoughts?” Cool!

“Sometimes. Mostly when he’s angry or—” She threw the mirror on the bed, yanked open the door and ran outside.

She left the door standing open. Erin doesn’t do that.

“Erin! It’s storming out there.” Dayna ran after her.

*

Raindrops gathered in midair like steel shavings drawn together by a magnet.

Impossible, of course, but there it was.

Clumps of water hung collecting more and more droplets, forming a roughly human shape. The shape rapidly refined itself until it might have been a talented chef’s ice carving, complete with hair, beard, glaring eyes and crooked, rotten teeth.

But it wasn’t ice, it was liquid, which could move and flow and reform. It had legs, arms. It wore boots, clothing and a hat. It carried a rapier.

Captain Richard Stryker, my ancient enemy.

Whatever curse had burned out the Spanish brigantine, leaving me alone and unharmed on the Sarah Jane must also have immortalized Stryker in his own watery hell. Once every few months I could depend on his visit, always in a rainstorm, always raging mad.

Stryker’s entire manifestation took less than a minute. By then, I was headed his way, cattle prod in hand.

“McKinsey, you niddering mouse, get over here and take what’s coming to ye.” The voice was only in my mind, but the vision was real and Stryker’s sword was as solid and sharp as any blade.

I’d patched up more cuts than I could count from that blade, yet I once severed Stryker’s watery head from his watery body, and it flowed right back together. Bullets passed through him without harm.

A flare gun once had left a bigger hole, apparently evaporating the part of him it touched. A moment later, the hole was gone, and even in the rain, shooting off too many flares on a ship was piss-poor thinking.

How I’d hit upon using electrical current, I don’t recall, but for some reason it scatters the water, and it takes a minute or so for Stryker to reassemble. The battle can still go on and on, though, I with my electric stick growing weary, he with his rapier tiring not at all.

So now, to avoid losing an appendage, I sidestepped the blade aimed at me and gave my watery opponent a jolt. Half of his body sprayed the air. The other half dissolved onto the deck.

Seconds later, he reappeared behind me, coming fast.

The lad on fore watch must have heard the commotion. He arrived just as I prodded my opponent for the third time. The lad stood gaping as Stryker’s watery molecules scattered.

Unlike pirates, mates don’t carry weapons aboard my ship, so when Stryker materialized again and came at me with his sword, the mate nearly fell arse-backwards trying to get away.

“Don’t worry yourself about this,” I called to him, as I gave Stryker another jolt. “I’ll take care of it. You mind the ship.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And keep mum about what you see here.”

“Yes, sir!” Still agape, he tripped backing up but quickly righted himself and fled.

The skirmish went on and on, Stryker coming each time from a different angle. At one point he became so enraged at not being able to get at me that he sliced through some rigging for spite. Then he materialized behind me again.

I spun on my heel and started toward him. My boot hit a slick spot. I went down hard. The cattle prod slid from my hand.

In an instant, Stryker was looming over me, his booted foot on my groin, rapier raised over my outstretched arm. Despite the number of times we’ve fought this battle, there were always surprises. It had been a long time since I felt quite this powerless.

For a sudden moment I was nine years old, dangling by Stryker’s fist wrenching my collar, his glistening black eyes full of slimy crawling things and his laughter exploding in my ears. The moment passed, but looking up into Stryker’s hellish face, I couldn’t deny it: this time I was scared.

And maybe he had water for brains, but he knew what I was thinking. Whichever way I moved, his rapier could get there faster. I’d be without a hand. Or an arm.

I’d lived long past my pirate days when lost limbs paid extra. If the devil would go for my neck, one hard clean swipe, it might solve both our problems. I’m fairly certain I can’t grow a new head or meld my severed neck back together, as he can.

Go for the neck, I silently implored. Do a clean job of it. Cut the head right off. I’ll even stretch it out for you, and we’ll be free of each other for good. Stryker had always enjoyed maiming a bloke, though.

The moon appeared from behind the clouds, and the rain seemed to be letting up. Foolish to count on it.

The cattle prod lay some four feet away to my right. As these thoughts flashed through my brain, I glanced to my right, feinting, then twitched a shoulder in that direction.

Stryker swung his blade.

I rolled left while kicking his ankle with my boot heel. My boot struck water, of course, but it knocked a chunk out of him, and he stumbled.

While he got himself back together, I turned and reached for the prod—

The rapier got there first, missing my hand by a hair as I jerked it back.

And he was right there upon me, swinging again! No time to move— the blow struck above the elbow—

A shrieking banshee flew from the shadows. It barreled across the deck and tackled Stryker like a full-body battering ram.

My enemy scattered into pieces.

I grabbed the prod and scrambled after him. He was still missing some chunks when I hit him with the shock and sent him spraying into the wind again.

He’d be back, but the rain had definitely slacked off. So maybe not tonight.

Scanning for where he would manifest next, I spied the banshee that had saved my arm from being hacked off at the shoulder.

It was Erin.

This is our last week together on Paradise Cursed, so BUY THE BOOK now, because we’re only halfway there and you’ll want to read what happens next.

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Bitch Factor – Chapter 23

December 27, Interstate 45, Texas

Parker watched the Houston Skyline tower into view, buildings like sentries waiting to close in on him. He was in a pissy mood, not at all interested in talking about the night of the hit-and-run. Why was Flannigan so friggin keen on the subject, anyway? They’d be quits soon as she dropped him at the county jail.

“Tell me about the guy who stayed late at the Green Hornet,” she said.

“Again? Nothing’s changed in two hours.”

The bounty hunter’d cut the twenty-two-hour trip to seventeen, driving like a Tasmanian devil — with the fortitude of a camel and the bladder of a friggin elephant. Stopped once, for gas, leaving him locked in the backseat without a prayer of breaking free.

As the mile markers whipped by, he’d tried to get her talking about herself — family, work, anything to give him an edge. The bitch ignored him! Kept asking about his case, same questions over and over, more relentless than the friggin cops who arrested him. Maybe she was brushing up on her cross-examination techniques, planning to go back into litigation.

“Humor me,” she insisted. “What did the man look like?”

Parker crossed his arms, turned sideways, and leaned against the car door.

“Light brown hair, receding hairline. Ears stuck out from his head. Six-one, hundred and eighty pounds, lanky –“

“Lanky, is that the same as wiry?”

“Hell no. A guy that’s wiry, he’s slender but muscled. Tightly wound, like a spring. This guy was running on idle.”

With downtown Houston still painted in lights against the night sky, they reached the bypass leading to the county lockup. Flannigan took the turn, and Dann’s chest tightened. He recalled all too vividly his brief stay in this miserable place: Crowded. Smelly. Volatile. A cauldron of bile with no vent. Even now, months later, he heard doors clang shut behind him and apprehension squirmed like worms in his belly.

Been kidding himself thinking he’d get loose from Flannigan. Charm her, he’d thought. For a while, back at the motel, it seemed to work. She’d combed her hair and softened up a little. Then whap! She shut down. He won so many friggin gin games, he knew she wasn’t paying attention. Laughed when he tried to sit up front. She had a great laugh. Gave him the Mountain Spring Water bottle and started on the third degree. So much for his fancy escape plan.

“Lanky,” she said now. “Not wiry. How old was this guy?”

“Thirty-eight, forty. But baby-faced, like he could look young even when he’s older — “

“Tattoos? Scars? Moles?”

Dann was about to say no when a picture popped in his mind, a butterfly with a human head. Bright. Intricate. On the man’s left forearm. Why hadn’t he remembered that before?

He told her about it. “Why are you harping on this, anyway?” There was something screwy about the whole deal, Flannigan getting on his trail so fast.

“Belle Richards believes you’re innocent. She doesn’t want you screwing up your chance of acquittal. You’re lucky she sent me to find you.”

“You mean the DA doesn’t know I cut out?”

“Not yet.”

“Officially, then, I’m not a fugitive…”

“Dann, you were a fugitive as soon as you crossed the state line. Right now I’m the only one who knows.”

“What about Richards?”

“I haven’t talked to her since I agreed to scout around, see if you were bending an arm at one of your favorite haunts.”

That put him back where he started when he left the courtroom. Richards must have picked up somehow on what he was planning.

Flannigan pulled off the road and stopped. Parker looked out to see razor-sharp barbed wire curling along the fence that encircled the Criminal Detention Center. Doors clanged shut in his mind. His stomach started to squirm.

“So…” he said, his voice sounding dry as paper in his ears. “What now?”

“Now we have a dilemma.” She turned to face him. Light from the Center’s sodium flood lamps cast an orange glow along one side of her face. Her brown eyes were as impenetrable as the night. “If I take you inside, it’s all over. You stay locked up until the jury reaches a verdict. The fact that you skipped will tip the scales against you.”

“You could drop me at home.” We wiggled his eyebrows, tried to smile, feeling how pathetic it must look. “I’ll stay put till the trial.”

She didn’t say anything, just stared with those big, soft eyes. Smirking.

“What do you want, Flannigan, a guarantee signed in blood?”

“You have seven days until your trial resumes. The closer it gets, the more you’ll sweat the jury’s decision. You’ll get itchy feet, Dann.”

He hated to admit she was right. The weight of truth settled on his shoulders, and hope seeped out through his teeth in a rush of air. Probably bolt before her Mustang was out of sight.”

“Hell. Maybe I’ll be lucky. Maybe the jury mellowed out over Christmas.”

“I wouldn’t count on it.”

She was chewing on something. He wished she’d spit it out. “Got an alternative?”

“Maybe.” She studied him for a minute, her eyes soft and unreadable. “I could turn you over to Belle Richards, collect my fee, and forget about you. Belle is way too trusting, so you’d soon find a way to skip town again. Then I’d haul you back and collect another fee.”

“Sounds like bounty hunting pays well.”

“With fewer hours than prosecuting, and less stress.” She yawned. He could tell she was taking her time, either stalling to make up her mind or enjoying watching him sweat. “There’s another alternative,” she said, finally. “How handy are you around a house?”

“Handy? You mean fixing things?” She nodded, and he said, “Fair, I guess. Fix up my own house when it needs it.” As long as it didn’t include plumbing, wiring, or carpentry.

“I can put you up until your trial resumes. In exchange, you do odd jobs. And maybe I’ll look around, see if I can turn up any new evidence.”

“Why would you do that?”

She hooked a thumb toward the building across the road.

“There’re too many criminals on the streets who ought to be locked up over there, and maybe a few inside who don’t belong. The system would work a hell of a lot better if cops, lawyers, and judges did what’s right instead of just doing their jobs. Barney Flannigan used to say, ‘You’re either part of the solution, Dixie, or part of the problem.’ I believe that I also realize it’s possible you got a raw deal.”

Parker started to speak, but his throat went suddenly tight, and he had to turn his face into the shadows. Crazy, the way hope made your eyes water.

After a few moments, he said, “Think you’ll find something the cops missed? And Richards’ PI missed?”

“If you didn’t drive your car the morning Betsy was killed, someone else did. Let’s say someone stole it and hit the girl by accident. Why bring the car back to your house? Why not abandon it across town where no one would connect it with the girl’s death, at least not immediately?”

“Sounds like one of the DA’s arguments against me.”

“Face it, the DA has a tight case. But he didn’t start from the position that you might be innocent.” She paused, looking thoughtful. “The thief may have brought the car back to your door knowing it would focus the investigation on you, at least until you were cleared and by that time his trail would be cold. Your being drunk might’ve been an unexpected bonus.”

Parker didn’t want to get his hopes up, only to have them smashed in the courtroom, but if Flannigan could find some evidence… “While you’re out snooping, how do you know I won’t skip?”

She started the car. In the rearview mirror he saw her smile.

“I have a good friend I can trust to keep you in line.”

Friend? Another Superbitch? Parker envisioned a dungeon master with whips and chains.

Driving back the way they’d come, she passed downtown and turned on the Southwest Freeway. A mile or two outside the city, she exited the freeway and turned on a two-lane road.

“I take it you don’t live in Houston,” he said.

“About twenty miles out, in Richmond.” She stopped in front of a sprawling country house. “But right now we’re picking up my friend.”

He watched her stroll to the door, stretching as she walked. Before she even rang the bell, the porch light flicked on. The screen door opened, and Flannigan disappeared inside. Five minutes later, she came out with a dog, part Doberman pinscher, by the look of it. Maybe part mastiff. Its head reached almost to Flannigan’s shoulder. Had the coloring of a Doberman, but heavier, more muscular. Muzzle a foot wide, like a bulldog’s.

Parker could hear Flannigan murmuring soothing phrases. When she opened the front passenger door the beast lumbered onto the seat. Snarled through the steel mesh.

“Parker Dann, I want you to meet my best friend, Mud. For the next seven days, he’ll be your roommate and bodyguard.”

Jesus, that thing’s teeth are like daggers. Dann could feel them piercing a leg, crunching right through to the bone. The dog growled low in his throat, eyes steady with malice.

“He hates me,” Dann said.

“Don’t be silly. Mud doesn’t hate anybody. But he can pretend he hates you if you get out of line.”

“Mud? What kind of a name is that?”

“Short for Mean Ugly Dog.”

Join me right here next week for another Bitch Factor chapter.

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Here Lies a Wicked Man – Chapter 36

IN HIS CUBBYHOLE, WITH HIS TECH EQUIPMENT and marked-up script, Bradley listened to the whisper of backstage activity. The lighting guy had gone home early, complaining about his cast itching as if invaded by ants, and left Bradley to work the changes for the first act.

Before the play started, he’d run through the whole script sequence with only one glitch, which he replayed until he knew it cold. Now, his brain on automatic, the irritation with his father intruded again.

What was Dad trying to prove? His old job had seemed safe all those years, yet he’d almost been killed. Investigating a murder had to be maximum dangerous.

Seeing his father in the hospital, tubes running everywhere, Bradley had sat beside his bed in the dark and confessed. He knew his mother had wanted the divorce. But fathers were supposed to be strong, able to fix things. Bradley counted on him to fix the family back together. He confessed that he missed his father and ached to talk to him at times. Dad hadn’t been awake to hear that confession. Later, Bradley never seemed to find the words to express how he felt.

Now that Dad had gotten sucked into another dangerous job, Bradley wondered if his own accusation had pushed him. Dad was no quitter. He’d tried more than once to patch things up. How many families stayed together forever, anyway? Among all his friends, he knew two.

As the act one curtain fell, Bradley brightened the lights, then took the stairs two at a time to the men’s dressing room. Jeremy’s car hadn’t been in the parking lot when Bradley arrived. He wanted to ask a few questions about Jeremy’s brother. Aaron reminded him of Duff Clark, the bully he’d clobbered in grade school. Aaron had that same angry hardness in his eyes, even when he tried to be all buddy-buddy, selling Dad the Tahoe. If anybody knew whether Aaron had killed his father, it’d be Jeremy.

Hearing his voice softly rehearsing his lines, Bradley found the actor-director at a makeup table. The voice came from a tape in an old boombox. Jeremy buttoned the dusty blue uniform jacket of a railway conductor and murmured the lines along with the audio.

“Wasn’t sure you’d make it,” Bradley said. “That inquest was maximum intense.”

Jeremy positioned a partially bald, stringy gray wig on his head. Securing it with spirit gum, he glanced at Bradley in the mirror. “It was dumb.”

“Dumb?”

“Birdwell’s a jerk.”

Bradley didn’t know what to say to that. The coroner had seemed okay, but Bradley conceded he might feel differently if it was his father who’d died.

“You did fine,” he said. “I mean, you and your brother finished quick. It was later that everything turned intense.”

Jeremy penciled a deep wrinkle alongside his mouth.

“My dad has to help the sheriff investigate,” Bradley said.

“Tell him to check out McCray’s bank account. Find where she squirreled away all the money Dad gave her.” Jeremy streaked dark color under his cheek bones, creating shadows.

“He gave her money?” Bradley tried to recall what was written under “motive” beside Melinda’s name on his father’s chart.

“Everyone knows my father spent nights at her house. She’s a pig.”

Bradley recalled how Melinda had looked at the inquest. Optimum figure. Prettiest woman he’d seen since leaving Houston. A lot of men had watched her, including Jeremy’s brother.

“I guess Aaron must feel pretty bad about the argument with your father just before he died.”

“Didn’t mean anything. Dad and Aaron were always arguing.”

Was that significant? Bradley had spent four years barely saying a civil word to his father, the air between them as heavy as crankcase oil, but he’d never wanted to hurt him.

“Forty thousand dollars is a lot of money,” he said.

Jeremy laid the brush down and met Bradley’s gaze in the mirror. “Why the hell are you so interested in my brother?”

“If it was my father that died, I’d want to know what happened.”

In the railway conductor’s face, Jeremy’s eyes looked fierce. “My brother didn’t kill my father. Despite what that woman says, my mother didn’t kill him either.”

Bradley suddenly felt bad about digging into Jeremy’s problems. He was a friend. If Bradley had a brother, even a bully like Aaron, he wouldn’t rat him out. Wanting to smooth it over, he nodded.

“Ms. McCray sure caused a stir at the inquest. Guess your mother got the raw end of it.”

Jeremy stood abruptly and faced Bradley, the old-man makeup incredibly realistic.

“No matter what my father did, my mother never raised her voice to him, never demanded he stay at home when she knew he was going out with another woman. It ate at my mother, made her old and bitter. But she never gave up hope that he’d change—until he started whoring around for the whole town to notice. Whoever shot the arrow, that McCray pig killed my father.”

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