Chris Rogers's Blog, page 8

Paradise Cursed – Snippet 19

CHAPTER 16

“The whole summer?” Dayna couldn’t believe their luck. “You said yes. Right?”

Erin looked away.

No matter how many sheep or good-looking sailors Dayna counted in her mind, she had not been able to sleep. Anyway, she could still hear music playing on shore. Her shoulders and feet refused to be still. When the rain had stopped, and Erin returned to their cabin, Dayna bombarded her with questions until the captain’s proposal popped out like a surprise inside a birthday cake. They could travel with the crew for as long as Erin did tarot readings for the ship’s passengers. How could she not say yes?

“I told him I would consider it,” Erin said.

Her sister still didn’t look at her. Dayna couldn’t stand the silence. Silence meant Erin was stacking all the reasons to say no on one side against a single yes on the other.

“What’s to consider? This is a no-brainer, Erin. You can use the summer to get out of your funk, thumb your nose at the jerk, catch up on your blog, get a sensational tan, breathe a whole summer of air untainted by diesel fumes and cow farts and, best reason of all, I can learn to sail a schooner!”

“I’m not in a funk.”

“Oh, really?” Dayna jumped from her bunk, walked the two steps to their bureau and got the hand mirror. She held it in front of Erin’s face. “That is what a funk looks like.”

Erin took the mirror and turned it upside down on her mattress. “Maybe you’re right about taking more time away from… everything. But this ship…”

“This ship is perfect for letting go of whatever’s clogging your head. We’ve never been on a tall ship before. We’ve never been to the Caribbean. We don’t know anyone like the people we’ve met here.”

“Your point?”

“No reminders, Erin. You can make all new memories. Who knows, maybe you’ll decide to sell the old albatross and buy a house somewhere in the islands.”

“Our house is not an albatross.”

“Yes, it kind of is. Or you could lease it—whatever—just to stay away until you can look at the walls and the furniture and the dishes and photographs and smell the garden without instantly reliving every bad thing that happened in the past year.”

Erin finally turned to look at her. “We have good memories there, too.”

“We don’t need a house to remember the good times.” Dayna sat down and placed a hand over her sister’s. “You deserve to have some healing time, sis.”

Instead of cheering her, the words seemed to deepen Erin’s frown. And then Dayna got it. How could she have been so dense? In her own crazy happy world of working with the ship’s crew tomorrow, she’d blanked out on what happened just before the captain appeared.

“Is this about that… thing… we saw on the deck earlier? Spooky, but what does that have to do with the ship? You’ve always been a little bit psychic—yeah, I know, you don’t like to talk about it, but it’s true. If we go home, that goes with you. It’s part of you. It’s not part of the ship.”

“I’ve never before seen a forty-foot snake with yellow, murderous eyes coming at me.”

Dayna felt a shiver, remembering. It had happened so quick. And maybe she’d intentionally shoved it out of her mind. “How did you know what to do?”

Erin shrugged and shook her head. “I didn’t. I just…I saw the snake, and the amulet was suddenly in my hand, and—”

“But you knew the words to say that made it vanish. How did you know?” Then another thought occurred to her. “If you’re the psychic, why did I see that spooky vision?”

Again, the shrug, the vague shake of her head. “I’ve no idea where it all came from. But I think you only saw it because you were touching me.”

“Yeah-ah-h.” It made sense now. “You stepped away from me, and it vanished, but you were still staring, mumbling those words, as if you could still see it.”

“That sort of wide-awake vision never happened to me before I set foot on this ship.”

“And you think it will stop if you leave?”

“I don’t know.” She fingered the amulet hanging around her neck. “The captain wants me to do readings. And I guess he wants you to scrub decks and polish brass.”

Dayna didn’t mind scut work. It was the way of the sea. You learned to care for a ship before you learned to steer it. “I bet I’ll get a turn at the helm before the summer’s over.”

Erin’s eyes were full of sadness and confusion. “Dayna, you know I want you to have this dream, but I don’t know if I can do this.”

“The reading with Ola went okay, didn’t it? She was ecstatic when you told her about the year ahead, and you didn’t get any spooky backlash. Did you?”

“No.” The tiniest smile curved Erin’s lips and touched her eyes. “It went well.”

“And you’ve always loved that ability to help people see what’s ahead.”

“Until I…” The smile vanished as quickly as it appeared.

“Until you began seeing things that weren’t all roses and sunshine.”

“That’s not fair. I’ve always been willing to lay out exactly what comes to me, good or not so good, but…cards and astrology charts don’t predict death. And the things I’ve been seeing, well I don’t know what I’m supposed to do about them.”

“Okay.” Dayna wanted her to accept the captain’s offer, wanted to sail on the Sarah Jane all summer, wanted it so bad, but she didn’t want her sister to be hurt or unhappy. “So here’s how I see it. If you want to curl up and hide from what’s going on in your head, let’s go home. If you want to find out what you’ve got and get hold of it, this ship seems like the right place.”

Erin lifted her eyebrows and pursed her lips in a way that always signaled she was giving an idea some serious consideration. Then she smiled, a real one, not that same sad half-smile as before. “Little sister, when did you grow up so much?”

Dayna grinned back. Yes!

*

“There’s nothing more I can do,” Demarae had said.

After casting off, I opened the dory’s throttle hoping the speed, the sound and the wind in my face would siphon off some of the frustration of getting bugger-all in my dealings with the shaman. True, he did not appear to be the charlatan I was prepared to strong-arm into refunding Ayanna’s money. In fact, he had proffered the envelope she gave him before I could mention it.

But money wasn’t the real issue, was it? Mind and body, the girl was turning into a bloody reptile, and who the blazes knew what was happening to her soul in the process?

“Not good enough!” I had not come to hear him beg off. “There’s got to be something we can do. A replay of the same ceremony, only with a goat instead of a chicken. Isn’t that a bigger sacrifice, better to win the orichas’ favor?”

“Not better, just different. And a replay, as you say, would not benefit Ayanna. I am a humble servant of my religion with strong favor among the orichas, but the Bokor’s dark magic is more powerful.”

“What if we take the orichas aboard the Sarah Jane? You know the rumors about my ship having her own powerful magic. You, Marisha, all the ladies from last night. I’ll clear out the dining room, and we’ll do it while my passengers are ashore.” I hated the idea, but I hated even more knowing a loathsome voodoo master was using my ship to sharpen his nasty habits. What Ayanna was going through needed to be stopped.

Demarae seemed to seriously consider the idea.

“I cannot guarantee it would work. And the risk? This is a thing that needs careful thought.”

“I understand.” A simpering platitude, because I didn’t understand at all. Yes, the ship was three hundred years old and still sailing, just as I was. In addition to the periodic overhauls, there had to be something magical about that. “Yet judging by Ayanna’s change from yesterday, when she boarded, until an hour ago when I took that video, she doesn’t have a lot of time before whatever this Bokor has planned will come to completion. Reversing a curse must be a lot harder than stopping one in its tracks.”

Demarae gave another of his grave nods. “Time is certainly a factor to be considered, though perhaps haste is not as important as having the best practitioner. I am an excellent shaman, and I will carefully consider your plan to have the Sarah Jane‘s power amplify my own. But here is another possibility.” He paused. “On Roatan Island, Honduras, Shaman Omar Shawnte practices a somewhat different order, using various herbs and poisons. He is said to have trained in Africa, the birthplace of our religion. I have sent other difficult cases to him.”

“With what result?”

“Various, in all honesty. It is a sad fact that the black arts are very strong, and Ayanna’s Bokor is clearly practicing on the side of evil.”

Except for the watch lights, the Sarah Jane was quiet now and dark. As I tied off the dory and climbed the accommodation ladder, I reflected on my new assessment of Shaman Demarae. He was a good man seeking to do good in the manner in which he was trained. What more could anyone ask? I decided to discuss both options with Ayanna, but I was leaning toward a visit to Roatan.

A pirates’ haven in the old days, though decades before my time, the island held strong memories for me. I had spent more plunder on Roatan while drinking tankards of rum, trading stories and bedding women than on any other island in the Caribbean.

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Bitch Factor – Chapter 8

Chapter 8

Thursday, December 24, Interstate 29

The Mustang’s tire felt solid enough on the snow covered gravel stretching back to the highway, but the icy blacktop was less forgiving. When Dixie stepped on the gas, the big engine surged and the car’s rear end fishtailed all over the road, swerving inches from an oncoming pickup truck.

She fought for control, panic snapping at her. Suddenly the tires grabbed the pavement and the car settled into the lane, steady and straight.

Dixie filled her lungs, waited a beat, then let the air seep out between her teeth, countering the surge of adrenaline that tensed her muscles.

“ Let me guess,” Dann said. “ Got your driver’s license by mail order.” It happened so fast, everything fine one minute, out of control the next. Usually, she was a good driver, facing tricky situations with a cool head, but she was tired, wired, and sleepy – the worst driving conditions she could imagine. Loosening her grasp on the steering wheel, she flexed her fingers, mentally counting to ten.

Losing control was a special fear of hers, a deep-rooted fear. As a youngster, she’d play football with the tough kids on the block, but roller skating left her hugging the rail. Where was the logic?

Just now, though, she’d done all right. Both truck and Mustang sped unmarred toward their destinations. By midnight or bust, she’d make Omaha, even without chains or snow tires.

Easing up on the gas, she relaxed into a comfortable cruising speed a hair over forty-five. Driving would be a damn sight easier if she could give her eyes a rest from the blinding whiteness. Squinting made her head ache, yet her sunglasses were too dark. Their comforting shade would coddle her right to sleep.

A silent barrage of snowflakes flying straight at the windshield was sleep-inducing enough, every bit as mesmerizing as the glistening ribbons snaking along the highway in front of her. Dixie cast her gaze into the distance and tapped her foot to an imaginary rock band, refusing to be lulled.

“No ketchup for these fries,” Dann groused.

“Look in the other bag.”

Dixie heard a rustle of paper followed by the crinkle of plastic packets. She’d tossed everything to the back except the thermos of coffee.

“Damn good burgers. Do you want one?”

“Later maybe. Not now.”

Her stomach felt as empty as a winter ball park, but tanking up on food would only encourage sleep. With the lane stripes buried under the snow, she had to keep sharp to stay on the road. Luckily, the highway was straight and flat.

“Saw you thump your bumper back there at the cafe. Nasty fall. Surprised you didn’t break something.”

Dixie ignored him. Conversing with skips made as much sense as laundering bullshit. Skips bitched about how the cops handled their investigation, bitched about their own attorneys, and bitched about the system in general. They could spin heartrending stories asserting their innocence, but anyone guppy enough to listen would be broadsided later by the truth.

If she made a list of people to scrape off the face of the earth, drunk drivers would crowd right up near the top. Dumb, self centered and lethal. She could understand anyone getting snockered – hell, she’d been snockered a few times herself, had even curled up in the backseat to sleep it off. But a drunk behind the steering wheel turned a car into a weapon. Parker Dann might as well have held a gun to Betsy Keyes’ head and pulled the trigger.

“Probably stepped on a patch of black ice back there,” Dann mumbled around his hamburger.

Sure was a talkative bastard.

A shock of wind slapped the car, sending it scudding across the road. Startled, Dixie clenched the wheel and took her foot off the gas until the car righted itself. It had swerved only a few inches into the other lane, but the incident left her shaken. Crosswinds could be devastating. She had battled them on the Texas flatlands, usually during spring or fall, not dead of winter; never on icy pavement. She slowed to forty.

“Black ice,” Dann was saying, “dangerous stuff. Slick as oiled glass…”

At forty miles an hour, Dixie calculated, we’ll make Watertown in three hours, Sioux Falls in five.

“… builds up in thin sheets. So clear you see the pavement through it and don’t know you’re on ice until it’s spinning you nine ways to Sunday.”

The entire sky now roiled with clouds, forward horizon as murky as the one behind. Folks at the diner hadn’t been joking when they called it a devil storm. Dixie nudged her speed back up to forty-five. She wanted to be clear of this mess before dark.

The buzz-saw sound of Dann’s snoring drifted from the backseat. Much better than listening to his prattle. The next twenty hours would be nerve-racking enough without his voice to grind on her. A dismal damn way to spend Christmas Eve.

At home, she could be finishing her Christmas shopping, buying batteries for Ryan’s new remote-control model airplane. Recalling her nephews beaming face the day they’d come upon the Cessna in the hobby store, Dixie smiled.

“If I had this, Aunt Dix, we could go flying together!”

One day, while exploring the attic, he’d seen Dixie’s identical model, a gift from Barney her first Christmas after the adoption. With visions of dueling Cessnas, and showing off her model-flying skills, Dixie had waited until Ryan’s interest was captured by a rack of CD’s, then skulked back over to have the Cessna wrapped and shipped to Amy’s. What were kids for, after all, if not a chance to relive the best moments of our lives?

Dixie glanced at the sun visor, where she had clipped the Christmas snapshot of the Keyes girls. Dixie had been just a year older than Betsy the day her blood mother, Carla Jean, dropped her on the doorstep of Founders Home and disappeared – the best thing that could have happened. Within a month, Barney and Kathleen rescued Dixie, and a few months later, their lawyer tracked down Carla Jean to sign the adoption papers. Withdrawn at first, Dixie had soon warmed to the love that permeated her new home. Amy was fifteen, and the two girls became inseparable.

Dixie’s gaze flicked once more to the big grins in the Keyes snapshot. Living with the Flannigans had erased the horrors of her first twelve years. But Betsy’s young life had been snuffed before it had a chance.

According to the dash clock, Dixie’d been driving half an hour, but had traveled barely twenty miles. Maybe Omaha-by-midnight was a trifle ambitious.

A crust of ice covered the windshield outside the fan-shaped area scraped clear by the wipers. That same icy crust would be building up on the pavement. Her arms ached from fighting the crosswind. Her eyes felt grainy and raw from the tiresome whiteness.

She closed them briefly for relief….

Damn she needed sleep!

Jabbing the radio’s ON button, she set the scanner to search for a local station. It swept the band, found nothing but static. Dixie turned up the volume, rotated the dial, and picked up a few words. They faded. Her next sweep got only dead air.

Turning it off, she listened instead to the hum of the heater fan…

the scrape, scrape, scrape of the wipers…

A grunt from the backseat signaled her prisoner’s awakening. Snow fell so furiously now that Dixie could scarcely see past the hood. The Mustang’s speed had dropped to thirty, and they’d traveled fewer than fifty miles since leaving the diner.

“Look at those taillights,” Dann said suddenly. “See them up ahead there?”

Dixie could barely make out the twin red specks. Where had they come from?

“That’s a truck. A big one. Lights are too high off the ground for anything else. Probably turned in from one of the state roads.”

You mean there’s another fool on this highway? Dixie had begun to think the world ended at the Grandin Diner.

“If you catch those taillights,” Dann said, “we can travel in the truck’s wake…”

Like riding behind the windshield wipers.

“…plow right behind him all the way to Watertown. Yep, catch those taillights, we might make it.”

The distance between the Mustang and those red lights were tantamount to leaping the Grand Canyon. The truck driver must have been going fifty, at least. Dixie nudged the Mustang to forty and instantly felt the tires lose their traction, the same way she’d lost her footing on the icy sidewalk. The brutal crosswind threatened to blow them into Iowa.

Yet those tail lights were the only sign of life Dixie had seen in nearly and hour. Tightening her grip on the steering wheel, she pushed her speed past forty, past forty-five.

She’d driven through stretches of Texas as desolate as this, miles of highway without passing a car, no sign of a town, nothing to break the monotony but fence posts, road signs, and from time to time, a cow lumbering along the road. Here, even the fence posts were buried.

A bleak white emptiness stretched all around, the delineation between highway and prairie no longer discernible. Dixie felt like an ant skating on whipped cream. Only her intuition and the occasional reflector kept the Mustang from running off the road.

A flash of movement streaked across the highway.

Dixie stomped the brake –

The steering wheel whipped through her hands.

The car spun out of control – whirling in sickening gut wrenching circles – skidded sideways, tires skimming the ice like new skates, gliding, sailing, sliding – and whammed bumper deep into a snowbank.

“Dammit to hell, woman. You sure know how to make a bad day worse.”

Join me right here next week for the next Bitch Factor chapter… because you’ll want to read what happens next.

Meanwhile, check out Slice of Life, another Dixie Flannigan book.  You can watch the cool Slice of Life video trailer below…

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Here Lies a Wicked Man – Snippet 22

Let’s try again. Booker practiced the words in his mind as he held the door open for Bradley to enter the dealership. Come home. We’ll go fishing. We’ll start over, and I’ll keep my clumsy fourteen-double-E foot out of my mouth. His heart raced with concern of saying it all wrong.

Bradley crossed the painted concrete floor to a full-size Silverado pickup. Beneath the dealer lights designed to enhance the sleek lines of their product, forest green paint sparkled like a big chuck of emerald. Booker couldn’t resist rubbing the luminous hood as he circled to the driver’s side.

“Look, Dad, a gun rack.” Bradley pointed to a pair of brackets inside the cab. “Double brute force.”

Aaron rounded the customer service counter and introduced himself to Bradley.

“Dealing with so many hunters in this area,” he said, “we found a local custom shop to make the racks for us.”

Booker ducked inside and slid behind the wheel. “Could it be used as a bow rack?”

“Sure, depending on the bow. I didn’t realize you were a bowman, Mr. Krane.”

“I bought some stuff, thought I’d give it a try.”

“He’s outfitted for a month in the wilderness,” Bradley amended.

Booker examined the dash gauges.

“Trying on that gear last night, I felt like a kid again, running through the woods, shooting at imaginary bad guys.” A self-conscious smile pulled at his lips. “Robin Hood of the people.”

Bradley grinned at him, a real one, not strained at all, and climbed onto the passenger seat.

“Me, I was Little John,” Aaron said. “Knocking heads together when I wasn’t slinging arrows at the wicked Sheriff of Nottingham.”

Booker pictured the hole in Chuck Fowler’s shirt, and a quick shiver overtook him.

“I saw your trophy at the Gilded Trout. You father being such an accomplished hunter, I suppose you grew up with a bow in your hand.” Testing the turning indicators, Booker avoided looking at Bradley. “Always wished my father and I had something in common, a hobby we could enjoy together.”

“Ye-ah.” Aaron dragged the word out, his gaze aimed at Bradley. “Our whole family used to get off on shooting, mostly competition and small game. Some bow-fishing. Frogging.The best times were just fooling around, though.” He hesitated, as if remembering. “One year, me and Jeremy got these ping-pong guns. Take a shot between the eyes and it’d never hurt, but the guns made a loud ping when you scored a hit. Pop had one, too. We’d lay for each other in the back yard until one of us made a run for it, then ping! Pop always won, but we gave him a hard battle.” Aaron looked away suddenly, and a muscle twitched beside his mouth. “Those were good times.”

Booker averted his gaze to give the boy some privacy. Bradley stared straight at him.

“Jeremy? Jeremy Fowler?”

Aaron nodded. “Yeah, my brother.”

“I just met him,” Bradley said. “Sorry about your dad.”

Aaron’s lip muscle twitched again. “Yeah.” Then his chin jutted and he stepped away from the truck. “Maybe you’d like to look at the mid-size model over there, Mr. Krane.”

Booker scarcely heard him, his brain wrapped around the question of where Bradley had met Jeremy Fowler. Bradley hopped out of the cab and jogged over to a red version of the smaller pickup Booker had seen outside. Booker took his time.

“Sounds like the family changed as you got older,” he said softly to Aaron. “I suppose that’s not uncommon.”

“Yeah. It changed.” Aaron’s voice turned hard and sharp. “But we were always a tight family, until Ms. Swizzlehips McCray moved to Masonville.”

“Ah.”

“Yeah, ah.” Aaron glanced at Bradley, then turned his flinty gray eyes on Booker. “You were sitting with her at the lodge. I hope you aren’t making the same mistake Pop did.”

Booker frowned. “What mistake?”

“I’m not naïve, Mr. Krane. Pop had women before her. I met some of them. He’d brag to me and Jeremy, same as he’d brag about taking down a deer, but those other women never threatened the family. We were close. Picnics, camping, fishing, boating, hunting, we did it all together.” Aaron took a hard, quick breath and let it out slowly. “Then Pop met

Melinda McCray and turned fifty.”

Ah, yes. Fifty. Booker sighted it right around the next curve, the psychological jumping off place where you look at life and decide you’re running out of time to do whatever you’ve been missing. He’d headed for that bend a few years early, at the time of his divorce.

He looked at Bradley, and guilt gnawed in his belly. Booker had never been a skirt chaser, but he had plenty of other faults. Just ask Lauren.

“Did you talk to your father about it?”

“Talk to him?” Aaron snorted. “There wasn’t any talking to Pop about anything. After his birthday in January, we suddenly didn’t matter. He cared only about himself and his gold-digging bitch.”

Bradley frowned at them from under the hood of the Colorado, and Booker wished he hadn’t opened this particular can of worms.

“Oh, Pop kept up appearances,” Aaron continued. “Came with Mama to the lake house every weekend. Insisted we all gather once a month for barbecue or a fish fry. But just try asking him for anything. Might as well be strangers, for all he cared.”

The young man looked suddenly embarrassed, talking to a stranger about family business. Moving away, he slapped the tail of a rugged-looking SUV. “This Tahoe might be more your style, Mr. Krane.”

Booker looked it over and had to agree. The closed bed would offer more protection for his equipment. He opened the door and eyed the interior. Tough leather seats. Sensible gauges.

Bradley opened the opposite door.

“What do you think?” Booker asked.

“Boss, Dad. This is you. Can you mount one of those bow racks?” he asked Aaron.

“Not a problem.”

Booker took the truck for a spin, with Bradley riding shotgun, then followed Aaron into a glass cubicle. Thirty minutes later, he folded the papers to his new Tahoe. A bowman andan off-roader, all in twenty-four hours. Times they were a-changing.

Aaron walked with him back into the showroom, where Bradley stood with his head under the hood of a monster pickup.

“Mr. Krane, you seem like a nice guy,” Aaron said. His eyes turned serious and his voice had lost all its professional smoothness. “It’s none of my business, but I’d think twice before mixing it up with Melinda McCray. She’s…well…”

“A barracuda?”

Aaron laughed. For the first time, Booker saw a touch of the Fowler attraction that must have drawn women to Chuck over the years. He hoped Aaron made better use of it.

“She’s a barracuda, all right, but you look man enough to handle that. What I meant was, she has this old boyfriend that hangs around. Ramsey Crawford. One mean mother. Runs a shade-tree auto repair shop in Masonville. He and Pop had a few run-ins. But Pop, well, I guess Pop was meaner and bigger.”

“Thanks for the warning.”

“Yeah. Well, like I said, it’s none of my business, but Crawford’s nobody I’d want to tangle with.”

Aaron offered a handshake, and Booker took it. He watched the boy walk away, wide, tall, two-hundred-plus pounds of solid youth, and decided that if hard-fisted Aaron Fowler would shy away from Crawford, then Booker hoped to never lay eyes on the man.

He tapped Bradley on the shoulder with his new contract. “Time to drive it home.”

“It’s yours?”

“As long as I keep the bank’s finance department satisfied. Come ride back with me.”

Bradley closed the pickup’s hood and fell in step.

“We could rent a trailer for your Harley,” Booker added.

A few seconds passed. Finally, Bradley spoke, his accusing tone unmistakable. “I heard what Aaron said about Ms. McCray. Sounds like his dad was ready to blow off the family even before he died.”

Booker felt his son’s anger like waves of heat.

“That’s what Aaron believes, anyway.” He injected his own voice with as much soothing balm as he could manage.

“Why do people get married if it’s all a sham?”

“Marriage doesn’t come with a lifetime guarantee.”

“Then parents should work out their problems without ruining a kid’s life.”

“Bradley, I—”

“Why did you give up on us?”

Booker resisted the edge that threatened to color his voice. “Would’ve gotten pretty crowded, don’t you think? You, me, your mom, and the computer guy?”

“She’s not even with him anymore. You quit—”

“I didn’t—”

“Just like you quit your job to hide out in Seniorville.”

A fist tightened around Booker’s heart. He couldn’t argue. Anything he said now would be wrong. He’d lose his son again, maybe this time forever. Booker forced a breath into his stubborn lungs. They had reached the Tahoe, polished and ready to drive away.

“At least the fishing’s good in Seniorville,” he said finally.

Bradley stared at him. After a dozen heartbeats, he smiled thinly.

“Yeah. The fishing’s optimum.”

“Before dark, we could catch enough for a fish dinner.”

The boy nodded, but without smiling. “Maybe later. Right now, I need some time alone.”

“Like I said, it’s a big house.” But Booker sensed he’d made all the headway he could for now. Legally, Bradley was still a minor. Booker could insist the boy return with him, or to his mother. And next time he ran away, the break would be final. No contact, no answer to the milk carton ads.

Booker squeezed his boy’s shoulder as they walked toward the Harley.

“Son, you have a room at my house anytime you decide to use it. Don’t forget that.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Where are you staying?” Finding which motel Bradley had booked would take about ten minutes on the phone.

Bradley hesitated then named a place at the edge of town.

“Are you sure you won’t join Roxanna and me for that play?”

Bradley shook his head. “This is the first date for you two, isn’t it?”

“I’m not sure it’s actually a date.”

“It’s a date, Dad. And you don’t need me tagging along.” He started the Harley’s engine and roared off down the road.

A quitter, his son had called him. The word soured in Booker’s stomach as he drove the new Tahoe toward home.

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Paradise Cursed – Snippet 18

CHAPTER 15

After the rain stopped, I saw Erin to her quarters and decided to look in on Ayanna. She had disappeared from the dining room as soon as dessert was served. Granted, the lady deserved some time alone for coming to grips with Shaman Demarae’s reversal of her curse, but tomorrow was another day. If she drank herself silly tonight, she’d get no mercy from me.

A knock at her door brought no response. Yet, I hadn’t seen her elsewhere on the ship.

I knocked louder.

“Ayanna?” When still no response came, I raised my voice. “Look sharp, mate. This is a twenty-four-hour job you’ve signed on for.”

I needed to know she would belly up to the task now that she’d achieved her purpose for sailing with us. Another knuckle rap.

“I’m coming in, mate.” I waited another three seconds before applying my passkey to the lock, my displeasure with the woman rising hotly up my neck. The door pushed easily inward, and the thick scent of recently burned candles rushed to greet me, along with a darkness deeper than in the sparsely lighted passageway.

I fumbled for my pipe lighter and spurred a flame.

“Ayanna?”

She lay on the floor at the foot of her bed. When I placed a hand on her shoulder, she moaned. I smelled no hint of alcohol, which surprised me. Why else would she have passed out on the floor?

Feeling the lighter begin to overheat, I snapped it off and clicked on the overhead light. The candles were part of an altar of sorts. Something odd about Ayanna’s arm drew me to lean down again and examine it. From elbow to shirtsleeve, her skin was greenish in color. Touching it gave me the sort of chill I recalled from a long-ago night…

A band of lowlifes raided our camp. Outnumbered, logy with food and drink, we were fair game. When the hilt of a sword bashed my temple, I fell, lay unconscious for a bit, and was slowly regaining my wits when a snake crawled beneath my shirt, onto my naked chest, taking its bloody time about it. The fight was still going on around me, and a single move would likely get me the sharp side of a sword, so I stayed put, and by the time the snake moved on, so had the raiders.

Our party eventually caught up with the buggers and reclaimed what they’d pillaged, but lying skin to skin with a snake was a feeling I’d never forget. That precisely was the feeling

I got when I touched Ayanna’s skin.

She moaned again and tried to sit up.

“Take it easy.” I gripped her shoulders to help her sit.

The bottom of one pant leg rose to reveal her ankle, colored that same greenish tint. What the bloody hell was going on with her?

“If I go with you, Shaman Demarae can complete the healing,” Ayanna argued.

“Did he tell you the process would take more than one ceremony?” Learning that the scaly green skin was part of the curse Demarae supposedly had cured made me want to wring the charlatan’s neck.

Ayanna was too sick to put up much resistance. After I’d helped her to stand, she clung to her bureau for support. Still, she wanted to argue.

“He say one time, but—”

“Earlier tonight, why did you think the healing had worked?”

“The sickness was gone. My skin was all smooth and brown. I felt wonderful.”

“I saw nothing wrong with your skin when you came aboard yesterday.” She’d been wearing a sleeveless dress, with no hint of snaky green scales showing.

“That part started later.” She nodded, and the motion must have churned her nausea. Lurching from one handhold to the next, she made it to the head before emptying her stomach.

“Rest,” I said. “I’ll deal with Demarae then summon Burke to bring you ashore once the shaman has arranged another healing party.”

A quick stop at my quarters was enough to prepare me for whatever arm-twisting I might need to do. Leaving Jase Graham in charge, I took the dory ashore, alighting at the pier where taxi drivers sat smoking in their vehicles in hopes of a late night fare. Approaching the nearest, a small silver van, I leaned in the driver’s window with a wad of cash in my hand.

“I need your car for several hours,” I said. “But I don’t need you to drive it. Understand?”

He grinned with a brilliant flash of white teeth. Cayman Islanders are a friendly lot and eager to please, a fact I was counting on.

“Mon, da car rental place—”

“—is not what I want. I’m in a hurry. You can fill your pockets right now with more dollars than you would earn all week.”

He hesitated, looking at the Cayman banknotes, probably wondering if they were real. “Sorry, mon, I cannot give you my taxi.”

“Tomorrow, you can pick up your taxi right here. Let’s keep this a pleasant deal between the two of us.” While speaking, I gave the man a hint of my backup plan. The prick of a blade near the jugular can be quite persuasive. “Now, step out and take the money. Stay quiet, and I promise your car will be returned without a scratch.”

Opening the door slowly, I removed the small knife from his neck but held it close enough to remain a threat. He eased out, the whites of his eyes as bright in the dock lights as his teeth had been a moment ago.

“Thank you,” I said, pressing the money into his hand. “You will find your keys on top of the right front wheel.”

He began backing away, and I swung into the seat. A minute later, I was on Harbor Drive and could see him standing there counting his sudden wealth. One of the curiosities of my predicament is that, regardless of the business I and the Sarah Jane engage in, money is rarely in short supply.

*

Shaman Demarae’s home was dark except for two rear windows where lights shone and cast their glow over nearby shrubbery. I parked the taxi two doors down. Taking care not to make noise, I walked back.

Skills I mastered as a pirate have served me often through the centuries. Thus, silent reconnaissance of a house, compared with a ship at sea, is child’s play. Three minutes after arriving, I knew that Demarae and Marisha, the tall, thin woman who greeted us the night before, were alone in the main house. The building in back with no windows held no guests.

Having gotten the lay of it, I approached the door and knuckled a loud, officious knock. Without waiting long enough for anyone to walk from the rear of the house to the front, I knocked again, even louder. Seconds later, the porch light winked on. The door opened a crack.

Life on a barefoot cruise ship is quite casual. Shorts, baggy shirts and swimwear are accepted for all occasions, thus my dress whites remain in their plastic casing from the dry-cleaner for months on end. But there is nothing quite as authoritative as a full dress uniform.

“Captain McKinsey to see Shaman Demarae,” I said, “on urgent business.”

The door opened wider. “McKinsey, the fellow from last night?”

Without his feathered costume and headpiece, the shaman looked rather ordinary: close-cut gray hair, heavy-lidded eyes, a round belly.

“I need a word.” Taking advantage of his surprised confusion, I gently bullied my way in. “The service you promised and were paid generously to provide did not have the agreed-upon result. In fact, the woman’s suffering has worsened since your treatment.”

While delivering that little speech, I watched Demarae’s expression intently. His raised eyebrows fell and with them every muscle in his face drooped. Emotions can be faked, but I believed the man was genuinely sad to hear that he had failed.

Marisha came in from another room, wearing a light robe and slippers.

“Sit, please,” the shaman said, “and tell me.”

“I can do better than tell you.” Using my cell phone, I’d taken a short video showing the nubby green patches on Ayanna’s arm and feet. Her weakness from the nausea was also apparent.

“This is not good,” he said, taking the phone from me and dropping into a chair. “But our prayers were strong. The orichas were there, Babalu Aye and Oya Mimo, I felt them among us.”

He stared at the video, features screwed into a frown. Light from the screen reflected in spots of dampness in his eyes. The video dimmed and he stared past it, unfocused, as if looking into the past.

“I felt another presence among us last night, a dark spirit, very dark, and I hoped I was wrong. Seeing this, I know I was not wrong.”

He handed the phone back to me, and I sat down. “A dark spirit?”

Demarae’s grave nod was slow and thoughtful. Finally, he said, “Ayanna believes she was cursed by a Bokor, a curse broker, if you will, someone who misuses the orichas for their own gain. Perhaps this is true, but I believe now that this Bokor may have dealt Ayanna a greater misfortune than she knows.”

I wasn’t surprised. The Sarah Jane never seemed to attract people with easy problems.

“Did Ayanna tell you the lore about my ship?” I asked.

He smiled, but not with humor.

“I have heard the tales, long before Ayanna called me from Jamaica. At that time, we were merely exploring her situation, the dreams, the illness that attacks her stomach without warning and for no apparent reason. Only yesterday, when she called to arrange the ceremony, did I learn she was on the ship that spawns so many strange stories.” Demarae captured my gaze for a long moment with his sad brown eyes. “It is your ship, I believe, that the Bokor covets. Somehow, he, or it could be a she, you understand, orchestrated Ayanna’s plan to sign on with your crew. At that moment, he, or she, cast a binding ceremony and took possession of Ayanna.”

While we talked, Marisha must have gone and returned. She set a steaming cup of tea on the table beside my chair.

“Thank you,” I said. Then to the shaman, “What does that mean, exactly? That he took possession?”

“The Bokor, I believe, is riding within your first mate…with intention of capturing the Sarah Jane‘s magic for himself and using Ayanna’s natural beauty and charm to wield it.”

“And you knew this last night?” I demanded.

“It was only a… a notion… a hunch.”

“Ayanna paid for your experienced hunches, so why the bloody hell didn’t you deliver on your promise?” Without waiting for his answer, “Trust me, Shaman, you will cure Ayanna’s curse and stop this Bokor from invading my ship.”

*

The shaman’s words took me back to the night I awakened after being struck by whatever force had cursed me to ride these seas for eternity. One would consider a lightning bolt to come from Heaven, and by association from God, or at the least from one of God’s angels.

But had it? Or had the ship itself wielded a latent wizardry? Had the Sarah Jane snatched me from Death’s hands?

The first sensation I recalled from that awakening was the acrid odor of smoke from the burnt-out brigantine nearby. Then the silence of a calm sea and the eerie sense of isolation.

Private moments in a pirate’s life were rare, almost nonexistent. Hammocks below decks strung side by side for sleeping, crowded benches at the dinner table. The remoteness of a small ship on a vast sea with not another soul around was alien enough to spark thoughts of Limbo, that wasteland of lost souls.

Only after exploring every crevice of the Sarah Jane, as well as the Spanish ship, had I realized how truly alone I was. Lying supine on the ship’s main deck, I gazed upward, past the furled sails and into a blackness broken by a glitter of stars. Where had everyone gone? If they died, one would expect to find the deck stained with blood and littered with corpses. That was not the case.

Had they jumped or been tossed overboard? If so, why?

And even more troubling, why not I?

Suddenly I became so convinced that I was not flesh and blood but a spirit that even a thorough examination of my arms, hands and legs, then in a shaving glass, my face failed to persuade me otherwise. I unsheathed my knife and drew the blade across my arm. Though I winced at the pain, I felt also gladdened. I marveled at the blood that flowed freely.

Surely spirits did not feel. Did not bleed.

Hunger and thirst drove me to the galley, where I had seen a full stock of supplies during my search for fellow sailors. Everything tasted wonderful, as if near death had sharpened my senses. I gorged myself. Strong drink seemed inadvisable, so I made do with tea.

Then I wandered to the gunnels and looked out across a four-pounder cannon at the brigantine, trying to recall any hint of what had happened after the ball of fluorescent light had engulfed me. I sat pondering until daybreak. During that time, a notion came over me that I was not truly alone. I may be the only flesh-and-blood aboard, but there was another presence.

By whatever magic I had come to be alive, I knew instinctively that the Sarah Jane and I were bound together. As decades passed, that notion solidified. My ship and I were one.

Now Shaman Demarae had suggested a conniving conjurer was bent on exploiting the Sarah Jane‘s magic. Recalling that long-ago experience, I shuddered at what horrors such power might loose upon the world if wielded by a depraved mind.

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Bitch Factor – Chapter 7

CHAPTER 7

Thursday, December 24, Grandin, South Dakota

Dixie swallowed another caffeine tablet and pulled off the highway to look for a coffee shop. The noonday sky had muddied up with storm clouds. The snow fell harder now, a blinding white curtain that stretched miles into forever. She barely felt safe going sixty. If she could drive far enough south, she’d leave the storm behind, but that meant staying awake a few more hours. No matter how it kicked and sputtered in her stomach, coffee was a must.

Spying a red neon DINER sign, its message softened by a snowy scrim, Dixie coasted to a stop and pulled on her gloves. The Mustang’s feisty heater kept the car toasty, but from the buildup of fresh snow outside, she figured the temperature had dropped considerably.

“Hey!” Dann called from behind the steel mesh. “Where you going? Don’t leave me in here. I’ll friggin freeze.”

“How do you want your coffee?”

“Coffee?” What the hell happened to breakfast?” He rattled the chain that shackled him to the Mustang’s floorboard.

“You won’t starve and you won’t freeze, so don’t get your panties in a wad.”

“Come on, lady, I’m not going to run. How far would I get in this weather?”

“You think I intend to find out? She zipped her jacket and turned up the collar. “That backseat is your home all the way to the Harris County lockup, so you may as well get comfortable.”

“Yeah? Suppose I have to take a leak?”

“See that plastic bottle back there? Label says ‘Fresh Mountain Water’? Consider that your personal urinal.” Dixie tucked her thermos under one arm and flipped the door latch.

“Aw, come on, lady—”

A blast of icy wind wrenched the door from her hands, flung it wide, and peppered her skin with snow and sleet like gravel. Turning her face from the wind’s force, she wrestled the door shut, then fought her way down the sidewalk to the front of the diner. She had parked away from the windows to avoid curious eyes. Glancing back now through the swirling snow, she could barely see the car. Surely no one would notice Parker Dann in the backseat. In this squealing wind, if he yelled, no one would hear him, either.

A wave of heat and the smell of hamburgers greeted her when she stepped inside the diner. Her taste buds snapped to attention. Around midnight, she’d stopped at a drive-through burger stand. She hadn’t eaten since.

Raking snow from her hair, she scanned the diner. The ambient noises dropped a notch. Dishes slowed their clatter, voices leveled to a hum. Local citizens sized up the wayfaring stranger.

A somewhat crooked Christmas tree decked with tinsel and candy canes twinkled in one corner, while Elvis crooned “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” on a vintage jukebox. To be home for Christmas, Dixie would have to cross three states and half of Texas in less than thirty hours.

She sighed and slid onto a stool at the counter as she checked out her fellow customers. Two young couples sat at a square table across the room, thick down-filled ski jackets padding their chair backs. At the counter, a pair of middle-aged men in plaid flannel shirts drank coffee, and in a booth on the back wall, an elderly couple had just finished lunch.

They shoved their plates aside and stared openly at Dixie.

The waitress, twenty-odd, with bouncy chestnut hair, pushed through a swinging door from the kitchen. Her gingham uniform had a loose button dangling from the top buttonhole, a long run marred her stockings, and an artistically penned card Scotch-taped to her name tag said, “Smile, it’s almost Christmas.” She set plates of food in front of the plaid-shirted men, then turned a ready smile at Dixie.

“Yes’m. What can I get for you?”

Dixie eyed the wall-hung menu. “Four burgers, two orders of fries, a large milk, and a thermos of black coffee to go.” She didn’t plan to stop again anytime soon. “I’d also like a coffee to drink while I wait.”

The waitress wrote it all down, then flashed the smile. “We have some fresh cherry pie. You guys want to take some of that along, too?”

Dixie checked the stool beside her to make sure she was alone. So much for anonymity. Everybody in town had probably watched the Mustang pull in, spotted the Texas tags even through the snow, and, with their keen country eyes, noticed Dann in the backseat. Small-town folks didn’t miss much.

“Cherry pie sounds real good,” Dixie said.

The waitress jotted that on her pad, too, and scurried off to the kitchen. Minutes later she was back with Dixie’s coffee.

“We got a room vacant if you guys want to bed down for the storm. Weatherman says the roads north of Hillsboro are closed. Expect they’ll be closed farther south inside an hour.”

“Hillboro? I just came through there. The roads aren’t closed.”

“Yes’m, they are now. Storm’s coming in fast.” She slid two generous slabs of pie into a foam carrier.

One of the men at the counter said, “Your first time up this way, is it?” His flannel shirt was red and green plaid.

“First time and a quick trip at that,” Dixie told him. “I was hoping to make Omaha before stopping for the night.” Driving up early that morning, even with light snowfall, and the muddy remnants of earlier snowfalls along the shoulders, the roads had been clear. She couldn’t believe the highway would shut down completely.

“Blue Norther’s pushing a ton of snow and ice down from Canada,” the man said. “Wet front’s moving up from the southwest. Be the devil of a mess when they get together—”

“—and tougher’n the devil to outrun,” said the man beside him in blue flannel. “You got chains for that Mustang, have you?”

“Chains?” Dixie had left sixty-degree weather in Houston the night before. Even if there’d been time, she wouldn’t have thought to bring chains.

“Blue plaid shook his head doubtfully. “Those roads will turn to ice before you get five miles.”

In Texas, a favorite small-town pastime was teasing the tourists. She couldn’t help wondering if these South Dakotans were pulling her leg.

“I don’t suppose you have a spare set of chains I could purchase, do you?”

“The two men looked at each other and shook their heads.

“Harold would have some up at the Texaco,” said red shirt. “Only he shut down at noon.”

“Good set of snow tires might do,” said blue shirt. “You guys have snow tires on that Mustang, do you?”

Dixie was beginning to regret she’d even stopped. Ten minutes wasted here would’ve taken her ten miles farther south. But the snow snaking across the road in hypnotic waves had started her nodding off.

“No snow tires,” Dixie admitted. Her tires were the best for driving through mud and sand. This time, she’d have to trust them on ice.

The waitress reappeared from the kitchen, t0-go bags already turning dark where grease from the fries seeped through. At home, Dixie dosed up on salad greens every day to compensate for the junk food she couldn’t avoid on trips. She dropped some bills on the counter when the waitress presented the check, then eyed the loose button and ruined stockings, dropped another bill, and told the girl to keep the change.

“Watertown’s about a hundred and fifty miles,” red shirt said. “You might make that before dark, if the storm doesn’t close the road south.”

The clock above the counter said twelve thirty-five. Even poking along at fifty, Dixie could make Watertown in three hours. “What time does the sun go to bed around here?”

Red shirt scratched his unshaven jaw. “Four, four-thirty, this time of year. Earlier, maybe, with this storm.”

“Sisseton’s only a hundred miles,” the waitress said. “In case the road gets really bad, you might want to stop there. It’s only three miles off the interstate, and they’ll have a room.

Emma Sparks will be sure to stay open for late travelers.” She smiled encouragingly. “Merry Christmas.”

“Thanks,” Dixie said. “I hope you don’t have to work through yours.”

“No, but thanks for asking. We close at one.”

“I was lucky, then, to get here when I did.” Dixie waved at the two men. “Cheers!”

“You guys take care,” blue shirt said.

The elderly couple were still staring, as if Dixie’d walked in naked. Pulling the door shut behind her, she shivered at the shock of frigid wind and started back toward the Mustang.

Her leather boot soles hit a slick of ice. Without warning the sidewalk zipped out from under her. She whumped down on concrete, jarring her spine, tailbone to teeth. Bags and thermos scooted away as tears of pain welled in her eyes.

“Damn! How did it get so fucking cold so damn fast?”

During the few minutes she’d spent in the diner, the sidewalk had iced over. The cold pierced her light jacket as if it were cheesecloth.

Groaning under her breath, Dixie struggled to her knees and clamped a gloved hand around the thermos, thwarting the gust that threatened to roll it into the street. She clutched it to her chest, scooped up the bags, then stretched a hand to a windowsill to pull herself to her feet. The Mustang was only twenty paces away, but looked like a mile.

Head down, she moved off the sidewalk on to the snow-covered dirt and, testing her footing with every step, fought the wind back toward the car. She couldn’t recall ever being so cold. Why the hell did people live with such weather? She wanted to holler back into the diner, tell all those folds to come on down to Texas where a body can breathe without freezing her pipes.

When she finally ducked into the car and shut the fierce wind outside, Dixie fought down a shock of trembling that was only partially due to the cold. She couldn’t help wondering if she was courting disaster to try to drive in the coming storm. Stalling out anywhere along the highway would likely mean freezing to death. She considered taking the room the waitress had said was available here at the diner. But in the backseat of the Mustang, Dann hadn’t a prayer of escaping; in a motel room, with space to maneuver and Dixie asleep, he might get free. People could get hurt—the men in their plaid shirts, the helpful waitress with her dangling button. Dann was big enough to do some serious damage if he took a mind to hurt someone.

She could always call the Houston judge trying Dann’s case and let him know Dann had violated the terms of his bail agreement. But if the judge managed to get him back to Houston, Dann stood a good chance of being convicted—precisely the situation Belle had hired Dixie to avoid. Sure, she’d be able to look at that Christmas photo of the Keyes girls, knowing she’d done her part in avenging Betsy, and Ryan would still think of his Aunt Dixie as a hero, tracking down bad guys, but she’d forever hear Belle’s yammering scold: Innocent until proven guilty, Flannigan.

Dixie could argue that she hadn’t bargained for hauling the bail jumper across four state lines in a raging snowstorm. It was dangerous. Crazy as bungee jumping.

So when the job gets tough, Flannigan, you quit? What kind of hero is that? Dann wasn’t a murderer, after all. He was a useless, thoughtless drunk driver, possibly guilty of vehicular manslaughter, but not murder. She could handle him. And she had no choice but to brazen the storm.

As she eyed the lowering clouds, Dixie started the Mustang. Once she put the weather behind her, she could park at a roadside camp and grab a few winks. She didn’t feel a bit sleepy at the moment, with a roaring fire of caffeine in her belly, but she wasn’t fooled. Out on the highway, swirling snow and droning tires would work on her like a snake charmer’s flute.

Meet me back here next week for the next chapter of Bitch Factor.

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Here Lies a Wicked Man – Snippet 21

CHAPTER 22

The Carey Theater turned out to be an old department store, windows blacked out with paint, show bills in plastic page protectors taped along the outside wall. Bradley jiggled the door. Locked. A fan cranked away in an upper window and the sound of hammering came from inside the building.

Pushing his cycle around the side, he looked for additional entrances. A back door opened onto a parking lot riddled with potholes, weeds poking through. Beneath the hammering, music played. He knocked. No one answered, so he knocked again, then eased the door open.

“Hey, anyone here?”

No response, just noise and music.

Inside, he found cracked plaster walls and chipped floor tiles, typical of community theater venues. Walking toward the noise, he passed the prop room, probably a warehouse before the store went out of business. Racks of costumes, shelves of hats and wigs, pegboard hung with purses, umbrellas, ties—an actor could outfit a hundred optimum characters.

In the middle of the room, he recognized the beginnings of a rock formation and sand dune, the set for Seascape. A boy a couple of years older than him was hammering a section together at the far end. Suddenly more at ease, Bradley shoved his hands deep in his pockets and appraised the workmanship. Not bad.

When he approached, the other kid looked up, startled. He laid his hammer down, reached behind a scrap of plywood, and lowered the volume on a CD player.

“What’s up?” A long strand of straw-colored hair flopped over one eye. He pushed it back. His black tank shirt and cut-off jeans were soaked with sweat despite the fan stirring the summer heat.

Bradley guessed air conditioning cost too much to run except during shows and rehearsals. He stuck out his hand.

“Bradley Krane. Optimum job on those boulders. I helped build a set exactly like this.”

The kid nodded, and his suspicious eyes relaxed some. “Jeremy Fowler. I build all the sets here.”

“I saw your name on tonight’s program. You’re directing Tales of O. Henry.”

“Yeah. We double up, act some, work some.”

Bradley nodded toward a door leading beyond the room they were in. “Manager around?”

“Not till six o’clock. Production manager should be here about five-thirty.”

“No run-through before the big opening?”

“We had the final dress yesterday, everyone was here until midnight. Today’s for resting up.”

Bradley studied the new framework, nailed together out of freshly sawed two-by-fours.

“Guess some people don’t have time to rest.”

Rising, Jeremy straightened to his full height, about five-nine, Bradley figured.

“Too much work to do, too much to think about.” He pushed his hair back again. “What do you want, anyway? Auditions are next week, and I already told you I build the sets.”

Bradley grinned. “I can do other stuff. Lighting, sound.”

“School plays?” Jeremy smirked.

“A boss drama department with optimum equipment.” He glanced at the shabby walls. “Better than most small-town theaters can afford.”

Without releasing his gaze, Jeremy sauntered to an ancient refrigerator, pulled out a bottle of water and popped the sport top.

“Lighting, huh?” He squeezed a few ounces down his throat. “Ever get any time onstage?”

In school, Bradley had seen Broadway stars who came as guest speakers become totally relaxed around drama students, as if they were one big happy family. With luck, Jeremy would open up the same way.

“Bit parts, mostly,” he admitted. “But I played Oscar in The Odd Couple once, when the lead had to drop out because he was failing history.”

Jeremy grinned. “I played Felix.” He pulled another water from the fridge and tossed it to Bradley.

They talked a few minutes about O’Henry, then Jeremy picked up a plywood cutout and a length of two-by-six.

“How about giving me a hand with this?” He was obviously building the escape steps that would go behind the boulders for the sea lizards.

“Sure.” Bradley jockeyed one end of the board and held it in place while Jeremy nailed his end. After he sank three nails, he handed the hammer to Bradley. Working together, they finished the steps in fifteen minutes.

“Guess I’ll go,” Bradley said, wiping sawdust off his hands on a shop rag. “Had a maximum blow-up with my parents. Now I’m wondering which one I should grovel to so I can go on eating.”

Jeremy’s lips thinned. “Good luck.”

Bradley studied him for a beat. “You’re getting shit from your folks, too.”

“Mom’s okay. Dad just died.” He finished his water and wiped a hand across his mouth. “Funeral’s tomorrow.”

Bradley swallowed hard. He knew lots of kids whose parents had split up, but nobody who’d just had one die. That wasn’t supposed to happen until they were old. What if Mom or Dad were to die before he could patch things? He’d feel like a stone toad. No wonder Jeremy was in here working alone instead of resting up for opening night.

Staring at his hands with the shop rag, he tried to think of something to say that wouldn’t sound dumb.

“Listen,” Jeremy said. “Our lighting tech broke his arm last week, and he says it feels clumsy working the switch panel. Maybe you could give him a hand when he needs it. And help move furniture for set changes.”

“Thanks.”

“Probably won’t pay much.”

Bradley shrugged. “Something’s better than nothing. I’ll check back before curtain.” He put the shop rag down slowly. “Sorry about your dad.”

Jeremy frowned.

“Yeah. Thanks.” He picked up a can and a brush and started painting the steps.

CHAPTER 23

According to the loquacious tow truck driver, Bryan-College Station’s combined population was two-hundred-thirty thousand, with an eclectic economy heavy on agriculture.

“Growing fast and steady, but both towns would dry up,” the driver conjectured, “if not for Texas A&M.”

Booker liked college towns. Professors aside, most of the residents would consider him a walking fossil at forty-six, but he enjoyed the energy of young people. Their enthusiasm for fast cars, fast food, and fast-lane success tended to rub off.

A glance at his watch told him Bradley would be hitting Dallas city limits about now. With a rental car, he could be at his parents’ house well before dark. That would mean canceling his date with Roxanna.

The tow-truck driver deposited the Buick in a “waiting for maintenance” section.

“Service department’s closed,” he said, “but you’ll get first served Monday morning.” Booker eyed the new vehicles lined up for sale. Pickup trucks and SUVs dominated the lot.

Maybe Littlehawk was right. An aspiring country photographer could certainly benefit from driving a truck with ample storage space.

He walked the lanes, speculating. After a while, Aaron Fowler came out of the sales office. Recalling Aaron’s temper, Booker couldn’t deny a mild apprehension.

“Hot out here,” Aaron said, in his gravelly voice. “You might want to take a look at the models in the showroom, where it’s cooler.”

Turning, Booker stepped into the shade of an awning and removed his sunglasses. The young man’s smile looked suddenly strained, and beneath his knit shirt a washboard of muscle bunched in readiness.

“We’re not usually open on Sunday. Pete Littlehawk phoned.” Aaron backed up against a Coke machine. “Listen, I’m sorry about losing it there at the clubhouse. If you feel compelled to get even, fine, but let’s take our differences out back, out of sight. Okay?”

Booker flashed his most disarming smile.

“Son, I’d’ve done the same thing if I thought somebody was manhandling my mother. Forget it. Wouldn’t give it another thought myself, except for this shiner staring back at me in the mirror.” The photograph of iced cola on the front of the soda machine was too much for Booker to ignore. He dropped three quarters and selected an orange. “Care for a cold drink?”

A can clunked down the chute. Booker reached for it. When he yanked the pull tab and looked back, some of the tension had left Aaron’s face.

“You’re really here to look at a truck?” He fed the soda machine and selected a Pepsi.

“My LaCrosse sounded like it might’ve thrown a rod. Thought I’d check prices on your pickups.” Booker pointed with his sunglasses at a nearby row. “Those look like they’d take well to country roads.”

“For everyday use, these midsize models are remarkable,” Aaron said, leading the way and opening the door on a blue Colorado for Booker to look inside. “Extended cab, short bed, excellent gas mileage. Chevrolet’s offering good discounts on everything we have in stock, getting a jump on year end. But if you do any heavy hauling, you’d want a full-size truck. We have a good selection of both right now. Or we can special-order, get the equipment you want.”

Aaron’s face had softened around the jaw line, and his muscles had lost their edge. The Krane charm working its magic. Why the blazes didn’t it work on his own son?

Booker took a pull on the soda, letting the cold, sweet bite of orange wash around his mouth as he peered inside the cab. It smelled of plastic and new carpet. The lean, functional dashboard boasted mechanical gauges instead of the digital type. He liked that.

“Actually, I’m not sure what equipment I’d want. I carry photography gear, so I’ll need a safe, dry place to store it.”

“A lock-down bed cover will protect your equipment. Both models have them as an option, or you can get a tool box that bolts down behind the cab.”

Booker walked around the truck as they talked. “Expect I’ll hit some rough country, traveling to take photographs. Think I’d need four-wheel drive?”

“Gotta have a four-by-four if you go off-road.” As Aaron warmed to the business of showing his products, his youthful eagerness blossomed like foam on a beer mug. “C’mon. Let’s beat this heat. Our showroom models have all the options you could want.”

Before they could move inside, Booker heard a mechanical buzz that made his heart stop. Out on the road, a black-clad figure on a Harley had slowed near the dealership entrance.

Bradley! Relief turned Booker’s knees rubbery. What was his son doing in Bryan? What had he been doing for the last few hours? What the devil did it matter? Booker was just glad to see him.

“Go on in,” he told Aaron. “I’ll catch up with you. That’s my boy.”

Aaron entered the showroom as Bradley coasted to a stop near Booker’s feet.

“I talked to Gramps,” he shouted above the engine rumble. “He said the Buick broke down and you were headed here. What happened?”

Booker’s throat closed up over the questions that needed to be asked. He coughed. “That rattle we heard last night must’ve been more than cheap gasoline.”

“So you’re buying a truck? Optimum!” Despite the easy words, Bradley’s smile seemed strained. His eyes looked like cold blue marbles in the August sunlight.

“I’m looking.” Booker itched to wrap an arm around his son, tell him that no matter what the problem, they could work it out. Apologize for being such a lame-brain fool earlier. Say that any time he wanted to talk he could count on Booker to listen. Instead, he dropped a hand to his son’s shoulder. “Why not come in and help me decide?”

Bradley squinted toward the showroom window. “I rented a motel room. Thought we both might need some space for a couple of days.”

“You don’t have to stay in a motel to have space. My house is plenty big enough to steer clear of each other, if we want.”

Bradley thumbed a smudge off the chrome handlebar. “Think I’ll keep the room for tonight, anyway. Supposed to check on a job later.”

“Oh.” Standing here in the sun, with the Harley’s engine running, didn’t seem the time or place for apologies. Nevertheless, Booker cleared his throat. “Son, about this morning—”

“Guess I’ll miss O. Henry tonight. With you and that lady.”

The play! Once again Booker had forgotten it. “You sure? I reserved three tickets.”

Bradley swiped at a ribbon of sweat off his cheek. “I’ll call and cancel mine, so you won’t get charged.”

Booker’s mouth tasted sour and dry. His son had covered an acre of ground in the past hours. A room. A job. Plans for the evening.

“At least come in and help me pick out a truck. I’m on virgin territory here. Your granddad will tell you I’m no good with motors and horsepower and such.”

Bradley’s solemn face broke into a strained smile.

“Gramps swears you’re all thumbs and scraped knuckles.” He cut the engine, kicked the stand down, and climbed off. “Maybe you do need help.”

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Paradise Cursed – Snippet 17

CHAPTER 14

Excusing myself from a bawdy cluster of passengers as gracefully as possible, I made my way along the deck seeking out Erin Kohl so that I might put the question to her. Tomorrow would be a full day in port. While many passengers would go ashore, others would not, and free tarot readings could keep them occupied and happy—a constant aim on cruise ships.

As usual, nearly all of our after-dinner crowd had migrated to the bar on the upper deck. I spied the Kohl sisters, however, just past the cabins on the main level. Drawing closer, I noted a tension between them.

They were not talking but staring at something I couldn’t see. Dayna held tight to her sister’s arm, fear written in the rigidity of her body language. Yet as I advanced along the rail, puzzled, I saw no one threatening them.

Then Erin stepped away from Dayna. An instant later, at my approach, Dayna threw her arms around her sister.

“Are you all right?” A gold charm dangled from a thick chain Erin was holding.

“That thing—” Dayna gestured in the direction they’d been staring, “it nearly—”

“We’re fine,” Erin said, before Dayna could finish her sentence. She drew the gold charm against her breast.

Erin did indeed look fine, but Dayna’s young face was etched with the harsh lines of confusion and fear. Fear of what? I saw nothing amiss, no one skulking away.

“Ladies, if someone is hassling you, I need to know.”

A look passed between the sisters. Dayna wide-eyed and open-mouthed, as if wakened from a nightmare, Erin calm and thin-lipped. A quick shake of her head.

“Honestly, we’re fine,” she said.

The chilly silence said otherwise, but I decided to drop it. For now.

“Dayna, will you be ready for another duty tour,” I asked. “This time earlier than first bell?”

“Absolutely! I mean, aye, captain.” She snapped a quick salute.

The resilience of youth never failed to amaze me. “Four a.m. Report to Cookie to help prepare breakfast, then to First Mate Ayanna to usher our guests to the launches for shore day.”

“I’m on it!” She darted away.

In Dayna’s absence, I felt captured once again by her sister’s allure.

“Did you know…” With two fingers, I gently touched Erin’s hand, which was still tightly clutching the amulet. “…it was one of Solomon’s wives who first suggested the Seal?. Originally, it symbolized unity and family, but some hold it as the first recorded charm of magic.”

With obvious reluctance, Erin relaxed her grasp and lifted the engraved gold disk to glitter between us in the moonlight. “It’s just a pendant. Probably someone’s family heirloom.”

“May I?”

When she nodded, I took it from her hand—and drew a breath at the frisson of pleasure that went through me when my fingers touched hers.

I had recognized the amulet instantly as the one Ayanna was wearing earlier. Replicas are fairly common in the island shops, but this was no cheap souvenir. It was gold, probably eighteen karat, and quite delicately engraved. Examining the Seal as I never had before, I saw that one side depicted the entire symbol, two interlocking triangles, while the reverse featured the sixth pentacle of Mars. Writing around the eight points of the radii was in the mystical alphabet of Malachim. I couldn’t read Malichim, but I recognized it.

On a hunch, I asked, “What does it say?”

“Elohim qeber.” Erin’s eyes widened after she spoke. Then, slowly, as if reciting a long ago memory, “Elohim hath protected.”

“The words are Hebrew?”

“An extract…” Her expression slipped from mild surprise to intense concentration, her forehead compressing into tight lines. “… extraction… from traditional Hebrew, I believe. We’re not of Jewish faith, I mean the family who owned it. I mean… my family never embraced any religion… and… I’m rambling. Like I said, an old necklace. I don’t know why your first mate gave it to me.”

“It’s quite beautiful, and a protection against evil.” A quite powerful charm, judging by the way it communicated meaning to its new owner.

But then, why hadn’t it protected Ayanna against the Bokor’s curse? Evil will in, I supposed.

Taking the chain in both hands, I leaned forward to place it around Erin’s neck. “Even more beautiful against your skin.”

“Thanks.” She touched the Seal. The tip of her pink tongue caressed her lower lip.

With the moonlight behind her and prisms of light from establishments along the port sparkling in her dark eyes, Erin Kohl’s attraction… so like my long-ago Remy… was irresistible. I raised my hand—

I stopped just short of cupping her chin, lifting it, pressing my mouth to those incredibly sensuous lips. Instead, I brushed a strand of hair from her face with my thumb.

“Four a.m.,” she said. “An even tighter schedule than yesterday.”

“The breakfast bell won’t ring until six. You’re safe to sleep until nine.”

“Missing the cinnamon rolls.” A raindrop struck her cheek, and she flinched as if from a blade. She swiped at it. “What’s this? Our nightly ten-minute shower?”

“Like clockwork.” I glanced at the sky. Wispy clouds, no thunderheads.

Erin’s expressive face looked much too troubled for a discussion of raindrops and cinnamon rolls.

“Perhaps it’s time to get you to your quarters,” I said.

More drops splashed us.

She hesitated. “Maybe the dining room. It’s too early for sleep, but Dayna will be trying to rest for tomorrow.”

And even the largest of Sarah Jane‘s bunk rooms didn’t allow much space for lounging. “By the time we reach the dining room you’ll be soaked. Let me show you a secret dry spot.”

When she nodded, I took her hand and hastened to a giant hulk of a table as ancient as my old bones. On the upper deck, it stood snug against the outer back wall of the bar. In a half dozen strides, we were there.

“In you go.” She tossed me a glance that said, you’re serious? But then she smiled, ducked under the big table and sat. I folded my taller frame alongside.

Once snuggled into the dry, close space, with rain creating a silvery moonlit veil that cloaked us from the sounds of passengers scurrying to their quarters or to other dry areas, I wondered at my lack of wisdom in sequestering us in such an intimate atmosphere. Too many days I’d been without a woman to warm my bunk, and Erin Kohl, exquisitely female, possessed a delicate, beauty that would tempt a monk. My animal urges were suddenly on high alert. Setting aside the male-female conventions that exist in this century and seducing the girl on the spot was at once shamelessly tempting and morally forbidden.

To batten down my desire, I squinted through the rain trying to make out the deck’s rail and the black sea beyond.

“That bit you did—” I cleared my throat. “with the tarot cards tonight, Ola appeared—”

“Oh! I only did a reading because she begged me to, and I don’t take money—”

“Whoa. I wasn’t about to chastise you, Ms. Kohl. Quite the opposite. I was hoping I might employ you.”

“Employ? You mean, hire me? For what?”

“Ola seemed rather passionately taken with your interpretation of the cards. I assume that’s something you’ve studied?”

“It’s just for fun.”

“Fun is precisely what brings passengers to sail with us. I was hoping—”

“I don’t do it anymore, I mean, except that Ola wouldn’t take no.”

She seemed truly distressed by the prospect of what I was asking, and now I recalled the argument those cards had fostered between Erin and her sister.

“I’m confused,” I said, honestly. “If it’s just for fun, as you say, then what is it that troubles you about engaging your talent to give our other passengers a spot of pleasure? I’m willing to offer free passage for you and your sister for as long as you’d like to sail with us.”

Even in the limited light, her scowl was fierce enough to set me back a peg.

“I’m glad Dayna isn’t listening to this conversation. She wouldn’t give me a moment’s peace, pleading that I throw every caution to the wind and stay here all summer.”

Despite her scowl, my heart leapt at the idea of having more than a passing acquaintance with this woman. “Your sister has the makings of a fine sailor.”

“Sailing is a lark, not a sensible career choice.”

I couldn’t help laughing. “One summer spent among the people of these islands is an education not available at any school. The healthy fresh air, sunshine and exercise come as a bonus— think of the money you’ll save on spa visits.”

Reining it in, I added in a more businesslike tone, “The offer is open for the full season, of course, but I realize you must have commitments.”

She looked away from me, taking a sudden interest in studying her hands as she clasped them together. What had seemed an entertaining idea from my side was giving her more stress than I could have imagined. There appeared to be a much deeper worry beneath the surface, bearing out my hunch that she was burdened by a problem akin to Ayanna’s.

Donning my role of the broad-shouldered cleric who takes on all manner of knotty issues and helps sort them out, I laid a gentle hand on her clenched fingers.

“Tell me,” I said.

She hesitated, not meeting my eyes.

I waited silently, and after a moment the story poured out. Two years earlier, her parents had celebrated their anniversary with a driving trip through the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. Erin consulted their astrology charts, all in good fun, but something she read in the planetary aspects suggested the trip would end badly.

All this she delivered while staring at my hand resting lightly on her clenched fingers. Then she turned to me, and her voice took on a note of anxious confusion.

“Astrology is not meant for predictions. It’s like getting a weather report before setting out, so you’ll know what sort of clothes to pack. But the danger I saw was so clear to me. Without causing alarm, I tried to steer my parents toward a quiet week at their lake cabin, which they always enjoy, but they were looking forward to seeing a part of the country they’d visited before getting tied down by family responsibilities. The day they drove away was the last time I saw my parents alive.”

I gave her fingers a mild squeeze and uttered the expected lie. “Surely that was coincidence. As you said, the stars don’t predict with such exactness.”

“Yes. That’s what I told myself. Then…”

The rest of the story unfolded as if the words had been stuffed back and would not be stifled any longer. She’d traded astrology for tarot, and her readings were simply a way of entertaining friends.

“It’s fun, and I was good at it. People enjoy feeling a little bit of control in knowing what the future might hold.”

But then the cards revealed that her fiancé was cheating, which turned out to be true. At approximately the same time, a friend’s reading turned dark, and even though taking heed of Erin’s cautions, the friend was horribly injured in an escalator accident.

“That’s when I tossed the cards in the trash. But Dayna found them and brought them along on this trip. And now I’m seeing things…things that are…impossible.”

On the Sarah Jane, “impossible” loses its meaning. But Erin Kohl wasn’t quite ready to hear that.

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Here Lies a Wicked Man – Snippet 20

Duke’s Diner had a horseshoe over the door and a COOK WANTED sign in the window, along with a poster for Surprise Endings: Tales of O. Henry, the play he and Dad and that lady were supposed to see tonight. Bradley guessed he’d miss it.

Inside the diner, red-checkered cloths covered the tables, an A&M football game mural covered one wall, and the smell of bacon on a griddle reminded Bradley how much he liked bacon cheeseburgers. He swung a leg over a stool at the counter. Two waitresses older than his mother rushed around taking orders and serving food. Dishes clattered in the kitchen. When one of the waitresses passed by, Bradley ordered a bacon-Swiss, diet Dr. Pepper, and the hugest basket of fries on the menu. Maximum indulgence. Mom wouldn’t cook fries at home since she’d started squeezing into last year’s bathing suit.

Studying the COOK WANTED sign, Bradley wondered about finding a job. Leaving Houston on the Harley had been more an explosion than a planned escape, and right now he liked the idea of staying away from his whole flaming-lecture family for the rest of the summer. He could max out his “emergency” credit card, or he could earn some bucks of his own.

When the waitress brought his food, he asked about the job. She looked him over, using the back of one hand to push her drooping, curly red-brown hair away from her forehead. One of her teeth had a large white cap.

“You look young to be a fry cook,” she said.

“I’ve never cooked in a restaurant, but I cook at home. Fry, bake, boil, whatever.”

“It’s not the same, sugar. I cook at home, too, but you wouldn’t catch me in this kitchen. Come suppertime, it gets crazy.”

“What about a dishwasher? Or a busboy?”

“A machine washes the dishes, and you’re looking at the busboy. This place isn’t big enough to carry extra freight.” She wrote out his ticket and laid it on the counter. “You must be new in town, otherwise you’d know. College kids outnumber the rest of us working stiffs, and jobs get scarce in the summer.”

Bradley felt like a real flounder head. Should’ve known the Aggies would grab any summer work.

“Thanks, anyway.” He popped his straw from its paper sleeve and shoved it into the icy brown liquid. While he wolfed down his burger, he studied the tab wondering how much to leave as a tip. The waitress giving him job information, was that considered extra service?

Hunching over the counter, he fanned the bills in his wallet. These last four years, Dad had deposited money into a college savings account, and Mom insisted Bradley carry the account number in case he was ever in trouble. He guessed this qualified. Tomorrow, the banks would open.

Thinking about how fast his mom and dad had come down on him, Bradley felt himself tighten up again. What did they know about the crap you were up against in school these days? What was it, twenty years since they’d been inside a classroom?

Finishing the last of his fries, he counted out enough for the tab, added a dollar tip, and slouched past the crowded tables. The thing was, he still wanted to talk. To somebody.

Before reaching the door, he saw a cork bulletin board posted with business cards and fliers and little bits of handwriting, mostly selling stuff. There was another flier for O. Henry.

Next to the flier, a three-by-five card announced auditions for Seascape, an Edward Albee play Bradley had worked on in school. He’d understudied for the part of Leslie, one of the sea lizards, had also built sets and handled the lighting. Should he try out? He wondered what it would pay, if anything.

Then he saw the run dates. No way he’d still be in town for Seascape, but the O. Henry play opened tonight. The theater might need a techie. Couldn’t hurt to ask.

He yanked the card off the bulletin board and carried it to the waitress for directions.

CHAPTER 21

“SURE, BOOKER, SURE YOU CAN USE MY TRUCK,” Littlehawk said. “A small fee, of course.”

Booker helped himself to a tumbler of ice water from a waiter’s station at the side of the dining room. The long walk from his stalled LaCrosse had been a killer. As the liquid chilled his mouth and throat, he considered Littlehawk’s offer. With a thirty-minute head start, Bradley was likely halfway to Dallas.

In the restaurant’s entry, a new aquarium occupied a prominent position. Littlehawk opened a plastic bag and gently poured an angelfish into the tank.

“You should think about buying a truck, Booker. Your Buick is a fine car for city driving. It’s not tough enough for our gravel roads.” The angel darted among a number of tiny blue fish with neon red stripes along their sides. “I could negotiate an exceptional deal for you on a new truck.”

“Would that be from one of your cousins? And you get a cut?”

“Booker, you insult me. You are my friend. Your picture remains the center attraction on my photograph wall. Would I take advantage of a fellow bow-hunter?”

“How’d you find out about that? I just bought the gear last night.”

Littlehawk leaned close and lowered his voice. “Was this a secret?”

“No, it’s…never mind. May I use your phone?” Booker wanted to let his parents know Bradley might be headed their way. His cell phone still had no service.

“The lobby pay phone will work much better. A relic, but handy in emergencies. My land line has a terrible buzzing. While you use the pay phone, I will call my friend and yours,

Aaron Fowler, to tow the Buick away and give you a fine deal on a new truck.”

Booker fingered his sore face. “You expect me to buy a vehicle from the man who punched me out two days ago?”

“Business is business, Booker.”

And hadn’t he considered taking the Buick there for repair? “Why is he working? His father just died.”

“Aaron not working won’t make his father alive again.”

No, but it didn’t seem right. “Anyway, I don’t need a truck.”

“The Chevrolet dealership has a fine repair service.”

Going there when the LaCrosse was merely making odd sounds seemed different from having it towed there, giving Aaron the upper hand, so to speak. “There must be a mechanic nearer. In Masonville, maybe?”

“That mechanic is bad news. I would not be a friend if I let you take your car to him.”

Booker squinted at Littlehawk, knowing he was working an angle, but he needed the tow, regardless, so why not give the business to Fowler? He found the pay phone and dialed his parents’ number first, hoping his mother would answer.

“Booker!” His father exclaimed into the phone. “Been a month a Sundays since I saw you, boy. Right after you got winged. How in the world are you?”

“Right as rain, Dad. You know me, always land on my feet.” Oh, Lord. Aphorism Fever again. It happened every time he talked to his father. “Are you and Mother all right?”

“Finer’n frog’s hair. Wake up ever morning thanking our lucky stars we’re in Texas. You doing all right out there in the w-i-ld?” His father gave the word three full syllables.

“Fine, Dad. I’m calling about Bradley.”

“Ain’t that boy sprouting up like a weed? Told him we’re gonna have to buy his shoes a pair and a half at a time, now that he’s grown another foot.”

His father cackled heartily at the weak joke. Booker waited until the laughter diminished then told him about the scene with Bradley.

“Crack cocaine? Whew! That’s serious business.”

“You can see why his mother and I are concerned.”

“Drugs are a sorry damn pastime, you ask me. Saw too many friends on the downhill slide before I heard my own wake-up call. Don’t you worry, I’ll set him down eyeball to eyeball. Put him on the straight and narrow right damn quick.”

“Thanks. He doesn’t talk to his mother or me anymore. If anyone can get through to him, you can.” Brad Senior had no trouble getting eyeball to eyeball with anybody. And Bradley trusted his grandfather. That counted for a lot. Booker felt as low as a slug’s belly knowing he couldn’t communicate with his own son, but there it was.

“The boy tell you about the rally this summer?” Brad Senior asked.

“Yes. He did.”

“You oughta come with us, son. Three Brads riding together. We’d have more fun than a barrel of drunk monkeys.”

“You know I’ve never been comfortable on a motorcycle.”

“My fault, for taking you out too young. But that was then, this is now. Time to grow into the leather.”

Before Booker could think of a reasonable response, his father continued. “At least think about it. Nothing’s going to bring you closer to your son than being on the road together, asphalt under you tires, bugs in your teeth, the roar of a good engine under your butt.”

“Bugs in your teeth?”

His father chuckled. “It can happen.”

“I’ll think about it, Dad. Right now, let’s concentrate on setting Bradley back on track.”

“Good enough. Now, talk to your mother. She’s standing here looking as nervous as a long-tail cat in a room full of cedar rocking chairs.”

“Junior?” His mother’s refined voice held none of the Texas twang.

“How are the strawberries, Mom?”

“They are as sweet as nectar this year, and enormous! I picked one last week as big as my palm. For days I couldn’t bring myself to eat it, just set it on a crystal dish and enjoyed the beauty. Junior, what about this murder? I thought you had moved to a nice, safe country place.”

“If you’re speaking of the man we pulled from the lake, the sheriff ruled the death as accidental.”

“Then you have a fool for a sheriff. A bow and arrow does not shoot off accidentally.”

“It was the man’s own arrow, Mother. Sheriff says he fell on it.”

“Then your sheriff’s not only a fool, he’s a silly fool. I am no stranger to the bow, son. As a girl, I took lessons, and if this man was the excellent bowman asserted by our newspaper, then he wasn’t foolish enough to walk around with an arrow pointing at his heart.”

Booker thought she might have a point…so to speak. He still questioned Ringhoffer’s judgment.

“Junior, if there’s a murderer sneaking around in those woods, you should pack a bag and return to Houston until he’s caught. We almost lost you once. I couldn’t face that again.”

“If you believe newspapers, Mother, then Houston has more than one murderer running loose. Dallas, too, I imagine.”

“One murder in Lakeside Estates is as frightening as one on every street corner in a big city. Now, if you don’t want to go home, you can stay with us until this maniac is caught.”

Booker closed his eyes and shook his head. “All right. I’ll consider driving up for a visit.”

As he cradled the phone, Booker couldn’t help thinking that his mother and Sheriff Ringhoffer should talk. Maybe the sheriff had been too quick to chalk up Fowler’s death as an accident.

“The tow truck is on its way,” Littlehawk said, when Booker returned to the dining room.

Another angel fish had been released into the tank. The pair swam in tandem, strikingly graceful among the smaller fish.

“Thanks, Pete.” Booker strolled outside to wait.

The club owner followed. “I told Aaron you wanted to trade for a pickup, and he is knocking fifty percent off your towing fee.”

For an instant, Booker wanted to wring Littlehawk’s neck. Then he reminded himself that the man was likely telling the truth about the dealer’s repair service being the best, and he wouldn’t be Littlehawk if he didn’t try to promote a sale, skimming a bird-dog off the top. The prospect of dealing with a hothead like Aaron Fowler didn’t thrill Booker, but this might be an opportunity to ask a few questions. About bow hunting.

A tepid breeze ruffled hibiscus flowers planted around a stone fountain. Littlehawk busied himself trimming dead blossoms and scooping leaves off the water while Booker squatted on the stone steps and waited. After an amazingly short time, he spied a tow truck zipping down Highway 3 toward Lakeside. Instead of turning in at the gate, it zipped right past.

“Why isn’t he stopping?”

“I was outside when you drove away. When I saw you returning on foot, I calculated how far you must have traveled before breaking down.” Littlehawk pointed toward the distant horizon. “I told the driver approximately where to find your burgundy Buick.”

Booker turned to stare. The club owner had sat here in the shade and watched him walking down that long, hot road?

“Don’t thank me, Booker.” Littlehawk’s perfect teeth gleamed in his bronze face. “This is what friends are for.”

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Bitch Factor – Chapter 6

Chapter Six

The way Parker Dann figured it, he’d gotten careless, let his guard down, and deserved to be caught. But it still felt lousy being outsmarted after all his careful plotting, playing the “model citizen,” waiting for the holiday court break so no one would miss him for a week or two. That bounty hunter must be part bloodhound to guess he’d head for Canada.

How many years since he’d lived there? Twenty? Twenty-five? Next time he got loose he’d throw a dart at the map, shoot for someplace he’d never lived before. The beach, maybe. Yeah, he’d always wanted a waterfront home, surf pounding right outside his door.

He yanked the heavy chain that shackled him to the rear floorboard. The chain slid out of his numbed hand and rattled around his feet.

Flannigan, she’d said her name was. Wasn’t that the name he’d heard muttered around the jailhouse, waiting for bail to be set?

Inmates talked about her like she was some kind of mind-reading magician, showing up at places she couldn’t possibly know about. One guy’d been successfully dodging the law for nine years. Joined the Mexican army, and nobody even came close to finding him. Then he crossed back into Texas to see his daughter get married. When he left the church, there was Flannigan waiting at his car.

Parker rubbed his chest where she’d hit him with the friggin stun gun. Felt like a mule kicked him in the gut, then trampled on his head.

Nudging the chain aside with his stocking foot, he studied the U-bolt attaching the chain to the car floor. She hadn’t even let him put on his shoes or shirt before hustling him out to the Mustang. Now there she was in the motel room, poking around, packing up his stuff, he hoped. Maybe she’d bring him a shirt before he froze solid.

He yanked the chain again, hands flexing quicker this time., No way he’d ever work that U-bold loose. The shackle locked around his ankle looked simple enough, if you knew how to pick locks, which he didn’t. If he could find a nail or a piece of wire, might as well give it a try. Might get lucky.

Otherwise, he’d bide his time till he got a chance to snatch her keys. Twelve hundred miles back to Houston… she’d have to let him out sometime… and he must outweigh her by eighty pounds. Pure mass had to count for something, magician or not. He’d shove her down and sit on her.

Mighty Mouse, that’s what the inmates had called her. Big Joe Bonner swore she’d brought him down in ten seconds flat.,

“Shee-ut. Reached out to knock the little runt out of my way, maybe cop a feel of those fine tits while I’m at it. She grabbed my wrist in some kind of devil’s grip, had me on my knees before I could spit.” Exaggerating, of course. Bonner must weigh three hundred pounds. Only way to save face after being brought in by a woman was to make her out to be Superbroad.

But Pico, a quiet, hard-eyed Hispanic, his acne-scarred face devoid of expression, had taken up the story from where he squatted on his heels in a corner to avoid sitting on the floor.

“Same bitch brought my brother in. Rudy makes it halfway to Monterrey, stops at a cousin’s house maybe ten minutes. Gets back in his car, drives twenty feet down the road—the engine quits. While Rudy’s head’s under the hood, Flannigan cuffs him, man, throws him in her trunk. Hauls him back across the border.” Pico gave everybody a look that said the punch line’s still coming. “Cousin finds the car. Later, he tells Rudy the bitch stuck a potato up his tailpipe. A goddamn potato, man.”

After that, half the guys in hearing distance had bounty hunter stories, each one trying to top the last. But the ones featuring Flannigan were the most colorful.

Dann watched the motel-room door open and close, Flannigan striding toward the car, carrying his plastic bags, stun gun clipped to her belt. Have to stay clear of that thing.

The inmates all agreed on a couple of points. Said if Flannigan got on your trail there was no shaking her. Someone said she used to be a hotshot ADA, had a good chance at the top job. Then one day she up and quit, no explanation.

Dann heard her pop the trunk, toss his bags in, close it. When she strode around to the passenger side, he caught a brief full-length profile, and an unexpected stir of appreciation gave him a start. The woman was a looker, no denying that. The cut of her curves awakened carnal appetites that had gone woefully dormant these past few months.

She opened the front passenger door, leaned in, and slid a panel open in the steel mesh separating the front and back seats. Parker got his first unobstructed view of her face: full mouth, well-shaped lips, sunny complexion over fine bones, no-nonsense chin. But it was the lusty brown eyes that gave her away. This bitch might walk, talk, and kick butt like a man, but inside she was all woman. And women had soft hearts.

“Here’s a shirt and coat, Dann.” She shoved them through the opening. “And some dry socks.”

The rolled-up socks bounced off his chest, hitting the chain with a thud and a rattle.

“Guess you think I’m Houdini.” He jiggled his cuffed wrists with just the right amount of impotence. Wasn’t a woman alive could resist male helplessness. “How am I supposed to put them on?”

She motioned him to turn around. Parker suppressed a smile as he heard a click and felt the cuffs separate.

“What about my shoes?”

“Packed.”

“Guess you didn’t notice the snow. Guy could get frostbite.” he grinned his most puppyish grin.

“You won’t be walking anywhere until we get to Houston.”

So much for charm.

“Well, what about my car?” It was a wreck, sure. He’d bought it to get by until the city released his impounded Cadillac. Paid hard-earned money for it. “Can’t just leave it here in the parking lot.”

“You won’t need any wheels where you’re going.”

Shit! “Tell me, lady, were you born a bitch, or did it come with your training bra and pubic hair?”

She cocked an amused eyebrow, then snapped the mesh panel shut and slammed the passenger door.

What a lousy friggin mess. Bracing one foot against the door, as high as he could lift it, Parker studied the shackle lock.

“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation,” Thoreau had written. Parker had never felt desperate until the day he was arrested and charged. Mostly, he took life as it came, hard or easy. Never accomplished much, but then he hadn’t aimed at making any great marks in the world. He had lusty appetites, and he was unashamed of those. “In the long run men hit only what they aim at.” Henry David Thoreau hadn’t minded jail, but then he wasn’t facing twenty years. Parker aimed to stay out of jail. No way he was going back to court. He’d watched the jurors’ faces that last day. If the trial had ended there, he’d be in Huntsville now, staring at up to twenty years behind bars. He’d rather they shot him.

Meet me here next week for the chapter of Bitch Factor.

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Paradise Cursed – Snippet 16

CHAPTER 13

For the first time in many weeks, Ayanna felt clean in her mind, happy in her heart. In the shower, singing. Then she rolled all her bloodstained clothing into two tight bundles, pressing the air out, to make a final offering, yeah, to Oricha Babalu Aye and Oricha Oya Mimo.

On the floor at the foot of her bed, on a scarf serving as an altar cloth, she had placed two bowls, each with a stone and three cowries shells. She tucked the bundles inside the bowls. Earlier, in the galley, she had found ears of roasted corn, a basket of purple grapes. Babalu Aye preferred the grain, so she added a corn ear to his bowl. After breaking off a stem of grapes for Oya Mimo, she set the remainder aside for her own snack.

With pride, she admired the offerings. They were good.

She ate a few grapes then shared a few more with Oya Mimo. Now she lighted one small candle for each saint and murmured the prayer written on the paper Shaman Demarae had given her. Rising, she clapped her hands to the rhythm of the words and slowly danced in the small space of her quarters. Around and back she danced, watching the candles waver and murmuring her prayer. Her heart was full up with the joy this evening had brought and grateful to Babalu Aye for taking her sickness, Oya Mimo for taking the evil put on her by the Bokor. So she danced, praying her thankfulness, until her eyes grew heavy.

Lying down beside the altar, she pinched out the candles. In the near darkness, she could see thin wisps of smoke rising from the cooling wicks. She placed her head on her arm and let a most peaceful sleep take her.

Within the blackness, a fire burned yellow and red, casting harsh light and shadow on a figure dancing nearby. The figure was familiar, but not Shaman Demarae. Ayanna felt certain it was a woman, but just as certain it was the Bokor. She never had heard of a female Bokor, nah, and never had seen this person in her dark dreams except from the backside, yeah. No hair at all. Skin ashy-black, not brown like Ayanna’s. The only clothing a string around the waist and a skinny thong between the meaty behind cheeks. Maybe a man.

Each time the Bokor appeared in her mind, Ayanna saw a bit more but not enough, and never the person who paid for the curse. Bokors only conjure for a fee. Ayanna did not understand who would hate her enough to pay a Bokor for obeah magic and a curse so terrible.

Dancing beside the blazing fire, and black-up with smoking the weed, the Bokor threw a handful of something into the flames. They burned high and yellow, emitting a cloud of smoke, a stifling odor like banana leaves and fresh-turned earth. Cha! She wanted away, but bound by sleep her arms and legs refused to move.

A man-size crocodile hung from a tree limb, thick rope binding its throat and jaws. Grinning and singing in the thick smoke, the Bokor sliced open the beast’s belly, neck to tail, and scooped out its innards. Then two side slits cut with the same sharp, curved knife, and the Bokor slid his body into the croc’s skin, wearing it like a coat—

… and was Creation Stepper, struttin tru Babylon witout fear, livin on da struttin edge, fearin no foe. Da Bokor was Control. Da Bokor was Taker.

The Bokor’s fire burned higher.

Into the smoke walked a second person, spiky rastas glowing red in the firelight. Scaly green croc skin turned soft, smooth, white. Croc jaws flapping around the Bokor’s neck turned to soft, springy dark curls.

And the Bokor laughed and laughed and laughed.

*

Watching the Kohl sisters tonight had given me the tip of an idea. On any voyage, passengers arrived with such a variety of interests that entertaining them for days at sea was a challenge.

As a group, the islands offered shopping and water sports, but except for history lovers there was often little difference from one to the next. Had it not been for bringing Ayanna to Grand Cayman, we would’ve sailed to the Leeward Antilles, where Dutch, French and British cultures provide a rich assortment of dalliances. Among the Caymans, diving enthusiasts could find miles of ever-changing landscape to explore undersea, but those who preferred to remain on ship were not as thoroughly amused. Crab races. Toga parties. Shove out the diving plank so the young and courageous can jump and splash around. The more adventurous would climb the jib boom to dive, like going off a six-meter platform, or clamber across the widows’ net to jump.

Compared to an ocean liner, which was much like a city with its swimming pool, theater, casino, and numerous dining areas, the Sarah Jane had little to offer guests during long sails— which typically were done at night— or to offer guests who remained aboard after dinner rather than go ashore and take in the nightlife. Tarot readings might spice things up a bit.

Ola certainly seemed to enjoy hers. Seeing the sisters exit the dining room, I finished my conversation with a couple from Wyoming, one of those American territories I find immensely fascinating because I can never hope to go there, and followed the girls to the main deck hoping to pitch my idea.

Unfortunately, on this a clear and balmy night, I met such a number of strolling passengers who wanted a moment of my time that my objective remained out of reach.

*

Lying on the cool cabin floor beside the altar, Ayanna floated in yellow, in the divine spiral of a reptilian eye, yellow yet not like sunshine yellow or lemon yellow but the color of her urine when she was full-up with rum. The yellow took her slide-along up the companionway and across the ship.

Spying two women, toucan and dove, Ayanna felt evilous bad thoughts invade. Her mind filled with craven for the dove. She thought to rip open the pretty little dove head and discover her secrets.

Though sickened by the evilous thoughts, Ayanna could not tear herself from the spiraling, slip-sliding yellow.

“Great fracking hell!” the toucan screeched, clutching her sister. “Erin, what is that?”

“You see it, too?” Backing away, the dove groped busily in her handbag.

“See it? We’re going to be its next meal, run!”

*

“Run!” Dayna screeched again, but she was frozen in heart-hammering panic at her sister’s side, scarcely believing what she saw, the snaky thing materializing in mid air as big as an elephant but longer, squirmier, scalier, coming at them—fierce yellow eyes, ugly slash of a mouth with fangs, dripping, coming at them—coming at them, and they were smack against the ship’s rail, and Dayna’s feet were ice, heart threatening to burst, tongue so thick and dry she couldn’t say it again, run!

Erin calmly continued searching through her bag.

Run! Yet the word stuck to Dayna’s tongue, filling her mouth that tiny word, refusing to budge past her teeth. Fingers clenched around Erin’s arm, she tried to pull her away from the hideous, scaly, yellow-eyed reptile, willing her sister to come on, Erin, move. Run!

Erin pushed things around in her bag…

What are you doing? Let’s go. Run! The words shouted in Dayna’s brain but came out only in squeaks from her stubborn mouth.

The reptile rippled closer, bigger, it’s glaring eyes bathing them in yellow—not just light, it was thicker than air, thick like smoke with a smell like rotten eggs. It oozed around them, filling Dayna’s nose, burning, choking…Please, Erin! Unless you’ve got a gun hidden...the squeaks in her throat became a racking cough but still she tugged at her sister’s arm. Please run!

Finally, Erin stopped rummaging and removed a small object from her bag. It caught the moonlight and gleamed. Ayanna’s amulet?

She lifted it toward the beast.

“Your sword shall enter into your own heart…” Erin murmured. Holding the charm in front of her, she stepped toward the beast, slipping Dayna’s grasp.

The beast faded.

“…and your arrow shall be broken.” Erin thrust the amulet high.

But the beast was already gone.

You did it. Dayna stared, unwilling to blink. How did you make it vanish?

“Your sword shall…” Erin murmured again, still moving forward.

Moving toward it, like it was still there, but it was gone, wasn’t it? Amazement melting her fear, Dayna scanned the ship’s deck for any sign that the thing had been real.

*

On the cool floor, floating in yellow twilight sleep, Ayanna moaned and writhed. Words like fiery stones falling from the dove’s lips as she thrust her puny bauble ahead of her. Ayanna floated forward.

“Your sword shall enter into your own heart and your arrow shall be broken, your sword shall enter into your own heart…”

Bauble catching the moon’s light, reflected a cold beam. Dissolving within the yellow… Ayanna gasped and woke fully. Terrified. Sick in her stomach. Unable to breath.

Shaman Demarae’s cleansing had not worked.

His blessing had fallen on closed ears, the orichas not hearing.

Or worse… the orichas had failed.

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