Jennifer Crusie's Blog, page 57

Happiness is Not Bears

I was stressed this week, so on an impulse I ordered a sleep shirt and a box of candy from Amazon. It arrived after dark, and a bear ripped open the box and took the candy. It did leave the sleep shirt, so that was something. So for me, happiness would have been a box of candy a bear didn’t get. I know, I didn’t need a box of candy. One damn thing after another.

What didn’t the bears get at your place this week that made you happy?

This is a Good Book Thursday, April 6, 2023

I’ve been rereading Rex Stout, mostly for comfort because my brain’s on overload.

What did you read this week that was a comfort? Or not?

Working Wednesday, April 5, 2023

I’m working. Rewriting the first chapters of RS, filling up a dumpster, doing taxes . . . life is full.

So what have you been doing?

Happiness is Thunder Road

Sometimes I get so far up in my own orifices that I forget the basics of happiness. Like music. I know nothing about music, but (sorry) I know what I like. I tripped over Bruce Springsteen’s Barcelona performance of “Thunder Road,” and the sheer exuberance of the band and the crowd, coupled with how much I love that song–it’s a novel in itself and had a huge impact on my first single title–just cleared out all the tension and left my brain bright again. Listening in my bedroom isn’t quite as good as blasting it as I sail down the road with the windows open, but it’s still damn good. So even though things are rocky right now, I’m going to have faith because there’s magic in the night. (I’m not a beauty but hey, that’s all right.) And from now on I’m going to do a lot more dancing in the dark, too.

What made you happy this week?

Rocky Start, Chapter Four: Max, Chapter Five: Rose

It’s April Fool’s Day. If I was the sprightly type, I’d do some clever prank here, but I left sprightly a long time ago, so here’s some more Rocky Start.

Chapter 4
MAX

I continued on to the post office for my boots, sorting out what had just happened.

The woman swinging the statue hadn’t been young, but she hadn’t been weak, either; tall and feisty and fierce, nobody to mess with. Attractive, but then I hadn’t seen a female other than Maggs in weeks, so my judgment was questionable.

The guy had been serious, ready to escalate to firearms, which was bad news for the woman. Didn’t matter how feisty she was, if he shot her, she’d be done. He’d also rolled with the leg sweep and then assumed a stance which indicated training in real no-frills fighting, which is a combination of the useful parts of various martial arts, leaving the bullshit for the movies. And he’d left in a limo after being brought to heel by some woman so he probably had some mother issues. Those are the worst.

As for the woman’s back-up, the blonde girl had been young and pretty and obviously not afraid to use a shotgun, steady and serious. Dangerous, if inexperienced. The older, stacked woman in the big black hat. . . something odd there. That wasn’t a hat pin she’d taken out of her hat. It was a small version of the classic Fairbairn-Sykes fighting knife and she held it in a way that indicated she knew how to wield it. If the guy had come for her, she’d have gutted him. And then the last woman, roughly the same age as the statue-swinger, Asian-American in a suit with a taser in her hand and a look on her face that said somebody was going to die.

A quartet of women ready to inflict pain.

Definitely not going back there.

Heading down the main drag in town, there was no sign of the limo, just a handful of people going about their business, most of them middle-aged or older, which made sense. Rocky Start did not look like the kind of place that kept its young.

The town was on a bend in the river that cut through the mountains. The highway I’d come in on ran between the town and a ridge line on the side away from the river. The trees were just beginning to turn at the higher elevations, and it was going to be a beautiful fall here in a week or two. It would also be beautiful miles down the AT where I planned on being shortly, with fewer homicidal women.

I checked my app and found out there were two post offices because the town was bisected by the state line between Tennessee and Georgia. That explained the blue line running down the center of the appropriately named State Street. Two post offices seemed extreme, but I’d done contract work for the government and knew redundancy and stupidity were built into all elements of the bureaucracy.

There wasn’t much of a town outside of this main street, perhaps a block or two on either side. None of the buildings were higher than two stories. Most of the ground floors were small mom and pop shops. A furniture store, a small hardware place, a dentist, a Chinese restaurant, a sketchy looking pharmacy, and, I noticed, two funeral homes, across the street from each other, one in each state, which seemed extreme unless there were things going on in them there hills I didn’t want to know about.

The two POs were, like the funeral homes, directly across the street from each other, and Georgia had a CLOSED sign on the door. Tennessee won by default although I had little doubt that my old boss had shipped the boots to the Georgia side because it would amuse the superior entity running the simulation which was my life.

Maggs and I climbed the steps up to the porch in Tennessee, and I signaled for her to wait outside the door and went in. There was no one behind the counter, but there was a bell. Before I tapped it, given the weirdness I’d already seen here, I surveyed the place, noting a pair of cameras in the far corners of the room. Pretty high tech for a small town. Then I leaned over the counter to take a look. Nothing suspicious to see except a M1014 Benelli semi-automatic shotgun in a specially made sheath behind the counter, ready for quick deployment. It was the close-quarters shotgun that the Marines had chosen in a competition and was also used by various special operations forces when they wanted to clear a room quickly with a half-dozen 12 gauge rounds as fast as you can pull a trigger. Not standard post office issue, last I checked. I hoped my package wasn’t postage due.

Okay then.

I lightly tapped the bell. It took several seconds, then an older fellow—gray hair, bushy white eyebrows, a napkin tucked into the collar of his uniform shirt—came out. He looked me up and down, then nodded.

“Max Reddy?”

I tensed, half-expecting dark figures to lunge out of the shadows. “Yes.”

“We got your package yesterday.”

I had to ask, although I didn’t want to. “How do you know it’s mine?”

“The wife and I know everyone in town and the package was sent care of the post office to someone we never heard of,” Postmaster Ferrel (according to his name tag) explained. “Max Reddy. So we figured it was a stranger passing through. We don’t get many strangers. Passing through. None staying. You are him, right?”

“I am he,” I said, for lack of anything else and noting the emphasis on ‘none staying’. So far, this wasn’t turning out to be a friendly town, Weed Brothers, statue brawls on the street, and all. I waited for him to produce the package but he just stared at me.

“The package?” I finally prodded.

“Oh,” he said, as if surprised. “It was sent to Rocky Start, Georgia. Across the street. My wife has it there.”

“That post office is closed.”

“Yes,” he said. “Post mistress is out doing the route.”

“Could you perhaps get it for me?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Nope. Not my jurisdiction. The United States Post Office is a branch of the federal government, son, and as such we are governed by very strict laws regarding the storage and delivery of mail.”

“Right,” I said. “Could you unlock the door so can I get my package?”

He shook his head. “The wife doesn’t like me messing with her stuff. She doesn’t like me much in general right now. That woman can carry a grudge. She should be back before dinner.”

I sighed. “You want me out of town? Get my package and I’m gone.”

He looked at me keenly. “You here because of Ozzie?”

“Who’s Ozzie?”

“Friend of ours. He died two days ago. Terrible thing, but he was getting on in years.” He pursed his lips. “I hear tell there’s some stranger in town claiming to be Ozzie’s son, giving Rose at Oddities some trouble. That you?”

“Nope.”

“Good. Don’t like vultures winging into town. Not much for strangers either.”

No shit. “Could I just get my package?” I pointed at my toe sticking out of the boot. “It’s boots. I need them.”

“You sure do,” he agreed, without moving. “I also hear there’s a fellow who ran off the man claiming to be Ozzie’s son. That you?”

“Apparently.”

“Just happened to be there by chance, did you?”

The rumor network in this town was better than the NSA’s computers monitoring the internet. The paranoia on par with the CIA. “I was on my way here. To get my boots.”

“Planning on staying long?”

“I was hoping to be gone this afternoon,” I said. “Once I get my boots. And see a veterinarian for my dog. Sooner I get the boots and my dog looked at, the sooner I can be on my way. Not staying. Don’t want to stay.”

“Town doesn’t have a vet at the moment. He’s gone.” His voice made it clear the vet couldn’t have gone too soon to suit the postmaster.

This guy was mutinously stubborn. I noted the screaming eagle pin in his collar. “I was in the Infantry a long time ago and learned that taking care of the feet is a priority.” I hated playing the veteran card but I needed the damn boots.

He nodded judiciously. “Hundred and First airborne.”

I dialed up a unit. “First Cav.”

He scoffed. “The line they never crossed, the horse they never rode, and the color speaks for itself.”

I blinked at the insult based on the First Cav’s shoulder patch which consisted of a large yellow shield, with a diagonal line on it, and a horse’s head in the top part.

“Better than a puking chicken,” I returned, referring to the screaming eagle on his pin since it appeared Postmaster Ferrel liked playing games.

He gave a slight smile now that we had properly insulted each other. But he didn’t move.

The door opened behind me and the young shotgun blonde came in, looking like she owned the place, Maggs padding after her from the porch. Which Maggs isn’t supposed to do. I waited for Ferrel to throw a fit about the dog being inside. I was, of course, wrong.

“Hiya, Poppy,” Ferrel said, changing demeanor in a flash.

Poppy smiled at him. “Hiya, Mr. Ferrel.” Then she turned to frown at me. “Your dog is hurt. Let me help, I’m good at that.”

“Yep,” Mr. Ferrel agreed. “Poppy’s pretty much the town vet these days since that moron Alfie ran off to Peru with his assistant. Louise.” He said the name with loathing, and shook his head. “I give it six weeks and he’ll be back, tail between his legs, poorer and no wiser. No Louise, neither.” He looked at me. “She’s a dangerous woman, that Louise, with her womanly wiles. Women. They’ll turn on you in a second. No offense,” he added to Poppy.

“None taken,” she said, cheerfully.

The door opened again, and this time it was Feisty, out of breath and bosom heaving, her cheek red from where that jerk had hit her. “Hi, Stanley,” she said cheerfully, and Stanley said, “Hiya, Rose. Looking good.”

“Thank you, Stanley,” she said, practically twinkling at him. Just a cute little woman in an apron who fifteen minutes ago had tried to beat a guy to death with a Maltese Falcon.

Then she looked at me.

“I came looking for you,” she said, smiling. With dimples. “I’m here to help.”

“I’m good,” I said, not smiling.

Behind me, Stanley chuckled.

It was right about then that I became sure the whole damn town was out to get me.

Chapter 5
ROSE

The good guy and Stanley Ferrel were having a stare down when I walked in, and Poppy was down on her knees beside the dog.

She said, “Oh, no. She’s bleeding,” and looked up at the good guy, frowning. “And you made her keep walking?” She stood up, angry. “What’s her name?”

“Be polite, Poppy,” I said, and then held out my hand to the guy. “I’m sorry, we haven’t been introduced. I’m Rose. And you are?”

He looked at my hand as if having an internal debate, then sighed and took it. “Max,” he said, and dropped my hand. Then he looked down at Poppy. “Her name is Maggs. But—”

Poppy shook her head at him. “I’m going to take Maggs back to our place and get her bandaged up. You can come get her when you’re done here.”

“She won’t go with you,” he said with calm certainty—I’m pretty sure this guy was calm 24/7—and then he turned back to Stanley. “About my boots?”

Poppy bent to say something soothing to Maggs, and then stood. “C’mon, Maggs,” she said, and the dog headed for the door with her.

The good guy—Max—looked at the dog leaving and said, “Hey!” but Maggs looked back and then kept going and then they were out the door. He stared at the door in surprise.

“It’ll be okay, she’ll take care of your puppy,” I told him, in case he was thinking of going after them. “Poppy’s good with dogs. And cats. Pretty much everything that breathes, really.”

“Yes, she is,” Stanley chimed in. “Poppy’s good people, Rose. You raised her right.”

“Aw, Stanley, thank you. That means a lot.” It actually did mean a lot. Poppy is the best thing in my world, so I love it when other people see how great she is.

Then Stanley looked at Max. “I told you, I can’t get your package because it’s in Georgia.”

“You mean across the road.” Max closed his eyes for a moment, and that’s when I knew how to pay him back for grabbing Junior, and possibly convincing him to trust me long enough so I could lift his wallet to see if he and Junior were in this thing together.

Yes, I have trust issues.

“Stanley.” I leaned on the counter beside Max, brushing his sleeve. If men didn’t like it when you moved in close, they moved away.

Max did not move away.

Stanley frowned at me, so I said, “This guy just saved me from somebody who hit me. I mean, look at my cheek! Max is a hero. The government should reward heroes. You’re the government here, Stanley. You have the power to get him his boots. C’mon, be a hero, too. All he wants is the package that is legally his.” I smiled at him again, just between us, a secret we could share.

It’s a trick so old it has whiskers, but it always works.

“You know how Dottie gets,” Stanley said to me, but I could see a smile breaking through. He was a cheating husband; they always respond to flirting with women who aren’t their wives. Dottie was going to kill him for invading her space, of course, but that was his problem. My problem was getting Max’s boots for him so he’d trust me so I could steal his wallet and find out what the hell was going on.

“Stanley.” I leaned a little closer to Max, a little farther across the counter, too, tilted my head, and hit him with my smile and my dimples. Those dimples are worth their weight in moisturizer. “You’re not afraid of Dottie. I don’t believe that for a second. A tough veteran like you? You’ve faced down much worse. And the hero needs his package. I bet anything he’s ex-military, all you guys have that devastating confidence. He’s your fellow soldier, Stanley. Esprit de corps. And he really needs his package. C’mon. Be a hero. Get the guy his boots.”

Stanley looked at me, and sighed, and turned to Max. “You wanted some boots?”

“Yes,” Max said, clearly on his last nerve and trying to hold onto it. “I wanted some boots.”
Stanley lifted the counter top and headed across the street.

When he was out the door, Max looked at me. “Don’t bother to try that crap on me, it’s not going to work.”

“Have I ever?” I said. “I know you don’t scam that easily. You’re too clued in.” I watched him relax a little. Compliments often did that for men. “That was a big ask, for Stanley to invade Dottie’s territory.” I looked across the street until Stanley was at the door unlocking it. “I lied, he couldn’t take Dottie in a fight. Actually, I think he thought that was a plus in the beginning. Stanley likes strong women.”

Max frowned, looking confused. “In the beginning?”

I nodded. “They’re divorcing. It’s played merry hell with the mail delivery. Some days, nothing gets delivered if they’re really feuding.” I took a deep breath. “So anyway, thank you very much for defenestrating Junior. Or whatever throwing somebody off a stoop is. I was rude back there and you were helpful. So it was my pleasure to con Stanley for your boots, don’t mention it.” Then I stopped. “But I really did have that.”

“He had a gun and he was going for it,” Max said. “And you weren’t armed.” He looked at Lian’s taser in my hand. “Then.”

Junior had a gun? How did he know Junior had a gun? Bespoke suit, they can make them to hide things. Maybe I hadn’t had that. Stop arguing, Rose. “I just needed to thank you.” I smiled and flashed the dimples again.

He was frowning at me now, negating all my dimple power, which was just wrong. I mean, I’m not young any more, and I was never a beauty, but when I put my back into it, I can be cute as all hell.

“That guy who hit you said he was coming back,” Max said. “Why was he going to shoot you?”

“I hit him with the Maltese Falcon. It’s a movie prop—”

He shook his head “I know what it is, why were you hitting him with it?”

“It was the first thing to hand.”

“No, I meant—”

Stanley came back into the office and handed a large Amazon box to Max. “You owe me, stranger. Good thing you’re just passing through.” He held out an electronic handheld device. “Sign here. You can use your finger.”

“Right.” Max slashed his forefinger across the screen while awkwardly holding the box.

“Have a nice day,” Stanley said in his usual, flat voice, indicating his being nice was over and we could leave.

“You’re a sweetheart, Stanley,” I told him. “Dottie is a lucky woman.”

Stanley cheered up a little at the first part, but the mention of his wife’s name put the dour back. Max opened the door and stepped back so I could go out first. What Coral would call A Real Gentleman. So I tripped and fell into him, and he caught me, and I looked up and met his eyes and he really was attractive, and for a moment I forgot why I’d fallen. I mean, I came to my senses, we needed to know more about this guy, but there for a moment, it was just nice to have somebody’s arms around me. Especially his. You know that chemistry thing people are always going on about? Turns out it exists.

I said, “Sorry,” and patted his chest while I pinched his wallet between two fingers, and he moved away from me a little which pulled it from his pocket, and I turned out onto the steps, my back to him as I dropped the wallet in my apron pocket. He came out and closed the door behind us. “I didn’t know about the gun. So. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” He looked around, probably for his dog.

“Poppy will take care of Maggs,” I told him. “You know where we are, right? How to get back to the Oddities shop?” I pointed back the way I’d come. “The blue line runs right down State Street and ends at the shop. You can’t miss it.”

He nodded and sat down on the curb with his Amazon box just as I started to back away, and Pike’s truck rolled to a stop next to him, missing his feet by inches.

Pike looked down at him, but addressed me. “This the guy who helped you, Rose?”

“Hey, Pike,” I said, moving to the window. “Yes. This is the good guy I was telling you about. Do not maim him.”

Pike shook his head. “Go home, Rose, I need to talk to him.”

“Do not hurt him,” I said. “I mean it, Pike. He helped me. That guy who hit me had a gun.”

Pike frowned. “He did?”

I nodded.

“What kind?”

“Uh.” I looked down at Max who was reaching for something on his belt. “What kind of gun?”

He answered without looking up. “Browning Hi-Power in a hip holster, right side, extended mag which is awkward and unnecessary if you can hit what you’re shooting at.”

“That so?” Pike asked.

“That’s the rumor,” Max replied, pulling a very sharp knife out of a sheath.

Pike gave me one of those looks that said he was dead serious. “Go home, Rose.”

Right.

I leaned over Max as he slit open the box. “Really sorry about this,” I whispered and started back down the street at a good clip, wanting to make it back to the shop before he noticed his wallet was missing, him being the observant sort—there was a gun?—but he called, “Wait a minute, Rose,” and it was nice to hear him say my name until he walked the few steps to join me, looking stern.

“My wallet,” he said.

I immediately moved into this-is-my-innocent face. “Hmmm?”

“Cute. Give me my wallet, or I will take it.”

“I don’t know—” I started and then I stopped because he was patting me down. Everywhere. He hit the apron pocket just as he was getting to my good parts, and it had been awhile since I’d been patted, so that was a let down, plus I’d somehow screwed up the lift, and that never happened, and—

“If you wanted to see the wallet, all you had to do was ask,” Max said as he took his wallet back.

“Really?” I said.

“No.”

“That’s what I thought.” I put my hands on my hips, trying for the spunky little woman this time, since innocence wasn’t working. Well, the spunky little woman who was 5’9,” but still such a cute archetype; you’d have to forgive a spunky little woman—

“Don’t do that again,” he said and I gave up on the spunky little woman, too.

“I wasn’t after your money,” I said, trying for outraged virtue.

“I know,” Max said.

“I just wanted to know more about you.”

He leaned down then, almost nose to nose with me and said, “You don’t need to know more about me.”

That’s when I began to think seriously about sleeping with him. Because men will tell you anything if you’re naked, not because I wanted him, I’d given that up a long time ago when I’d realized that I have a genius for finding the only cheating alcoholic in the room and taking off my clothes, and when that happens to you two or three or four times, you just say, “The hell with this” and—

He narrowed his eyes at me, and I realized that being naked might not work with Max, him being the suspicious type, and then he leaned in, and I put my hands on his chest to hold him off, and lifted his wallet again.

Maybe I could get him to pat me down again. That was fun.

“Whatever you’re planning, the answer is no,” Max said.

“That’s really mean,” I said and walked away with his wallet.

Rocky Start, Chapter Three: Rose

Chapter 3
ROSE

Momentum from the missed swing to the nuts kept me moving and I staggered a little, but I could see Junior sprawled out in the street now, courtesy of the new guy who turned to look at me with no expression at all: Middle-aged, dark-hair with grey at the temples, tall, weather-beaten, tired-looking and gaunt as all hell, dressed in dusty black, a man who looked like he’d traveled far and hadn’t enjoyed it and hadn’t eaten much on the way. And he had a dog with him that looked like a big black wolf.

“I had that,” I said, annoyed because I do not need to be rescued—I learned early that rescue does not show up so you have to get on with it yourself—and I’d really been looking forward to nutting Junior.

“You did not have that,” he said, calm as all hell, which irritated me further, another one of those Master of the Universe guys, but then I saw Junior get up off the street and charge him, and I yelled “Behind you!” and the dog barked, and the new guy took a step sideways and did a leg sweep and took Junior down again.

Okay, I was beginning to warm to him.

Junior went with the fall and rolled to his feet. The two of them spent a moment looking at each other, sizing each other up, the dog baring its teeth by the good guy’s side, and they subtly changed positions and I thought, This is getting dangerous. Then I saw Lian running down the street with her taser, and Coral was at my side with a long, skinny knife in her hand.

“Pike’s on his way,” Lian yelled, and I looked at Junior.

“Pike’s the local law, and you hit me in front of witnesses,” I called out to him. “I’d leave if I were you.”

Junior ignored me, staring at the good guy who stared back, looking bored. I could tell Junior was trying to make a decision and having problems with that. Before he could, a window in the rear of a limo across the street powered down and a woman’s low voice called out. “Oswald. Enough.”

I couldn’t see who it was, the interior of the big car being dark, which was odd. Limosines didn’t come to Rocky Start because rich people didn’t come to Rocky Start. No point, really.

After a long moment, Junior nodded and stepped back. “I’ll be back for what’s mine,” he said, and walked off. He opened the middle door in the stretch limo and got in. It was moving before he’d even shut the door.

“Fuck you,” I called after him. I know, not clever but I was not at my best.

Lian reached us, breathless, taser at the ready. “What the hell, Rose?”

“I don’t know.” I watched the limo roll down State Street, the main road that dead-ended into Ozzie’s shop behind me, wishing only bad things for him. “Did you really call Pike?”

“Yes, I called Pike, that was battery.” Lian looked at the good guy. “And you are?”

“Just passing through.” He motioned to his dog. “You ladies have a nice day.”

“Wait a minute,” I said, feeling guilty now. The guy had helped and I’d snapped at him, the least I could do was . . . something. Offer him a drink? Lasagna? My body?

He really was attractive, if you liked dusty, underfed men.

He nodded to me and walked away with his dog down State Street, the same route the limo had taken, his back straight, and his stride strong. He looked good, but the dog was limping. If Poppy saw that—

“Mom?”

I turned around and saw Poppy standing in the doorway with Ozzie’s shotgun which she’d grabbed from behind the counter. It was a nice gesture but useless since I’d taken the shells out a long time ago. She said, “That dog is hurt,” put the shotgun down on the stoop, and came down the steps to look after the good guy and his limping wolf.

Coral stuck her very thin knife back into her hat—apparently it had been holding that monstrosity in place—and I rethought whether it needed a crow. A knife was better. From now on, all my picture hats were going to have skinny knives. Of course, first I was going to have to get a picture hat. And a skinny knife.

Coral turned to me, her hat bobbing, and I decided that it still needed a crow. The thing was huge. Room for a crow, a skinny knife, and probably a bat and an automatic weapon.

“I’m losing my mind,” I told Coral.

She looked at me, serious as all hell. “You tell Pike what happened when he gets here, Rose. This is real trouble.”

“That really was Ozzie in the picture?” I asked.

“Yes. Tell Pike we’ve got Outsiders.” She shot a glance down the street where the stranger and the big limo had gone but had now disappeared, and then shook her head and went back to her shop next door.

I pulled Junior’s wallet out of my apron pocket and went through it. Lots of cash, no credit cards, a condom (bleah), a keycard to the best hotel in Bearton (which wasn’t saying much), and a driver’s license that said, “Oswald Stafford,” address in DC.

The side of my face hurt from getting hit, and I was suddenly exhausted. Two days starting with finding Ozzie motionless on the floor of the shop and then an ambulance and the hospital and the grim faced doctor and the morgue and competing funeral directors (Ozzie wouldn’t want a funeral, but the two funeral directors in town were desperately vying to give him one anyway) and terrifying uncertainty about our future, and then Junior had shown up and I’d gotten hit and my ears were still ringing, and then there was a good guy who showed up just in time, which was a little suspicious, and who needed food, and I just wanted to lie down and sleep. Or maybe die. I was so tired of fighting my way through life. I didn’t expect it to be easy, but did it have to be so damn difficult all the time?

I know, stop whining, Rose.

“Thank you for coming to tase Junior,” I said to Lian.

She frowned at me. “Do you know what’s going on? Because that was bad.”

“No,” I began, but then Pike pulled up in his beat-up pick-up truck.

We don’t know if Pike is officially the law. He supposedly has a badge, but I understand you can buy those online. He’s one of those guys who’s not so much elderly as seasoned, as if the years have worn away all the weakness and just left this teak-tough ancient force of nature that nobody messes with. He and Ozzie definitely ran Rocky Start together, so whether or not Pike is official law enforcement is kind of moot. It’s his law and he enforces it.

Pike got out of his rust-bucket and came up the steps.

“Somebody giving you trouble, Rose?” he growled.

I nodded. “He claimed he was Ozzie’s son, and he tried to throw Poppy and me out of the store. I shoved him out and he backhanded me, but he can probably claim self-defense since I hit him with the Maltese Falcon.” I took Junior’s wallet out of my apron pocket and gave it to Pike. “I got his wallet. You can give it back to him, tell him you found it on the steps, after you check him out.”

Pike shook his head as he took the wallet. “Ozzie didn’t have a son. Where’s this asshole now?”

I pointed down State Street. “He went thataway in a big limousine, shouldn’t be hard to find if he’s still in town, but he said he’d be back. But there was another guy, another stranger, who threw him into the street for me. So make sure you get the right stranger. The bad one.”

Pike nodded. “Tall, thin, around fiftyish, with a big black dog?”

“That’s the good one,” I said. “How did you know?”

“The boys ran into him,” Pike said. “I was coming in to town to look for him.”

I frowned. “Pike, you can kneecap Junior, but do not maim the good guy. He helped.”

He frowned. “What’s this Junior look like?”

“The bad guy? Pretty much what the license says. Five nine or so, slick, shifty eyes, expensive suit, Rolex, no respect for women or tenant rights. A smirker. Definitely not related to Ozzie in any form.”

“Did he give a name?”

I gestured to the wallet in his hand. “His license says Oswald Stafford. From DC.”

“Stafford?” Pike looked taken aback, something I’d never seen in him before.

“Yes. Does that mean something to you?” When he didn’t reply right away, I said, “I think Coral might know something. She said both of these guys were outsiders.”

“She used that exact term?”

“Yes. She told me to tell you that. And there was a woman in the limousine. I couldn’t see her, only hear her voice. She called the guy Oswald, so . . .”

Pike looked grimmer than usual, which is pretty grim. “Lock your doors until I get rid of them.” He stopped. “In fact, now that Ozzie’s gone, just lock your damn doors all the time.”

“Yes, Pike,” I said, not telling him I’d been locking doors since I’d arrived, pregnant and alone, nineteen years ago. One thing Ozzie and I had shared was a keen sense of the importance of locking out the unknown.

He paused. “Ozzie’s still in the morgue in the Bearton hospital, right?”

I blinked at the change of subject. “Yes. But I’ve got no idea what his wishes were for his body. I’m hoping there’s a will or something.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Pike said. “I know what he wanted. I’ll take care of it. I’ll let you know when it’s ready.”

I wondered what ‘it’ was, but Pike was moving his truck up to park in front of Coral’s Ecstasy, and I had enough on my plate without dealing with Ozzie’s corpse. If Pike said he’d take care of it, it would be taken care of.

Pike went into Ecstasy and came out a minute later, moving with purpose.

Lian and I looked at each other. We were both survivors of bad relationships and single motherhood, and that builds a bond, and we were also both good at seeing trouble when it was coming right at us.

“What the hell is going on?” Lian asked. “Pike knew that name. Stafford.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “But I don’t like any of it.”

“What did that creep want in the shop?” Lian asked. “Why was he in such a rush to evict you? He wanted you out so he could do something. What’s in there?”

“Everything.” I closed my eyes. “Ozzie has a lifetime of stuff in there. He’d been collecting it for decades, over thirty years since he came here, and some of it is from before that. You think Junior wanted to search the place?”

“I don’t know.” She smoothed out her frown, calm but still worried. “Pike will sort it out. What did he mean about Ozzie’s body?”

“I have no idea. But if anyone knows how Ozzie wanted to be buried, it’s Pike.”

“Do you want to stay with Lu and me tonight?”

“And leave the store empty so that asshat can break in? No.” I felt Poppy come to stand beside me. “You want to spend the night with Lu, baby?”

“No,” Poppy said, her voice low. “I want to spend the night here and use the shotgun on that guy when he breaks in. Where did you put the shells?”

“My daughter,” I said to Lian. “Armed and fabulous.”

“Mother,” Poppy said.

“No, Poppy. We are not going to shoot people.”

“Then I’m going to go find out why that dog is limping,” she said, and went down the street in the direction the stranger had gone.

“You know,” Lian said, watching her go, “the good guy was attractive in an experienced Johnny Cash man-in-black kind of way.”

“He didn’t look anything at all like Johnny Cash.” I frowned down State Street. Poppy was stalking a stranger’s dog, and the stranger did not look mild-mannered, plus there was Junior out there, somewhere, about to discover that his wallet was missing.

“No, the vibe,” Lian said. “Like he had been interesting places and done dangerous things. I find that very attractive.”

“Then stop dating younger men.”

“They’re the ones who ask me out,” Lian said.

“They’re the ones you say yes to,” I said. “You have older-man-phobia.” Which was men our age, come to think of it. We were Older Women. Like I needed that depressing thought on top of everything else.

Lian ignored that, which is a talent of hers. Focus. “What are you going to do now?”

“Go after Poppy so she doesn’t annoy the stranger. Try to find out who the good guy is and why he was in town just in time to interfere with Junior because two strangers here in the same fifteen minutes is suspicious. Maybe lift his wallet. Men keep such interesting things in their wallets.” I looked at Lian. “Thank you for coming to tase the enemy. You are a good, true friend.”

“Here.” She handed me the taser. “In case a stranger gets ugly again. The second guy was not ugly, but if he catches you in mid-lift of his wallet, that might change.” She looked off down the street. “No, he still wouldn’t be ugly.”

“He’s too old for you,” I said and went down State Street after Poppy and the good guy.

This is a Good Book Thursday, March 30, 2023

I’m having trouble sticking with a book these days; I get to the middle, it slows down, I skip to the end. This is probably more a comment on how frazzled I am than literary criticism, but I’d really like to get swept up in a book again.

What book(s) did you get swept up in this week?

Working Wednesday, March 29, 2023

I have a dumpster and a WIP; my life is full. (Unlike my dumpster. Yet.).

What have you been working on?

Rocky Start, Chapter Two: Max

You met Rose, here’s Max.

Chapter 2
MAX

The forest became quiet as I stood there, balanced on one foot. The good news: I hadn’t been killed immediately by an explosion when I hit, but did not break, the tripwire. I’d spotted it a fraction of a second before my right foot touched it. My momentum, plus the fifty pound backpack I was carrying, caused me to stretch the wire, but my combat-honed, peace-dulled instincts stopped me before breaking it. I remained frozen in place, foot a couple of inches above the forest floor, pressing against the wire, and considered my next move.

The bad news was that I was going to have to do something about this.

Looking left and right, I saw that the wire extended to trees on either side, went through green metal o-rings screwed into the trees, made turns, and continued on as far as I could see which explained why there’d been no big bang. It was an alarm, not an ambush.

There’s a limit to how long I can stand on one foot. I started to wobble. I slowly, very slowly, brought my foot back. I wondered about Maggs, but she was trained, having gone to school for a heck of long time, topped with a lot of real world experience, to avoid such things as trip wires and stupid owners.

Technically, I didn’t own the dog. It was more that she tolerated my existence.

Clear of the line, I looked about a bit more closely than I had been and spotted the reason for the alert line.

Ahead of me were large swaths of cannabis, aka, weed, growing in the Cherokee National Forest, where the undergrowth had been cleared out of a couple of acres hidden under the trees. The plants were not there due to nature’s whims. Someone had planted them, and whoever it was probably didn’t want me wandering through.

I considered turning back, but that would mean going uphill and making an even bigger detour from the Appalachian Trail than I already had. I was tired and grouchy and hungry and my right knee hurt, a reminder I wasn’t getting any younger and that my youthful world adventures were taking a toll in middle-age.

It was just weed, after all.

I stepped over the wire and continued on, a bit more wary.

I envision my innate warning system like a geiger counter and right now it began a very slow, low clicking in my head. I didn’t think weed was legal in Georgia or Tennessee or North Carolina and I was near the nexus of those three states coming together in the Smoky Mountains. I hadn’t bothered to check the news since starting the trail months earlier, so maybe something had changed and pot was legal in one of those states. Maybe aliens had invaded. Maybe world peace had broken out and everybody was high.

I was doubtful on all three, particularly the last one. I just wanted to keep my own peace. I figured I could hurry through because there was something I needed in the oddly named town of Rocky Start, which wasn’t far ahead.

I was on a deer trail after leaving the Appalachian Trail to the northeast along the angled border between Tennessee and North Carolina. Maggs was off to my left about ten meters. I just wanted to make it through to the town peacefully.

Sometimes I wonder if I’m living in some sort of sadistic simulation and whoever was running it liked to mess with me because as soon as I thought about peace, two young men, almost boys, appeared to my right front at twenty meters, one of them carrying an AK-47, the silhouette of the assault rifle unmistakable and one I’d seen far too often in my past. Carrying one was legal in all three states, as opposed to growing weed, which is a head scratcher if you think about it. They saw me at the same time I saw them. Which meant I’d been wrong about how the tripwire worked.

I sighed, debating whether to turn about. I glanced over and saw Maggs on alert. I gave her a quick hand signal to lay low and remain in place because people often mistook her for a wolf. She crouched down and disappeared from sight.

“Hey, you!” the one with the AK called out.

I turned around, ready to backtrack, resigned to a slog uphill and a big loop around.

“Hey, I’m talking to you! Stop!”

He was yelling at me. I’d walked away from people yelling orders years ago, so—

A shot rang out and I froze. I felt, more than heard, the snap of a bullet going by, hyper-sonic. It wasn’t close. I knew what close was, and worse, what too close felt like, but still it was a bullet.

I turned around, not drawing the pistol inside my light coat because once you draw a weapon you use it, and when you use it, you kill, and I wasn’t in the mood to kill. Or die at the moment. It was just weed, after all.

The guy with the AK looked a little surprised, as if he hadn’t meant to pull the trigger, which really didn’t matter, because he had. Guns don’t shoot themselves. His buddy was slightly behind him, apparently not armed. AK guy was holding the rifle at hip level, approximately aimed in my direction. Worse, his finger was still inside the trigger guard. They both were dressed in dungaree coveralls with brightly colored tie-dyed t-shirts underneath.

“Geez, Reggie,” the unarmed one said, shaking his head. “Why’d you do that?You might have hurt somebody.”

A genius at work. I held up both hands. “Sorry. I wandered off the A.T.. Got lost. I’ll leave.”

“You a cop?” Reggie asked, trying to regain some bluster.

Sure, a cop just wandering around in the woods with a rucksack on his back. “I got lost,” I repeated.

Reggie was shaking his head. “No way, dude. Can’t have you going around telling people about the farm.” The two stopped about ten meters away.

The other boy looked at him. “Come on, Reggie, just let him go.”

After all I’d been through over the years, the concept of dying over a field of pot in the middle of bumfuck nowhere because a guy named Reggie was a paranoid moron seemed ludicrous. Then again, I’d seen people die over much less in much worse places.

I tried once more. “I’m through-hiking the trail. I’ll be out of the area before you know it.”

Reggie looked back at his buddy, who appeared a bit out of it, perhaps partaking of too much of their product. “He’ll rat us out, Marley. We ain’t nowhere near the trail.”

“Dude, he’s a stranger,” stoned Marley said. “He got lost. Chill out.”

Reggie was uncertain and uncertain people are in many ways more dangerous, especially when they have their finger on the trigger. A person who was certain would have already killed me or let me pass through without raising the stakes. Reggie was lost on a middle road that didn’t exist. Now that they were closer, they appeared related, solidly built with the same curly dark hair and blue eyes, probably brothers. Reggie and Marley, the Weed Brothers. Great.

“I don’t know, Marley, man,” Reggie said. “I think he’s a narc.”

Marley was nervous. “Dude, just let him go.”

“What do you think Pike would say if we let him go?”

“We don’t tell him,” Marley said, which seemed reasonable to me. “He’s gonna be mad if he finds out you took his gun, and he’ll know you did if you use it.”

Marley had a portion of logic going inside his muddled head although he’d already forgotten that his brother had fired a warning shot. Details make all the difference.

“We’ll tie him up and see what Pike wants to do,” Reggie said. “You know what he says about Outsiders.”

He made the last word seem like a profanity and definitely capitalized. I half expected a banjo to start playing. I didn’t want to see what Pike wanted to do, and no one was going to tie me up, and squealing like a pig was never going to happen. I started walking toward the two which surprised both. “I don’t want any trouble,” I said.

Five meters.

“Stop,” Reggie said uncertainly, waving the barrel of the AK back and forth as if it were some sort of magic warding stick. Too much Harry Potter in his childhood.

“Let me just do this,” I said, which further confused both of them. But he still had that gun, finger twitching inside the trigger guard, and I knew I was going to have to get Maggs involved.

I whistled a two tone note.

Maggs came fast and hard from the left, a big blur of fuzzy black streaking through the forest. She scared even me a little bit and we’d been together for two years. She went for Reggie because she knew what a gun looked like and if it wasn’t in my hands, then it was a bad thing.

Maggs didn’t like bad things.

She leapt and that was when the two stoners became aware of her, some latent caveman survival gene kicking in. Maggs hit Reggie in the shoulder with her chest, her jaws clamping on his neck but not closing as her sixty-five pounds of muscle and bone and claw and tooth took him down before he was halfway turned toward her.

She whined in pain as she did so, which upset me. Marley was turning in surprise to his brother but by then I had the Glock out and my finger was on the trigger and I was closing on him and aiming for a head shot and for some reason, I didn’t shoot.

Probably because I hadn’t killed anyone since I’d retired.

Marley was still trying to figure out what day it was, and Reggie had dropped the rifle and was on his back, whimpering in fear, as much he could with Maggs’ teeth on his throat, a command away from having it ripped open. And I didn’t give the command.

I was violating my rules. About drawing a gun. About assholes.

Worried about Maggs’ whine of pain, I tapped the barrel of my pistol against the side of Marley’s head as he was still trying to process what had happened—don’t do drugs, kids—and he crumbled to the ground, out cold. I knelt next to Reggie.

“I didn’t want trouble,” I said in what I considered a reasonable tone, although it had been weeks since I’d actually talked to anyone other than Maggs. “I don’t want any more. There’s no such thing as a warning shot, son. If you remember that, you’ll be a better person for this encounter. I’m taking the gun because I don’t want to be shot in the back and you don’t know what you’re doing with it. I see you again, I’ll kill you. No warning, no hesitation. Just stone cold dead. Understand?”

He wanted to nod, but was too afraid of Maggs, her mouth clamped over his throat.

“Blink twice if you understand,” I said.

What was he gonna do with fangs pressing on his carotid? He blinked. I could smell urine and wasn’t sure which one of them it came from. I didn’t care.

“Blink twice if you agree.” Because understanding wasn’t necessarily assent.
He blinked twice.

I stood. “Release,” I said in a command voice and Maggs let go. She looked up at me with those big brown eyes that could make the stoutest heart melt, even while she was ripping out a throat. “Good dog.” I knelt and checked her while Reggie watched, wide-eyed.

She’d caught her paw on the button of his coveralls and it had dug in under her pad. There was some blood. Nothing major. I stood, hefting the AK, and walked past them toward the road they’d been coming up since it headed in the right direction, hoping my day was going to get better.

I figured it couldn’t get much worse.

Maggs was limping next to me, so when we hit the dirt road and then crossed a wood single lane bridge over a fast-moving river just outside of town, I shrugged off my rucksack. I broke down the AK-47, which took all of five seconds which is why it’s very popular among the stupid and untrained, and slid the parts inside my ruck.
I took a closer look at Magg’s paw. It was bleeding worse. I pulled out the first aid kit and cleaned the wound as best I could, put some triple antibiotic in it, then bandaged it.

I stood up, shouldering my ruck. I checked to see how Maggs did with the bandage and of course, she promptly started to chew it off.

“No,” I said.

She looked at me for a moment, ran that command through her brain, decided nope, not in her skill set, then finished ripping the bandage off. She seemed very proud of that. Another game we could play.

Great.

I re-bandaged the paw, using all of the medical tape in my kit, plus a bit of duct tape which I kept for extreme emergencies such as sucking chest wounds. Maggs took that as a challenge and lowered her head to chew.

“No!” I said in my best command voice, but I knew it was a losing battle. She was going to tear that off and I had nothing left to put on it and it would get infected and . . .

Fuck.

I was close to the town. Maybe there was a vet. I only had one errand there: My current pair of boots were really worn, my big toe poking through the top of the right one. That hole in the toe doesn’t sound like a big deal unless you’ve walked some miles, 2,641 in this particular case, not that I’m counting. So I had plenty of time to get Maggs seen too.

We started down the road toward Rocky Start.

My new plan was pick up my boots where they were waiting for me at the Rocky Start post office, get Maggs’ paw seen to, and then get out of town and hole up for a couple of days to let Maggs heal.

I had to constantly chastise Maggs not to chew the bandage but her limp became more pronounced. So I cached the rucksack in the woods off road, just outside of town. Then I picked her up, cradling her in my arms and carried her. She seemed pretty content with that, but she was really heavy. Not as much as you might think since a lot of her appearance was the puffy hair, but the core was all lean muscle, bone, fang, claws and a big heart.

I staggered out of the forest on the eastern edge of town, where the two-lane highway hugged the river. The town was on the other side of the highway, spreading out for a half mile covering a bend in the river away from the highway.

As we got farther into the town, I heard some shouting from a store and then a guy stumbled backwards out of the door and down the steps, followed by a crazed lady swinging a small black statue, driving him into street. There was a limo, engine running parked across the street, which seemed odd.

The store they came out of was called Oddities, which seemed about right.

Also, none of this was my business.

But then he backhanded her. I don’t care who started it or who was in the right or wrong, you don’t hit women. You might have to kill one if she’s trying to kill you, but that’s a different scenario. I put Maggs down and motioned for her to remain in place. Then I went up the steps to them, noting that the woman was a furious, violent, middle-aged version of the girl-next-door, all curly dark hair and flashing eyes. Cute in a she-demon kind of way, but then I’d been on the trail for months.

I noticed a bulge under the guy’s jacket that he was reaching into and realized he was armed and this could get really ugly, so I grabbed the guy’s collar and pulled him backward and behind me into the street.

Rocky Start, Chapter One: Rose

We’re around 70,000 words on Rocky Start–look, stuff happened/is happening to both of us, and it’s slowing us down–so it’s time to start getting some feedback. Here’s Chapter One. Have at it. (Lian, I stole your name for this.)

Chapter 1
ROSE

I was on Day Three of what was shaping up to be the second worst week of my life when my best friend, Lian, called to see how I was doing.

I was behind the counter where I worked in the secondhand store that belonged to my late boss, Ozzie Oswald. Oddities is the best (and only) secondhand shop in Rocky Start, Georgia and Tennessee, but I’d put the CLOSED sign up because Ozzie had died the day before yesterday and I was not in the mood to have Mrs. Baumgarten come in and try to bargain me down a dollar on a two-dollar tea cup. Most of the time, that’s fun, but today I was tense. I would not be good at customer service. I might start screaming at any minute. Instead, I was trying to glue a doll’s head to a bottle of paregoric with the wrong kind of glue, something I did not notice until much later because I was frantic and trying to pretend that I wasn’t. I have heard that if you fake an emotion, it becomes real. This is not true of calm.

So when Lian asked me how I was doing. I told her I was gluing a doll’s head to an antique bottle.

“No,” she said, patiently. “Not what are you doing, how are you doing? Ozzie died just two days ago—”

“I’m fine,” I lied, getting the glue tube out of my apron pocket to add more to the bottle lip. I always wear aprons in the shop, not the tie-behind-the-waist kind, the kind you put over your head with the straps crisscrossed in back. Camouflage. Nobody pays any attention to a middle-aged woman in a big, loose apron. Also my aprons have huge pockets. Pockets are very important in my life.

“You’re lying,” Lian said.

“Yes,” I said because my life was a mess that involved sudden death, poverty, homelessness, and possible jail in my near future.

That’s when I heard heard somebody rattle the front door to the shop. “We’re closed!” I yelled at the door without looking up (that glue was not working and I was concentrating), and Lian said, “Ouch,” because I hadn’t moved my mouth away from my bluetooth headset.

The door rattled again, and I looked up and saw through the window that it was our next door neighbor, Coral Schmidt. Coral’s shop, Ecstasy, is definitely the best coffee shop/bakery in Rocky Start. I was pretty sure she’d named the shop that so she could say, “This is Coral in Ecstasy,” every time she answered the phone, but she says it’s because her baking sends people into bliss, which is true.

“It’s Coral,” I told Lian. “And I’m making lasagna because Poppy and I are having a private wake for Ozzie tonight.”

“She owns a bakery. She doesn’t need your lasagna.”

“That’s my position, too. I doubt it’s Coral’s.” Then I felt guilty. Coral was a good person who had fed me lots of times, I could spare some pasta. Just not tonight.

The door rattled again.

“Coral has many positions,” Lian was saying. “Most of them under Ozzie and Pike. Did we ever find out what she did before she moved here? Because she’s very limber for a seventy-something woman.”

“No, she never talks about the past.” Much like you and me and everybody else around here, I thought. “I should give Coral some lasagna. She’s a good friend.”

“The woman’s a human Hoover,” Lian said.

“All of Coral’s appetites are strong. But I also want to keep working on this assemblage I just started.”

“You’re making another saint? I love those.”

Lian’s voice sounded different, I realized. Tense. Clipped. “What’s up? You sound stressed.”

“I’m fine,” Lian said, clearly not, but here is a key fact about Rocky Start: We do not ask about each other’s pasts. We don’t volunteer anything, either.

So I said, “I’m not making another saint. I don’t know what it is yet. I started it when I found an old paregoric bottle in the shop. I had to look up what paregoric was, and it turns out it was a medicine that was very popular in the first half of the twentieth century, possibly because it was made of opium, alcohol, and honey. Fifty per cent alcohol, in fact.” The head on the bottle wobbled and fell off. Definitely the wrong kind of glue. “I’ve been thinking about seeing if there was any left in the bottle because it sounded like exactly what I need. And maybe what you need.” I picked up the doll head before it glued itself to the marble counter. “Tell me what’s wrong, and we’ll fix it.”

I heard a key scrape in the lock, and then Coral came in. “What the hell, Rose. Why didn’t you open the door?”

“I was coming,” I lied and then stopped because Coral was dressed head to toe in tight shiny black. She looked like the Angel of Death. If the Angel of Death was a voluptuous blonde in her seventies.

“That’s a lie, you haven’t come in years,,” she said. “I don’t know how you stand it.”

I took a deep breath. Coral was a good person. It would be bad if I strangled her. “That’s what you came to tell me?”

“I worry about you, honey,” she said, coming to stand on the other side of the old marble-topped counter. “It’s not good to go without sex for years. And years. And years. Probably because you dress like an old woman.” She looked closer. “Is that one of Mrs. Baumgarten’s old dresses under that horrible apron? You’ve been thrifting again, haven’t you? Are you braless? You’re fifty years old—”

“Forty-nine,” I said. “I’m not fifty until Saturday. And the shop’s closed, there’s a sign and everything, so underwear is unnecessary. And uncomfortable.” I looked down at the top of my loose apron. “How could you tell I’m braless in this?”

“Things were shifting under there,” Coral said. “Beauty is pain. Put on a damn bra.”

I surveyed her with skepticism.

She was flashing enough seventy-three-year-old cleavage over a wasp-ish waist to cast doubt on her mourning, although I had to give her credit for maintaining her figure or at least corralling it with powerful undergarments. She would have pulled it off, too, except for that thing on her head, resting on her faux blonde upsweep: a wide-brimmed black picture hat full of black tulle bows with a black spotted veil swathing her face.

“That hat needs a crow,” I told her, squinting at it. I would have put a crow on it, first thing out of the box.

“Oh, god,” Lian said in my ear. “Is she in mourning?”

“Yes,” I said to Lian.

“No,” Coral said, rejecting my crow idea, but thankfully moving on from my non-existent sex life and my equally non-existent underwear. “Have you heard from Barry?”

“Oh yeah, just what you need,” Lian said. “A shifty lawyer.”

Lian is the other lawyer in Rocky Start. The good one.

“Why would I hear from Barry?” I asked Coral.

“About Ozzie’s will.”

She sounded breathless and avid, not a good look for mourning. Coral really loves drama. I think it’s the heat from the ovens at her place and all the caffeine.

“Coral, he died two days ago. Give the body time to cool.” I saw her flinch and felt bad because she really is a good egg. “I’m so sorry, Coral, that was thoughtless. It’s just not a good day. No, I have not heard from Ozzie’s lawyer. I don’t even know if Ozzie made a will. I’m pretty sure he thought he was immortal.”

“He was wrong,” Lian said judiciously in my ear. “Everyone needs a will.”

“Let’s not speak ill of the dead,” Coral said at the same time.

I wanted to say, I wasn’t speaking ill, I loved the cranky bastard like the father I never had, but that would just get me into more conversation, and I had a doll’s head to glue to a bottle of opium.

“You should call Barry,” Coral said. “You need professional help to handle Ozzie’s estate.”

Barry was not a professional kind of lawyer, which is probably why Ozzie had liked him. Most of Barry’s local clientele came to Rocky Start from out of town. Usually after dark.

“I’ll talk to him,” I told Coral.

“Don’t you dare,” Lian said in my ear. “You’ll get legal cooties.”

“Ozzie would want you to call Barry.”

Coral looked at me soulfully through the spotted veil, and I wondered how long she was going to be in mourning. I knew she truly missed the old grump. Not like my daughter Poppy and I did, but still, she’d cared for him. Kind of. Well, she’d slept with him a lot.

“Do you think he left anything to me?” Coral went on.

She leaned forward, and her breasts came with her, threatening the black satin that bound them. Ozzie used to call her The Couch because he said she was well-upholstered. “I’m spending the night on The Couch,” he’d say, “If anybody calls, tell them I’m in Ecstasy”, and then he’d head over to her apartment above her bakery. He didn’t call her the Couch behind her back; that was his nickname for her, in front of her face. Ozzie didn’t go in for tact. He didn’t go in for people, either, although he went into Coral with surprising frequency for a seventy-eight-year-old misanthrope.

Pike, her other friend with benefits, was her younger man. Seventy-two.

Coral must be buying Viagra and lube by the case.

That sounds snotty, but actually, I was envious. I didn’t know anybody I’d be willing to take my clothes off for—small town, limited population, much of it weird—and Coral had two guys on the line, both of them perfectly willing to share her. Of course, Pike and Ozzie had also shared a past before Rocky Start which they had never talked about.

“I have no idea if he left you anything,” I lied to her to be nice. Ozzie wouldn’t leave anything to anybody. He accumulated things, he didn’t give them away. As my daughter Poppy once said, ‘If you crossed a pack rat with a raccoon, you’d get Ozzie’. “He didn’t leave me anything, either,” I added.

Coral frowned. “Of course he did. Why would you think that?”

“He said so. He kept telling me to make plans for the future that didn’t include this place.” He’d tried to make it sound like he was doing me a favor, a sort of “You’re better than this place,” but he was also pretty obviously telling me I was temporary and not to get any ideas about permanence. Even though Poppy and I had been there for nineteen years.

“That sounds like Ozzie.” Coral shook her head, making her hat swivel a little on her head. It really needed a crow. “Do you know what this building is worth? If there’s no will, which there probably isn’t knowing how Ozzie was, then Norman is probably going to sell the whole thing.”
“Norman? Really?” Ozzie loathed his brother, I didn’t see him leaving that moocher anything.
But if there was no will . . .

“He’s the only living relative Ozzie had.” Then Coral leaned in and whispered, “But if there is a will and Ozzie left the building to me, I’ll give you some of the money when I sell it.”

“Coral,” I began, about to tell her that I wanted to discuss my lack of money even less than I wanted to discuss my lack of intercourse and undergarments, but then the bell rang again as the door to the shop opened, and a man came in: middle height, pale and dark-haired, slick-looking, probably in his mid-thirties, expensive suit (bespoke cut), air of superiority, a Rolex (a real one, I can tell) your general upper class weasel sharing Coral’s inability to read a CLOSED sign.

“Who’s that?” Lian said in my ear, having heard the bell.

“We’re closed,” I said to Beady Eyes.

“You’re right,” he said. “I was just going to tell you that. My name is Oswald, and this place belongs to me.”

I was so surprised that it took me awhile to react, but once I got my brain working again, I frowned at him. “What?”

He smiled but there was nothing friendly about him.“I’m Ozzie Oswald’s son, Oswald Junior, and since he’d dead, all this is mine now.” He looked around the shop, sneering. “So I’m taking over. I’m closing this place down. You need to get out. Now.”

I just stared at him for a moment, at his feral smile and tiny eyes.

Then he added, “You have no legal standing to be here, honey, and I doubt you ever earned your salary anyway, so you’re no loss. Get out.”

He smirked and I hate smirkers, and he was ordering me around, and if you want to see me go ballistic, try telling me what to do, plus under all that bravado, he was nervous, so this was a scam. I dropped the doll’s head onto the counter, walked around him, opened the door, and pointed outside. “Out, Limb of Satan.”

His smirk got smirkier. “You really think I’m going to let a middle-aged woman throw me out of my own property? Get over yourself, grandma.”

“What the hell?” Lian said in my ear.

Coral was appraising the stranger with narrowed eyes behind her veil.

Junior went on as if talking to a simpleton. “Do you understand? I own this place now and the business is closed for good.” He looked around the shop as if calculating its worth.

“The hell he owns that place,” Lian said in my ear. “And even if he does, you have tenant rights. I’m calling Pike.”

“This is a scam, a truly stupid one,” I said to him. Twelve years traveling with Poppy’s father and then nineteen years working with Ozzie, and I had mad skills for spotting the crooked. Just not for avoiding them. I picked up the only heavy thing on the shelf by the door, a reproduction of the Maltese Falcon, and gestured to him with it. “Get out, Junior, and I won’t beat you to death with a movie prop.”

“Ozzie never mentioned a son,” Coral murmured from behind Junior. “He would have mentioned that.”

“Look.” He reached into an inner pocket, retrieved a picture and held it out.

Coral hustled over to take the picture and drew in her breath. Then she came forward and showed it to me.

A young man with a sharp face, dressed in dull green fatigues, was looking at a tall slender woman next to him wearing khaki with the blackest, straightest hair I’d ever seen, framing skin so pale she looked dead. Beautiful but dead. Morticia Addams in the flesh.

“My mother, Serena Stafford,” he said. “And my father, the man you knew as Ozzie Oswald. We thought he was dead all these years.”

“That could be anybody,” I said, getting even more irritated, but Coral shook her head.

“It’s Oz,” she whispered as if seeing a ghost. “I remember. God, he was so handsome then. Six-pack abs. He could crack a walnut with his glutes.”

I frowned at her, not pleased to know about Ozzie’s glutes and even less pleased that she was supporting Fake Ozzie Junior. “I don’t care if it is Ozzie. He’s just standing next to a vampire, that doesn’t mean they made this guy together.”

“I’ve got a lab sending a DNA test to Dad’s lawyer,” Junior said. “But you need to get out of here now, or I’ll call the cops and have you arrested for trespassing on my property. Women of your age don’t do well in jail.”

“I don’t like this,” Lian whispered in my ear. “Stall him, Pike’s on his way.”

“Nobody does well in jail, you moron.” I opened the door wider. “Ozzie’s estate hasn’t been settled yet, so nobody has any idea who gets what. And I have a bottle of opium that needs a head. Get. Out.”

Junior looked annoyed. He’d obviously thought it would be easy bullying some middle-aged counter clerk in a small Appalachian town. Dumbass.

Coral was still staring at the photo lost in her walnut-cracking memories, but Junior pulled it back from her and tucked it away in his coat.

“Mom?” Poppy said from the doorway, just home from high school, tall and blonde and beautiful and eighteen and not like me at all. Well, I’m tall.

“Hello,” Junior said to her, and then started toward her. “You, on the other hand, can stay.”

I moved around him fast to block him from my daughter, and Poppy’s voice pitched up. “Mom!”

“Rose,” Lian said in my ear. “Be careful. Let Pike handle this.”

Junior grabbed my arm to shove me out of his way, and it was just not the day to do that to me, okay? I shoved him back as Coral reached up and pulled something out of the crown of her hat. Poppy came toward us, and he turned to her, and I swung the Falcon with enthusiasm and whacked him hard on the shoulder.

He yelled and dropped my arm and staggered as I drove him toward the open doorway, swinging the Falcon again and again, yelling “Stay away from my kid, you perv!” as he fell back.
Then he grabbed me, dragging me with him as he stumbled outside onto the steps.

Poppy said, “Mom!” and Junior backhanded me with one hand as he let go with the other.

“MOM,” Poppy yelled.

I slapped my hand on his chest to push him away, dazed from the blow, and started to swing the Falcon again, and when his eyes followed my arm, I slid two fingers onto his wallet in his jacket. Then when he swung back to me, half a second later, the movement of his body pulled it away from the wallet so it was out of his pocket. I pressed closer and dropped the wallet into one of my lovely, large apron pockets as I shoved him away again and swung the Falcon low and hard, aiming up for his hot spot, just like Ozzie had taught me, with only one thought in mind.

The best thing about my week was going to be neutering Junior.