Page 3 of A Dead End Fourth of July (Tiger’s Eye Mysteries #14)

Tess

"What we need to do is call the goblins," I told Cletus.

"The goblins?" He looked confused.

"Specifically, Ollie. He knows how to deactivate magical items. He helped us out with a trove of evil magical artifacts once."

Ollie, short for Oleander, Gardner was the oldest son of the hippie goblins who ran Dead End Nursery. Nursery, as in plants, not little kids. The family also had a folk band, and they were all tall, lean, and pretty and looked like rock stars.

More importantly for the current problem, Ollie and his girlfriend Prism both possessed powerful talent and a great deal of knowledge for deactivating magical items.

"I think we should give them a call. Do you know exactly what kind of magical artifact your girlfriend has?"

"She’s not my girlfriend. She was never my girlfriend. We went out once, and then she became a crazy stalker." He shuddered. "You see this kind of thing on TV or at the movies, but you never think it will happen to you in real life.

Jack leaned against the counter, studying Cletus with narrow eyes. "No, you never do," he drawled.

"Anyway, do you know what kind of item it is?" I asked again.

He shook his head. "Not sure. I just know it’s something major. Her threats got worse after she got her hands on it."

I called Ollie but got his voicemail, so I left a message that was pretty vague. I just told him I wanted to ask for his help in deactivating something. He’d get the idea, and I could go into more detail when we connected.

"As soon as I hear from him, I’ll let you know," I told Cletus, who'd been listening to the call. "Maybe you could try to find out more about exactly what it is she has in the meantime?"

He shrugged. For someone who claimed to be terrified of a crazy stalker, he suddenly seemed fairly nonchalant about it, which made me wonder what the actual story was. But it wouldn’t hurt to ask Ollie about how to deactivate an unknown magical object, just in case the ex-girlfriend showed up here.

It wouldn't be the first time I'd had stalkers in my shop.

Cletus, glancing at Jack and then back at me, started edging toward the door. "Okay. Well, thank you for your help. I need to go down to town square and inspect the area where I’ll put up my tent and stage the display."

"Your tent?" Jack raised an eyebrow.

"Cletus got the Fourth of July fireworks contract for Dead End," I explained.

Jack, who’d only been back in town for less than two years, didn’t understand the hefty weight of that statement, so he just nodded.

Cletus said his goodbyes and made his way out the door, and Jack turned to me.

"The one that got away?" He said mildly.

I rolled my eyes. "Honestly, as if Bubba McKee would ever say something like that about anybody, let alone about me. He was probably talking about his snake."

Jack laughed. "I need to head out. I’m hoping to catch the Fox brothers to ask them to help me with this case."

"You decided to help your friend?"

He nodded.

Of course, he had. That was who he was.

The Fox brothers, Austin and Dallas, were ex-Special Forces like the rest of the Swamp Commandos personnel ("the boys" to Jack) who owned and ran the airboat business. But the Fox twins were also brilliant with computers, digital security, and all sorts of things I’d never understand.

They ran a business that was highly regarded in the upper echelons of people and companies who needed their expertise.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"Can I have a donut?"

I waved a hand toward the kitchen and wandered around inspecting my newly cluttered domain. When Jack came back out with a donut in each hand, he stopped in front of the new ferret display and shook his head.

"Eleanor?"

"Eleanor." I sighed. "Part of it is because she needed to escape a difficult situation with her new step-grandson. I’ve invited the three of them over for a pool party and barbecue later this evening, if that’s okay with you."

I still wasn’t quite accustomed to checking in with someone else about my plans, but Jack was working hard to do the same after all his years as a lone-tiger soldier, so we gave each other some grace on the issue.

"Sure. I’ll make sure we have enough meat to grill."

"Jack. We have enough meat in the freezer to feed half of Dead End, should they show up at our door."

"You can never have enough meat," said my husband, the tiger shapeshifter, grinning at me.

In his Bengal tiger form, he weighed around five hundred pounds, and he was maybe half that—and all muscle—in his human form, so he needed quite a lot of food.

"Okay. About this case," he said, after polishing off both donuts. "An old friend from my fighting days called me. Sergeant Sam Sampson was an old-school soldier. He served in the U.S. Army before the vampire wars and brought a whole lot of expertise and toughness to our missions.

He paused and laughed. "He also had a fondness for the wrinkliest dogs I’d ever seen. Georgia Bloodhounds, he called them."

"I love dog people almost as much as I love cat people." I adjusted a cloudy glass jar on a shelf so it caught the light from the window, and the clouds inside the jar began to sparkle and swirl around. After checking to see that the jar was firmly sealed, I stepped back and looked up at Jack.

"What does Sam need? Sounds like he’d be able to handle pretty much any problem on his own."

Jack’s grin faded. "His granddaughter is missing.

He says she was in a bad way for the past year.

The family is pretty sure something happened to her at college.

A rough breakup, maybe. Then she dropped out and started traveling.

She kept in touch for the first few months, then less and less, and finally went radio silent. "

Radio silent meant she stopped communicating. It was one of the interesting phrases I’d learned since I started dating a soldier.

Others: O Dark Thirty (ridiculously early in the morning, when it was still night, really), SNAFU (Situation Normal, All F’d Up—FUBAR was a variant of this, F’d Up Beyond All Recognition), and check your six, which meant watch your back.

Since I’d made the very real threat to stop baking pies if he didn’t cut it out, Jack had calmed down on the acronym use, but when he and the Swamp Commandos got together, it was like an alphabet convention on steroids, with ABCs flying in all directions.

"I’m so sorry to hear it." I felt instant sympathy for Mr. Sampson. I’d be devastated if Shelley disappeared. Of course, my sister was only ten, and this girl was in college, but still.

Family was family.

"What’s her name?"

"Katherine." He snorted. "Apparently, Katherine’s mom wanted to name her Delilah, but Sam and his son—Katherine’s dad—put a stop to it."

"Delilah Sampson?" I shook my head in disbelief. "Maybe not the best idea."

"Anyway, Katherine disappeared. They discovered she’d last used her credit card a few days ago in Jacksonville. After that, nothing. Sam is really worried. I’m going to go talk to the boys and see if they can help me out."

"Good luck. I’m going to putter around and play catch-up on some paperwork and then close the shop and go home and take a nap." The word nap must have triggered me, because I yawned hugely. "I’m still on honeymoon time."

Jack grinned and pulled me close for a hug and then an intensely satisfying kiss that was just heating up when a busload of senior citizens swarmed into my shop in a clatter of canes, walkers, and chatter, floating on a cloud of Old Spice and Estee Lauder White Linen.

When the old guy with the shiny bald head, first through the door, waggled his eyebrows at me and said, "Hubba, hubba," I had to laugh.

"Okay, hot stuff," I said, moving out of Jack’s arms. "Go do your thing. Looks like I’m about to be busy."

"I thought you moved the GYST folks to a different day?"

"I meant to, but we were a little busy battling Fae champions for control of the town before the wedding, and then we left right after, and …"

"Enough said." He winked at the old dude, kissed me again, and then headed out.

More than a few of the white-haired women sighed as he walked past them. When one, a pink-cheeked, tiny woman who had to be at least eighty-five, cast an apologetic look my way, I smiled at her.

"You know, we’ve been married almost a month, and sometimes I still can’t believe it myself."

After that, half the group wandered around shopping, and the other half, mostly women, crowded close to the counter to offer wedding congratulations and compliments.

I spent the next hour happily ringing up sales, smiling till my cheeks hurt, and meeting Maud, the new bus driver who’d taken over the route.

She was a compact woman, curly-haired and leanly muscled, maybe in her forties.

Best of all, she seemed to be all three Cs: cheerful, competent, and capable, which were qualities the best tourism staff needed in large quantities—along with a healthy dose of patience.

When I handed Maud an envelope with the customary fifty dollars in it, though, she looked surprised.

"Is it enough?" I frowned. It hadn’t occurred to me that a new driver would mean an increase in the small amount I paid the GYST driver for stopping at Dead End Pawn. It wasn’t a bribe as much as a small thank you.

The buses had plenty of options of places to take people, but the tourists seemed to enjoy my quirky little shop, and I appreciated the business.

She raised her eyebrows. "What? No, it’s not that. I didn’t expect any payment."

"It’s more of a thank-you tip. I worked it out with the GYST bus owners," I assured her, not wanting my new acquaintance to think I was up to anything shady.

She looked relieved. "Oh, sure. I didn’t want to do anything wrong during my first week."

"Absolutely. The owners asked a few years back if I could accommodate the bus once a week, no charge to my shop, because we’re apparently ‘local color,’" I said dryly.

She grinned. "I get that."

"But speaking of arrangements, I’m going to close on Mondays for the foreseeable future. I was wondering if you could stop by on another day. Wednesdays would be great, but I’m open to any day but Sundays or Mondays."

"Sure. I’ll talk to the bosses."

"Thanks!"

She held out her hand, but I regretfully shook my head. "Sorry. I don’t shake hands."

A trace of unease crossed her face. "Right. I, ah, heard. How could I forget? I sure don’t want to know how I’m going to die."

"Hey, lady!" called out one of the GYSTers, a grumpy man in bright orange shorts, a neon-yellow shirt, and sandals worn with white knee socks. "I want to sell you this thing. I heard you like to buy quirky magic stuff."

I blew out a sigh.

It was going to be one of those days.