Page 32

CHAPTER 32

I didn’t tell Dmitri what the cause of our fast return was and he wasn’t happy, but he must have seen my face because he obeyed. We got back to town fast and he dropped Marley and me off behind Oddities, where we immediately commandeered the Pathfinder. I didn’t go in and tell Rose because Poppy’s fourth text had been emphatic that I didn’t. Which of course put me in a classic catch-22 between mother and daughter, but for the moment, I honored Poppy’s wishes. I’d pay for it later.

We did scoop up Jackie, and her black bag, from the pharmacy next door as Poppy had requested. She told us Luke was in Bearton buying building supplies. Rose had said we could trust her and given that Poppy had texted in a bit of a panic, I wasn’t about to argue the point. From the text it was hard to tell how bad things were:

MRS. B SHOT

GET DR QUILL

SHOOTER DEAD

DON’T TELL MOM

We hightailed it out of town, took the turnoff into the forest, and roared up to Betty Baumgarten’s cottage. I opened the gate and let Jackie in, Marley at my side. We ran around the house to where Poppy had said they were and skidded to a halt as we faced an enraged llama.

Behind Fernanda, Poppy was standing next to Betty who was sitting, her dress stained with her blood. Poppy was keeping pressure on her shoulder, and there was a masked body underneath Fernanda; the way it lay, I knew that whoever it was, he was way beyond dead.

Poppy looked at me, barely in control. “She’s been shot.”

“Is that a llama?” Jackie asked, staring perplexedly at Fernanda.

“Can you call off Fernanda?” I said to Betty, and then I spun about as a familiar voice called out. “ Milaya moya , I have returned!”

It was no Douglas MacArthur coming around the side of the house, but Dmitri again. He’d evidently been as busy as Marley and me since he’d dropped us off because behind him was Tanke, leading another llama on a leash.

So now I was looking at two Russians, two llamas, and a corpse.

Yeah. Rocky Start.

“Oh, hell,” I heard Betty say, so the wound didn’t seem to be that bad.

The good news was Fernanda lost all interest in us and approached the new llama, and Jackie didn’t waste any time, hustling over to Poppy and Betty. Dmitri realized Betty was hurt and lost all interest in his llama and ran to her, leaving Tanke with two llamas, which didn’t seem to bother him at all. He evidently preferred llamas to people, and who could blame him?

Marley had gone straight to Poppy, who clung to him, and there seemed to be more to that than just “Hey, friend, are you okay?” but this wasn’t the time to get into that. Too many moving parts, and it was a sideshow for the moment.

Jackie did a quick assessment, but I could see that the wound wasn’t mortal or even particularly bad. The bullet had creased her shoulder on the outside, carving a not-too-deep furrow in the flesh of her upper arm and back. There was a lot of blood, but it would heal and leave a nice scar. Betty didn’t seem overly concerned and she was the one bleeding.

I’d figure out the kids and the llamas later.

With Betty and Poppy in good hands with Jackie and Marley, Dmitri and I went over to the body. It had been pretty badly mauled by Fernanda. Dressed in black pants and a black jacket. I could see body armor underneath the jacket. The body armor hadn’t done him any good because there were three black dots in the black balaclava covering his face. One centered in the forehead, one two inches to the left of that, and one in the left cheek. A tight shot pattern for Betty at this distance, even with a shoulder wound. Any one of those rounds would have been sufficient but she’d made sure. I pulled up the sleeve and there was the Cauldron tattoo, albeit in bright red rather than the black the others had had. Another miscellaneous dog.

I went over to the three women. Poppy was helping Jackie bandage Betty’s wound, Marley and Dmitri hovering around them.

I pulled Poppy to one side, and Marley stuck with her.

“Tell me exactly what happened.” I was tempted to tell Marley to step aside, but he was in this, too.

She nodded, and I realized she was shaking. “We were talking, and we heard Fernanda make this awful noise, and Mrs. B. tackled me to the ground and I looked up and there was this guy with a gun and he was aiming at me.” She met my eyes. “He was aiming at me , Max. I thought I was going to die . And Mrs. B. shot him three times and he died.” She took a deep breath and Marley tightened his arm around her. “Am I going crazy? Because he looked right at me and raised the gun. I don’t think he meant to shoot Mrs. B.; he hit her because she was knocking me down. If he’d shot again, he’d have shot me, Max. But that’s crazy, right?”

“You’re not crazy,” I told her, sounding as sure as I could. But why the hell would someone want to take Poppy out?

Marley looked at me and there was steel in his gaze. “This stops now. Who is this guy and who sent him?”

“Probably another Cauldron dog,” I told him. “The person we want is the one sending them.”

“I want to see his face,” Marley said, his voice flat, no emotion.

I was starting to think there might be more to Marley than I’d thought.

So I went back to the body with Poppy and Marley, knelt, and yanked the balaclava up. I heard Poppy suck in her breath.

“Somebody you know?” Marley asked Poppy. He had his arm around her again, holding her close.

She swallowed and nodded.

“Yeah, it’s somebody we know,” I told him. “And good news. I think Betty got the person at the top of this mess.”

Marley looked at me, surprised.

“Junior Stafford,” I said. “The guy who started all this the first day I came to town. The guy, I’m pretty sure, who took over the Cauldron.”

“So this is done now?” he said. “This is over? Nobody else coming for Coral or Pike?” He looked at the girl leaning on him, safe in the shelter of his arm. “Or Poppy?”

Poppy was staring in horror at the nightmare that had come back into her life.

“I think so,” I said, and he tightened his arm around Poppy and kissed her on the forehead and said, “It’s all over, Pops.”

“No,” Poppy said. “It’s never over.”

Marley held her tighter, and then Dmitri came up and said, “We must get Betty back to Rocky Start. The doctor wants her safe in town until Tanke has cleared the area.” He looked at me, his face grim. “We will, of course, stay with her tonight. Tanke will take care of the Fernanda and Dolly, and I will protect my Betty.”

I thought about saying “Betty will have something to say about that,” but it wasn’t a bad plan and it would mean I didn’t have to go after any treasure wild-goose chase for a while, so I nodded. Some part of my brain processed that we now had a new llama named Dolly. Great.

“Let’s get Betty back to town,” I said and checked with Poppy, who was holding onto Marley with both hands now, and we went back to Betty, who looked like thunder.

“Yeah,” I told her. “We’ll end this, I promise.”

“Well, hurry,” she said, cranky, probably because she’d been shot, and we headed back to town, leaving Tanke with the llamas.

Fernanda Llama and Dolly Llama.

Somewhere, the entity that controlled my life was laughing its ass off.