Page 7

CHAPTER 7

H alf an hour later, I had the floor clean; Anita was opening the register; Coral was sitting at the corner table near the side counter watching everything with a cup of tea in front of her; Pike had photographed and taken fingerprints from the body, bagged the knife in one of the Ecstasy takeout bags, and headed out to give it all to one of the Ferrells (our postal workers—don’t ask); Luke was rolling the corpse up in a body bag; Maggs was contentedly chomping on a bakery dog biscuit; and Jackie and I were sitting at the side counter so I could explain Rocky Start to her.

I was trying to think of where to begin when Hermione Witch, the little redhead who’d been Sid Quill’s part-time squeeze from Chicago, came storming in the front door demanding, “Who the hell is messing around in my pharmacy?”

Yes, Hermione Witch is an alias. Lotta those in Rocky Start.

Anita pointed to where Jackie and I were sitting in back at the side of the counter.

“It’s not your pharmacy, Hermione,” I said as she stomped over as best a small woman in her forties could stomp.

Jackie nodded to her. “I’m Jacqueline Quill. I own the pharmacy.”

Hermione blinked, for once speechless, which was a real blessing.

“Sid left a will, Hermione,” I told her. “Barry called Dr. Quill. It’s her pharmacy now.”

“But Sidsie was my fiancé!” Hermione wailed. “He would have wanted me to have the pharmacy. And everything else . Whatever else there is. He loved me .”

Jackie looked at me with a single raised eyebrow and I shook my head. Not even I could explain “Sidsie.”

Hermione zeroed in on me. “This is wrong,” she told me, outraged. “You have to do something. Sidsie would have wanted me to have?—”

“Evidently not,” I said, “since he very clearly left it to Dr. Quill.” She opened her mouth again and I said, “No, I will not fix this, this is not broken.”

I know that was short and rude, but Hermione’s sense of entitlement was not my problem. My problems today were: Coral looking like she was about to fall over, Anita looking like a deer in headlights as she tried to take over from Coral while trying to ignore the dead person, Max off in the wilderness peeing his name in the snow instead of being here where he was needed, my daughter Poppy who was exhausted because of her PTSD nightmares thanks to that bitch Serena Stafford (now mercifully deceased) and who was not going to feel better when she heard about this mess, and the cherry on top: the possibility that there might be another Outsider assassin coming for us.

Hermione Witch would just have to deal.

“This isn’t fair, ” she whined.

“Go talk to Barry,” I said. She started to say something and I overrode her. “Hermione, you were trespassing even being in there. Assuming Sid left you something was your mistake, not life being mean to you.”

“This is not right !” Hermione said, starting to cry again.

I wished she wouldn’t do that. She looked awful when she cried—her face got red and there was usually a snot problem—so instead of feeling sorry for her, I just wanted to smack her because I was pretty sure she was crying so people would feel sorry for her and give her things. Like a pharmacy.

I looked at Jackie to be sure she wasn’t falling for it and saw her frowning at Hermione as if she were an interesting life form before transferring her gaze back to Luke, who had just risen to his feet with a filled body bag over his shoulder, no exertion at all. Evidently, he was also an interesting life form.

He really was a magnificent man.

And we really did need to keep Jackie in town.

I was going to have to talk to Luke about seeing Jackie again.

Then Luke smiled and touched his finger to his forehead in salute to her and carried the corpse out the door.

And Jackie smiled after him.

Maybe I wouldn’t talk to Luke. Maybe I’d just stay out of his way.

When the door had closed behind him, Jackie looked at Hermione.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” she said politely and went back to her coffee and the butterkuchen that I’d liberated from the bakery case. I’d figured that Coral’s insanely good butter cake might be a little temptation for her to stay.

Of course, so far, my record for making people stay was: people—one, me—zero.

Max should be here, I thought, but I knew he was having a high old time on the Trail, reveling in his peace and quiet.

And here I was, stuck in Rocky Start with Hermione Witch and a dead assassin.

“This isn’t—” Hermione began again, and I stopped her.

“Go talk to Barry Mason, have him explain it to you,” I said, throwing Barry to the wolves. Or Witch. “Maybe Sid gave him something to give to you in person.”

Her little eyes lit up at that.

Sometimes I felt sorry for Hermione. She was the kind of woman who went through life feeling perpetually victimized, but that didn’t mean sometimes she wasn’t actually a victim. She and her two sisters had been couriers for the Chicago mob and Sid, and that couldn’t have been a great life, and when Max had sent them back to Chicago, Hermione had refused to go and her sisters didn’t try to get her to go with them, abandoning her without a backward glance. And she’d been Sid Quill’s lover, which was even worse than working for the mob. But every time I tried to think of her with sympathy, she grabbed something else to fill the gaping maw of greed and need that yawned inside her, and if anybody stopped her, she cried and yelled and dripped snot. It was like constantly dealing with a toddler who was a tiny redhead with big boobs and grabby hands. After a while, you just wanted to put her in time-out.

Hermione gave up and went off to see what she could pry out of Barry on account of her trauma at losing a pharmacy that had never been hers, and I looked at my own life, trying to ignore the blood on my apron.

Maybe Max had a point about getting out of Rocky Start. I imagined being on the Trail, snowy and peaceful, no blood or snotty tears, just the sound of the wind in the trees, blissfully alone. With Max.

Of course, there would have been all that walking and terrible food, and it was probably really cold, but also, Max.

Yeah, I should have hit the Trail with Max.

At least nobody was getting attacked out there.