Page 63 of The Vampire and the Case of the Cursed Canine

I blinked. ‘Why not? Are you a master of disguise?’

‘I’m a Yee Naaldlooshii,’ she admitted it in a tone that said she expected me to run away screaming. Luckily for her, I had no idea what one of those was.

‘Does that mean you won’t meet me for coffee?’ I pressed.

‘During which you’ll try and wrangle the location of the market out of me?’

‘Not for the first five minutes,’ I promised.

Laughing, she hung up. I turned to Connor. ‘Do you know someone named Posie Payne?’ He shook his head. ‘Well, she might be our kidnapper-slash-curser.’

As we headed back to the car, I called Gunnar. ‘I need an address for a magic user named Posie Payne. Do you know her?’

‘The name sounds familiar,’ he said. ‘Let me check the database.’

I heard him banging at the keyboard and my foot tapped in time with his typing. I was in a hurry. He came back to me. ‘Huh. I knew the name rang a bell. I’ve got a J. Payne who’s been given a warning for threatening behaviour.’

‘That’s good enough for me. Do we have a current address?’

‘I’ll text it to you. Do you have cuffs with you?’

I had the black bag. ‘Absolutely.’

‘Go get ’em tiger.’

‘Thanks, Gunnar.’ My phone vibrated with the incoming text before I hung up. ‘I have the address,’ I said to Connor. ‘Let’s go get her.’

Chapter 40

I’d thought that since Posie was threatening people and taking protection money she must be hard up, but I was wrong. Apparently her protection racket made a pretty penny because her house was near Connor’s on another gated estate.

He frowned when I read the address. ‘Give me her name again,’ he said.

‘Posie Payne.’

‘I don’t know it. I wonder if she’s related to Josephine Payne?’

‘Gunnar said the person he’d arrested was J. Payne, so I bet they’re one and the same,’ I suggested. ‘Josie Payne, Posie Payne – it’s not much of a stretch. You’re not friendly with Josephine, are you? This could be awkward if you are.’

‘No. She’s been a right pain in my bahoochie.’

I grinned. I’d heard that particular bit of Scottish slang when I was at university. Though Connor may be of Scottish descent, he was as American as they came. ‘What has she done?’ I asked.

‘Oh, the usual. Tried to stop me from building, then tried to stop me from putting the fence around my place.’ He sighed. ‘I had to put up the fence because she’d sent her two large dogs to crap on my lawn to punish me.’

‘Punish you for what?’

‘Building my house on my property. She said I obstructed her view.’

‘But you’re at the top of the hill.’

‘I was obstructing her view of the hill.’

‘That sounds ridiculous,’ I scoffed. ‘I didn’t even see another house near you.’

‘She’s not that close. I’m almost in the centre of my ten acres, and she has five. We’re plenty far apart.’

I shook my head. We drove up to Connor’s road but where you’d turn right to go to his estate, we turned left. ‘When did you build your house?’ When I’d gone there the first time, I’d thought it looked fairly new.