EYE OF THE STORM Page 2

  "The culprit?"

  "She reads a lot of mysteries," Jack helpfully explained.

  I ignored them both, because suddenly I felt like crying. I'd put so much of my life into this shop. I'd started working here as a teen, and grown up to be a manager, and finally became an owner when my former boss was kind enough to leave me a half-interest in his will.

  It was all mine, and I worked hard to make it turn at least a modest profit. I ran the business. I did the books. I cleaned the floors, the cases, the counters, and the bathroom. I did my best by my customers, and I even had a part-time employee. Stupidly enough, all I could think of was how unfair it was that the thief or thieves had hit a hardworking small-business owner like me.

  Since stamping my foot and saying "It's not fair" over and over didn't seem to be the most useful thing to do, I took a deep breath and turned back to Susan. "And the back room? Did they get into the vault?"

  In the back room, I had a small kitchenette, storage racks for ordinary pawned items, and a vault—well, really, a strongly reinforced room with a steel door—because in the pawn business, we keep other people's possessions on loan, and we need to keep them safe. The more valuable for-sale items went in there at the end of each day, too. Mostly jewelry, but a few of our more exotic magical objects, too.

  "Why couldn't someone rob me when I was stuck for so long with that dreamcatcher with the nightmare trapped in it?".

  Deputy Andrew Kelly walked out of my back room just then, as if on cue, gaze pinned on Susan. "They tried to get into the vault, judging by the damage to the door, but the alarm must have scared them off." He nodded at Jack and then glanced around and saw me. "I think—oh, my dear Lord!"

  "What?" I whipped my head back and forth, trying to see what had made him react like that. "What is it, Andy?"

  But he wasn’t looking at some freshly discovered damage to my shop.

  He was staring at me.

  And making incoherent noises.

  I sighed. Loudly. "Really? Have none of you seen a red dress before?"

  The deputy's face turned bright red, which clashed badly with his red hair and freckles, and he turned and ran out the front door.

  I blinked. "What? What just happened?"

  Susan started laughing. "Well. It is a helluva dress, Tess. And I probably shouldn't mention this, but he's had a crush on you for a little while."

  Jack's eyes narrowed, and he stared speculatively at the front door.

  "If you take one step after Andy, I'm going to never make pecan pie for you again," I said, pulling out my most dire threat.

  Jack winced. He loved pecan pie. "I'm staying. Poor kid probably doesn't know what hit him. You do look spectacular."

  "Yep," I said glumly. "Spectacular. And I have hours of cleanup in front of me. Speaking of the alarm, though, you said it rang through to your office?"

  She nodded.

  "Then why didn't it notify us?"

  Jack, now scrolling through his phone, grimaced. "It did, and I ignored it, because … well, because I saw you in that dress."

  "I was ignoring my phone, too," I groaned.

  Jack had insisted on installing the alarm after the second time a dead body got dropped off at my back door, and I'd been fine with it. I'd fought him on the video cameras, though, because I didn't like the idea of being watched the whole time I was at work. I'd lost that one, though, and now I was glad of it. "Camera feed?"

  But I was talking to his back, because he was headed for the connecting door between our adjoining businesses, another security feature he'd proposed when we'd worked out the deal for the shop and his private investigations office.

  "On it. Sheriff, if you give me your email or phone number, I'll upload the camera feed to you."

  "That would be great, but I want to see it now," she said, and she and I both followed him into his office.

  While Jack pulled up the video, I tried to think of who would do something like this, but I came up blank. Maybe some transient who needed money for drugs?

  "It's the first time I've ever been robbed," I blurted out. "The shop has never been robbed before I owned it, either. I remember Jeremiah complaining about the money he paid for commercial crime insurance when he'd never been robbed or vandalized or anything else."

  Jack looked up at me. "Do you still pay those premiums?"

  I blew out a sigh. "Yeah, but they're expensive. I kept thinking about dropping it—who would rob the pawnshop?—but now I'm glad I didn't. I guess I'd better give Mayor Ratbottom a call."

  Susan groaned, and Jack glanced between the two of us, looking puzzled. "Why would you call the mayor? Is there some weird law in Dead End or in Black Cypress County, Florida, that says you have to alert a sleazy politician when you get robbed?"

  "Funny. No, of course not, but that sleazy politician is also the local insurance salesman. Really, the only insurance salesman in town. Others have tried to set up shop, but he always finds ways to drive them out of business."

  "And sometimes out of town altogether," Susan said quietly. "That's one of the more unpleasant parts of being sheriff. I have to report in to him. He's not just a sleazy jerk, he's one of those guys who likes to get handsy with the women who work with him."

  Jack's eyes flared hot amber—this time, a sign that he was angry—and his jaw tightened. "Susan, do you want me to have a little talk with him?"

  She and I both stared at him in disbelief.

  "Yes, Jack," I drawled. "The sheriff wants you to step in and handle her problems, because she's such a girl and needs rescued."

  Susan pointed at me. "What she said."

  "I'm sorry, I'm sorry. The guy in me wants to jump in and fix things for my friends—both men and women, if you'll at least give me that."

  I shrugged. It was true. He was an equal-opportunity overprotective kind of guy.

  "Here's the footage." He pointed at his laptop screen, and Susan and I crowded in.

  "Damn." My heart sank even further. "He's pretty smart, isn't he?"

  "Is it even a he?" Susan pointed to the figure smashing my counters with a baseball bat. He was wearing a black hoodie, baggy sweatpants, and sneakers. His? Her? hood was up, and the thief was careful to keep his or her head down, so the cameras never caught his or her face.

  "It's a he." Jack pointed to the shoulders. "Or at least it's highly probable that it's a he. Look at the proportion of the shoulders to the hips."

  "I see it. And it's somebody tall," I said. "Look at where his hips are in relation to the top of my counter. That's where my waist hits when I stand there."

  "Maybe my height," Jack said.

  "But with much worse taste in clothes," Susan said, a hint of amusement in her dark eyes. "Do you want to tell me where you were at … six thirty-five this evening?"

  His voice turned to ice. "Are you accusing me of this?"

  "I'm just clearing my possible suspect list of men who fit the height and body type," she said calmly, looking at his broad shoulders.

  "I was on the way to Tess's house."

  I sighed. "Yes, of course we know you didn't rob my shop, especially when all you'd have to do is ask me for anything I have in the shop, and I'd give it to you."

  "And the little matter of how I'm not a thief," he said, his voice still cool.

  "We know, we know. Yes, Susan, he arrived at my place at maybe ten till seven. No way could he have been here at six thirty-five, obviously. Now can we move on? This doesn't help, so how are you going to find out who did this?"

  Andy, his face still red, popped his head through the doorway. "I might have an actual clue, weirdly enough."

  Susan sighed and led the way back into my shop. "Deputy, we don't tell the civilians that it's weird for us to find clues."

  Jack snickered, and Andy shot him a dirty look.

  "I meant that the clue is weird." He crossed to my cash register counter and ducked behind it, then came back up holding a white card by the edges. "Found this on the floor. This is not ho
w you left this, I'm going to assume, right, Tess?"

  He held it upright so we could all read the card I'd taped to the back of the cash register shortly after Jeremiah died.

  WE DO NOT DEAL IN VAMPIRE TEETH, EVER

  Except somebody had added their own edits. The card now read:

  WE DO NOT DEAL IN VAMPIRE TEETH, EVER

  Damn Straight You Don't

  And the "damn straight you don't" was scrawled on there in something that looked a lot like—

  "It's blood," Andy said ominously. "Somebody wrote this in blood."

  "Well, now we've got something to test, since there aren't any muddy footprints," Susan said dryly.

  "What do you mean, test? Isn't it obvious?" Andy shot us a bewildered look. "A vampire did this."

  "Not necessarily," Susan said.

  "Of course it was a vampire! Who else would care if Tess sells vampire teeth?"

  "Oh, I don't know," Jack put in. "How about anybody who has a friend or loved one who's a vampire? How about anybody with a stupid sense of humor? How about anybody who wants to make us think 'hey! It's a vampire!'" He strode over to Andy, who started to pull the card back, but Susan stopped him.

  "Let Jack … smell it. Maybe his tiger side can pick something up."

  Jack sighed. "I'm a tiger, not a wolf. We don't have particularly sharp senses of smell. But I can—" He jerked his head back before he got closer than a foot away from the card and then turned and looked at us, eyes widening.

  "Yeah. It's a vampire."

  Andy bit his lip. "Sheriff, I hate to ask, but is there any chance that your brother—"

  "No," I said firmly. "Carlos is a good guy. And I just saw him when I drove by his house on the way here. If he was there then, he couldn’t have been doing this here."

  Jack and Susan exchanged a quick look that I didn’t understand, so I started to think back. On second thought, Carlos could have driven from my shop to his house when the alarm went off. After all, first Susan had to get here, and then there were those lost ten minutes after she called me … No.

  No, I wouldn't believe it.

  "Well," Susan began, but then both police radios buzzed loudly, and Susan's cell phone rang, too. She answered her phone, and the deputy answered his radio. The gist of both was that the thieves had struck again.

  "Dead End Hardware, and old Emeril Peterson is injured and on his way to the hospital," Susan said tersely, heading for the door. "Tess, Jack, close up the best you can, and I'll send another deputy out to keep an eye on the shop overnight until you can get that door fixed. Andy, you're with me."

  Andy shook his head. "No, I'm not."

  Susan stopped walking. "What is it?"

  "The bank's alarm is going off, too."

  I shivered. "What the heck is going on?"

  Susan snapped out orders over her radio and then turned to Andy. "You go to the hardware store and talk to Harold."

  "Who?"

  "The other Mr. Peterson. Go!"

  Andy ran out the front door, first casting an apologetic glance back at me.

  "Am I okay to clean up, or do you need—"

  "Go ahead. We got photos, but there were no fingerprints."

  "I just cleaned all the glass," I said, almost apologetically.

  She shrugged. "We could see in the video that he was wearing gloves. Any chance you can come with me and help out, Jack? I can deputize you if you—"

  "Nope. No deputizing. But I'm glad to help, once I get Tess safely home." He reached for my hand, and I stepped back.

  "Nobody needs to get Tess safely anywhere. Tess is going to change clothes, clean up a bit, and wait for one of the other deputies to get here before Tess leaves her shop with the door hanging open in the wind." I rolled my eyes. "And Tess is done talking about herself in the third person. So get your butts out of here and solve crime. I'll be here if you want to stop by afterward."

  "Figure it out," Susan snapped, and then she headed for the door at a near-run.

  Jack's face hardened, and he got that stubborn look in his eyes, but I held up a hand.

  "Don't even say it. I've got a broom in the back I'm going to put to good work and I've got a rifle in the vault. I think I'm pretty safe, anyway. They already hit my place."

  The vastly overprotective tiger in my life hesitated, but then he nodded. "All right. You're right. I'll just … call me if—if anything. You hear me?"

  "I will," I said, because I would have anyway. I'm brave, but I'm not stupid, and I have no desire to face thieving vampires on my own. "I'll call the mayor, too. He might want to come over and take a report just after the crime happened."

  He hesitated, clearly torn, but I wasn't having it. "I have the rifle," I repeated. "Go. Call me if you hear how Mr. Peterson is doing."

  Finally, he nodded and started for the door. But then he stopped, swung around, strode back to me and kissed me. "Fine, tough guy. But maybe call Mike? You're going to have to tell them anyway, and he can hold the rifle while you hold the broom, or vice versa."

  I groaned. I hadn't even thought about how difficult calling Uncle Mike and Aunt Ruby was going to be. "Yeah, yeah. I got it. Go."

  So he went.

  And it was only after I heard truck pull out of the parking lot that I let a few—just a few—of the tears I'd been fighting fall. My shop was a scene of chaos. Wanton destruction, I didn't even know how much valuable merchandise I'd lost, Mr. Peterson was injured, and some whack job vampire was writing threats in blood.

  Not to mention, I'd wasted The Dress on this.

  "Right. Enough of that," I told myself, because the sound of my voice bolstered my courage in the empty shop. "Change clothes first, then call Uncle Mike."

  Just then, my phone started going off, buzzing so loudly and vibrating so much it practically started to bounce its way out of my pocket. I glanced down at it and realized that almost every single person I knew in Dead End was calling me.

  They must have heard.

  I had to smile. This is why I loved my small town. When there was a crisis, everybody pitched in to help. I smiled to myself and started answering calls and building my clean-up crew. I'd just like to see that vampire thief go up against Aunt Ruby and her rolling pin.

  I changed clothes, carefully hung The Dress on the back of the bathroom door, and started cleanup, taking notes of what seemed to be missing, so I could check it against inventory later. By the time I got the floors swept up and the shelving unit righted and restocked, I was feeling a lot better about everything.

  Yes, it was awful to be robbed, but thank goodness Eleanor and I hadn't been here to get hurt. And, strangely, enough, it didn't seem like that much was missing. What was gone was mostly crosses and silver jewelry, which didn't make sense, unless the vampire was trying to preemptively get rid of anything that might be used against him?

  I didn't understand it, but maybe Susan or Jack would. She knew a lot more about vampires than I did, since her brother was one and her ex-boyfriend, too. And Jack had even worked with a famous vampire named Daniel who'd been a major player in Congress for a while.

  Hopefully, they'd solve this soon. By the time I heard the first car arrive, which was one of the deputies Susan had promised, running with siren and lights blaring, I was feeling a lot steadier.

  And then I opened the drawer beneath the cash register and found somebody's amputated foot.

  3

  I slammed the drawer shut.

  "I did not see a foot in my drawer. I did not see a foot in my drawer. I did not see a foot in my drawer."

  I peeked in again and then slammed it shut.

  "There's a foot in my drawer."

  This did not fall under "Things a Pawnshop Owner Should Have to Deal With."

  Also, I was almost certainly going to throw up.

  A new deputy I'd never met before sauntered into the shop like he had all the time in the world, and a robbery was no big deal. Maybe, in his world, it wasn't. He was about my height but with a stocky, mu
scular build. He had a red face, prominent nose, bald head, and slight underbite.

  Basically, he looked like a bulldog crossed with a tractor.

  And, as he looked around my shop, he looked extremely unimpressed.

  "So. You had a robbery?" Even his tone of voice conveyed his total boredom, and it took me from scared to angry in about half a second.

  "No, I always stand around my shop on Sunday night with a broken door and smashed counters," I snapped. "Not to mention amputated feet in my drawer."

  That got his attention. His gaze sharpened and snapped to me. "What did you just say?"

  I pointed at the drawer. "I just opened my drawer and found somebody's foot in it, Deputy ...."

  "Baker." His hand had dropped dangerously near his gun, or at least it felt dangerous to me. But with a severed foot in my drawer, maybe that was exactly the right reaction. Speaking of which …

  "I have a rifle in the back room, just to let you know," I said, not wanting him to see it and get overexcited. I'd been shot once. I had no desire to repeat the experience. "Susan knows I have it."

  "Susan? You mean the sheriff?"

  I didn't understand the animosity dripping from his words, so I just nodded.

  "Where's the other foot?" He scanned the room, as if the foot might hop out from beneath a shelving unit and attack him at any minute.

  "What other foot?"

  "You said 'amputated feet in my drawer,' and then you said 'somebody's foot.' So, where's the other one?"

  I felt like I'd suddenly entered an alternate dimension. "I don't understand what you're talking about. There is one foot in the drawer. I have seen no other feet. Only this one. Would you like to see it?"

  He nodded and jerked his chin to the side, which I assumed was tough-guy-wannabe for "please move out from behind the counter," so I did. He went back there, opened the drawer, and stared inside for a long moment.