Private Eye: A Tiger’s Eye Mystery Read online

  “She’s not family until proven guilty,” I said automatically, which didn’t even make sense. “Go away. I have treasures to sell.”

  He laughed, reached over and gave Fluffy a pat on the head, and left.

  I rang up several sales, one of which included the emerald bracelet, oohed and ahhed over the identical pictures on identical phones of alligators they’d seen on the swamp tour, and answered questions about the provenance—owner history—of some of the more valuable collectibles.

  Then a little bald man wearing his pants so high his belt was tucked under his armpits waved his hand in the air at me. “Miss! Miss! Is this an authentic Wildenhammer?”

  I handed a yellow-and-blue Dead End Pawn bag to one of the GYSTers with her purchases neatly wrapped inside and headed to the glass case that held some of our smaller and more precious items. I didn’t even have to look to know what he was talking about, though. The tiny wooden train always sparked exactly that look of reverence on serious collectors’ faces.

  “It certainly is,” I told him. “Would you like to see it?”

  It wasn’t actually for sale, though. Well, it was, but the people who came through my pawnshop weren’t usually the type to fork over big bucks for wooden toys. Collectors snapped up larger Wildenhammers for several thousand dollars on the auction sites the minute any appeared.

  “Oh, could I?” He clasped his hands in front of his ample belly and beamed at me. “I have several pieces at home.”

  Several pieces? I automatically looked at his watch and shoes, one of the ways Jeremiah had taught me to assess a person’s potential to buy. His puke-green flip-flops told me nothing, but the Patek Philippe watch all but flashed strobe lights at me. (Not that I’m mercenary, exactly, but a girl’s gotta make a living, right?)

  I unlocked the case, pulled out the wooden caboose, and carefully placed it on the counter, and then both of us proceeded to stare at it and wait for it to do something.

  This is not as stupid as it might sound. Wildenhammer toys were magical, because their creator was a forest Fae. A tiny wooden ballerina that Aunt Ruby and Uncle Mike had given me one Christmas still graced my bedroom dresser, and—every once in a great while—she would dance for me.

  “He’s a resident of Dead End, you know,” I confided. “His son went to school with me.”

  This wasn’t telling tales. Each of Felix Wildenhammer’s magical toys was shipped out of the Dead End post office. We’d even had a few ardent collectors show up in town, hoping to find their idol. But Dead Enders kept each other’s secrets, and nobody had ever given away the location of Mr. W’s converted barn that served as his home and workshop. We used to go on school field trips to see the toys in December, but he’d quit allowing that several years back.

  “I know,” the man said. “I can’t believe you have one of his pieces in—no offense, miss—a pawnshop.”

  I stifled a sigh. “None taken. A customer inherited this train, but it didn’t fit in with her modern steel-and-glass decorating, so she sold it to me.”

  I’d paid far too much for it, too. But it had been one of my first purchases after I’d learned that Jeremiah had willed the pawnshop to me, and I’d been operating in a haze of grief and guilt. I definitely hadn’t budgeted for the extra twelve hundred dollars I’d given the woman for the little train, but I consoled myself with the thought that one day the right collector would come along.

  Maybe today, even.

  My customer bit his lip and squinted at me. “May I touch it?”

  “Sure. You can pick it up and examine it. I know a collector like you will be careful with it.”

  Holding his breath, the little man gently lifted the train and examined it from all angles. Then, apparently realizing that his look of awe wasn’t going to help him with negotiations, he reluctantly put it back on the counter and put his hands behind his back. I let him think about it for a minute, saying nothing, because most people can’t stand silence and will rush in with an offer to kick start the haggling.

  “I can’t go higher than twelve,” he finally said, and this time I let the sigh loose.

  “I’m sorry, sir, but twelve is what I paid for it. I have to have something for overhead and at least a small profit,” I said, reaching for the train as if I were going to put it away.

  “Wait! Um, fifteen,” he said, leaning forward, his muscles straining toward the little train.

  I tried not to smile. “I was really hoping for seventeen.”

  “Sixteen,” he countered.

  “Done,” I said. Sixteen hundred dollars was fair, and clearly this man would cherish the piece. That meant a lot to me, even though it wasn’t very businesslike.

  He held out his hand, practically bouncing with joy. “Thank you, young lady. I’ll have the money wired to you this afternoon, and I’ll be back for my train in the morning, if that’s acceptable.”

  “Wired?” I blinked at his hand, always hating this awkward moment. “I’m sorry. I don’t shake hands. I have this weird germ phobia. We take cash and credit cards, Mister….”

  He gave me a funny look, but for once it didn’t seem to be about my refusal to shake hands. “Oglethorpe. And I’m not in the habit of carrying sixteen thousand dollars’ worth of cash around with me. I suppose I can put it on my card. Do you take Visa?”

  My knees went wobbly, and I forgot how to breathe for a second. “Sixteen thousand dollars?”

  Mr. Oglethorpe’s eyes narrowed, and I realized he was shrewder than I’d thought. “You meant sixteen hundred?”

  Greed (buy a car, since the giant alligator had totaled mine, pay some bills, have more than fifty-nine dollars in savings) warred with conscience (I could not defraud a customer, I could not defraud a customer, I could not defraud a customer), and conscience won out.

  Damn conscience.

  I sighed. “Yes, I meant sixteen hundred. Mr. Oglethorpe, as much as I’d love to take your money, the train isn’t worth that.”

  Leona walked up to us, from where she’d been ushering the last of the GYSTers out the door. “Take his money, darling. Men come and go, but money is forever.”

  Aunt Ruby glared at my new grandmother. “We raised Tess to be honest and fair, and she’s a credit to our family.”

  I clutched my head. “Okay, I can handle this without input, thank you both.”

  Mr. Oglethorpe’s gaze ping-ponged between the two of them. “Um—”

  “Your bus is leaving,” I said, suddenly hearing the grinding of gears from the parking lot.

  “My bus?” He looked puzzled. “Miss—”

  “Callahan,” Aunt Ruby said with satisfaction, probably because she shared the last name. Uncle Mike was my missing father’s older brother. Which reminded me, where was he? He should have at least been here for moral support.

  “Miss Callahan, I drove here in my car, specifically to see if you had any Wildenhammers in your shop,” he said, waving his hand in the general direction of my parking lot. “And as much as the retired CEO and business shark inside me is telling me to take advantage of your lack of knowledge, the human side of me is impressed by your honesty and unwillingness to do the same to me. So, let me explain.”

  He pointed at the train, as if to ask for permission, and I nodded.

  “Do you see this tiny fleur-de-lis on the bottom?”

  We all crowded together to look at the spot he indicated.

  “This means that it’s a one-of-a-kind piece that Felix Wildenhammer made early in his career as a toymaker, before he started creating multiples of the same piece. You could probably get twenty thousand dollars at auction for it.”

  I sucked in a breath. “Twenty thousand…holy cow.”

  “Then give her twenty thousand,” Leona demanded.

  I shook my head and answered her before he could. “At auction doesn’t mean cash in hand. It means an auction house takes a hefty commission out of whatever they manage to sell it for. And we wouldn’t even know about this if Mr. Oglethorpe hadn
’t told us.”

  I felt like an idiot not knowing such a basic thing about Mr. Wildenhammer, who was practically my neighbor, but the hard truth about the pawn business was that we couldn’t be experts on everything. We read a lot, used online sites to double-check, and we did the best we could.

  Aunt Ruby read the expression on my face. “I didn’t know either, Tess, so don’t beat yourself up. I don’t think this flower thing is common knowledge.”

  “I didn’t know, either,” Leona said, smiling at me.

  I smiled back, because, why not? A new grandmother and a sixteen-thousand-dollar sale all in one day. What was next? A unicorn? Bring it.

  “No,” Oglethorpe said. “It’s actually a fairly recent revelation, but we have a collector’s site on the Darken.”

  I was almost afraid to ask. “What’s the Darken?”

  Next to me, Leona cleared her throat. “Now that one, I do know. It’s the hidden internet for magic users. It’s quite benign, in spite of its ominous label.”

  Mr. Oglethorpe shook his head. “Not entirely, ma’am. There are places hidden there that truly merit the name.”

  “This is fascinating, but back to the train,” said Aunt Ruby.

  I agreed with her. Special websites didn’t interest me nearly as much as sixteen thousand dollar sales.

  Except…

  “I can’t take that much from you,” I said. “I bought it for twelve, as I said. Twelve hundred.”

  “Doesn’t a good deal like that make up for the losses you take sometimes?” Aunt Ruby gave me her innocent face, which I didn’t believe for a second.

  “Well…”

  Mr. Oglethorpe grinned. “How about we settle on the twelve I originally offered? For me, it will be a steal, for you it will be a windfall, and we’ll all go away happy.”

  I wavered. That was so much money. More than I’d ever sold anything in the shop for, before. “Can I throw in a dream catcher that almost certainly has a nightmare trapped in it?”

  He shuddered. “Certainly not.”

  The little caboose picked that time to let out a shrill whistle and roll across the counter to Mr. Oglethorpe, whose bald head turned pink with excitement.

  “So I guess you have a deal,” I said, helpless to contain the enormous smile spreading across my face. Even after taxes and overhead, it was a hefty profit.

  Aunt Ruby could barely contain herself, but she managed to keep quiet until the paperwork was complete, the wire transfer was done (Mr. Oglethorpe decided he couldn’t wait), and my deliriously happy customer left cradling the train like it was a baby. When the door closed behind him, she whirled to me and gave me a huge hug.

  “What a great sale, Tess,” she said. “You can quit driving our worn-out farm truck and get a car!”

  Leona, shot Aunt Ruby a narrow look. “I don’t understand why you didn’t just buy the girl a car, but Grandmother is here now, darling,” she told me, and then, before I could stop her, she hugged me, too.

  That’s when I started screaming.

  I saw at least ten people die before the world—and my pawnshop—went black.

  Chapter 3

  I woke up to the roar of an enraged tiger, and a giant paw next to my head. I looked up and into Jack’s furry, orange, black, and white face. His eyes shone hot amber.

  “He won’t let us near you,” Uncle Mike said, irritated.

  My vision cleared, and I glanced up at the counter, where Uncle Mike, Aunt Ruby, and Leona were all peering down at me.

  Because I was lying on the floor.

  Again.

  I sighed. I’d thought I was over the passing-out part of my visions. On the other hand, I’d never seen ten deaths at once before. What the hell?

  Jack made a grumbly-growly sound and pushed his enormous face into my side, and I batted him away.

  “Move, already. I’m fine. I just need to sit up,” I told him.

  “Tess,” Leona gasped. “Be careful. He’s a tiger.”

  I rolled my eyes as I sat up, checking my head for bumps or blood. Funny how just two months ago I would have freaked out at the sight of a quarter-ton Bengal tiger standing right next to me, too.

  “I caught you on the way down. You didn’t hit your head,” Aunt Ruby said. “But then Jack showed up and decided we were all dangerous.”

  She sounded as exasperated as Uncle Mike.

  Jack snarled, but it was half-hearted. Could tigers get embarrassed? In any event, he needed to be human Jack again.

  “Tiger Jack thinks differently than human Jack,” I explained apologetically. “He just thinks protect.”

  None of the three looked impressed with my explanation.

  “Shift back, please. I could use some help with all this,” I murmured to Jack, almost inaudibly. He was always bragging about his superior tiger hearing, after all.

  He swiveled one rounded ear toward me, and a feeling like a mild electrical shock swept through my body as he entered the shift. In seconds, he was human. Luckily for both of us, he could pull clothes into the shift, so he was fully dressed. Uncle Mike might have shot him if he’d turned into naked Jack.

  And why did I keep thinking about naked Jack?

  Argh.

  Jack held out a hand. “What happened?”

  I put my cold hand in his big, warm one and let him pull me up. I even leaned against him for a moment before putting my brave face back on and turning to face my family.

  “Leona didn’t know,” I said, feeling some inexplicable need to defend her.

  Leona’s face was pale under her perfect makeup. “I’m so sorry. When you said death visions, you never mentioned that touch provoked them. Did you…did you…”

  “Maybe if you’d bothered to keep in touch with your only granddaughter, you might have known,” Aunt Ruby snapped.

  Leona gasped. “You told me to stay away. Much to my eternal shame, I listened. Now I’ve finally met Tess as a beautiful, grown woman, and caused her to see my…my…”

  I looked at her and immediately knew what she was thinking. “No. I didn’t see your death. I saw a bunch of other people die, though.”

  A shudder raced through my body, and Jack put an arm around me to hold me up. I wasn’t that fragile, but I appreciated the support.

  “Whose deaths?” he asked gently.

  “I didn’t know any of them. A very old woman with a long white braid, a thirty-ish man driving an RV, a girl—” I had to stop and swallow hard. “A young girl on a red bicycle. Others. I don’t really want to talk about it.”

  Uncle Mike had apparently had enough waiting. He strode around the counter, shoved Jack out of the way, and hugged me. “Has that ever happened to you before?”

  “No, never.”

  Uncle Mike smelled like the outdoors, his horses, and my childhood. His hugs had gotten me through many an emotional trauma, and I appreciated him more than I could ever tell him.

  “They’re mine. My deaths,” Leona said hoarsely, as if anguish were wrenching the words from her throat. “Those were all deaths that I foretold.”

  I stared at her. How was that even possible? I’d seen deaths that had already occurred? Deaths that my grandmother the banshee had foretold? A sick, burning feeling started in my stomach and snaked its way up through my chest.

  “I need to sit down,” I said.

  “We need to go home and get some lunch and talk this out,” Uncle Mike said, practical as usual.

  “I don’t want her in my house,” Aunt Ruby said, not softening in the least at the sight of Leona’s obvious pain. “She let that man hit Tess. He knocked her down so hard she had a black eye for nearly two weeks.”

  Jack’s eyes, back to human green, flared hot with a hint of amber fire in their centers. “Who exactly hit Tess?” He bit off each word.

  “Her son of a bitch of a grandfather,” Leona said with so much bitterness that Aunt Ruby flinched.

  “Where do I find this man?” Jack’s voice was dangerously calm. I’d heard that vo
ice before, and it was bad news.

  “I beat the crap out of him when it happened,” Mike said, with no little satisfaction.

  “Maybe he needs a reminder,” Jack said, ratcheting up the testosterone level in the place to an eleven. Good thing the GYSTers were gone. There weren’t enough adult diapers in the world for this.

  “Stop it, both of you,” I said, fed up. “We’re not living in a TV melodrama. You don’t get to go all alpha male on an old guy because he hit me more than twenty years ago. And anyway, you can’t kill him, he’s already dead.”

  “Good riddance,” Aunt Ruby said.

  “Lunch. Now,” Uncle Mike said firmly, taking a look at my face. “You don’t want Leona in our house, Ruby. Are you telling me you want to air our dirty laundry at Beau’s?”

  Beau’s Diner was the only eat-in restaurant around, and it was gossip central for our weird little town. Only a fool would talk about personal stuff there.

  Aunt Ruby threw her hands in the air. “Fine. Let’s go. Tess, you can ride with me.”

  Jack shook his head. “Why don’t I bring Tess, since you’re both upset? If that’s okay with you, Tess?”

  “Sure. Leona?” I swallowed. “Um. Do you want to come with us?”

  Aunt Ruby shot me a look filled with betrayal, but Leona looked as wiped out as I felt, and I was the only other person in the room beside her in the room who understood how hard it was to see dead people.

  Jack and Leona were silent on the drive, which gave me too much time and space to remember how my visions had started. I’d been barely eighteen, working at the shop and saving money for the college I’d never get to attend. Jeremiah had been out, and I’d been all alone when the desperate-looking woman came in to pawn something.

  She’d touched my hand, and I’d told her how she’d die.

  I’d hit the floor that day, too, just like today. I’d had a seizure, my head screaming with pain and my mind flashing the vivid image of Annabelle Hannah Yorgenson—a name I’d never, ever forget—being brutally murdered.

  I’d later found out that it happened just as I’d foreseen. Exactly as I’d told her it would. Annabelle’s husband smashed her head in with a shovel.