EYE OF THE STORM Read online

Then he looked up at me. "There's a foot in your drawer."

  "As I said."

  He rubbed his face, which had gotten even redder while he stared at the foot. "What the hell kind of town is this?"

  "Hey! Dead End is a great town. This is just a … a fluke."

  "The foot's a fluke?"

  "The foot's a fluke."

  "So. You got robbed and somebody just happened to drop off a foot?" He gave me skeptical, flat, cop eyes.

  I gave him not-so-flat, pawnshop-owner eyes right back. "The robbery's a fluke, too. This store has never been robbed before, in all its years in business." I folded my arms.

  "And no random feet showed up?"

  "No!" I bit my lip. "Well, yes. But they were connected to the bodies."

  Now he was scowling. It did not improve his looks.

  "I know I'm going to regret asking this, but what bodies?"

  I sighed. It always sounded bad when I said it out loud. "The two dead bodies that were dropped off at my back door."

  Baker pulled his handcuffs out and started twirling them around in one hand. "You wanna run that by me again?"

  "Not really," I said honestly.

  He looked at me.

  I looked back at him.

  He broke first. "I think I should put you under arrest."

  "I really disagree with that." I held up my phone. "How about we call Susan? She knows all about the dead bodies. Well, not about the foot, this foot, but that's only because somebody robbed Dead End Hardware and the bank alarm went off, so she and Andy had to go."

  "Andy?" He was sneering now. "Do you mean Deputy Kelly? It's a little strange that you're on a first-name basis with all the law enforcement personnel in town."

  Now I was on solid ground. "No, it isn't. This is Dead End, population 5,000 except when the Wizkowskis go to Canada for the summer, and everybody knows everybody and we're all on first-name basis, which I'd think you'd know or at least learn if you want to work here for long."

  I had to stop and take a breath, which was good, because Baker's hand was back on his gun, and his mouth was hanging open.

  "Who said I wanted to work here?"

  The sound of a car speeding into the parking lot interrupted anything I'd been about to say, and we both turned to face the door when a door slammed, and then we could hear someone running up the stairs to the porch.

  "Tess! Tess, are you okay? I just heard," Uncle Mike called out, and I whirled around to face Deputy Bulldog and held both hands up.

  "It's my uncle, please don't shoot him."

  He rolled his eyes. "I don't shoot people for no reason, Miss Callahan."

  "Call me Tess," I said automatically, and then I almost smiled. "See? You're on first-name basis with me, now. You'll be a Dead-Ender in no time."

  Uncle Mike ran in the door, and I rushed over. In seconds, I was swept into the warm, strong, flannel-shirted, hay-and-sunshine scented hug that had sustained me through so much of my childhood.

  "Are you okay? Honey, are you okay?"

  "I'm fine," I said, stepping back and plastering an "everything's under control" smile on my face.

  Uncle Mike's tanned face lost a lot of its color, and his blue eyes stared into mine. "Oh, my God, you're in pain. What happened? Did you get shot again?"

  He glared at the deputy over my shoulder. "Did she get shot again?"

  "She got shot?" Baker whistled. "Jeez, Lady, you're a piece of work. Was this before or after the dead bodies?"

  I was not going to tell him about the banshee murders. Enough was enough.

  I put a hand on Uncle Mike's arm. "I'm fine. That wasn't a look of pain, that was my 'everything's under control' smile."

  He shook his head, a pitying expression on his face.

  Ouch.

  I quickly filled him in on what had happened, with Deputy Baker interrupting at various points to ask annoying questions that all seemed to imply that I was a criminal or—at best—some kind of escaped mental patient.

  "Do I need to call our lawyer?" Uncle Mike finally said, just after Baker mentioned checking everyone I knew to find out if any of them were missing a foot.

  "Not yet," the deputy said darkly. "I'll be in my car for a few minutes, trying to talk to somebody who can tell me what the hell's going on here. I also need to get an evidence tech out here to retrieve the foot."

  I winced at 'retrieve the foot' and then blew out a sigh. "No lawyer, yet, but I need to call the mayor. Do you think it's too late? Should I wait to call him tomorrow morning?"

  The deputy, who'd been on his way out the door, froze and slowly turned around. "The mayor? Let me guess, you call him Ronald?"

  Uncle Mike frowned. "What? Why would she call him Ronald?"

  "Just let it go," I said. "Deputy Baker apparently comes from someplace more formal than Dead End."

  "Damn straight," Baker said, and then he marched out the door.

  Damn straight?

  Kind of a weird coincidence that he used the exact same phrase someone had written on my vampire teeth sign.

  In blood.

  I didn't like that. I didn't like it at all.

  And I was glad that Andy had taken the card with him as evidence.

  I hugged Uncle Mike again and felt immeasurably better. "So, who called you about all this?"

  "Nobody." He shoved his hands in his pockets and suddenly couldn't meet my gaze. "I, ah, actually didn't know about this."

  I narrowed my eyes. "Why'd you come out to the shop, then?"

  He blinked, in an "I'm innocent" look I recognized from my childhood, used most often when the last piece of pie had magically disappeared.

  "Uncle Mike," I said in my most threatening tone. "Spill it."

  "Oh, all right. It's not a secret, anyway. I was coming out to measure your windows."

  "Why in the world would you measure my windows? Wait. I told Aunt Ruby I don't want curtains for the pawn shop. Blinds are just better for a business."

  He grinned. "I heard. No, this isn't about curtains. I want to make sure I have enough plywood, so I can be prepared to board up your windows."

  I froze. "What? Why in the world would you want—oh, no." I clutched my head. "Not again. Not this early in the year!"

  He patted my arm. "Sorry, but yes. Hurricane Elvis is on the way and projected to be a Cat 5 by the time it gets here a few days from now."

  A Category 5 hurricane was a truly monstrous storm. The kind that wiped out entire towns. This was not good news.

  "Hurricane Elvis?" I sighed, envisioning all the bad puns that were going to come my way over the next several days. "A few days from now? You didn't need to come out on a Sunday night to measure windows. What's up?"

  He gave me a serious look. "Well, you know, honey. You're Always On My Mind."

  I groaned.

  He grinned.

  Deputy Bulldog burst back into the room, looking happy for the first time since I'd met him. "Great news! We've got a dead vampire. Found out on the edge of the swamp."

  "Okaaaay," I said. "I'll bite. Why is that great news?"

  "Because it's a vampire … and he's missing a foot! Crime solved." He stood there, thumbs in his belt loops, smirking.

  I looked at Uncle Mike.

  Uncle Mike looked at me.

  We both looked at Baker.

  "Right," I finally said. "So, the vampire robbed my shop, cut off his own foot and put it in my drawer, and then made his way out to the swamp to die, footless and alone."

  Baker scowled.

  "Might just be somebody else involved in this crime, Deputy," Uncle Mike pointed out, in the slow, thoughtful voice he used to talk to small children and chickens.

  (Actual chickens, not scared humans. Uncle Mike had a theory that yelling at chickens made them lay fewer eggs.)

  "Damn it," Baker growled. Then he turned around and stomped back out to his car.

  Uncle Mike grinned at me. "Poor guy. He's—"

  "Don’t say it," I warned him.

  "H
e's—"

  "No!"

  "All Shook Up."

  I closed my eyes and smacked myself on the forehead a few times. A robbery, a foot in my drawer, a new, unpleasant deputy, and Hurricane Elvis.

  "Tess?"

  "Yeah?"

  "Stop hitting yourself. I know you're a Hard Headed Woman, but—"

  I chased him all the way out of my shop.

  4

  This wasn't a big, rebellious, stand-on-my-own moment, because being an adult in a small town was like being a sled dog in Alaska: you could be the strongest one in the pack, but teamwork still won the race.

  Or so I assumed, never having been to Alaska, or anywhere else that had snow or sled dogs, for that matter.

  Also: he was Uncle Mike, and I loved him.

  Also: he had plywood.

  "Let's board up the front door for now, and we can come back tomorrow and rehang it or buy you a new one and install it, if need be," he said, rummaging around in the back of his old Ford truck.

  He paused and glanced over at my Mustang. "How's that car working out? Better than that foreign job you had, isn't it?"

  "Look. After seven years of putting up with your cracks about my Toyota, the rhino-sized alligator crushed it, and now I have an American-made car. You should be happy. Also, I'm sure the statute of limitations for complaining about a car dies with the car, if you know what I mean."

  He hauled a sheet of plywood out of the truck, motioning for me to take one end of it.

  "Tess. I rarely know what you mean. Or your Aunt Ruby, either. She's decided that a vegan diet is the way to keep us alive until we're a hundred years old." He grimaced. "I told her I didn't want to live to be a hundred, if I can't have bacon and eggs."

  I grinned, momentarily pushing my worries about the robbery and the foot in my drawer aside. "That's not all. If you go vegan, she can't use eggs or milk or butter in her baking. You'll have to eat tofu pie."

  He stopped walking and very nearly dropped his end of the board. "Tofu pie? That's … that's … grounds for divorce."

  "Not in Dead End."

  We wrestled the large board onto the porch and then leaned it against the wall.

  "Speaking of divorces, how was your date?"

  I put my hands on my hips and glared at my uncle. "That was the worst transition in the history of the English language. Also, unfair. Jack has been nothing but nice to you."

  "When he's not eating me out of house and home," he muttered. "I'm just worried he wants to be a little bit too nice to you."

  I threw my hands in the air. "What does that even mean? I'm twenty-six years old and have never had a serious boyfriend. You didn't like Owen—"

  "I liked Owen! Boy just bored me to death."

  "You didn’t like Owen, and now you don't like Jack. Do you want me to be single all my life? Until I end up … end up … footless and alone in the swamp, like the dead guy?"

  Uncle Mike raised an eyebrow, and suddenly I lost it. I burst into laughter and laughed so hard I was holding my belly with one hand and holding myself upright with the other against the wall. "Footless and alone. Oh, my goodness. My life has come down to … to this."

  Uncle Mike's bushy white eyebrows rose, and then he tentatively patted me on the shoulder. "Tess? I think maybe you need to get some sleep."

  "Oh, sure," I said, waving one hand through the air like Vanna White with a vowel. "Because all this is so restful. I'm sure I'll have no problem falling asleep tonight."

  Deputy Baker picked that moment to climb out of his car and trudge over to us. "If you've got this boarding up under control, I'm heading out to the bank. The evidence techs can't make it out till tomorrow, so I guess—"

  I pointed at him. "Don't even think of saying the foot stays in the drawer until tomorrow. Get your evidence out of my pawnshop."

  "Listen, Miss Callahan—"

  "Tess."

  "Miss Callahan. You need to—"

  "I'd suggest you rethink whatever you're about to say, Deputy, and certainly the tone in which you're saying it," Uncle Mike said mildly.

  Baker sneered at Uncle Mike. "You think you're gonna give me a problem, old man?"

  Okay. Those were fighting words.

  I stepped between the two. "Don't you ever speak to my uncle like that again, Deputy. And you can bet that Susan—Sheriff Gonzalez—is going to be hearing about this. Now get the foot and get off my porch."

  He glared at me again but then, probably due to my threat to call Susan, he did just that, walking back out of the shop in a few minutes with a sealed plastic bag containing the foot in his hand. He didn't even look at us as he stomped down the steps, got in his car, and floored it, skidding out of the parking lot.

  "That can't be good for the tires," I said. "Tires are expensive."

  Uncle Mike looked at me like he'd never seen me before. "Tess! You … you …"

  "Again with the pronouns."

  "What?"

  "Never mind. I what?"

  He suddenly pulled me into a fierce hug. "I don't think I've ever been so proud of you. And you're right. I need to quit treating you like a child. I promise to try, okay? After all these years, it's going to be hard, but I promise to try."

  "That's all I ask," I told him, leaning up to kiss his cheek. "Now, since you're here, let's talk about our plans for building that ramp. I hate that this porch isn't accessible."

  We talked lumber and costs for a few minutes, ultimately deciding that this was a job for my friend Dave Wolf's construction company, and then we boarded up my front door and headed out.

  "I'll get Eleanor to help me inventory the losses in the morning, so I can file a complete police report for the insurance. Oh, and I need to call Mayor Ratbottom, but that can wait until business hours tomorrow."

  Uncle Mike nodded, the porch light glinting on his full head of white hair. "Probably better. He'd just be more unpleasant than usual if you pull him out of whatever hole he crawls into at night."

  "Uncle Mike! That's kind of harsh!"

  His face hardened, and I suddenly remembered that kind, sweet Uncle Mike could be a bit of a badass when he was protecting his family. "I won't forget that he was all cozy with those mobsters who hurt my brother and tried to hurt you. We need to get him out of office."

  "Elections are coming up in December. Why don't you run?"

  He shuddered. "Not a chance. Maybe we can get Lorraine to do it again. Or Bonnie Jo. Even she'd be better than Ratbottom."

  Bonnie Jo was our very, very old horse.

  Thinking about it, I had to agree. "Bonnie Jo couldn't do much worse."

  He walked me to my car, because he was Uncle Mike, so of course he did. I slid behind the wheel and then glanced up at him. "Too bad I couldn't label that bag with the foot in it before the deputy took it."

  "What? Label it what?"

  I grinned. "Return to Sender."

  I love getting the last word.

  By the time I got home, I remembered that I'd left The Dress in the shop, which wasn't that big a deal, but I felt a little bit forlorn about the fact that our date had been postponed—canceled?—yet again.

  Not to mention the robbery and the foot and the dead vampire, of course I felt bad about all that, but give a girl a break. I'm totally entitled to a moment to regret missing what I'd expected to be a wonderful evening.

  I grabbed a pint of mint chocolate chip out of the freezer and sat down with Lou on my lap, a spoon in my hand, and baking shows on TV. But I couldn’t focus on how light the "sponge" needed to be—sponge was evidently British for cake; it took me a while to quit picturing my cleaning sponge when they said it—when my imagination kept running wild calculating scenarios for how exactly that foot ended up in my drawer.

  I was also more than a little surprised that I hadn't heard from Jack yet. I'd gotten accustomed to him never being very far away from me when any kind of danger was …

  Afoot.

  Lou slitted her eyes at me when I laughed just a bit too hard at
my own joke.

  "Everybody's a critic," I told her, scraping the last bit of chocolate from the bottom of the pint, which had been half-empty already, so I didn't feel bad about eating it all.

  My doorbell rang, but I hadn't heard a car drive up, so either it was Jack, and he'd traveled on four feet, or the vampire had come back to life? Undeadness? and wanted his foot back.

  Jack didn't usually ring the doorbell, but then again, I had locked the door.

  The bell rang again, and I jumped up, trying to decide whether to go see who was outside or go run to my room and hide under the bed.

  "Tess? It's Carlos. I see your car and your light is on, so I thought you might be awake, but if you don't want to talk, I'll go away."

  Carlos. I blew out a sigh of relief and rushed over to answer the door before remembering that Carlos was, in fact, a vampire.

  Huh.

  I paused and then threw open the door and glanced down at his feet, which didn't even make any sense, since they'd found the footless vampire.

  Alone and footless in the swamp.

  I swallowed the laughter that tried to bubble up.

  "Hey, Carlos. What's up? Did you hear about the robbery? Come on in."

  He hesitated. "Tess, the myths and fairy tales about inviting a vampire into your home? They're true. Do you still wish to invite me, knowing that?"

  I narrowed my eyes. "Carlos Gonzalez, you are my neighbor, and I've known your sister since we were in school. You are absolutely invited into my home. Now get your vampire butt in here, or we're going to have a problem."

  The first real smile I'd seen from him spread across his face like the sunshine he could no longer endure, and it really didn't hurt his dark-haired, dark-eyed gorgeousness. "Thank you, Tess. You are officially the best neighbor I've ever had."

  "Sadly, after you say something nice like that, I'm all out of fresh pie. But I think there are some cookies I can offer you." I was already heading for the kitchen. Robberies and amputated feet were not enough to get in the way of Southern hospitality.

  "Please, don't go to any bother."

  "Don’t be silly. We're neighbors. That's what neighbors do."

  "No, really, it's fine. I'm not hungry, but thank you. Actually, I was wondering if you'd be up for a drive? I have to go to Orlando, and I don't feel like being alone for some reason."