EYE OF THE STORM Read online

  I really didn't think my singing was that bad, but Jack had once burst into my house, afraid I was being tortured, when he'd heard me.

  The memory sobered me up a little. He certainly wasn't perfect.

  But then I touched my lips and grinned. He was pretty close, though.

  I was in bed and sound asleep ten minutes later, at not quite two in the morning, and I managed one glorious hour of sleep before the hammering started.

  "What the heck?" I sat bolt upright in bed, and Lou meowed at me in disapproval.

  BAM, BAM, BAM!

  It sounded like a construction convention was doing demolition on my front door.

  No, not on my front door. On the entire front of my house.

  BAM, BAM, BAM!

  I grabbed my phone and put it in my pajamas pocket and went for my rifle and remembered I'd left it at the shop. I cautiously went out to the living room, leaving off the lights.

  "Who's out there?" I called out, not particularly wanting to get close to the door or windows, but not ready to call 911 yet, either, in case Jack had gotten into more whiskey and come over to ask me to dance or sing Elvis songs to me.

  "Jack?"

  Nobody answered, and the hammering stopped. I waited a good three minutes, and when no further noises or hammering happened, I carefully opened the door.

  The alligator on my front porch lunged at me.

  I yelled and slammed the door in him, just as he broke the rope he was tied up with and threw his body into my house. The door hit him squarely on the snout and made him angry.

  At least I think it made him angry. He might have already been angry. Who could tell with alligators? He roared, and I ran.

  Here's a little-known fact: alligators are fast. They can manage short bursts of speed on land up to thirty miles per hour, a fact that evidently stuck in my mind on one of my trips to the gator farm, because my brain was screaming it at me now.

  I jumped on the couch and then leapt over the back, ran down the hall, started to go in the bedroom, but then saw Lou, standing on the floor in the kitchen.

  I screamed, changed course, and ran flat-out for the kitchen, scooped up my cat, and tossed her on top of the refrigerator. Then I jumped on top of my counter and grabbed my cast-iron skillet off the stove, had second thoughts, put the skillet down, grabbed my phone and called Jack.

  He answered on the second ring, but he sounded fuzzy. No wonder, with all that whiskey he'd consumed. Tiger or no tiger, two bottles of whiskey was a lot.

  "Tess?"

  "JACK OMIGOD THERE'S AN ALLIGATOR IN MY HOUSE COME NOW," I screamed into the phone, and then I hung up and put the exact same message into Susan's voice mail, and then I tried to decide if the skillet would stop an enraged gator or just make him madder.

  Also, I was just starting to remember that unpleasant fact from our brush with the pirate gold: gators can jump.

  "This sucks," I told Lou. "You stay there. No way can he get you there."

  My cat, who was very smart, clearly had no intention of going anywhere near the gator. She crouched on top of the fridge, hissing, and then she used one delicate paw to push everything on the top of the refrigerator off.

  A loaf of bread, off. A box of Zebra cakes (okay, I know, but I love those things), off. A brand new bag of bread flour, not only off, but this one landed on the gator's head.

  This did not make him (her? it? did it matter?) any happier.

  The gator roared again, and icy shudders ran down my spine. A gator's roar sounds like it belongs on a dinosaur movie—one of the last sounds you'll ever hear.

  It lashed its tail and then switched directions and headed for me.

  "I don't want to hurt you," I shouted at it. "Go away!"

  He came closer.

  "Please don't jump, please don't jump, please don't jump," I chanted, my whole body shaking now. I put my phone down and grabbed my skillet again.

  "Please don't jump, please don't jump—"

  He jumped.

  I swung that skillet through the air like I was Alex Rodriguez going for a home run, and it smashed into the gator's snout just as he started to open his massive jaws, the better to eat a Tess snack.

  It fell to the floor, shaking its head back and forth. Maybe I'd stunned it, because it scuttled under my kitchen table and stayed there, making grumbling and shrieking noises. I started to feel guilty for endangering wildlife, but then I remembered that the wildlife had endangered me first.

  When Jack arrived at full speed, we were staged around the room just like that: Me, on the counter, clutching my skillet in one hand and my phone in the other; Lou, still on top of the refrigerator, hissing; and the gator, still under the table, but making fewer sounds.

  Maybe it was asleep. Or I'd killed it. Oh, no, I think killing a gator was a felony in Florida.

  "I'm going to jail," I cried, and Jack, who'd skidded to a stop, stared at me like I was a lunatic.

  "Why are you crying? Did it hurt you?"

  I put down my skillet and touched my face. My fingers came back wet. I hadn't even realized I'd been crying.

  "No, these are stress tears, I think. I had to save Lou, and then I had to hit the gator in the snout with the pan. Am I going to jail? Is it still alive? Will you get it out of my house?"

  That last bit may have been a bit high-pitched, because the not-dead-at-all gator woke up and started lashing his tail again.

  Jack growled—really growled—and the gator went silent at the sound of an unknown apex predator.

  "I called the sheriff. She said she'd heard from you, and Rooster is on the way."

  I took a deep, shaky breath. "Okay. Okay. That's good. Rooster captures gators that get in people's yards and pools. He can take care of this. That's good."

  Jack scanned the room. "Tess, can you open the window behind you and climb out that to the back porch?"

  "No. The screen is bolted on. And even if I could, I'm not going to leave Lou here alone."

  Jack blew out a breath and then nodded. "Okay."

  Then, from standing still, he leapt across the kitchen and landed on my kitchen table, leaving me wanting to tell him to keep his dirty shoes off my table, because I was clearly hysterical. He grabbed Lou, leapt back into the hallway, and ran down the hall and out the door, leaving me alone with the gator.

  He left me alone with the gator.

  Before I could start screaming or really, truly freaking out about this, he was back.

  "I put Lou in my truck, where she's safe. And now I'm coming for you."

  "I—what?"

  "Put down the frying pan, Tess," he said calmly and soothingly.

  I lifted my chin and squared my shoulders. "Don't talk to me like I'm hysterical, because I'm not. And even if I were, it would be understandable, because somebody hammered on my house and tied a gator to my front porch!"

  Jack's eyes went fiery amber. "The gator was tied to your porch?"

  I nodded. "Yes, but it broke the rope when I opened the door, and it lunged for me and I had to leap the couch like a tiger. Like a you, Jack." I could hear that my voice was shaky, but darn it. There was an alligator in my house.

  "Please put down the frying pan," he repeated. "I think you're very brave. Very few people would have risked their lives for their cats. Lou and I are proud to know you."

  I sniffled out a laugh, but I put the skillet down.

  "Jack, I—"

  In the same lightning-fast manner, he leapt across the kitchen, grabbed me and threw me over his shoulder, and leapt back out, this time running down the hall with me still over his shoulder. Behind us, I could hear the enraged gator roaring and I turned my head from its view of Jack's back to see an upside-down gator charging down the hall after us.

  Here's another little-known fact:

  Tigers are faster than gators.

  We were out of the house and inside Jack's truck before the gator even made it to my front door, which was still hanging open.

  I clung to Jack for a
few minutes longer than I wanted to admit, holding Lou between us. My cat put up with that for only a very short time, before she squirmed to get out and arranged herself on the dashboard.

  "Cool as a cucumber, that cat," Jack said.

  "At least one of us was." I laughed a little. "I was scared to death. And now that stupid gator is probably peeing all over my stuff. Or worse."

  Jack started laughing. "The really sad part of all this is that I can't think of a single Elvis song that applies."

  Rooster and Susan showed up a few minutes later, and Jack helped Rooster get the gator out of my house and into the back of Rooster's specialized truck.

  "Just let me know what I owe you," I said. "I'll send you a check first thing in the morning."

  Rooster Jenkins was a very sweet man in his late sixties, and he was the size of a barge, at well over four hundred pounds and nearly seven feet tall. He patted me on the back with one concrete-block-sized hand, and I nearly fell over.

  "No worries, Tess, I won't be charging you for this. That's just a little baby gator, can't be more than six feet long. How's my goat, though? Still pooping on your shoes?" He rumbled out a laugh that sounded like mountains were forming, and scratched his head.

  (Rooster had once manipulated me into buying his live goat by pretending he was going to go shoot it when I said I didn't take live animals into pawn. The goat now lived happily at Uncle Mike's and pooped on his shoes.)

  "You know it, Rooster. The gator didn't … um … didn't poop in my house, did it?"

  "Nah, you got lucky. No urine, either. Oh, wait." He fished in his pocket and held something glittery out to me. "Darndest thing. That gator was wearing this."

  He dropped a shiny chain and piece of metal into my hand, waved goodbye, and headed off with the gator to wherever he took them.

  I waved back and then glanced down. It was the silver cross from my pawn shop, last seen on Ivan the mysterious missing vampire.

  "Do you think it's too much to hope that the gator ate him?"

  Jack nodded. "Way too much. But Ivan's going to wish the gator had eaten him, when I get my hands on him."

  Susan, who'd been answering the radio in her car, must have caught that something was going on, because she headed over to us at a fast clip.

  We explained about the cross, and I handed it over for evidence. She gave me a receipt and said she was going back to her office to lean on some of her contacts and see if anybody had seen or heard anything about Ivan's whereabouts.

  "We're pretty clear that his whereabouts were right here at Tess's house, very recently," Jack gritted out.

  She sighed. "Maybe. But Mellie's bakery was broken into tonight, too. Lots of vandalism on storefronts downtown. The mayor is calling a town hall tomorrow. He wants to form a neighborhood crime watch, with Baker heading it. Says I'm not doing my job."

  She stopped and scrubbed her tired eyes with her hands. "The worst part is, I'm not sure he's not right. Nothing I'm doing has helped. I can't even find the guy we're pretty sure is behind this, but he comes out and does this. Pretty damn ballsy, vampire or not."

  "Okay. I've got to get going. I'll send someone out here in the morning to try to collect evidence, but this guy hasn't been leaving fingerprints or anything else behind."

  "Smart criminals suck," I said fervently, and Susan laughed.

  "Yeah. I agree completely with that. Give me the dumb criminals any day."

  Jack and Lou and I went back into my house which, shockingly, had no real damage at all. I mopped up muddy gator pawprints while Jack 409'd the kitchen table and the counters we'd stepped on.

  "Jack, would you mind—"

  "I'm not going anywhere," he told me.

  All three of us slept curled up on my couch, my trusty skillet near at hand, for the few hours left of the night.

  12

  When I woke up in the morning, Jack was in the kitchen making coffee and eating blueberry pie. When I eventually wandered in, he poured me a cup of coffee and offered me a fork.

  "No, thanks. I'm not hungry. It's already weird enough sitting at the table that a live gator was thrashing around beneath last night."

  I kept having to fight the urge to look under the table and be sure it was gone.

  "What's on the agenda today?"

  He paused and put his fork down. "I need to find this Ivan. Enough is enough. We need to know why he's doing this. If it's random insanity, okay, I can deal with that, but I just need to know."

  "I have counters being delivered. And Susan gave me the all-clear to get rid of the death cooties one, so I'll have the trash guys take it with them."

  Lou jumped up in my lap, and I gave her a tiny piece of plain crust. "And I'm taking Lou to Aunt Ruby's today, because she doesn't like all the activity in the shop on busy days, and I don't want to leave her here alone."

  He reached over the table and covered my hand with his. "We'll figure this out, and I promise you, it will stop."

  "From your lips to God's ears," I said, puling out an Aunt Ruby-ism.

  The counter deliver and installation guys were just pulling into the shop parking lot when I arrived, so I had a happy couple of hours overseeing that. I warned them about the death cooties, but they were sublimely unconcerned and even seemed to think I was being a hysterical female.

  "Sure. You think whatever you want," I told the crew chief. "But you've never opened a drawer in your business, only to find a bloody, amputated, foot. It changes a person, it really does."

  They didn't have much to say after that.

  When they'd gone, I spent another couple of hours arranging jewelry and other small items back in the counters, and polishing the new glass tops until they shined as brightly as the rest of my shop. People have a seedy impression of pawn shops, based on movies and TV shows, and I like to make sure that my shop is always perfectly neat and spotlessly clean. It's better for business, and it makes me happy.

  Plus, I like to either clean or bake when I'm stressed, so there had been a lot of pies and cakes and a lot of cleaning during the past several months.

  The chimes over my door sounded, and Mrs. Gonzalez—Susan and Carlos's grandmother—tottered into the store.

  "Mrs. Gonzales! I'm so happy to see you. Is someone parking the car for you?"

  "No, I drove, dear," she said, which made the color drain out of my face. She was a lovely woman with fluffy white hair, curly white bangs, and an abiding belief that it was still the 1950, when her beloved husband had still been alive. She was maybe eighty or so and she was developing a serious case of dementia.

  It made me so sad.

  Luckily, Jack showed up with lunch just then and sized up the situation immediately.

  "Mrs. Gonzalez, would you care to share our lunch?"

  "Why, that would be lovely, young man." She reached way up and patted his cheek. At least she tried to, but she was a bit near-sighted and wound up patting his nose. I tried to swallow a bad case of the giggles at the sight of the big, bad, tiger getting a nose pat, but it was not easy.

  We had a lovely lunch of soup and sandwiches from Lauren's Deli, and Mrs. G regaled us with tales of her handsome husband, and how he was back in town now and was going to take her away for a long cruise.

  "He's been gone for so long, you know. And now he only comes over in the evening.:

  Jack and I traded an alarmed glance. "Only in the evening?"

  She couldn't be mistaking Ivan for her dead husband. I was making an impossible logic leap.

  "Oh, do you mean Carlos?" I breathed out a sigh of relief. She hadn't seen him for a while. Maybe she got him confused?

  "Oh, no. My husband has lovely blond hair. Carlos's hair is quite dark brown."

  I shook my head. Ivan hadn't been blond.

  Jack relaxed back into his chair. "Stephen isn't blond, either. He's completely bald."

  Mrs. G started gathering her things. "I thank you for this delicious lunch, but I need to go now and meet my darling Nico."

 
"I'd be honored if you'd let me escort you home, Mrs. Gonzalez." Jack stood and bowed to her, and I fell a little bit in love with him right then. He was so sweet with her.

  "Why, that would be lovely."

  As he escorted across the shop, he turned to whisper to me. ""I'll take her home, you call Susan. She needs to figure out a better plan for … repainting this room in here."

  "What?" But then I realized he didn't want Mrs. G to hear us talking about her like she was a burden. "Oh, right. The paint. Goodbye, Mrs. Gonzalez. I'll see you soon."

  I called Susan and filled her in.

  "Damn! I don't know how she keeps getting car keys. I've taken every set we own away." She sighed. "It's a problem I'm not ready to face, Tess. Vampire murders are easier than deciding what to do in times like this."

  "Speaking of?"

  "Nothing. You?"

  "Not since the alligator wearing my jewelry got taken away."

  "Huh."

  "Yeah."

  "Tess?"

  "Yes?"

  "You have a weird life."

  "Tell me about it."

  "See you at the town hall?"

  "I guess so. We need to figure out what to do about all this as a town."

  "See you there."

  She hung up, and I went back to puttering around my shop. Larry from Dead End Towing showed up around one, and we spent an enjoyable half hour talking comics.

  "I have a treat for you!" I went into the vault and got out the special book I'd been saving for him. "I meant to call you, but then all this trouble started. Anyway, here it is. Wonder Woman #39, 1950 Golden Age issue: "The Trail of Thrills!"

  Larry's eyes got so wide I was afraid he might faint.

  "Oh, wow. You know I especially collect Wonder Woman."

  "I do," I said happily. Something was going right for a change. "And I can sell it to you for a great price. It's in mint condition, as you can see, inside its sleeve, with its backboard. The owner stored them in acid-free boxes, too."

  He pounced. "Them?"

  I held up my hand. "He was only willing to sell me this one. I'll give it to you for $500. eBay is at $575, so it's a good deal for both of us."

  I'd bought it for $350, so, even after overhead and taxes, it would be good for me, too