Dead Eye (A Tiger's Eye Mystery Book 1) (3 page)

Tiger
.

I usually tried to stay out of the sheriff’s line of fire, but I couldn’t let this offensive stupidity stand. “So you’re saying that it was Chantal’s fault she got killed? Blaming the victim—that’s a pretty awful thing to say, Sheriff.”

Jack nodded. “Agreed. Also, where’s the motivation for the drunk biker to drive his dead or dying girlfriend clear across town so he can dump her at the back door of the pawnshop?”

I looked at the sheriff, Susan looked at the floor, and the sheriff looked all around the room, not meeting anyone’s gaze.

“Well, that’s one of the things we have to figure out now, ain’t it? That’s why they call it an investigation, son,” Lawless finally said to Jack, ignoring me entirely.

Jack needed to watch out, or he was going to be a permanent resident of the sheriff’s shit list, and that was a place nobody wanted to be. Jeremiah could’ve told Jack all about that. I was earning myself my own place too, but I found it hard to care, under the circumstances. If Sheriff Lawless had done his job, we’d know who murdered Jeremiah, and the killer would be behind bars.

“Do you know if Chantal has family around here? If they have the funeral services here in town, I want to be there for her,” I said, figuring it was time to change the subject.

The sheriff looked at Susan.

Susan shrugged. “I think she had a cousin who lived out in one of those shacks along the swamp, at least part-time. I’m not sure. The community on the outskirts of town is pretty transient. I’ll find out. She lived in that apartment building by the fire station, but she lived alone.”

“Let me know, will you please?”

Susan nodded.

Jack looked grim. “I’d like to know that too, so we can find out what, if any, connection there was between Jeremiah and this woman.”

“What makes you think there was a connection? Haven’t you ever heard of a coincidence?” The sheriff scowled at Jack. “This is official police business, son. Don’t even think about getting in the middle of it.”

Jack took a single step toward the sheriff; one short, very controlled movement. He stopped—still a yard away from Lawless—but every line of his body conveyed tightly leashed anger. “I am not your son, you pompous imbecile. The only relative I still had in this world was killed right here, and you never bothered to find out who did it or why. So you can bet your ass that I’m going to get in the middle of whatever I need to in order to find out the truth.”

I gasped, and the sheriff’s jowly face turned so red that I was afraid he might have a stroke right there in my shop. “I know what you are, Jack Shepherd,” he said, low and vicious. “This is Dead End. I have a cage with silver bars on it in my jail. You better concentrate on staying out of my way, or you’ll be looking at those bars from the inside.”

With that, the sheriff turned and scowled at me. “I’ll be in touch with you, young lady. Try not to find any more dead bodies for a while.”

He stalked out of the room, and my spirits sank a little bit with every thunk of his boot heels on the wooden floor. Getting justice for Chantal didn’t seem to be any higher on the sheriff’s priority list than it had been for Jeremiah. I could feel the beginnings of a raging headache starting in my temples, and I rubbed them with the tips of my fingers, wondering if I had any Tylenol left.

Then it hit me that I was having a pity party for myself when a woman I knew had just been murdered, and a hot wave of shame rushed through me.

Susan, who’d lingered behind, let out a deep sigh and shook her head. “Well, Jack Shepherd, that’s one way to announce your entrance into town. Probably the stupidest way, but then again, nobody asked me.”

A hint of a grin quirked the corner of Jack’s lips, but quickly faded. “Yeah, nobody asked you, but I should have, Deputy. Too many years of being the one in charge, I guess. I’m sorry if I made your job harder, but I plan to find out what happened to my uncle.”

“I can’t say that I blame you. If it had been my uncle, I’d be doing the same thing. Just try to stay out of the sheriff’s way while you’re doing it, that’s all I ask. I’ll share what information with you that I can.” Susan looked at me. “I’ll find out about the services too. I’m sorry this happened, Tess. You’ve been through enough, without getting dragged into this.”

“I’m just sorry about Chantal. I guess I’m going to have to tell Aunt Ruby. She would’ve known Chantal from the Pit Stop,” I said, not looking forward to the task.

Susan smacked her forehead with her hand. “Speaking of old ladies—and I’ll deny it if you ever tell Ruby I said that—I need to check on Gran. I’ll be in touch.” She touched my shoulder, nodded at Jack, and headed out.

Jack watched her go and then leaned back against the counter and looked at me. “Your Aunt Ruby used to work at the Pit Stop, didn’t she? I remember buying sodas from her when we were going fishing. We had to deal with the bait ourselves, though. She wouldn’t have anything to do with that side of things,” he said, smiling a little at the memory.

“She worked there full-time for twenty years or so. She’s long retired, but she’ll still fill in for the occasional shift if they need her, more to catch up on gossip than anything else, I think.”

I looked around, wondering what I should do next. I’d been ready to close, before everything happened. But now it seemed like urgent, unfinished tasks were pressing in on me from all sides. Mostly, I just felt helpless in the face of another murder that seemed too similar to Jeremiah’s to be a coincidence. But I didn’t know how it could be anything else; there was no connection between Jeremiah and Chantal that made sense to me.

Jack’s words were still ringing in my mind, though, and he was right.

We needed to find out the truth.

J
ack prowled around
the shop like…like a tiger.
Tiger.
It triggered something in my mind.

“Did you, and I’m sorry if this is offensive, but did you smell anything? Anyone? On Chantal? Like, like—”

“Like a dog?” Jack’s eyes narrowed.

He was making me feel like an idiot, and he was doing it on purpose. I didn’t deserve it, so I stood my ground. “No, like a cat. You think I could grow up in Dead End and not know about shapeshifters? You may not respect the sheriff, and with good reason, but don’t treat me like an idiot.”

Jack blew out a breath. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I tried to see what scents I could get. Mostly, she smelled like beer and cigarette smoke. A little pot, maybe. Lots of sweaty bodies. She was at a bar or party, I’m pretty sure.”

“And it’s not like a gun is an up-close-and-personal weapon,” I mused. “Her killer might not even have touched her.”

“Maybe not, but he wasn’t far away, either. I could tell from the gunshot wound.” His eyes iced over. “I’ve seen too many of those before.”

“Or she.”

“What?”

“He
or she
wasn’t too far away. We don’t know if her killer was a man or woman.”

“You’re right. I was just going by the odds. Unless you know something about Chantal I should know?”

I sighed. “No. I hardly knew her. We didn’t hang out with the same people. She liked to go out and party, and I’m more of a homebody. We should talk to Aunt Ruby. She’ll know something, and whatever she doesn’t know, she’ll be able to point us in the right direction to find out.”

My stomach picked that time to send out a ridiculously loud grumble, and I realized I hadn’t had anything to eat since breakfast. It seemed wrong, somehow, to think about food, but being hungry wasn’t helping my headache any, either.

“I’m going to have to go find something to eat.” I grabbed my bag and rummaged around for keys.

“Sounds good. Where are we going? Is Beau’s still pretty much the only place in town?”

“Um. I—you want to eat with me? Not that I mind,” I hurried to add, southern manners coming to the fore, even though all I wanted to do was go home, go to bed, and pull the covers over my head. For maybe a week.

“If you don’t mind. I haven’t exactly had a chance to lay in supplies at Jeremiah’s house. If you’re not up to it, though—”

“No. It’s fine. But I’m definitely not up for going to Beau’s. Everybody and his brother-in-law, literally, will be there and gossiping about Chantal. I don’t think I could take that right now.”

He nodded. “Don’t worry about it. I understand. I’ll just figure something out.”

I took a deep breath. “I have steaks. We could grill them. You’re welcome to have dinner with me. After all, we’re practically family.”

His eyes gleamed as he looked at me for a long moment. When he finally replied, his voice was edged with laughter and something else. Something darker. “No. We’re definitely not family.”

*

Jack followed me
on his motorcycle from the shop, which sat just north of town, through downtown, to my small house about ten minutes south of town. Since saying “downtown Dead End” was like saying “giant postage stamp,” it wasn’t a long trip. Our little town was home for maybe five thousand or so people, and a magnet for misfits of all types—human, supernatural, and other. I hadn’t yet determined exactly what “other” meant, but if aliens from outer space ever came to Earth, they could show up in Dead End and nobody would even blink.

Jeremiah had said Dead End was like New York, but with fewer naked cowboys. I’d responded that New York was like Dead End, but with fewer gator wranglers. I’d always had pride in our little town, even when I’d been trying so hard to leave it. We were all but hidden in the heart of the Everglades, could drive to Orlando in an hour, depending on traffic, and drove airboats as often as we drove cars.

The origin of the name Dead End was lost in the murky swamp waters of the past, but mostly people just assumed that our quirky little town was the dead end for anybody who had no place else to go. And right now, that apparently included an ex-soldier named Jack.

When I turned onto the short dirt road that also served as my extended driveway, since mine was the only occupied house on it, I glanced in my rearview mirror to be sure Jack was still behind me. He was. I realized that I was oddly nervous about having him in my house. He seemed to take up so much space, almost as if he owned a room just by walking into it. Maybe it was the soldier thing. Or the tiger thing. But this twinge of butterflies in my stomach was ridiculous. I wasn’t sixteen years old anymore, and I wasn’t bringing a boy home to meet Aunt Ruby. Jack was my new business partner, whether either one of us liked it or not, and if he was sticking around Dead End to look into Jeremiah’s death, I was determined to be part of it.

I parked the car neatly in the small gravel-covered space that served as my parking lot, instead of carelessly angling the car in as I usually did, so he had room for his bike. I was pretty good at lots of things, but parking had never been one of them. I didn’t have the right spatial sense or idea of distance, people told me. I blamed it on faulty rearview mirrors, personally, but that excuse had worn thin with my family and friends after I’d used it for every car and truck I’d ever driven.

By the time I grabbed my bag and climbed out of the car, Jack was parking his bike next to me.

“Nice house,” he said.

My little house was small, and nearly a hundred years old, but it was all mine, and I tried to take care of it. I’d had it repainted a fresh white just two summers before, which nicely set off the deep blue storm shutters. I’d always thought it was crazy to live in Florida—hurricane central—without storm shutters, unless you wanted to end up buying plywood and bleach every fall like some kind of tourist.

“Thank you. It’s mine,” I said, feeling that little rush of pride I had every time I thought about it. “Well, mine and the bank’s, but you know how that goes.”

Jack shook his head. “No, actually, I don’t know. I’ve never owned a home. Never had a house payment or a car payment. Nothing to tie me down to one place.”

“That sounds…lonely.”

His eyes widened. “Usually people say that it sounds great. Or that it sounds like freedom.”

I shrugged. “What do I know? Maybe it’s all three. I’ve lived here all my life. I like it. I like knowing my neighbors and being part of the community.”

It hadn’t always been true, but it was now, and I wasn’t going to go into the childish yearnings of my teen years anyway.

“Jeremiah was the same way,” Jack said. “He was always trying to get me to come home and stay for a while.”

I led the way up my front steps to the porch and unlocked my door. “Why didn’t you? If that’s not too personal.”

He sighed. “There was always too much to do. I was caught up in one battle after another after another. We fought back against the vampires who were trying to turn the country into some kind of vampirocracy. We fought back a demon invasion. I was there when Atlantis was attacked, and I helped out a little bit with that. I almost died.” He laughed, but not like he found something funny. More like he had a whole bunch of bitterness built up inside.

“Atlantis. That’s so crazy. I still can hardly believe it’s real.” The lost continent wasn’t lost anymore. Apparently it had been hidden under the waters of the Bermuda Triangle for eleven thousand years under some kind of dome, and now there was an actual kingdom of Atlantis in the world. I’d seen news images of the Atlantean king, who’d married a woman from the US he’d met on his travels, apparently. From social worker to queen, as the tabloids liked to say. It had a nice ring to it.