Tyrant Trouble (Mudflat Magic)

Tyrant Trouble

CHAPTER
1

Flattened
against the wood fence, I smelled the alley dumpster odors and tried not to
puke. Can’t do it silently. And if he heard me, he'd find me and then I would
be dead meat, stinking a lot worse than the dumpster.

“Claire?
Claire honey? I want to talk to you, Claire. That's all, just talk.”

Yeah,
and right after we talk and I tell you no, I do not have the information you
want, you slit my throat, right, fella? I'm not stupid. Oh, maybe I am or I
wouldn't be hiding in an alley with the likes of Dork tracking me down. Okay,
so his name isn't Dork, it's Darryl, but it might as well be Dork. Dork the
cheat, Dork the con man, Dork the liar, or, if I go Goth, Dork the Destroyer,
because that's sure what he wants to do to me.

Stupid
doesn't even cover my case. He'd been all charm and flash, fancy restaurants,
tickets to a country western concert, jeez, even roses, can you believe it?
Roses, delivered in a white van with a mushy note attached.

He
had been really charming me with a two-week pursuit, until he leaned over the
table of a dimly lit booth in a way too pricey restaurant and said, “I need you
to make me a chart.”

“Sure,”
I said, not giving a second thought to that request.

I
work parttime at a bank, and I also work at the Mudflat Neighborhood Center to
support myself. Astrology is a skill I learned from my grandmother. It earns me
a little extra pocket money.

I
was wearing an almost-there black dress, killer heels, and I'd even had a
friend twist my long dark hair into a style that scraped it back behind my ears
to show off my dangly earrings. Okay, so only the shoes were mine, bought at a
discount store, and the dress and earrings were borrowed. Glamour, that's me. I
was looking way too good to think clearly.

“Do
you have a birth certificate handy?”

Everybody
knows their own date of birth, but most folks don't have a clue as to the hour
and minute, very important, and an amazing number don't even know the latitude
and longitude because they presume they were born in the town where their
parents lived at the time. Nah. Not nowadays, maybe not in the past hundred
years for all I know.

Most
people get born in a maternity wing of a city hospital anywhere from across the
street to hundreds of miles from their home address. And, oh yes, that makes a
difference.

Except
not to Darryl. “Not that kind of chart, honey. I know you're so good at charts,
you give career advice, marriage advice, and you're bang on right.”

Odd.
He knew what I did, of course, but this was the first time he questioned me
about it and, honestly, I thought he wasn't interested. So how did he know all
that? Right. We grew up in the same small neighborhood.

“Umm,
so if you don't want a horoscope, what do you want, Darryl?”

“Numbers.
Scores. Winners. For sports events, honey. Seahawks, UDub games, whatever you
come up with.”

Ho-kay.
This took thinking. I leaned back in the booth and made a big deal of sipping
my wine, buttering a roll, carving a narrow strip of the salmon filet. Score
and winners? For one game? For one office pool bet? Wake up, stupid Claire,
look at where you're dining, look at his beautifully tailored clothes, salon
styled hair, and was that a Rolex? I'd been thinking it was one of those
knock-off imitations, but whoa. I don't think so.

“You
can do that, can't you,” he said and it wasn't a question.

“Uh,
I don't know. I never have.”

“Not
yet, but you can, right, with whatever information you need. I can get birth
date info on players and coaches, franchise times, the minute the ink soaked
into a contract, whatever you need.”

“I
do horoscopes for people,” I muttered.

“Yes,
fine, do the players. Figure it from there. Scores are best, but win-loss is
good, if that's all you can do. Not that I think it is. Jimmy told me you
tipped him on some stocks, the exact date they'd peak and the price.”

More
butter on the potato, until it ran in hot yellow streams around the plate, more
peas tucked into the mash I was stirring up inside those salted potato skins,
more carefully carved salmon, a top-off on my wine glass, and not one swallow
of anything making it to my mouth.

Jimmy.
Right. I never did financial stuff, way too tricky, sure to backfire, but Jimmy
had been in a bind with foreclosure breathing down his whatever, and he was a
cousin and family and all that and I made a bad mistake, gave him this stock
tip based on a string of math formulas and hit it right on.

“That
was a one shot thing,” I said and looked up and met Darryl's gaze, hoping I'd
see something there that said this was nothing more than a casual suggestion.

I
knew when I said it I'd been lying to myself. Every tightened muscle of his
expression gave him away.

Then
the glossy con man smile. “It's really important to me, honey, and I know you
can do it. For me.”

Man,
had I heard that line before.

I
did a lot of fast talking, made a few vague promises. And as soon as we'd done
the kiss goodnight thing and I'd shooed him out and closed my front door, I
grabbed my phone and called that rotten Jimmy.

He
did a lot of throat clearing, the bum.

“You're
the one who introduced me to Darryl!” I shouted. “You set me up! You know I
don't do gambles, never have, never will. I've turned down enough offers. You
know that!”

“Darryl
can be persuasive,” Jimmy whimpered.

Was
that how he'd got so far down in the hole, and, now that I thought about it,
what did I know about Darryl except that his younger brother still lived in my
neighborhood? Darryl had been in high school when I was in grade school. Now he
lived in a classier part of Seattle and our paths hadn't crossed until my lying
cousin introduced him to me and told me he worked for some perfectly
respectable Seattle business, something to do with cruise ships.

“What
do cruise ships have to do with betting? Does he deal blackjack to tourists or
something?”

“I
wish,” Jimmy said.

“What's
that supposed to mean?”

“Uh
Claire, I don't think I want to talk on the phone.”

When
I told him which of his body parts I was going to remove, he said, “Meet me
tomorrow, lunch at McDonald's, the one down by the ferry dock.”

McDonald's?
Right, definitely my budget level, although I had forgotten that in the past
two weeks of Darryl wining and dining and strewing rose petals in my path. Two
weeks. Constant attention. Very few kisses. No tries to hit on me. And I'd
thought he was very proper, very gentlemanly, when all the time he was very
unreal and I do hate that too-good-to-be-true cliché.

I
knew Darryl's brother, knew he was scum, but I really try not to judge people
by their relatives because do I want to be judged by Jimmy's behavior?

I
headed for my computer and was up so late googling Darryl that there wasn't any
point going to bed. Amazing how much is out there and how much is hidden, but I
collected enough information to make some guesses.

By
dawn's annoying light I showered, dressed, headed for the bank where I temp
cashier and asked a loan officer how to run credit checks.

“Thinking
about promotion, Carmody?”

“Can't
hurt to learn.”

“True,
the more you understand, the wider your job opportunities, though in your case,
I don't see you as advancement material.”

Okay,
so by the end of any working day my very long hair has escaped the clasp and is
sticking out in odd directions, as well as trailing down my face. For some
reason, my shirts never stay tucked in and it's good I work in the computer
room, because my pantyhose are always full of holes and runs, and, even as I
stood there talking to him, I wiggled my foot a little too hard and the
four-inch heel snapped out from under my left shoe.

We
both knew I was employed because they had three women gone on maternity leave
and the bank was desperate and I did have experience. Glowing references, no,
but my resume verified that I was honest and did not make mistakes, and when
the unemployment numbers drop, what's a human resources department to do?

He
gave in, showed me how to pull up credit reports, and I didn't bother to tell
him that once I am pointed in the right direction, I am wicked good on a
computer. Anyone who has ever downloaded an astrology program and then checked
for errors knows what I mean.

I
found so much to worry about, I didn't need more from Jimmy so I stood him up.
Served him right. A forty minute lunch hour later on the computer and I knew I
was dead.

It
started that night, the string of phone calls, first wheedling, then threats,
because Darryl wasn't just doing a little sideline betting, or even planning
something as straight forward as knocking off one of the Indian reservation
casinos. Oh no.

Did
I mention that I live in Mudflat, not a place that shows up on any Seattle map.
It's more like a mindset. The city is divided into numerous neighborhoods, each
with a name, and the names do appear on maps and in conversation, but Mudflat
is a winding trail of blocks of property that cut through several neighborhoods
and is considered off limits by those who know. Because Mudflat is where old
magic lives.

It's
where I grew up. It's why my horoscope predictions are right-on. There's no big
magic in my family's genes, just glimmers and traces that give a boost to anything
esoteric in our lives. It's why I limit advice to career, romance, health, safe
stuff, and even when I can see a clear answer, I always couch it in vague
terms. I know.

People
think the “meet-a-tall-dark-stranger-someday” line is a cover-up for faking.
Nope. Just the reverse.

I
could say, “You'll be running off with your best friend's husband on the second
Tuesday of next June,” but what for? How would that help anybody? Instead I
say, “You may be tempted to betray a friend, all in the name of love, but
you're a good person and will make the right decision.”

And
I cross my fingers and know darn well that on the second Tuesday of next June,
her friend is going to be crying her eyes out. Or buying a gun.

That's
how good I am, except I can never read my own future, which is why I was now
being stalked by a wizard's brother who planned to put me in the middle of a
bad deal going down, some kind of national gambling ring, and for sure I would
end up dead or in jail, which is the same thing, right?

I
was absolutely not going to help him. First, he was into felony territory.
Second, he'd up the demands until I was so twisted in the net of lies, I'd
never get my life back. And third, there's not much you can't figure out with
the help of a horoscope, a computer and access to news files, and his brother
the wizard was sometimes a very bad dude.

Which
is why, when my sort of buddy, Roman, said he and a couple of friends were
heading over to the Olympic peninsula on a camping trip, I said, “Wow! I love
camping!”

Yeah,
like I even go in the backyard to pull weeds. Sorry, I live in the heart of
tree-hugger country, but give me city traffic and smog to breathe any time.
Still, it was a small lie which earned me an invitation. Skip town for a week,
spend boring camping time thinking up another destination and, who knew, I
could be out of town for maybe a month or so, at which point my credit card
would do the spontaneous combustion thing.

With
any luck, Darryl would give up on me and move on to his next scam.

Really
good plan, really bad timing, because at somewhere around midnight I was
stuffing stuff into my backpack when I heard Darryl's car pull up outside. I
left the lights burning and ducked out the back door, cut across the small
yard, rolled over the wood fence and did a dive into the alley, landing on my
hands and knees. I tore the knee (both the denim one and the flesh one),
grabbed my pack and started to hobble away.

That's
when I heard the gate scrape open and I wedged myself behind the dumpster.