Pit and Miss Murder Read online

  “What about Hanley and Jock?”

  “Jock was in on it with me. I killed him because he threatened Theresa. I used antifreeze over a couple of days then stabbed him with a filet knife.”

  Lies, lies, and more lies.

  “Tell me the truth,” I demanded.

  He gaped at me, then opened his desk and pulled out a gun. Two uniformed men were standing in the open door to the sheriff’s office. They were goggling at Avery. They’d heard it all. They’d heard his confession. Fuu-uddge.

  “You have to leave, Ms. Mason,” one of the men said. “Now. Go.”

  Oh, Goddess, I’d pushed him too far. “Call Theresa,” I said loudly. “Call her now and tell her to call me.”

  “What are you doing?” the sheriff seethed. He pointed the gun at me. “I will shoot you, Ms. Mason.”

  It was a lie.

  “After, I’ll shoot myself and laugh all the way to hell.”

  The part about shooting himself rang true. He was not only going to take the fall for his wife, but he was also going to take himself out of the equation. “Don’t. Please. Killing yourself is not the answer.”

  His pulse was dangerously high now as he lived and breathed fight or flight. My phone vibrated. I pulled it out of my pocket and put it on speaker.

  “Hello,” Theresa said. “Lily?”

  “Think about your daughter. Your wife. They won’t come back from this. Not easily.”

  “What’s going on?” Theresa asked. “Daddy?”

  His face paled again, and the gun lowered a little.

  “Put the gun down, Sheriff,” one of the officers said. “Nobody needs to get hurt here.”

  “A gun? Lily, tell me what’s going on?” Theresa asked.

  “Just a little misunderstanding,” I told her.

  Avery glared at me for a moment, then all the anger drained from him. “Goodbye, Theresa. Tell your mother I love her.”

  Not today. I was already shifter-jazzed, so it didn’t take much for me to leap the distance between us. I flew over his desk with faster than human speed and tackled the sheriff before he could put the gun to his head. The weapon dropped to the floor as I clung to him.

  “Lily!” Nadine exclaimed, the fear thick in her voice.

  A quick peek around the room showed me Nadine was at the door now, along with Bobby. The two other officers were stunned in place.

  I focused my predatorial gaze on Sheriff Avery.

  “Your eyes,” he whispered. “What’s wrong with your eyes?”

  I closed them, willing my cougar back into her box. When I opened them again, I knew by the surprise on his face that the bright green of them had faded to a darker hue. I shook my head at him. “I think you’re under arrest.”

  Bobby and Nadine plucked me off the sheriff, and I heard one of the deputies say, “You have the right to remain silent,” as they helped him to his feet.

  Chapter 21

  “Everything smells absolutely delicious,” I gushed. The scent of red sauce, sausage, garlic bread, ricotta, Romano, and parmesan cheeses filled the air. I was taking the enthusiasm to an eleven, but I hated everyone being mad at me. I’d been berated by Buzz, Nadine, Bobby, and Parker for putting myself in danger. The only one who hadn’t yelled at me was Smooshie, but she must have sensed something was wrong because she’d wedged her big body between my knees and put her head in my lap fifteen minutes earlier, and she hadn’t moved since.

  Parker’s anxiety level was up as well because Elvis had glued himself to Parker’s hip.

  “I’m sorry I upset you,” I said again. “I couldn’t let him kill himself. Not when I knew I could stop him.”

  “And get yourself shot in the process. You may be quick, Lily, but bullets are quicker. And what if you had exposed your shifter side? You have warned me multiple times what might happen if people found out about your kind. You’re not just putting yourself in danger.”

  I sighed. He was right. I shouldn’t have used so much of my second nature. As it were, the deputies had written off my super-human leap to the adrenaline rush of the situation. “I don’t want to fight with you.”

  “You have no idea how much I love you,” he snarled. “If you did, you wouldn’t go out of your way to get yourself hurt.”

  “I love you, too, Parker. But it’s not in my nature to back down when I have a friend in need.”

  “Avery is not your friend.”

  “No, but Theresa is. You expected me to sit there and watch her father kill himself? I pushed him to it. I used my magic, and I pushed him to tell me something he would rather die than divulge. I had a responsibility to stop it.”

  He threw the slotted spoon into the red saucepan then slumped against the counter. “God, you make me crazy.”

  I stood up and approached him. “Parker.” He met my gaze. “I am who I am. I can’t promise I won’t put myself in danger again. You’ve known me for less than two years. How many times have I been shot at? I’m not sure why you’re acting like this is something new.”

  “Because this time I wasn’t with you. When Nadine called me, I felt… helpless.”

  I let my kitty bleed into my eyes, flashing him with my brights. “I’m not helpless. I don’t need to be rescued. That’s not the kind of relationship I want with you.”

  “Then what kind do you want?”

  “The kind we have every day when I’m not in danger. The kind where we trust each other to be true to our natures.”

  “My nature can get erratic.” The corner of his mouth tugged up in a half-smile.

  “Mine can too. I guess we’re a perfect match.” I leaned into Parker and kissed him. “Are we friends again?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Friends, again.”

  “Good.” I pushed myself up straight. “I’ll set the table.”

  “We’re here!” I heard Nadine holler from the doorway.

  Smooshie gave a short, sharp alert bark. “Just in time,” Parker said. “Our guests have arrived.”

  I poked my head out of the kitchen and yelled, “Come on back!”

  Buzz and Nadine strode on in, Nadine holding lemon-lime soda and Buzz carrying a bottle of gin. “We brought the party,” Nadine said.

  Buzz kissed my cheek. “Hey, kiddo.”

  “Ice is in the freezer.” I pointed to a cabinet. “Cups are up there.” I smiled. “But I’ll take a beer.”

  Parker chuckled. “That’s my girl.”

  “Well,” Nadine said. “The feds came and got Sheriff Avery. They are bringing him up on charges of racketeering. They obtained a warrant to get the name of the Honeysuckle Unlimited, LLC business because they don’t believe he was in it alone.”

  “I don’t believe he was in on it at all,” I said.

  Nadine set a cold beer in front of me. “Why do you say that? He confessed.”

  “And he was lying,” I told her. “You know I know when someone is being dishonest. He’s covering for someone, and that’s going to come out when they subpoena the bank records.”

  “Who would he cover for?”

  “His wife, Anna. I think she was in on this real estate scheme with Jock and Hanley.”

  Nadine sat down in the chair near me. “Christ.”

  “Yep.” I glanced at Buzz. He had really aged in the past few weeks. “I think you should shift with me tomorrow night.”

  He curled his lip. “Mind your business,” he said.

  “It is my business. If you’re trying to strip down to human DNA, you have to remember, in the human world, at your age, you’d be ready for the retirement home, and I hate to say it, but you’ve aged a decade in the past month. I’m not sure how many decades you can afford to lose.” I tried to keep my tone light and teasing, but I had real fear for my uncle.

  “Did you invite me over for a lecture? Or to eat?”

  “Can’t it be both?”

  Nadine had grown really quiet, and Parker said, “Nadine, how do you feel about Buzz suppressing his nature. Is this what you want?”


  “I don’t need therapy,” Buzz said. “I’m doing this, and that’s that.”

  Nadine teared up. “I hate what this is doing to you, Buzz. All we do is fight all the time. I miss you. I miss the way you were before you stopped being you.”

  “You want a baby. We talked about this.”

  “Before I knew what kind of toll it would take on you,” she fired back. “We can adopt. We can pick a sperm donor. Hell, we can live our lives together without any children. I don’t want you doing this just for me. I’m worried it is damaging you.”

  “Women have gone through much worse to conceive. Getting daily hormone shots for in-vitro fertilization, risking high blood pressure, chronic headaches, mood swings, weight gain, nausea, vomiting, and all this for months and months before getting several eggs implanted in their uterus. Then when they finally start to feel better, they have to deal with pregnancy on top of it. Are you saying that it’s okay for a woman to sacrifice to have children, but it’s not all right for me?”

  “Dang, Buzz,” I said, feeling the passion and conviction behind his words. “You really want this, don’t you? You want a child of your own.” I’d just gotten onto Parker about how I could make my own decisions. Maybe it was my turn to stop trying to control the situation.

  “I do,” he said. He cast a stark gaze at Nadine. “I want it more than I’ve wanted anything in my life.”

  “You’re not just doing it for me, then?” Nadine asked.

  “I’m doing it for us,” Buzz replied. He went to her and dropped to his knees beside Nadine’s chair. “I want you to have my baby, Nadine Jennifer Booth. Can you put up with me aging and getting really crotchety for a couple more months.”

  “Buzz, I’d put up with you for the rest of my life.” She wrapped her arms around his neck, and he hugged her waist.”

  I cast a sideways glance at Parker. Awkward, I mouthed.

  He winked. Counseling works, he mouthed back.

  I stuck my tongue out at him.

  Unexpectedly, the room filled with noxious fumes. “Oh, Gosh,” Nadine gasped. She plugged her nose. “Ugh. I can taste it.”

  Smooshie was under the table, laying down with her head on her paws. “Smoosh? Not again.” I waved my hand around, and Parker opened the back door to air the kitchen. She twitched her ears as if to say, not me.

  “I think it’s Elvis,” Parker said. The giant gas machine was on his bed in the corner of the kitchen. Parker walked over and made a face. “It’s stronger over here.”

  “Oh man, get him outside,” I complained. “It smells like he ate a few dozen rotten eggs.”

  “Poor baby,” Parker said. “Nobody loves a stinky boy.”

  When he took the dogs out, plural, because Smooshie got up and joined them, Buzz stood up and announced, “Ladies and gentlemen, Elvis has left the building.”

  After dinner, we all went and sat in chairs around a fire pit we’d thrown together with a tractor tire metal rim in Parker’s backyard. Parker had bought marshmallows, chocolate bars, and graham crackers.

  “Smores don’t pair well with gin and soda,” Buzz said as his marshmallow caught on fire.

  “I beg to differ.” Nadine took her perfectly roasted marshmallow off the stick and mashed it between two crackers and a square of chocolate. “Smores pair with everything.” In her tipsy state, she dropped the well-made smore right into the fire.

  We all laughed.

  She pouted. “It was so perfect!” She turned to me. “Can I see?” she asked.

  “See what?”

  “You know.” She widened her eyes. “I want to see you turn into a cat. Buzz can’t do it, but you can. I really want to see.”

  I leaned back to catch Buzz’s eye. He seemed to consider the consequences for a few seconds, then nodded his head. “If you are okay with it,” he said.

  “I can’t do it out here,” I told her. “Someone might see.”

  “In the house?” She giggled. “You are housebroken, right?”

  “I’m going to take your gin away,” I told her.

  “Noooo,” she whined. “Not the gin.”

  I laughed. “Come on. We’ll do it in the bedroom.”

  Nadine winked at Buzz. “Did you hear that? We’re going to do it in the bedroom.”

  “No one does the nasty flamingo in the bedroom but me,” Parker said.

  “And usually by himself,” Buzz said.

  We all laughed.

  Nadine followed me into the house and down the hall to the master bedroom. Other than the living room, it had the most floor space. “Sit on the bed,” I told her. “And please don’t freak out.”

  “I won’t,” she said. Her hiccup after her statement didn’t instill a lot of confidence in me.

  I stripped my shirt off.

  “Why are you taking off your clothes?”

  “Have you ever seen a cat in a bag? Well, that’s what it’s like to shift with clothing on.” And really, I’d been getting naked and shifting around other shifters from a really young age, so I wasn’t body conscious. The fact that she asked though made me a little nervous. Humans could be weird about nudity.

  She whistled, low and slow. “That makes so much sense. You know,” she said, “I’m really glad you didn’t die today.”

  “I’m really glad too.”

  “You’re brave, Lily.”

  “So, are you.”

  “No, I’m not.” She gave me a tight smile. “But I’m trying.”

  When I took off the last of my clothes, Nadine started chanting, “Shift, shift, shift,” while bouncing on the end of the bed.

  Awesome.

  I held my hand up in the air like a Vegas showgirl, snapped my fingers, just to make it fancy, then called forth my beast. Fur sprouted across my skin, my face narrowed, my nose and mouth protruding forward as my ears moved up on my head. I watched the fascination in Nadine’s expression as it reflected many spectrums of emotions from fear, amazement, wonder, and finally, judging by the smile on her face and the tears in her eyes, pure joy.

  I was fully a cougar now, and I waited for her to make the first move.

  “Lily,” she said after a minute or so of gaping at me, “You’re beautiful. Can I pet you?”

  I made a little rawr sound, then began to purr when I put my face near her leg, and she stroked the fur between my ears.

  She giggled. “You’re like a giant tabby.”

  I gave her hand a playful nip. She snatched back and giggled some more.

  I let her pet me for a while until Smooshie began to whine from behind the closed door. My sweet baby was feeling left out!

  I walked to where I’d placed my clothes, and I shifted back. After I dressed, Nadine embraced me. “Thank you, Lily.”

  “For what?”

  “For helping me. For being the best friend, I’ve ever had. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

  Parker knocked. “Hey, are you decent?”

  “I’m never decent,” Nadine boasted.

  “Come in,” I said.

  Parker opened the door. “The Blakes are getting Hester back tomorrow morning. We need to do a quick inspection of the property in the morning before she comes back to make sure there aren’t any more toxins around the yard.”

  “Okay,” I said, wondering why he was telling me this now.

  “Theresa had said she would do it, but she called just a bit ago and told me she can’t make it…for obvious family stuff. Can you handle it on your own? I have to get stuff ready for the volunteers coming to help me put up fence tomorrow, or I would do it.”

  A wave of sadness passed through me for Theresa. Her life had been turned upside down for the umpteenth time. I knew what it was like to have that kind of luck. “I’ll do it.”

  Nadine leaned into me. “If you want, I can come with you.”

  “Girl, you are going to be hung over. Do you really want to get up at the crack of dawn on your day off for two days in a row?”

  “No,” s
he said. “Not really.”

  “That’s what I thought.” I sighed. “How did Theresa sound?”

  Parker shook his head. “About as expected. I hate that she’s going through this. She’s a really good person, even if her parents aren’t.”

  I worried about Theresa. Parker was right, she was a good person, and she deserved some happiness after all the crap life had put her through. I just hoped, eventually, she would forgive me for my part in blowing up her life.

  Chapter 22

  Mick and Veronica Blake lived in the Sycamore Valley subdivision north of town. I’d never been to their house before, because Parker and Theresa had vetted them years ago, and Theresa usually took care of the home visits. I wanted to call Theresa to tell her how sorry I was she was going through another crisis. She had been strong enough to get through years of Jock’s abuse and come out on the other side with her humor and warmth intact. The fact that she’d been able to trust in love again with Keith had seemed like a miracle to me. I admired her, and I didn’t want to lose her friendship.

  The houses in the subdivision were similar in architecture, almost all of them split levels with two car garages, apart from a few ranch-style homes on three of the corners. The Blakes lived in a gray-blue split level with midnight blue trim and shutters. The door had been painted the same accent color. I walked up the steps and knocked on the door.

  Veronica answered. “Hi, Lily,” she said, a bright smile on her round, almost cherubic face. “Come on in.” She had thick tawny hair that hung down past her shoulders.

  “Thanks.” I went inside, and we walked up a set of carpeted steps to the main floor. The house was clean, the furniture plushy but worn. There was a large dog bed taking up space between the recliner and the couch.

  Veronica said, “We both like being able to pet the dogs we care for when we watch television.” She laughed. “Of course, Hester spends most of her time on Mick’s lap in the recliner. I told him he was going to need a bigger chair to fit both of their butts.”