Spines and slaughter, p.1
Spines and Slaughter, page 1
SPINES AND SLAUGHTER
POE BAXTER BOOKS
BOOK 5
ACF BOOKENS
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Notes
A FREE Cozy set in San Francisco
Also by ACF Bookens
About the Author
1
One might think that having most of three months off would mean I was rested and ready for our next book-acquiring adventure. One might also be wrong.
I mean, I was ready for the trip to Peru. I’d always wanted to see Machu Picchu—or Huayna Picchu, which I’d learned was its proper name. And I had been studying Peruvian folklore, particularly the legend of the Chullachaqui, since that mystical figure was the subject of the book we were being sent to acquire. So I was eager to get into the forests and see if I might run into the little man himself.
But traveling internationally, getting wrapped up in what would inevitably be dangerous work. . . I wasn’t looking forward to that part.
Still, since my budget had taken a big step up since acquiring this job, I was making the most of the trip by buying some pieces that would, I hoped, help me look less like a tourist in Lima. Of course, I didn’t have high hopes for this since I spoke only the most necessary words of Spanish and had skin so fair that I sometimes looked ghostly, but I could do my best.
So my best friend Beattie and I had gone on a shopping spree to get long, flowing skirts, colorful blouses, and hiking pants to make our time in the jungle more bearable. I also invested in a good pair of hiking shoes and a new pair of sandals that would be good for day-to-day wear. Beattie found some gorgeous linen pants and a woven jacket made by Indigenous Peruvians, so I took the opportunity and picked up a woven poncho that was also ethically sourced.
“We look cute,” I said as we took turns in front of the mirror in my Charlottesville, Virginia, house. “And honestly, I’d wear most of this most of the time.”
“Yep, me too,” Beattie said as she laid her six-foot-five frame across my queen-sized bed and said, “So, you and Boone?”
Beattie and her boyfriend, Aaran, had been away for the past month on a road trip visiting all the national parks in the Eastern US, and I had missed her. “What about us?”
“Things are good?” she said with a smile.
A blush slid up my neck. “Yes, they’re good. Quite good, actually. And it’s no surprise he now has more friends than I do here.” My boyfriend, and our boss, was a hipster to the max, but in Charlottesville, that meant he was just pretty standard, and his outgoing personality had made him somewhat of a sensation in this insular town. “He just got asked to sit in on spoons with Chamomile and Whiskey.”
Beattie rolled her eyes. “Of course he did.” She sat up. “We’re going to the show, right?”
“Of course,” I said. “It’s our last night in town, so we have to live it up.”
And live it up we did, with tequila shots at The Jefferson that I regretted almost as soon as the music ended.
Still, with a hangover so bad I could barely see, I rode in a rideshare the next morning with Boone, Beattie, and Aaran to the tiny Charlottesville airport and boarded a plane. Our layover was in Miami, and as a joke or because he knew we’d need a respite, Boone had booked us all on a CSI: Miami tour that included, believe it or not, a cheap pair of sunglasses like those David Caruso wears on the show.
We rode in an airboat through the Everglades and got a tour of the actual Crime Scene Unit and morgue, and finally, we ate at the top of one of those glittering waterfront high-rises from the show. Since I wasn’t normally a warm vacation woman, this was the perfect way for me to see Miami.
The next day when we boarded our flight to Lima, I sat down next to Boone and asked, “So, were you trying to beef up our investigative skills with that tour?”
He laughed. “Any residual knowledge you picked up from a very inaccurate but quite entertaining TV show tour is simply a bonus.” He leaned over and gave me a soft kiss. “I mostly just wanted us to go into this job a little slower and simpler than the last ones.”
I kissed him and then smiled. “I like slower and simpler,” I said with a wink before I took out my book and began to read. One thing I’d decided I would do whenever possible was to steep myself in the folklore of the place we were visiting, both for the sake of our work and for my pleasure. Since we were going to be looking for a text about Chullachaqui, I had brought along, on my e-reader, every book that contained the legend of the little man in the forest.
Some of these legends said he led people into the jungle by impersonating their loved ones. In most tales, he was a short man, sometimes with one leg longer than the other and sometimes with one human foot and one animal foot. Sometimes he wants to play. Sometimes he wants to kill. Sometimes he wants to kidnap children and swap them out for impostors, like the changeling legends of the European fairies.
From what I could tell, most Peruvians respected and admired him as a protector of the Amazon. But there was also a darker side to the legends, one that the tourist bureaus liked to play up—no doubt because it boosted sales.
Our manuscript was one of those that revered the little man. It had purportedly been recorded by an anthropologist visiting a Quechua village deep in the jungle in the early twentieth century. According to the notes about the anthropologist’s manuscript, made by his daughter almost twenty years after the visit to the village, an Indigenous elder of the tribe had told him the story one night around a fire.
There was a lot of controversy around this particular text, mostly because the anthropologist had disappeared in the Amazon when he returned to visit the tribe he had chronicled. The version of his disappearance that his daughter recorded involved a murder by the Indigenous people, something that I was skeptical about since it played into that “wild savages” hatefulness that so many people of that time—and sometimes our time—believed about native peoples. But the text was still important because if it did record a Quechua folktale, it might be the earliest known English written record of the story.
Many people believe that the Quechua are the descendants of the Inca, the builders of Huayna Picchu, so this text might fill in some gaps in the history of the people. New Incan settlements were being discovered in the Amazon all the time, so the history of these people, as told by themselves, was being uncovered more and more. That was, of course, the most important history, but still, these textual records told us about a particular period and might connect the story of Chullachaqui to the Incan tales from the Incan ruins.
That was my hope, anyway. At the very least, it would give us some insight into how colonialism affected and interpreted Quechuan culture. And it might let us peel away the veneer of the white perspective that always distorted the truth.
It was a lot to ask of a story, but stories have changed the world time and again, so why couldn’t this one? If we could find it.
Boone had gotten a lead on an art dealer in Lima who specialized in Quechuan and Incan artifacts, so that was going to be our first stop. A year ago, I would have thought that such a visit might simply entail a query, perhaps a purchase, if the dealer had the text. Now, though, I knew that the world of ancient and even recent artifacts and texts was ripe with black market dealings and smuggling. So I didn’t anticipate our acquisition of this text to be simple. Not in any way.
I had, however, promised myself that I was going to enjoy this trip. Peru hadn’t been one of those places I’d longed to visit, like Iceland or South Africa. Huayna Picchu had always intrigued me, but it was typically the cultures and living history of a place that drew me, but now, after reading so much about the Quenchua and the Inca, I couldn’t wait to land and get to work.
And apparently, Boone was eager, too, because as soon as we collected our bags and got into our rental car, he started briefing us on the mission. “Ivan and Frank are already here, and they’ve set up our command center.”
“We have a command center now,” Aaran said. “Aren’t we fancy?” His Scottish brogue always got a little thicker when he was sarcastic, and I loved it.
“Indeed,” Boone said, deepening his own South African accent to match the intensity of Aaran’s. “I figured it was about time.”
I looked over my shoulder at Beattie in the back seat of the Range Rover, and she shrugged. We always knew a little less of what was going on than everyone else, and we’d both gotten to like that. It meant we could focus on what we needed to do.
“Link, Omar, and Hildy will be joining us, too. Their flight comes in later today,” Boone continued.
“So it’s all hands on deck?” Aaran said, all humor gone from his voice.
“It is,” Boone said, “because there’s been a development. I’ll tell you more when we get unpacked.” He pulled the car up in front of a gorgeous hotel in a busy area full of high-rise offices and handed the keys to the valet. “Melia Lima,” he said with a sweep of his hand. “The best in the city.”
I smiled. Boone always booked us into the best places in terms of amenities and location, so if we were in the business area, there was a reason. I might have booked us into a little place out by the water, but there was a reason I wasn t in charge of these trips.
The four of us checked in, then rode the elevator up to our floor and stepped out. As we headed toward our suites to the left, I heard the door open at the other end of the hall. “You made it,” Ivan said in his booming voice. “When do you want to meet?”
I almost groaned. “Our suitcases aren’t even here yet, Ivan,” I said with a roll of my eyes. “Can we wait an hour?”
Boone nodded. “Good plan. One hour and I’ll have dinner brought up from the restaurant on site.” He pointed toward the door next to Ivan’s. “Tell Frank?”
Ivan nodded and stepped back into his room.
I took a deep breath and prepared myself for the beginning of the less-than-leisurely part of the trip. The suite, however, eased my stress almost immediately with its king-size bed, large lounge, complimentary mini-bar, and full kitchen. “Wow,” I whispered.
“We have two floors to ourselves, including another suite just for us to meet in. I decided it’s time we stop giving up our private space for the team,” Boone said as he pulled me close and kissed me.
A few minutes later, I managed to extricate myself and get into the shower. The water was hot and the pressure perfect, and my lingering worries about the mission slid down the drain with the lavender body wash the hotel had provided. By the time I dressed in my yoga pants and T-shirt for our meeting and night in, I was pretty relaxed, and the dirty martini that Boone handed me when I stepped into the lounge didn’t hurt. Maybe this trip would be mostly fun. I doubted it, but at least we had a really nice hotel room. Alone.
But that alone time would have to wait because I needed to meet with the team. Boone had gone ahead so he could handle the food delivery and do some sort of “techy setup,” as he called it, for the meeting. I decided to go all out—or as all out as I ever did—and put on some honey-scented lotion and a little mascara before making my way down one floor.
Most of my friends were already there. Omar looked as suave as ever in dark jeans and a T-shirt, and Link looked gorgeous in their long, flowy sundress. Hildy was business as usual in her cigarette pants and a white blouse, and even Frank and Ivan looked a little spiffier than usual in their collared shirts and dress pants. When Aaran came in wearing chinos and a polo, with Beattie on his arm in a snug body-hugging dress, I realized that I had somehow missed a note about how this was supposed to be a party or something.
Boone had indeed set up the TV with his laptop, and an array of the most amazing-smelling food was spread out on the dining room table. I saw what looked like rotisserie chicken, only fifty times more appetizing if such a thing was possible, and something that looked like mashed potatoes with cheese in them. There were peppers stuffed with some sort of meat and a salad that was so fresh I thought I could probably smell the soil on the leaves.
“That last one there,” Omar said as he came over and gave me a side hug, “is a guinea pig.”
I followed his gaze to find what looked exactly like a tiny pig skewered next to about ten of his companions on a platter. “You aren’t serious.”
“I am,” he said. “It’s considered staple fare here, but I knew you’d want to avoid it.” He smiled and winked at me.
He was absolutely right. I had a hard time eating meat some days anyway, and there was no way I could eat something that was a cousin to my childhood pet Hoover. I swallowed hard and tried not to keep looking at the little skewered rodents. I absolutely did not want to insult another culture’s food, but I was also very American in that I really didn’t like my meat to look like, well, meat.
“That one’s beef heart,” Omar quietly said as he glimpsed at another set of kebob-like things and then slipped away.
I swallowed again and turned to face the living room, where Boone was tapping a fork on his glass. “We are here on an important project, as you all know,” he said. “But before we begin work, we have a little celebrating to do.” He looked over at me and smiled. Then he turned on the TV and pressed a button on his keyboard.
I looked up and saw on the huge screen my newborn baby picture. My head was misshapen with a shock of brown hair, and fat rolls covered my arms. I had always liked this picture of myself, so I smiled. But then I looked at Boone, who was grinning.
“What is this?” I said as the image on the screen moved to another photo, this one of me in first grade as a Pilgrim, before spinning out to reveal me in red corduroy pants and a “Hug Your Kid” T-shirt. As I watched, I got older and older on the screen until ten minutes later, the show ended with a picture of Beattie and me in Charlottesville this past week and the words Happy Birthday, Poe! at the bottom of the screen.
I must have looked stunned because Beattie came over and said, “I know it’s not for two days, but we wanted to be sure to celebrate you properly.” She kissed my cheek.
I looked at her as tears welled in my eyes. “Wow, thank you.” I hadn’t had anyone throw me a birthday party since I was a child. Life usually required me to throw my own and, thus, do all the prep and clean-up if I wanted to celebrate at all. I felt a little off kilter at this generosity.
“Well, thank Boone. He’s the one who came up with the plan.” She hugged me again. “Go thank him, and then we need to get you changed.”
I stepped back and looked at her. She raised her eyebrows and looked at my yoga pants with a “really, you can’t stay in that” expression, to which I nodded. “All right.”
As my friends wished me happy birthday, I crossed the room and gave Boone a big kiss. “Thank you,” I said into his ear as he pulled me close. “I had no idea.”
“Good,” he said. “I wanted a surprise to be a pleasant one for once.” He kissed my cheek and then looked over my shoulder. “Um, you better go. Your fashion adviser is getting restless.”
I looked back at Beattie, who had one hand on her hip and was staring, with the flair of Marlene Dietrich, at her wrist like she was actually wearing a watch. “Be back in a few,” I told Boone and went back to the door.
A half-hour later, Beattie and I returned, this time with me in a shimmery, pink maxi dress that I had never seen before but that, because Beattie and Boone had picked it, fit me perfectly. Pink hadn’t really become one of my colors until recently, and I typically chose a deep, hot shade. But this baby pink with the shine was lovely, and the fabric felt great against my skin.
“You look radiant,” Link said when I made my way over to fix myself a plate of food. “And we took away the guinea pigs,” they said with a laugh. “Omar told me your reaction.”
“Thank you,” I said. “It’s my birthday, and I’ll ban the cooking of guinea pigs if I want to.”
Link laughed and handed me some little stacked thing that looked like a cross between a beet and goat cheese salad I’d had once and latkes. “Potatoes, cream, and cheese,” they said.
“I’ll take two.”
I finished making the rest of my plate, then found my way to the makeshift bar someone had set up on the kitchen counter. There, with a note in Boone’s handwriting, was a dirty martini. “Drink up. You need to be hydrated,” he’d written.
I caught his eye across the room and raised my glass. He smiled and turned back to Frank, who was telling some elaborate story, probably about his wild nieces and nephews. Those kids had literally wrapped their friend’s house completely in pink toilet paper as a joke one Halloween. There was no telling what they’d gotten themselves into this time.
With my plate in one hand and my martini in the other, I tried to make my way over to Frank and Boone, but Hildy waylaid me with a touch on the shoulder. “Happy Birthday, Poe,” she said. “You look amazing.”
I did a little handless curtsy and said, “Thank you, so do you. I love how those pants accentuate your hips.”
She laughed as she shimmied. “What a nice thing to say. I like dresses, too, but I’ve learned I might as well go with pants on business trips. You never know when we’ll have to run or roundhouse kick someone.” She smiled, but I also knew she was serious. Hildy was trained in several martial arts, and she was not someone to be trifled with.
