With a little bit of dea.., p.1
With a Little Bit of Death, page 1
WITH A LITTLE BIT OF DEATH
DEATH RETIRED MYSTERIES #4
CATE LAWLEY
CONTENTS
About With a Little Bit of Death
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
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Epilogue
EXCERPT: Adventures of a Vegan Vamp
Also by Cate Lawley
About the Author
ABOUT WITH A LITTLE BIT OF DEATH
Spelled into silence.
Before Clarence was a man possessing a bobcat, he was a murder victim. Now that he’s beginning to trust Geoff, he’s revealed a little of his background…and asked Geoff to find his murderer.
* * *
Geoff can either do the legwork himself or unlock the spell that keeps Clarence from telling anyone who hurt him.
* * *
What nefarious magic is meddling with Clarence’s free will and why?
1
Clarence had been murdered.
I felt like a hand was squeezing my heart when I remembered his words. “I need you to catch my killer.”
Orphaned at fourteen and murdered five years later.
Nineteen years in this beautiful, complicated world was all he’d been given before someone had snuffed out his life.
The Clarence I knew, the one whose soul possessed a bobcat, could be problematic. He had a penchant for profanity and a disregard for personal property. But his heart was solid gold.
It had taken me longer that it should have to realize it, but Clarence was a good person. The best of people.
Sylvie had seen it right away. Not me.
Maybe I’d initially been swayed by my prejudices. Possession in the normal course of life was a terrible deed.
Or maybe I’d let my first impression of Clarence guide me. It hadn’t been positive.
Frustrated hormonal urges: a teenage boy trapped in a cat’s body, was that any surprise?
Disrespectful language: he’d practically raised himself, so also not a surprise.
And a lack of respect for personal property: an attribute he might have obtained while living the precarious existence of an orphan.
All of Clarence’s quirks could easily be explained by his circumstances prior to joining me in my comfortable suburban home, where meals were plentiful and bills were paid on time. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that this was the most stable, secure environment he’d had since he’d been orphaned at fourteen.
Whatever the underlying reason for the false conclusions I’d drawn, I’d been plain wrong about him.
But good person or not, no one deserved to be murdered. It was a crime against not just the person but also against humanity and civilization. Maybe if I focused on that, my heart would stop breaking over and over again.
Because someone had willfully taken my friend’s life. Clarence was a good person. He was an amazing friend. He was my friend.
The fact of his murder had woken me in the middle of the night more than once since he told me. It was beyond imagining that anyone would want to kill him, a nineteen-year-old boy with a few quirks but a heart of gold.
I had to get over that. I had to imagine it, because I had to find Clarence’s killer.
I’d promised.
I let the problem sit for a few days, in part because I’d needed time to process. I couldn’t just jump into this with my emotions all over the place. But even more importantly, I’d need all the help I could get, and I knew I couldn’t count on Clarence this time. He might not be able to work his usual magic with background checks and deep internet searches.
So I waited for Hector to return from a trip and Lilac to move into her new house, and during those few days, my brain came up with the following underlying, and I believed relevant, facts.
First, the killer had been someone close to Clarence. If a stranger killed a person, the victim’s ghost became angry. More than angry. Bent on revenge, burning with rage over the unfairness of their fate. But Clarence wasn’t angry; he was deeply wounded. Only an intimate betrayal would prompt such a response.
Second, his killer was powerful. Clarence was dead, and he was still scared of him. Still scared and still compelled to silence. Persuasion was a magic I knew, but compulsion wasn’t something I’d ever seen. And what sort of magic’s influence could stretch beyond a person’s death? Clarence wanted to tell me who’d murdered him, but he couldn’t. And when I’d mentioned bringing in Sylvie, Lilac, and Hector to help break whatever hold his killer had on him, he’d panicked. Definitely powerful magic.
Third, there was a redheaded woman involved with Clarence’s death. Probably not the killer, but somehow and in some way, a redhead had contributed to his death. I’d been confused by his persistent dislike of redheaded women, but now I had a plausible explanation. This was more of a hunch, but my gut said I was on the right track.
And fourth, Clarence hadn’t lived in Austin when he’d been alive, but he’d lived somewhere in the area, probably the hill country, definitely within the state of Texas. He knew too much about the local area.
I tested this last supposition and simultaneously tried to narrow the geography of Clarence’s origins with a sneaky trick. I feigned an interest in bratwurst. Mentioned that it was possible I’d never understood his fascination with them because I’d never had a truly exceptional brat.
After a brief debate over Clarence’s assertion that any brat, no matter the quality, was better than some of my meal choices, he finally dropped a name: Grandpa Jo’s.
Everyone knew that Grandpa Jo’s made the best bratwurst, even after old Johann had died.
Then he’d clammed up.
His silence had been as telling as his recommendation and knowledge of the place’s history. I’d bet a brat and even a beer on Clarence having been a customer of Grandpa Jo’s back when he was still human.
I immediately changed the subject, and didn’t mention it again.
Soon—not today, but soon—I’d be chasing that lead.
2
Clarence was in bed early, probably to give Sylvie and me time to drink our wine and chat privately.
He’d always been more considerate than I’d understood. I probably wouldn’t be sitting on my living room sofa, cuddled up with Sylvie, if it hadn’t been for Clarence and his sometimes questionable but almost always well-meaning advice.
“What do we know about Clarence?” I asked Sylvie. “Before he came to live with me.”
“Where’s this coming from?” She looked one part curious and two parts worried.
I hadn’t told her yet that Clarence had been murdered.
It had been a week, and everyone had just been so raw. I hadn’t wanted to poke at Clarence or upset Sylvie. But Hector had returned from his trip today, and Lilac had lost the manic look in her eye that she’d had those first few days after moving into Tamara’s house.
It was time.
“Ah, yeah. Let me get something to take notes.”
“Notes?”
I stood up, saw the concerned frown on her face, and paused long enough to kiss her cheek. “I’ll be right back.”
I fetched a pad of paper and a pen from my office. When I returned, I placed them on the coffee table then I sat down next to Sylvie and wrapped my arms around her. “Clarence asked me to solve his murder last week.”
Her curvy body tensed against me, but she didn’t say anything. I held her tight against my chest until I could feel the frantic beat of her heart slow.
Sylvie had always recognized Clarence for the diamond in the rough that he was. She’d never doubted that he was an outstanding person, regardless of the fact that he inhabited the body of a wildcat. Her heart was so big, and she loved that boy.
“You’re going to do it?” she asked.
An odd question, because of course I would. “Yes.” I leaned back so I could see her face. “Is there some reason I shouldn’t?”
“It’ll have to do with magic.”
“Most likely,” I agreed.
“He obviously has some sort of magic, you know, since Tamara had him help her supercharge her protection herbs.”
“Right.” I’d actually forgotten about that.
“And, ah…” She paused, then muttered a curse.
She extricated herself from my embrace and took a deep breath. Then she squeezed her eyes shut. When she opened them again, she wouldn’t look me in the eye. Instead, she looked over my shoulder, to the hallway leading to the bedrooms, mine and Clarence’s.
“Are you okay? I know it’s a shock, but—”
“It’s not.” She stood up abruptly, then reached for my hand and pulled me to my feet.
Then she led me to the garage. I had absolutely no idea what was happening.
Once the light was on and the door shut firmly behind us, she said, “I have a confession.”
She looked so serious. And worried.
Again, she wouldn’t look me in the eye, and she was practically gnawing her lower lip raw.
I grabbed her upper arms and leaned down. When she still wouldn’t make eye contact, I said, “Hey. It’s going to be fine. Just tell me.”
“Oh, Geoff. I didn’t mean to do it.” Then she finally looked up at me. Her eyes were damp. “But I’m not sorry, and I’d do it again. If I knew how. Which I really don’t.”
“Honey, you’ve completely lost me.” Sylvie didn’t babble. She also wasn’t the kind of person who did things that caused this level of guilt. Whatever terrible thing she thought she’d done, it was eating at her conscience.
She took a deep breath then yanked my head down and kissed me. Not what I was expecting. Not that I was complaining. I was always happy to kiss Sylvie.
She was my girl.
When her lips left mine, she said, “I brought Clarence back from the dead.”
It took a second for her words to register. In my defense, she had just kissed me senseless. In the garage. After babbling a half confession to some unknown act.
Oh. She’d been confessing to bringing Clarence back from the dead.
No, I still didn’t understand what was going on.
My confusion must have been clear, because she smacked my arm. “The fight with the boogeyman? When Clarence was knocked ‘unconscious.’”
She even made air quotes when she said unconscious. Hard to misinterpret that. There’d been a nasty fight between Mr. Simons’s chunky black lab Garfield, Clarence, and the boogeyman.
Garfield had done his best to distract the creature, but Clarence had jumped on its back, using all twenty-five pounds of his small body to keep him from interrupting Sylvie and Lilac as they’d tried to save our friend Ginny. Tamara had tried to keep Clarence and Garfield safe, using some sort of magic to protect them. But then her magic had run dry and Clarence had been thrown into a wooden fence.
We all thought he’d been knocked out.
“He died.” And now my heart was the one going crazy in my chest.
“Yes.”
“And you saved him.”
“Yes.”
“After he died.”
“Yes.” Her voice wavered.
“I don’t understand how that’s possible.”
She made an exasperated sound. “Neither do I.”
Our location in the garage suddenly made sense. “Clarence doesn’t know, and you don’t want him to find out.” And another piece dropped into place. “Which is why you didn’t tell me.”
She looked up at me, still just as serious, just as worried as when the conversation began. “Partially.”
“Sylvie, honey. You know I don’t always get the subtext.” I was trying to be better at this whole relationship business, but it was difficult for me. I hadn’t had any close relationships—not friendships and certainly not romantic relationships—for the entire eighty-plus years I’d worked as a soul collector.
I was reading up on it, but I still needed some help.
“I was worried what you’d think of me.”
Now I really didn’t understand. “What I’d think about you saving Clarence?” I pulled her into my arms and whispered in her ear, “I love you. I love that you helped him. I know that must have been scary.”
She didn’t trust her magic, barely used it. The little bit of experimenting she’d done hadn’t gone well. So it must have been terrifying in the heat of the moment to use her magic, not knowing what might happen. Like taking a first aid course and then getting dropped onto a battlefield with a few Band-Aids and some Ace bandages.
“It was, Geoff.” She shivered in my arms. “I scared myself. All this magic bubbling up inside me, and I wasn’t really controlling it—it was controlling me.”
I rubbed her back, and we talked about it.
I did my best to make sure she knew she was an amazing woman and that I was proud of her for doing everything she could to help Clarence, even though it had frightened her.
She told me she’d been scared to tell me, because she wasn’t sure if I’d look at her the same way.
How could I look at her and see anything other than the beautiful woman she was, both inside and out?
Finally, a bit exhausted by the revelation, but feeling better, she said, “So Clarence finally told you how he died.”
“Ah, no. Just that he’d been murdered. Do you know the specifics?”
She tucked the hanky I’d handed her into her pocket now that her eyes had dried. “Not exactly, but he mentioned it once. I never said anything, because I felt like it was his story to share.”
“I understand that, but you have to tell me everything now. He asked me to find his killer, and he can’t talk about it. There’s some sort of magical compulsion preventing him from talking about whoever killed him.”
“Oh my goodness. Poor Clarence.” Her eyes started to get damp again, and she pulled out the handkerchief to dab at them. “I don’t know much. He told me that it was terrible and that he would have been alone, but that a wounded bobcat found him.”
“So someone tried to kill him either in a remote area, or they tried to kill him and then dumped him in a remote area. Someplace rural enough to have bobcats.” That actually made sense given the location of Grandpa Jo’s, the home of Clarence’s favorite brats.
Grandpa Jo’s, I’d since learned, was well outside of Fredericksburg, in the direction of Austin. There was a lot of undeveloped, wild land between Austin and Fredericksburg.
Sylvie leaned against the garage wall. “You remember what he said when Lilac was possessed? How he gave his life for the cat’s.”
“They were both injured.” I nodded. “I didn’t get that at the time. But if he was murdered and he gave his life for the bobcat’s…” I frowned.
I hadn’t given it a lot of thought at the time. In my defense, Lilac had just been possessed and it had been a terrifying and traumatic experience for her. But now, looking back… “How could he give his life for the cat’s?”
We shared a glance and both said at the same time, “Magic.”
Because wasn’t that almost always the answer when the facts made no sense.
“I wonder if he can tell us what sort of magic he has.” But then I shook my head. “Probably not.”
If it didn’t have anything to do with his death, we’d probably already know. Clarence was hardly modest. Insecure sometimes, yes. But not modest.
“I bet Hector has a cursed object that can tell us.” Sylvie sent me a meaningful look.
Obviously she knew he was back in town, too.
“What? I don’t have a problem with Hector.” I smiled. “As long as you’re dating me and not him, I’m perfectly fine with Hector.”
Sylvie rolled her eyes. “You do know that he’s in love with Tamara, right?”
No, I didn’t know that. I’d noticed a possible spark, but love? That was a big leap. “Are you sure?”
“Oh, Geoff. You poor, clueless man, you.” She softened that comment with a brief kiss, then said, “I’m sure.”
While good news for me—because he possessed both lethal charm and looks—that was pretty terrible news for Hector. Tamara hadn’t even told us where she was moving to and wasn’t expected back for a minimum of ten years.
I might be clueless, but Hector was worse off, with the woman he loved in the wind with no immediate expectation of her return.
For the first time since meeting the mysterious, powerful, and generally enviable Hector, I felt badly for him.
“I’ll text him and see if he has time to talk to us tonight. Since Clarence can’t run backgrounds for us on this one, I’ll also ask him what he knows about the area around Grandpa Jo’s.”
“Sounds like a plan. I want to run home and grab a book I borrowed. He’ll want it back.”
True statement. He could sense when any item in his magic man cave was missing and it seemed to make him uncomfortable. It spoke volumes that he’d been willing to loan Sylvie books and scrolls from his sacred sanctuary. The loans had been invaluable in helping her learn about magic, but even so—it was a sacrifice for him.
