Back home I made myself a sandwich. Rachel, my girlfriend, came into the kitchen for a bottle of water. “So how’d it go? Catch the cat-killer yet?”
Rachel’s got red hair, hazelnut eyes, mildly psychic powers, and a mean punch. I swallowed. “You’ve heard of cat ladies? I met a plant lady.” I showed her the pictures on my phone. “This is maybe two percent of what she’s got in her house, and she’s got two gardens in front, an orchard in back, and a greenhouse I couldn’t see into. Plus, a rubber tree tried to fondle me.”
She sighed. “On the one hand, it’s not vampires. On the other hand—I’m starting to see why your mom wanted you to be an accountant.”
“You’d be bored with me as an accountant.”
Rachel punched my shoulder. “If you were an accountant we’d never have met. I like it better this way.” She kissed me.
I finished my sandwich, open a Coke, and went to the office I share with Rachel. She’s a web and graphic designer, and she was working on yet another landing page for her client’s latest conference. I went digging deeper into Lillian Floria—her property, her career, anything I could find.
I found several people with her name, but I couldn’t narrow the list down beyond a romance novel writer, a social worker, and a retired high-school biology teacher. Well, maybe the biology teacher, but I couldn’t find anything to confirm it—no photos, no information except for the Chicago school where she’d worked for 30 years—up until 10 years ago, so the chances of anyone there remembering her seemed slim.
I was starting to think this case was a road trip to nowhere.
My phone buzzed. “Tom Jurgen speaking.”
“Mr. Jurgen? This is Michael Floria. I want you to stop bothering my mother.”
Okay . . . “Hello, Mr. Floria. I apologize if I’ve done anything to upset your mother, but all I did was ask her some questions—”
“You accused her of killing a cat! You went into her house and—”
“Sir, I didn’t accuse her of anything. And she invited me in. I was only asking questions.”
“Fine.” He took a breath. “Stop asking questions and stay away from her.” Floria hung up.
“What was that?” Rachel swung around in her chair.
“Lillian’s son.” I set my phone down. “Ordering me away from his mother.”
“Ohh.” She grinned. “Does that get your spidey-senses tingling?”
“Maybe. Or maybe he’s just overly protective.” Still, it gave me something to look into for a few more minutes before I called my client and told him there was nothing I could do. Michael Floria . . .
“Uh-oh.” It took me less than five minutes to realize I might be in trouble.
“What now?”
“He’s, uh, uh—mobbed up.” I pointed at my computer screen.
“What?” Rachel stalked over to my desk. “Vampires and demons we can handle. You’re not getting mixed up with the Outfit!”
“He’s a lawyer. He’s represented Outfit guys in court. Okay, maybe he just believes that everyone deserves the best defense—”
Rachel snorted. “Yeah, right.”
“It gets worse.” I clicked to another page. “Devon Hatler was suing one of his clients. The guy who disappeared?”
“Oh.” She leaned down. “What for?”
“Some kind of real estate deal.” I skimmed the page. “Hatler invested in a condo development and lost a hundred thousand dollars. He was suing the other investors, who he said didn’t lose anything.” I shook my head. “I don’t understand real estate.”
She frowned. “What does that have to do with the cat?”
“No idea.” The question was—what did it have to do with me? “I have to quit.”
Rachel nodded. “Yeah.”
I know, I know—private eyes in novels and on TV never quit. And I’ve stayed on some pretty dangerous cases out of sheer stubbornness and stupidity. But this was the Chicago mafia. And the case was about a cat.
I pulled Dukes’ check from my wallet. I didn’t tear it up. Yet. But depending on how mad he got at me, I might have to. I took a deep breath and made the call.
“Mr. Dukes? Tom Jurgen here.” I hesitated. “I’m sorry. I’ve talked to Ms. Floria, and honestly, I just don’t think there’s anything I can do for you. I’m happy to return your check. Sometimes these things just don’t work out.”
Dukes sighed. “Yeah. I understand. It was just—I get it, it’s just a cat. Okay, tell you what, why don’t you come out to the house tonight and I’ll give you a pie, and we call it even. Would that work?”
Pie? I looked at Rachel. “Can I bring a friend?”
We parked in front of Dukes’ house at dusk. Rachel unsnapped her seatbelt. “How old is this car?”
“Uh . . .” I drive a Honda. “Fifteen years? It still runs fine.”
“You still use a key to start it.” She opened her door. “Maybe it’s time to enter the 21stcentury.”
We walked up the sidewalk. “So I’m here to sniff out evil? Again?”
“Well, yeah.” I was still curious. “And to get pie.”
Dukes opened the door in a T-shirt and jeans. He smiled. “Come on in. Sorry to drag you out here, but I didn’t think sending pies FedEx would work. And I like to bake.”
In his small kitchen two pies sat on a hardwood table. “One’s apple, and the other’s blueberry. I figured since there’s two of you . . .” He shrugged. “Hope you enjoy.”
The aroma made my stomach feel warm. I set his check on the table. “Deal.”
“Do you have pictures?” Rachel looked around the kitchen. “Of Precious?”
Dukes seemed embarrassed. “Here.” He held out his phone.
Rachel peered. “She’s gorgeous. I’m so sorry.”
“I’ll get someone else someday.” He put the phone away. “But you can’t just replace a cat like that right away.”
Rachel nodded. “Of course not.”
I looked up from the pies. “Mr. Dukes—”
“José is fine. I’ll get a box.”
“Before that, I just wondered—could we get a look at Lillian Floria’s house from your yard?”
He blinked. “Of course. What—I mean, it’s fine. This way.”
Out his side door. We stepped across the grass toward the white picket fence.
Shadows covered the yard as the sun set. I looked up at the peak story of Lillian Floria’s house. Then I looked over the fence at the top of the greenhouse.
“Rachel is . . . kind of psychic.” I checked to make sure Dukes actually believed me. He only nodded. “I just thought she might be able to sense—”
“Whoa!” Rachel staggered back. I caught her shoulder. “Something—I don’t know what. Something’s in there.”
Dukes looked at me. “What does that mean?”
“I don’t know.” I grabbed her hand. “Rach? What is it?”
She looked at the fence. “I don’t know. But—something’s coming.”
The dirt started to shake at the base of the fence. All three of us took two long steps back. Before I could even suggest heading back into the house for some pie, dirt and grass erupted next to the fence, and a huge, wormlike creature burst from the ground.
I jumped back, almost knocking Rachel to the grass. The thing rose up. Its gray body was covered with hairy stalks jutting from its trunk, each stalk ending in triangular barbs that looked sharp enough to draw blood. The top of its body was covered by clusters of red petals surrounding a wide mouth shaped like a starfish, opening and closing as if sniffing the air.
Then it lunged at us.
The petals began to pop, shooting a crimson mist in the air. Dukes was closest, and it caught him first. He screamed, clawing at his arms, and sank to his knees on the ground.
The mist spread. I was wearing a jacket, and so was Rachel, but it stung my hands and my neck. Dukes tried to stand up, but the thing darted its body forward and caught his arm in its star-shaped jaws, pouring more mist into the air. Fortunately Dukes’ glasses protected his eyes as he screamed again.
I looked around, trying to overcome the instinct to just run away. I spotted a rake leaning against the fence.
I staggered for it, my legs shaking, but Rachel reached into her back pocket and pulled out the stun gun she always carried. She swore as the mist stung her hands and face, covered her eyes with one arm, and jammed the gun against the thing’s body with her other hand. She pressed the stud down hard.
The creature shuddered. More petals popped, but Dukes was able to pull his arm free and roll on the ground, yellow bile dripping from his elbow down. Rachel jabbed another charge into the thing’s body, and I danced around her and pushed the handle of the rake down its throat.
It didn’t quite roar, but the stench from its maw made me want to vomit. I pushed the rake as deep as I could before jumping back, and Rachel gave it one more jolt from the stun gun. I helped Dukes up, and we ran for the house.
“What the hell?” Dukes gasped, almost choking, as we paused at the side door.
The creature was sinking back into the ground. Somehow it managed to spit the rake out, but writhed back and forth as it descended down the hole, still spurting mist into the air.
“Oh god,” Rachel breathed. “Tom, are you all right? José?”
“Let’s get inside.” I pulled on the door.
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