The Curiosity Shoppe
by
Melanie Jackson
Published by Brian Jackson at Smashwords
Copyright © 2010 by Melanie Jackson
Discover other titles by Melanie Jackson at www.melaniejackson.com
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
CRITICS RAVE ABOUT MELANIE JACKSON!
DIVINE NIGHT
“Not to be read quickly, Jackson’s latest is closely connected to the two previous Divine stories….This is an excellent addition to this series.”
—RT BOOKreviews
"If you’re looking for a light and fluffy romance, this isn’t the book for you. But, if a literary experience with an entertaining romance on the side intrigues you, pick up DIVINE NIGHT and enjoy."
—Romance
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WRIT ON WATER
“An intriguing mix of mystery and romance, with shadings of the paranormal, this is a story that pulls you in.”
—RT BOOKreviews
DIVINE MADNESS
“Jackson amazingly weaves the present-day world with her alternate reality.”
—RT BOOKreviews
“This tale isn’t your everyday, lighthearted romance…Melanie Jackson takes an interesting approach to this tale, using historical figures with mysterious lives.”
—Romance Reviews Today
DIVINE FIRE
“Jackson pens a sumptuous modern gothic… Fans of solid love stories like those of Laurell K. Hamilton will enjoy Jackson’s tale, which readers will devour in one sitting, then wait hungrily for the next installment.”
—Booklist
“Once again, Jackson uses her truly awe-inspiring imagination to tell a story that’s fascinating from beginning to end.”
—RT BOOKreviews
THE SAINT
“This visit to the ‘wild side’ is wonderfully imaginative and action-packed…. [A] fascinating tale.”
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THE MASTER
“Readers who have come to expect wonderful things from Jackson will not be disappointed. Her ability to create a complicated world is astounding with this installment, which includes heartwarming moments, suspense and mystery sprinkled with humor. An excellent read.”
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STILL LIFE
“The latest walk on the ‘Wildside’ is a wonderful romantic fantasy that adds new elements that brilliantly fit and enhance the existing Jackson mythos….action-packed.”
—The Midwest Book Review
THE COURIER
“The author’s imagination and untouchable world-building continue to shine…. [An] outstanding and involved novel.”
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OUTSIDERS
“Melanie Jackson is a talent to watch. She deftly combines romance with fantasy and paranormal elements to create a spellbinding adventure.”
—WritersWrite.com
TRAVELER
“Jackson often pushes the boundaries of paranormal romance, and this, the first of her Wildside series, is no exception.”
—Booklist
THE SELKIE
“Part fantasy, part dream and wholly bewitching, The Selkie…[blends] whimsy and folklore into a sensual tale of love and magic.”
—RT BOOKreviews
NIGHT VISITOR
“I recommend this as a very strong romance, with time travel, history and magic.”
—All About Romance
A CURIOUS AFFAIR
“For a very different type of murder mystery and some very quirky characters and a twist at the end you won't see coming, pick up A Curious Affair, because in this tale, curiosity does not kill the cat!”
—Romance Reviews Today
“Fans will enjoy this light-hearted frolic in which cats serve as witnesses to the crime and as matchmakers.”
—Midwest Book Reviews
Prologue
Irish Camp
December, 1916
Gifford Handley wasn’t the world’s best undertaker. He was, in fact, a rather poor example of his profession. But not much was required of him usually and he could typically drink on the job without consequences.
Not this time though. Mayor Charlie O’Linn was lying on his table, getting pumped full of arsenic. A big city undertaken would have used formaldehyde and an embalming machine, but Gifford didn’t have either. There just wasn’t much call for embalming in Irish Camp. So he has doing it the old fashion way with a drip-feed and a bucket hung from a ceiling hook that Gifford had put in special. Gravity did the rest. Arsenic and water into the right carotid artery, the remaining blood pushed out the incision in the jugular and into another bucket. It wasn’t complicated, just messy and time consuming. Which made it a blessing that it was December and not August. Summer days often reached the 100 degree mark and Charlie would be smelling ripe even if they packed him in ice.
Not being completely irresponsible, Gifford had of course made sure that the mayor was actually dead before he started work. Not that he doubted Doc Taylor’s word, but Charlie was from a wealthy family that was inclined to cut up stiff if someone made a mistake. Especially about mortality matters. They had already laid out quite a sum for a coffin—the fancy eight-sided kind out of oak with a silk lining, not just a plain rectangular pine casket like most folks got. They had also rented a Packard funeral bus from an undertaker in San Francisco—it could hold a coffin, six pallbearers, and twenty mourners. Safely too, as long as you stayed off steep hills. There had been an unfortunate accident in San Francisco involving a roll over and a smashed body and that was why the Packard was available to funeral parlors out of town now. So, as he later assured the sheriff, he had made damn good and sure that Charlie was actually needing that coffin and motorized hearse before he started work. And Charlie had needed it. He’d had no pulse, clouded corneas and a full on rigor mortis. There was even lividity. Charlie was dead.
And yet, somehow, the moment that Gifford left the room to warm his hands at the front parlor fire—he didn’t add that he had also treated himself to a little whisky to help ward off the cold—the body had disappeared. Naked, drained of most of its blood, it had just nudged open the backdoor of the shotgun-style house and apparently ambled out into the cold.
Of course everyone in town had looked for the corpse. But Gifford had fallen asleep and not noticed it was missing for some time. And it had snowed that night—thirteen inches worth—and after that there wasn’t any hope of finding tracks. If tracks there were. A now very drunk Gifford was inclined to blame supernatural agencies for the body’s disappearance and about half the folk in town believed him. Irish Camp was that kind of place.
It wasn’t until three days later that anyone noticed that Charlie’s mastiff, a giant beast called Baskerville Flynn, had also disappeared. The most superstitious thought that Charlie had gone home and collected his faithful dog before going only God—or the Devil-- knew where.
There was a lot of hysteria and finger-pointing by Charlie’s family, but in the end there was nothing to do but store the fancy oak coffin in the attic until someone else could use it, and send the Packard back to San Francisco.
Neither Charlie or his mastiff were ever found.
Chapter 1
"If your dog doesn't like someone you probably shouldn't either." – Unknown
Irish Camp
present day
My name is Graham Belle and I have a strange story to tell you.
I live in a small town called Irish Camp that is in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains on the California side, and I have an even smaller business called The Curiosity Shoppe. Local people refer to me as a private detective, but really I am in the retrieval business. I find thing—and persons—who are lost. That means that I get paid a whole lot less than a real private eye, but on the positive side, I don’t feel slimy because I have been spying on unfaithful spouses who can’t keep things zipped, or tattling on teenagers who are doing stupid teenager stuff. I almost never carry a gun.
Things used to be rather rough financially at The Curiosity Shoppe, but my faltering business picked up about three years ago right after Halloween, when I was hit by lightning and acquired a new partner who has taken on a lot of the work. My colleague’s name is Grover—so called because of his strong resemblance to the late President, Grover Cleveland, which was apparently evident in him from birth.
It wasn’t just any lightning that hit me that All Hallows Eve. Nor is Grover just any old partner. The freak atmospheric phenomenon that literally knocked me on my head is what the locals call ‘spirit fire’ or ‘ball lightning’. And Grover is a freakishly large Airedale Terrier. I’m not sure why these facts are related, but somehow they are. I’m certain that someday science will have an explanation for what happened that afternoon, but for now the dog appearing after a lightning strike just feels like something magical. Magic is illogical and defies everyday explanation. You accept it or you don’t. I have obviously drunk the Kool-Aid.
On the day my life changed for good and all, I was out sweeping up acorns so that any trick-or-treaters brave enough to climb my mountain wouldn’t break their necks on my steepish walkway. It was my first Halloween without my wife and I was missing Edna. She had always loved Halloween.
A storm was brewing, which is rare in October, and the ozone was thick enough to make my teeth hurt when I inhaled. A wise man would have left off and gone inside, but I was nearly finished and kept on even when it began to rain. It was nasty stuff, kind of oily and it burned a bit when it touched my bare skin. The air also began to smell a tad sulfurous, a fact I take heed of now that I know what it can portend.
I had just climbed up on an aluminum ladder to knock the last of the oak leaves out of my clogged gutter when a ball of beautiful blue and green light rolled over the roof top, past my mossy chimney and into my face. It didn’t hurt. Not that I can recall. But before I could really appreciate the aesthetics of the thing or even the danger, I found myself sailing through the air, flying skull-first toward an auspiciously placed pile of oak leaves and acorns.
When I woke up in darkness about an hour later Grover was there beside me on the driveway, doing his best to bring me around by swabbing my face and asking repeatedly if I was alright. His voice was deep but he sounded and acted like a simple-minded child who was near panic, so though I felt a bit woozie and sick and desirous of going back to sleep in my leafy bed, I forced my reluctant eyes open so that I could reassure whoever was fussing over me. And I found myself staring into a whiskered face, backlit by a streetlamp. It wasn’t a human face—which is good, I guess, since it continued to lick me between questions.
You-alright? You-alright? Wooooo-woooo. You alright?
Since I could hear a dog talking—using what sounded like authentic human speech, though his lips never actually moved-- I knew that I was obviously not all right. But since I was suddenly cold and sore and wet—though with nothing broken except my brain—and since Grover finally calmed enough to admit that he was cold and wet and hungry too, I let the dog help me up. It took a few minutes, but we both made it inside the house and had a couple of turkey sandwiches after we dried off our muddy paws and feet.
I lit a small fire in the pot-bellied stove, which was more for psychological warmth than actual heating, since I have a good fuel-efficient furnace; an anniversary present from my late wife who was one of the most eminently practical women to walk the planet—bless her. One of us needed to be.
We had no trick-or-treaters that night, which is probably just as well because Grover and I had a lot to talk about over popcorn and whisky—popcorn for him, whisky for me-- like how the hell could he talk? And how the devil was I able to understand him?
Grover’s tale was a fairly short one. He was a stray who had been happily living off the land and the kindness of strangers since his last owner died in the spring, but with winter coming on, he was not adverse to moving back indoors where he could enjoy fires and regular meals. The lightning had called to him and told him where I was and that he should go and help me. Since Grover has a healthy respect for a natural element that can both talk and kill him, he obeyed.
He’s good company too. And since I had been growing ever more sick with loneliness since my wife’s death eleven months before, sharing hearth and meals seemed like an equitable arrangement. A bargain was struck. I would have company for the cost of kibble and a place by the fire. I could about afford that. Barely. We turned in that night feeling very satisfied with the bargain we’d struck.
As to how Grover can talk…. Well, apparently he has always talked; it’s just that few people can understand him. Nor do they understand any of the other dogs in town, which I can now also communicate with. Sounds bug-munching mad, doesn’t it? It took me a long while to accept it even with Grover’s help. But, it’s the truth—I kid you not. I talk to dogs and dogs talk back.
Airedales are not known for being tolerant of other canines, but Grover has a lot of friends, a real canine good-old-boys network, and there is very little they can’t find when they put their noses to it. Lost children and hikers are now a specialty of ours. Search and Rescue often call us in when they have someone missing in the back country. Once in a while I get some help from a wolf pack near Long Barn too. They prefer to avoid me, but will help out when it means getting rid of all the rescue people who scare the tasty deer and squirrels out of the territory when they scour the woods.
Things are good at home too. I’m drinking less and Grover has put on weight and developed a sober demeanor and an ability to concentrate for minutes at a time. Things go on, pretty much the same old same old, but it’s a comfortable life. Neither of us complains.
However, every now and again, we get a strange case that is tricky to handle. This is the story about one of them.
As is often the case in mysteries, this tale begins with a beautiful but mysterious woman coming to my office. Her name is Frederica, but she wisely goes by Fritzi instead of Fred or Freddie. She is a canine behavioral analyst, a doggie head-shrinker of some renown who writes a syndicated column that appears in many newspapers—both dead tree and electronic-- nation-wide. I’m a regular reader. We hadn’t met before, but I knew that she had a good rep among the canines in town and was reputed to be almost able to understand them. This visit wasn’t about a dog though; she was calling on me because she had lost her cat, Mister Spatz.
The cat was not actually her cat, she explained earnestly, picking up the mug of coffee I had poured for her once we had gotten through introductions and seating arrangements. I thought that she was very pretty in a healthy, wintery pink kind of way and had a low-timbered voice that I found fascinating., though she was far from being a proper mystery novel femme fatale. For one thing, she wasn’t wearing heels or a scarlet dress.
It wasn’t that she had rejected the animal. The elderly cat simply did not admit to new ownership, Fritzi went on to clarify when I was so busy staring that forgot to say anything. I had gotten distracted counting the striations in her hazel eyes and was listening to Grover inventory what she had eaten for breakfast (oatmeal and turkey bacon with orange juice). She was Mister Spatz’ conservator. His guardian. And apparently she was failing at it.
I said I understood complete, and could anyone ever really own a cat that had other ideas?
She nodded gratefully and went on. The missing feline had belonged to her grandmother, the silent screen actress, Mitzi Darling, and he came with a one and half million dollar kitty-care trust fund. Her voice was shaded with frustration as she said this and I asked for details.