Private Eye: A Tiger’s Eye Mystery (8 page)

I
scrubbed viciously
at my face, refusing to cry. She wasn’t dead. I wouldn’t let her be dead before I’d gotten a chance to know her.

“Did you…could you scent anything?”

Jack’s lip curled up. “I don’t know. Maybe the magic is still affecting me. I could only really smell Leona and Ned, and…”

“And?” I prompted.

“It’s stupid, and it probably doesn’t mean anything.” He raised his face to the night sky, though, and closed his eyes and inhaled deeply.

I clenched my hands into fists. “
What
doesn’t mean anything?”

Ned moaned, and I picked up his hand and held it, still watching Jack.

“Where is the damn ambulance?” Jack snarled, and then he looked at me and shrugged. “Okay, it’s stupid, but here’s the thing. There were cartons of Chinese food sitting on the table, but I got an overpowering scent of sweet potatoes. Is that even an ingredient in Chinese food?”

I stumbled back and almost tripped over one of the lawn chairs. “
Sweet potatoes
? Oh, no. It can’t be.”

“What? What about sweet potatoes?”

I couldn’t believe it, but there was no way this was just a coincidence. It was too weird; too unlikely.

“Oskar Wildenhammer,” I told Jack. “I just ran into him at the Super Target buying a cart full of sweet potatoes.”

Jack’s entire body tensed, and I almost expected him to shift again. “Oskar, the son of the woman whose death was foretold by a banshee?
That
Oskar?”

“Yes. I can’t believe it, but yes,” I whispered. “
That
Oskar.”

Finally,
finally
, we heard the first sirens screaming their way toward us, but now neither of us wanted to wait.

“We have to go. Now. Before we get caught up in the investigation here,” Jack said.

My phone rang. I’d forgotten that I’d tucked it into the pocket of my pajama pants before getting in the car. I yanked it out, but it was an unknown number. I showed it to Jack, who nodded.

“It’s Dallas.”

I put it on speaker. “Dallas? We have a problem—”

Dallas and Austin both were on the line. “Tess, Jack isn’t answering his phone, and we’ve gotta talk to him,” they said, words tumbling over each other.

“Jack’s here. Go ahead,” I said.

“Talk,” Jack said.

“The assassin? The one here in Dead End? We found his coordinates. He routed them through some fancy steps. Prague, Nigeria—”

“Focus,” Jack barked. “Tess’s grandmother had been abducted, and we’re pretty sure it was Oskar Wildenhammer.”

One of the Fox twins whistled, long and low. The other one said several very choice swear words.

“It’s him, Jack. The coordinates we found? It’s the Wildenhammer toy barn.”

“Meet us there,” Jack said, before disconnecting the call.

“Tess, they’re too far out. I can get there first.”

The sirens were getting closer, and now I was shaking again, trying to decide what to do.

“Should I go with you? Or wait and tell Susan what’s going on? Make sure that Ned gets taken care of?”

Jack grabbed my arm and pulled me to him. “Yes. Do that. You stay here,
safe
, do you hear me? I’ll get your grandma for you.”

Then he kissed me—hot, hard, and fast—and seconds later, he was gone.

People started to wander down to our side of the RV park, and I yelled for help. When the first capable-looking person showed up, I told her to get Ned in the ambulance and tell the sheriff to call me, or—better yet—come back me up at the Wildenhammer estate.

“What’s your name?” she yelled after me. “What are you doing?”

“Tess Callahan,” I shouted, already running for the car. “I’m going to save my grandmother.”

I
hadn’t been
to Felix’s toy barn since I was a kid, but I didn’t have any trouble finding it. The Wildenhammer place was a couple of miles and two closed gates down a dirt road, and both times I had to stop and open gates, I was praying that they wouldn’t be locked.

I got lucky on the first one, and Jack had taken care of the second. He’d left the steel padlock intact, but the entire wooden fencepost was ripped out of the ground, and giant claw marks streaked the aged wood as I drove through the space where the gate had been.

If this really was the home of an assassin, then death smelled like Kudzu and looked like a country fairytale. The two-story house shone bright white in the moonlight, and a lush garden surrounded the porch. The toy barn, set off about a hundred feet from the house, still had the carved wooden sign I remembered, proclaiming
Wildenhammer’s Magical Toys
.

I didn’t see Jack anywhere, so I drove right through the flower garden to the front porch of the house, not making any attempt to be stealthy. It was far too late for that. I ran up to the door and banged on it, feeling a little guilty at the idea that I might be waking up a sick old man, even though the man’s son had kidnapped my grandmother.

I blame Aunt Ruby and her southern manners for that.

“Oskar! I know you’re in there. Get out here and give me my grandmother.”

When the door slammed open, the business end of a pistol was pointing at my face. Perhaps I hadn’t thought through this “pound on the assassin’s door” idea well enough.

“Oskar?”

He didn’t look as tired and pitiful as he had at the store, so
that
had been an act, but he did look mad. Furious, really. Then he got a good look at me and started to laugh.

“
Donald Duck
pajamas? Really? Have you
ever
gotten laid?”

“Right. Well, those of us who aren’t out beating up and kidnapping defenseless old ladies in the middle of the night tend to wear pajamas,” I shot back at him. “Where is Leona?”

“Damn you, Tess, you always were a pain in the ass,” he said, almost calmly. “I wasn’t ready for this yet. Now I’ll have to kill you.”

My heart tried to leap out of my chest like Jack going through my front window. “Hey, whoa. You’re a business owner, I’m a business owner. There are always options. Let’s think this through.”

He stepped out on the porch and pointed to the steps with the gun. “Are you really trying to negotiate with me? What could you possibly have that I want? You’re not even a real banshee, like your grandmother. You’re some kind of useless half-breed.”

“Hey!” I stumbled on the step, as he shoved me with the gun in the middle of my back.

My brain was skidding around in my skull too fast and furious to care about a little nudge, though. “What do you mean? Why do you want banshees? Just to kill them? Torture them and bury them in shallow graves?”

“Why do people always say
shallow
grave? Deep graves would be better, wouldn’t they? Safer from discovery. Head for the barn, please.”

I stopped walking. “Are we really going to have a rhetorical discussion about shallow versus deep graves, Oskar? Right here? Right now?”

He shoved me again; harder this time. “The barn. Now. And we don’t have to have any discussion. I can just kill you now, if you prefer. But I thought you’d want to see your grandmother one last time. Was I wrong?”

I took a shaky breath. “Rhetoric is always good. Deep graves. I definitely prefer deep graves.”

Unless— “Did you kill her already?”

And where the
hell
was Jack?

“Why would I do that?” Oskar sounded honestly surprised, but then again, he’d made me believe he was just a poor, sad man caring for his sick father. He was a champion liar. Speaking of which, where was Felix?

“Your dad. Is he really sick?”

Oskar laughed, and now that I knew what he was, I could hear the madness in his laughter. Or maybe it was just hindsight, like how the neighbors of serial killers always said, “Oh, we knew something was wrong,” after the fact.

“He
was
sick,” Oskar said, and I could hear the smile in his voice.

“So now he’s better?”

“No. I killed him ten days ago. Now open the damn barn door, or I’ll shoot you right here.”

I absolutely, positively did not want to open that door.

He cocked the hammer on the gun.

I opened the door.

I
t was
like walking into a twisted, toy shop version of hell. Bodies were everywhere. Oskar was even sicker than I knew. He
kept
his kills. I made a low, pained noise that had never come out of my throat before and concentrated on not throwing up.

Bodies. Curled up in corners. Stretched out on cots. Chained to walls.

Wait
.

Chained? And why did it smell like unwashed, but not rotting, bodies?

“Why do you chain their bodies?” I asked, barely able to whisper over the anguish flooding me. “And where is Leona?”

Oskar looked at like I was stupid. “What bodies? I don’t bring the targets here to my home, you moron.”

“But…but…” I could only whimper and point. I still didn’t see Leona and was trying to retain just a little bit of hope.

Understanding finally dawned in his eyes. “Oh. I get it. No, they’re not dead yet. But thanks to you, I’m going to have to kill some of them.”

“What do you mean?”

He thought about it for a beat, and then he shrugged. “What the hell. I’ve never had the chance to explain my genius plan to somebody who could appreciate it. Maybe it’s time. Maybe it’s you.”

I tried to look like I was fascinated by what he was saying, and not looking around for a weapon.

“I blame those stupid toys,” he said vehemently.

“What?” I was dazed, and terrified for Leona and for myself, but I still think I would have understood him if he’d said anything that made sense. “The
toys
?”

Oskar pointed the gun at my mouth. “Shut up and quit interrupting, or I’ll kill you now.”

I shut up and quit interrupting.

“From the very beginning, it was brilliant. I’m so rich now, it’s not even funny. And not from the stupid toys.
Real
money.”

He walked over to one of the bodies and kicked it viciously, and the body jumped and yelped. I gasped.

They weren’t dead. They were drugged, maybe? Magicked?

I didn’t dare ask. Oskar was still monologuing, and he still had the gun.

Where was Jack, though? I was starting to worry that he’d fallen into a trap of some kind on the grounds. I shoved that fear aside, though—I had enough to be afraid of right here and right now.

“I never had magic, and my oh-so-wonderful father thought less of me for it. Just because stupid toys didn’t play tricks for people when I built them.
My
talent was better, though. I was good at the business side of things.”

Whine, whine, whine. Boo-freaking-hoo.
Get to the point, psychopath
.

I kept looking for a weapon, but saw him watching me with those cold eyes. I needed to sound interested. He wanted an audience. Suddenly, it came to me.

“The fleur-de-lis. That was you, wasn’t it?”

He laughed delightedly, like a parent pleased with a child’s cleverness, which was hideously ironic under the circumstances. “Yes! That was recent, though. And the collectors were too stupid to catch on very quickly. The one-of-a-kind guarantee shot our prices up into the stratosphere. Even though they
weren’t
. Way before that, though, I worked on packaging and branding. Collectors want to feel like they’re special. Idiots.”

Oskar pushed me down into a chair and waited for me to get it. It didn’t take long.

“You branded them as one of a kind, but they weren’t?”

“Right,” he crowed. “How could people stupid enough to collect toys ever find out? And with father too sick to build more toys, it became a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

His smile melted into a frown just then, and I had a bad feeling I knew what was coming.

“We never got along, though. Long before that, I knew he didn’t appreciate me. But then Mom planned a vacation that was supposed to be a big reconciliation, and, well…” His face twisted up in a parody of grief and anger, as if he didn’t really know how to fit authentic emotion on his features.

“She died,” I whispered, when he seemed to be waiting for an answer.

“Good,” a shaky voice called out from the back of the barn behind some boxes. “Then she never had to see what a monster her son became. Consider it your final gift to her.”

“Leona?” I jumped up out of my chair, but Oskar shoved me down to the floor.

“Shut up, you old hag,” he shouted. “Now I’m going to give
you
a present. I’m going to let you watch your granddaughter die before I kill you.”

Leona started to cry. Wrenching, helpless sobs that seemed—although I didn’t know her well—a little out of character. When Oskar turned his back to her, though, I saw the window above those boxes open, just a little bit.

“You know what I learned, Tess?” He started fiddling with the video equipment and monitors on the rolling cart next to him. “I learned that I had a
better
magic than my father. He could channel the magic of wood. I could channel the magic of
people
.”

He switched on the TV monitor, moved out of the way, and forced me to watch.

“She was my first,” he crooned. “The one who killed my mother.”

The woman in the video was lying on a cot that looked like one of the ones in this barn. She was screaming. Oskar had muted the volume, but I didn’t have to hear her to know. The strained muscles in her throat and face, her wide-open mouth…

I knew.

Something was wrong with her, but my mind didn’t want to see it. Refused to see it.

“I chopped off both her feet, one at a time, while she was awake,” he said in a sing-song voice,
forcing
me to see it. “And do you know what happened? She killed her cat with just the power of her pain and the force of her wail.”

This time I really did throw up. He waited until I was done and handed me some paper towels, as if he were a real human being and not a soulless monster.

“That’s when I knew,” he whispered. “I could use banshees to kill. I had to experiment, of course, and it takes a lot of them to achieve a true long-distance effect. But it’s easy enough to collect banshees when you’re hand-delivering toys across the country.”

I watched his mouth moving, but the words were buzzing in my skull like bees, and I was fighting so hard to get past the revulsion and horror so I could understand. “So you didn’t kill them? The banshees?”

He laughed. “No, silly Tess. Well, one. That P-Ops agent. She was clearly going to be a problem. But the rest of them are my
employees
.”

He sighed and switched off the video. “This has been fun. But now I get the pleasure of killing you before I move to my new ranch in the Idaho mountains.”

I shook my head, dazed with all this information coming at me so fast. “You didn’t kill the banshees. You use them to do contract assassinations?”

He suddenly and viciously kicked me in the ribs, and I thought I heard one crack. Pain smashed into me, and I fell, clutching my side. “What did I ever do to you?”

“I just got sick of hearing about you. Father liked you. Always talked about what a hard worker and self-starter you were. Like I needed something else hung over my head, bitch.”

He kicked me again, but I couldn’t fight back, because he still held the gun.

“And now I have to get moving, because I got a new contract tonight,” he boasted. “Five million bucks. The most ever. That makes this stupid toy business look like chump change.”

I couldn’t help it. I started laughing, in spite of the pain. “You idiot. That was us. We set that up to trap you, and here we are. You’re not going to Idaho, you’re going to jail.”

His mouth dropped open. “You what?”

“You’re going to jail. The sheriff is on her way out here right now,” I taunted him. “Better run while you still have a chance, you pathetic loser.”

He started jumping up and down, screaming.

Maybe he’d been around banshees too long. Or maybe that cracked rib had punctured my lung, because suddenly I was finding it very hard to breathe.

“What did you call me?”

I tried to laugh at him, but it just came out as a bubbling noise. “Loser. Monster. Pathetic little whiner. Can’t make the toys,
poor you
.”

He kicked me again and the world went red and shiny for a second.

“Shut up, shut up, shut up,” he screamed.

But I wouldn’t.

“Loser,” I whispered again.

So he shot me.

The last thing I heard before the darkness mercifully took me away from the pain was a tiger’s roar.