“Oh, good,” Addy said, not meeting his eyes. “I know Shep is relieved. He was so upset.”
The chief frowned. “I’d still like to know who took that body. I don’t like that kind of prank.”
“Addy, have them come in,” Muddy called. “Tell the chief there’s pound cake to go with that coffee. I’ll get it out of the freezer, and we can toast it with a little butter. It’ll be yummy.”
Mr. Collier’s face lit up. “That you, Edmuntina? I thought you were still scooter-pooting around the world. I had no idea you were back.”
“I’m back.”
The chief removed his hat and came inside. “I am a sucker for sweets. Maybe I will stay for a minute.”
Addy heard her aunt puttering around in the kitchen. “How did she know I have a pound cake in the freezer?” she muttered, hurrying to help. “Here, Muddy, let me do that. You go talk to Mr. Collier and the chief, tell them all about your world travels while I fix the coffee.”
“If you insist, dear.”
Muddy glided into the living room to greet the two men. Satisfied her aunt had things under control, Addy put on the coffee and sliced and arranged the pound cake on a cookie sheet.
“All I have to do is slather a little butter on the cake,” she said, getting a table knife from the drawer.
Brand took the knife from her. “I will do that. You go and get dressed. I find it too distracting knowing you are naked under that robe.”
“Think you can handle it?”
“I think I
have
handled it. Several times, as I recall.”
Addy blushed. “Not that, the cake.”
“Adara, I am ten thousand years old. In all that time, do you think I never learned to cook?”
She fluttered her lashes at him. “Eye candy and the man knows his way around a kitchen. Be still my beating heart.”
Brand pointed the knife at the bedroom door. “Out.”
She flew into the bedroom to dress. Casting a longing look in the direction of the bathroom—she’d dearly love a shower, but that would have to wait—she threw on panties and a bra, a pair of jean capris and a linen top, and slipped a pair of polkadot canvas flip-flops on her feet. She dashed into the bathroom to brush her hair and halted in front of the mirror. Good grief, her hair was a disaster. It had grown another two inches overnight and hung below her shoulders in loose platinum curls. At the rate it was growing, she’d have to cut it every two weeks or she’d be sitting on it. She secured it at the nape of her neck and quickly washed her face and brushed her teeth.
She scrutinized her reflection in the mirror. One good thing about Dalvahni DNA, makeup was superfluous. Her skin glowed, and her cheeks and lips were bright with color. The hair was a mess, though. She had no idea what to do with it. She ran a brush through her curls and wadded them on top of her head in a loose knot. A few stray tendrils dangled around her face. A couple of swipes of mascara and she was done. Primped and dressed in under five minutes. Not bad.
In the kitchen, she found Brand putting the finishing touches on the slices of pound cake. The rich aroma of coffee filled the air.
“Thanks.” She took the loaded cookie sheet from the counter. “I’ll stick this under the broiler. It’ll be ready in a jiffy.”
She put the pan in the oven and turned on the broiler. She was reaching into the cabinet for the coffee cups and plates when she felt Brand come up behind her. A warm shiver went through her that had nothing to do with the heat from the oven.
“I thought you were going to get dressed,” he murmured, caressing her bottom.
“What are you talking about? I am dressed.”
He caught her earlobe in his teeth. “This garment you wear shows the delectable curves of your, of your, oh-so-delectable rump. It makes me want to undress you.”
She turned and thumped him playfully on the chest. “Down, boy, I am
not
having hot monkey sex with you in the kitchen. There are people in the next room.”
He nuzzled her neck. “We could repair to that smallish space over there.”
“You mean the pantry? You want to have sex in the pantry?”
“It has a door that closes.” He lifted his head. The look in his eyes made her breathless. “We could be very quiet.”
She pictured them, grappling in the dark, her legs around his waist as he moved inside her, taking her with him to—
No, not going to happen. He’d have her screeching like a flock of toucans. Still, the idea was tempting. Maybe if she . . .
The smell of melted butter and toasted sugar brought her to her senses.
“Forget it.” She pushed him away. “I’m not having sex with you in the pantry.”
Brand sighed. “I suppose I will have to console myself with food instead.” He sniffed appreciatively as she set the cookie sheet on top of the stove. “That smells good.”
“It is good. It’s an old family recipe, butter, sugar, flour, eggs, and vanilla extract. You start the cake off in a cold oven. That’s what makes it crusty and delicious.” As she reached into the cabinet for a cake plate, she noticed the top was off one of her canisters. Sugar was all over the counter.
“What in the world?” She ran the tip of her finger through the spilled granules. “Muddy must have knocked over the sugar jar when she was looking for the coffee.” She shook her head. “It’s not like her to leave a mess. Oh, well, I’ll clean it up later. Let’s get this coffee and cake out there while they’re hot.”
Twenty minutes later, the pot of coffee was gone and all that remained of the pound cake was a few crumbs.
Chief Davis put down his cup and stood up. “Thank you, ladies, for the cake and coffee, but I reckon I’d better be off if I hope to make church.”
“My stars, I forgot today is Sunday,” Addy said. “Looks like I’ll miss church.”
“I think God will understand, my dear.” Mischief gleamed in Muddy’s eyes. “You’ve had a busy weekend.”
Addy’s cheeks burned. “Yes, well, I’ll see you to the door, Chief.”
The doorbell chimed.
“Don’t get up, Addy.” Chief Davis started for the door. “Let me get that for you on my way out.”
“Thanks, Chief,” Addy said. “I’ll bet that’s Shep come to tell me about Mr. Farris,” she told Muddy. “I’m surprised I haven’t heard from him by now.”
“What the hell?” the chief bellowed.
Addy jumped up. “What is it?”
Somehow, Brand was at her side by the time she reached the door and looked outside.
“Holy happy horse shit!” she squeaked, forgetting that a lady doesn’t cuss and never refers to a body function, thereby committing a double violation of the Rules of Lady-tude that Bitsy had drummed into her head since infancy.
Fortunately, Bitsy wasn’t here. But Addy felt sure even Mama would cut her a little slack under the circumstances. She was looking at the four-ton bronze statue of Jebediah Gordon Hannah, Spanish-American War hero, champion of the lowly peanut as the cash crop that saved Behr County farmers during the devastating cotton blight of 1915, and all-round swell guy.
For more than eighty years, Jeb had held his two-foot-high peanut aloft in the town square, a symbol of the enduring spirit of the American farmer and a beacon to peanut butter lovers everywhere.
But not anymore. Somebody had planted Jeb and his giant peanut on Muddy’s front lawn. Somebody had also decapitated poor Jeb and left the severed head at the statue’s feet.
Correction:
something.
A jagged black mark marred the front of Jebediah’s Cavalry uniform, a mark that matched the scar on Addy’s right breast.
The demon had left a calling card, a great big headless four-ton calling card.
Addy was no expert on demons, but she knew a challenge when she saw one.
This was a declaration of war, demon-style.
Chapter Twenty-two
T
he chief stomped out to his patrol car. Addy followed him outside, her ever-constant Dalvahni shadow at her heels.
“I gotta call this in. The mayor needs to be notified. And the town council,” he said.
The chief’s face was bright red. Addy had looked like that once after a day at the beach. But, the chief wasn’t sunburned. Nope, the chief was about to blow a gasket.
“How the hell did somebody move this thing all the way from downtown?” he fumed. “It ’ud take a forklift to move the son-of-a-bitch. Don’t matter. If I find out who did this, I’m gonna bury ’em under the jail. Stealing a corpse is one thing, but this here is desecration of a war hero. It’s like shooting the pope a bird. These suckers have crossed the line.”
“Who shot the pope a bird?” Muddy stepped out onto the porch. She gave a startled yelp when she saw Old Jeb. “Why is there a decapitated Civil War hero sitting in my yard?”
“Spanish-American war hero, Muddy,” Addy said. “Jeb was a Rough Rider, remember? Saved Behr County from the pernicious boll weevil by convincing local farmers to stop planting cotton and go nuts. That’s why he has the big peanut in his hands.”
“Is that a peanut? I always thought it was a pickle.”
“What in the world gave you that idea?”
“Lots of folks around here grow cucumbers, Addy. Pickles are big in the food industry. Think about it. There are bread-and-butter pickles and sweet pickles, and kosher dills and hamburger chips, not to mention gherkins and pickle relish.” She peered at the statue. “It’s not a very good peanut, if you ask me. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have thought it was a pickle.”
“Don’t look so much like a pickle to me as a cat turd,” Mr. Collier said, eyeing the statue. “I had this cat once that made the oddest-shaped poop. Kinda like that pickle there.”
“I remember that cat.” Muddy cocked her head. “ ’Course, looking at it from this angle, it could be a dildo.”
Oh, good Lord. Like the City Fathers would commission a statue of Hannah’s favorite son holding up a two-foot dildo.
“Got me a notion about that statue.” Mr. Collier lowered his voice. “But I’d better wait until the chief leaves. Wouldn’t want him to think I’m crazy.”
Addy rolled her eyes. Everybody in Hannah thought Amasa Collier was crazier than a sack of weasels.
As it turned out, the chief didn’t leave until after noon. Not until the mayor, the town council, the whole police department, the fire and sheriff departments, and half the town had traipsed through Muddy’s yard gawking at Headless Jeb and scratching their collective heads over such a peculiar thing as a migrating statue. Robyn James showed up from the
Hannah Herald
to take pictures and interview the rubberneckers, since the chief would say no more than, “The matter is under investigation.” To be exact, what the chief said was, “You bet your
beeping
ass the
beeping
matter is under investigation,” and then he stomped off.
“But, Chief, I can’t put that in the paper!” Robyn wailed, whereupon the chief promptly told Robyn where he could stick the
Herald.
“I’ve never seen the chief so upset,” Addy later confided to Evie. “Good thing Mama didn’t hear Mr. Potty Mouth. She’d a-gone all Bit-zoid on his butt.”
Various opinions were espoused by the gawkers as to how Jeb got himself in such a predicament. Payback by the Paulsberg football team was the most popular theory. It was no secret the Wildcats, Hannah’s longtime sports rival, still nursed a grudge over a prank the Hannah Blue Devils had pulled three years earlier involving the Paulsberg mascot. Neb the Billy Goat was kidnapped, dipped in a vat of purple dye, outfitted with a black hooded mask, and attached to a dozen large weather balloons, the idea being to float Neb over the football field at halftime. The pranksters miscalculated Neb’s weight, and he drifted over the grandstands and into the wild blue yonder, never to be seen again.
A Bolo went out for a purple flying goat, and animal rights activists and volunteers from five surrounding counties turned out to look for the missing mascot. Crop dusters and pilots from Montgomery to Mobile scanned the skies to no avail. Neb had vanished. The story made the Mobile paper and was picked up by the national press. Neb’s picture appeared on the front of the
National Globe
, under the headline
FLYING PURPLE GOAT ALIEN TERRORIZES REDNECKS
.
Last fall all hell broke loose at the Paulsberg/Hannah football game when the Blue Devil fans started chanting
“Spa-a-a-ce Goo-at”
There was talk of ceasing competition between the two teams until things cooled off. Like in a few hundred years.
Some folks reckoned Jeb’s statue was beamed up by space aliens and deposited in Muddy’s yard after the ETs had their wicked way with him, although sunspots, earth vortices, a message from Elvis, electromagnetism, a diabolical communist plot, and the pull of the full moon were also popular theories. Mamie Hall reckoned as how the town witch was responsible, but nobody paid her much mind. Miss Mamie blamed everything from her sciatica to the weather and the ping in her Ford Taurus engine on Cassandra Ferguson.
It was a hot day. Addy fixed a pitcher of lemonade and carried it outside to offer the chief and the others a cold drink. Brand went with her.
She stopped on the porch. Brand stopped, too.
“Dude, the ‘me and my shadow routine’ is getting on my nerves. Stay here.”
“No.”
She set the pitcher down and put her hands on her hips. “I’ll be right over there offering those nice officers something to drink. Notice the big crowd of people? I’ll be fine.”
“The djegrali are masters of dissemblance. They could be secreted within any of these humans.”
She looked at the crowd milling around the front yard. They all looked pretty normal to her. Well, normal for Hannah. “So, how do you tell if someone has been possessed?”
He shrugged. “It is difficult, especially if the demon is very clever. The djegrali crave human sensation and physical pleasure. Those possessed will often overindulge in food, drink, drugs, or sex. Some will become violent, if the demon or the human they possess has a taste for bloodshed. Sometimes, the victim acts out of character, or displays some other sort of eccentricity that gives the demon away.”
“Hate to break it to you, but this is the South. We pride ourselves on being eccentric. You’ve got your job cut out for you.”
“Adara, I was trying to explain how one human can tell if another human is possessed. The Dalvahni have other ways.”
“Like what?”
“The djegrali give off an odor when they are excited or angry.”
“You mean they stink?”
“Exactly.”
“Eww. What do they smell like?”
“It is most unpleasant, like rancid fat or something burning. I do not know how to describe the scent. Once you smell it, you will know it. It is unforgettable.” He paused. “But that is not the only means the Dalvahni have at their disposal.”
“Ooh, Mr. Mysterious. Do tell.”
His lips twitched. “I believe you would call it ‘woo-woo.’ ”
“Say no more. You know that stuff gives me the creeps.”
“My objective is to keep you safe, Adara. By any means possible. It is not my intent to annoy you or present you with the creeps. I will make myself inconspicuous.”
He vanished.
Addy blinked. “Brand?”
“See? Inconspicuous,” he said in her ear, making her jump.
“I will not get on your nerve, and you can go about your business.”
“Nerve-
zah
, dude. And don’t think about copping a feel because I can’t see you.”
Addy and her unseen escort approached the police officers. The area around Headless Jeb had been cordoned off by three-inch-wide yellow crime scene tape. Officer Curtis stood outside the line of tape contemplating the statue.
“Maybe it moved on its own,” he offered at last.
The chief gave him a scathing look. “Moved on its own
how,
Dan? You think the damn thing grew legs and walked here?”
“I saw something on the Discovery channel last weekend about sliding rocks in Death Valley,” Officer Curtis said. “These rocks are on a dry lake bed, see, but they move. Leave long trails in the dirt behind them like a snail. Real creepy stuff, rocks moving on their own. I’m not talking little rocks, either. These rocks weigh like a hundred pounds. Got them brainiac scientists stumped, I can tell you that.” He shook his head. “Rocks ought not move. It ain’t natural. But it’s a known fact them rocks in Death Valley move. Look it up, if you don’t believe me. Maybe Jeb moved on his own.”
Chief Davis’s face went from tomato red to a deep, eggplant purple. “And how, exactly, do you propose he did that?”
“Wind. Wind’s a mighty powerful force.”
“The wind.” Chief Davis took off his hat and ran his hand through his hair so that it stuck up in all directions. “You think the
wind
moved a four-ton statue.”
“Or an ice sheet like that Agassiz glacier that flattened North Dakota like a pancake. Saw that on the Discovery channel, too.”
“It’s a hundred degrees in the shade, Dan,” the chief said. “You could fry an egg on the sidewalk, and you think a giant sheet of ice moved into town and deposited Jeb Hannah on Miss Muddy’s front lawn and then crept back out again while I was inside her house having cake and coffee. Great Jumping Jehosephat.”
Officer Curtis looked stubborn. “I’m just saying.”
“And
I’m
just saying you’re an idiot.”
Uh oh. Time to run interference before two of Hannah’s Finest had a smackdown in Muddy’s front yard.
“Lemonade, Chief?” Addy asked with a bright smile. She handed the chief a glass and turned to Dan Curtis. “Dan, would you like something to drink?”
“Thanks, Addy.”
He took the glass without looking at her. He was too busy eyeballing the chief. Jeez, talk about your testosterone overload. The two men eyed one another like a couple of banty roosters in a barnyard. Addy was contemplating turning the garden hose on them when Brand whispered a warning in her ear.
“Despair all ye mortals,” he said in a voice of doom. “The mama approacheth.”
For a man with no sense of humor, he sure was turning into a wiseass.
Less than a minute later, Mama’s car pulled up.
“Car-lee, I brought lunch.” Mama didn’t say the chief’s name, she
sang
it, making it four syllables instead of two. “
Carrah-lee-hee
,” she said.
Toting an oversized picnic basket, Mama picked her way across the lawn. She still wore her Sunday clothes, Addy noticed with a pang of guilt. She’d blown church off, what with the sexual marathon of the night before, and Muddy and Headless Jeb showing up, but maybe God wouldn’t tap her on the head too badly for last night’s carnal sin. Make that sins
plural.
More like a whole night of uninhibited, full-blown, out-and-out debauchery. Bad Girl Addy had opened up a can of Behr County whoopass on Good Girl Addy. And she didn’t regret it one little bit. No sir-ree bobtail, not a smidge. Given a choice, she’d do it all over again. And again . . . and again.
She was officially a sex addict when it came to a certain guy. Thank goodness her God wasn’t one of those fire-and-brimstone-hellfire-and-damnation-type Supreme Beings. Her God was a laid-back kind of fellow with a sense of humor. He created the duckbilled platypus, and he let the bishop get away with wearing that funny hat. An omnipotent being with a sense of humor, if ever there was one.
And, a good thing, too. Otherwise she’d be in deep doo-doo in the lust-as-a-sin department. Along with anger, pride, gluttony, envy, greed, and sloth, lust was one of the seven deadly sins, right? One out of seven wasn’t bad. Oh, very well. Maybe she’d been guilty of envy and anger a couple of times. She’d sure envied Ruthie Bowab that pair of neon pink roller blades Santa brought her in the fifth grade. And just looking at the Death Starr made her mad, so add anger to the list. But all in all she hadn’t done too badly in the sin department.
Whoops, was that pride? That left gluttony, greed, and sloth. Crap, she forgot about her and Evie’s biannual mint chocolate chip ice cream binges. Six out of seven. Yikes. The jaws of hell yawned before her.
Mama handed the picnic basket to the chief and turned her lasers on Addy. “You still wearing that wig, Addy?”
“I told you, Mama. It’s not a wig.”
“Hmm.” Which in Mama-speak meant
We’ll talk more about this later, young lady.
“Why weren’t you in church?”
“Muddy came home, and then things got a little crazy when Old Jeb showed up.”
Bitsy blanched. “Muddy’s here?”
Hah, that had her on the run. Muddy did and said what she darn well pleased. Drove Mama nuts.
“You heard from your brother this morning?” Mama tried to act casual, but Addy could see her looking out of the corner of her eye for Muddy. “He wasn’t at church, either.”