Hound Dog Blues
Authors: Virginia Brown
The basement door opened. Looking up, she saw Jett through the cracks in the wooden stairs.
For a moment he just stood on the top step, the door propped open with his foot, then he let it close softly behind him but remained still and silent. He knew someone was here. The lights . . . she’d left the lights on. She barely breathed, just shallow breaths to keep from passing out, afraid he’d hear her. Bruno Magli shoes descended to the second riser. She briefly closed her eyes, thoughts of O.J. and his infamous shoes reverberating ominously in her brain. Surely, it was coincidence.
The shoes descended another step, then another, and she held her breath until her ears rang and her lungs ached.
The shoes stopped on the second from the bottom stair. She saw denim though the gaps, dark socks, long legs—she looked up and her gaze locked with dark blue eyes peering at her through the risers. Oh damn.
He smiled, but it wasn’t a very nice smile. “Well,” he said, “I seem to have an uninvited visitor.”
“I . . . uh, was just looking for you.”
“And now you’ve found me.” He reached the floor and turned to look at her where she’d edged out from beneath the stairs to feel for an escape route in the concrete block walls.
“Why yes,” she said, aware she spoke too brightly, “here you are. Now that you’re home, I’ll just be going.”
“No, I don’t think so.” He moved a few steps closer, near enough she could see the cold, dangerous gleam in his eyes. Uh oh.
“Oh, I don’t mind,” she said, “really. I think I hear my mother calling me.”’
“They’re not home.”
She stared at him suspiciously. “And how do you know that?”
“Because that obscene, puke green van is gone from the driveway.”
“Oh.” That sounded logical. After all, it had been Bobby’s first clue. So maybe Jett hadn’t done anything to them or was responsible for them leaving. Maybe.
He loomed over her. “I don’t like you being here, and I don’t like my privacy violated. Usually, I tend to get nasty about things like this.”
Uh oh. Not at all a promising conversation.
The Blue Suede Memphis Series
Hound Dog Blues
Harley Rushes In
Suspicious Mimes
The Dixie Divas Series
Dixie Divas
Drop Dead Divas
Dixie Diva Blues
Divas and Dead Rebels (2012)
General Fiction
Dark River Road
Blue Suede Memphis Series
Book One
by
Virginia Brown
Bell Bridge Books
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead,) events or locations is entirely coincidental.
Bell Bridge Books
PO BOX 300921
Memphis, TN 38130
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-61194-113-5
ISBN: 978-1-61194-097-8
Bell Bridge Books is an Imprint of BelleBooks, Inc.
Copyright © 2004 by Virginia Brown
Printed and bound in the United States of America.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.
Originally published as King’s Ransom, by ImaJinn Books, a division of ImaJinn.
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Front cover art and design by Don Thurakichprempri
Interior design: Hank Smith
:Mdhb:01:
To Lisa Higdon, who still hasn’t given up on me.
Thanks for the umbrella pokes, Jiminy!
“King’s been kidnapped.”
Harley Jean Davidson shifted her cell phone to her other ear and sighed. “Diva, what do you mean, kidnapped. Wouldn’t that be dognapped?”
Sitting in the drive-thru lane of the Taco Bell across the street from the buff brick building where she worked, Harley ignored the cashier leaning out the stainless steel window and kept sorting through a pile of change with her free hand.
“Harley,” her mother said, “this is serious. He didn’t come home yesterday. Your father’s beside himself.”
That seemed true. In the background, Yogi was yelling something about calling PETA to report the local medical school for abducting dogs for their research.
“Tell Yogi not to call PETA again,” she said quickly, “they’re getting tired of hearing from him. I’ll come by later.”
Leaning out of the car window, she deposited the exact change for her burrito supreme with extra salsa and cheese into the cashier’s outstretched hand. Fingers closed over the money, and the arm and cashier disappeared.
“You need to find King,” Diva said, and there was the slightest tremor in her tone that indicated her own distress. “He’s in danger. I sense great trouble if we don’t find him soon.”
Harley swallowed an exasperated sigh and said instead, “I have to stop by the office first, and then I’ll be right there. Okay?”
“Hurry,” Diva said plaintively. “We just got a ransom letter.”
“A ransom letter—for
King?
” Her voice went up on the last word, high-pitched and incredulous. “Who’d want that goofy dog?”
“Yogi.”
Oh yeah. That was true. Her father adored that maniacal mutt. Harley blew out a sigh and mumbled that she’d get there as soon as she could. It boggled her mind that anyone would willingly take a dog that gleefully dug holes in flowerbeds, dumped garbage cans, and—despite being neutered—went on regular romantic sprees through the neighborhood. Of course, taking the dog could be a form of protest against his depredations. That, she’d understand. After all, it wasn’t like her parents had money. Just the opposite. They lived in a small house her father had inherited from his parents when Harley was only fourteen, and eked out a meager living by selling junk and homemade kitsch at the weekly flea markets in the area. No, taking King had to be a protest of some sort. It was more likely the ransom letter was a list of demands, with keeping King inside a fence at the very top.
A car horn honked behind her, and Harley took the white sack being held out to her, and then shifted the Toyota into first gear. Jeez, she’d planned on taking the afternoon off. Now she’d have to deal with the damn dog. What a waste of sunshine on a dog that was probably in the holding pen at the Memphis Animal Shelter. Still, it wasn’t even noon yet and if she found him quickly, she could still manage several hours of sun and relaxation. Stress busters.
Cutting across eight lanes of traffic on Poplar Avenue took the nerve of a Navy Seal and the skill of a NASCAR driver, but she managed it, pulling into the parking lot of Memphis Tour Tyme offices without causing any wrecks or being seriously injured. She nosed the silver ’91 Toyota into the comparative shade of a hedgerow that ran along one side of the lot, and then sat back for a moment to think about her options.
She had to show up to look for the dog or guilt would overwhelm her, so it was a good thing she didn’t have a tour group this afternoon. As a charter tour bus driver and general flunkey, it was sometimes feast, sometimes famine. So she’d decided she’d bask in the sun to recover from the week before and rest up for the week ahead. Memphis in May was always a hectic time of year. This year she’d be ferrying people to or from the airport, to Beale Street and the annual world-famous barbecue, out to Graceland, and down to Jerry Lee Lewis’s home in Nesbit, Mississippi, and even down to Tupelo, Elvis’s birthplace. It wasn’t a bad gig, all in all, though on occasion—such as when she’d taken an entire Australian soccer team on tour—it’d get a little crazy. In mid-August, when thousands of Elvis fans descended upon Memphis and Graceland for the anniversary of Elvis’s death, tour groups ran three shifts and it’d be insane. The candlelight vigil on the anniversary eve would be the busiest night. A new job might be called for by then. Or maybe a convenient coma.
“Hey baby,” Tootsie greeted her when Harley stepped into the receptionist area offices on the second floor, “you’ve got some messages.”