Hound Dog Blues Read online

  Mrs. Trumble apparently intended to be sure Harley didn’t linger. She whacked the Toyota with the broom a few times, just to speed Harley on her way. Crazy old bat.

  “You tell your father I’m gonna call the cops on him,” Mrs. Trumble yelled as Harley got the car started, “and then he’ll be sorry he messed with me.”

  The car lurched forward as she shoved it into first gear, and she took the corner so fast the jogger on the curb was just a blur. She saw no sign of King in the two blocks to her parents’ house on Douglass, and by the time she parked out front, it had occurred to her that Mrs. Trumble seemed too irate to still be griping about her now refurbished car. Had something else happened?

  Yogi just blinked at her when she asked him that question. His worried green eyes went wide and innocent. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Oh God,” Harley said, and tossed her backpack to an overstuffed chair. “I have a feeling you know very well what I mean. Did you violate the restraining order?”

  Yogi spread his arms out at his sides. “Now Harley, why would I go over there?”

  Hands on her hips, she stared hard at him. Tall, rangy, with a potbelly not very well hidden under a ragged tee shirt that said Flower Power over a screen-print of marijuana plants, her father still resembled the cartoon bear of Jellystone Park fame for which he’d been nicknamed by his peers some time in the sixties. Shabby sandals and a pair of cutoff jeans that brushed his knobby knees completed his customary attire. Gray-streaked brown hair framed his angular face, short on top, long on the sides and with a ponytail down the back. Stylish.

  “I don’t know,” Harley said, “why would you go there? Looking for King, maybe?”

  Yogi raked a hand through his hair so that it stood up atop his head like a rooster’s comb. “Well, I was out looking for him yesterday, but that was before we got the letter this morning.”

  Diva appeared in the doorway to the kitchen. Tiny bells tinkled on her long skirts, and her pale blond hair was pulled back and held in twin ponytails by strips of ribbon edged with tiny bells. At fifty-two, Deirdre “Diva” Davidson was still a classical beauty, with high cheekbones and a straight, slim nose. She looked like Bo Derek and acted like Sylvia Browne. And her wide, cornflower blue eyes also had some magical power to render Harley motionless. How daunting.

  “It’s true, Harley,” she said. Her husky voice drifted across the living room cluttered with balls of yarn, half-finished dream catchers, burning incense, and chunks of crystal and wire atop tables and the slipcovered couch. Hound Dog by Elvis played on their CD player. Yogi must be really stressing. An Elvis fanatic, even his dog was named after the late singer, King referring to Elvis’s nickname as The King. Now Yogi played his favorite Elvis song while Diva added from her pose in the doorway, “King’s been missing since yesterday. I sense darkness, anger, and even . . . danger.”

  Melodramatic to the core, that was Diva.

  “All of that follows King wherever he goes,” Harley said flatly. “The dog is a menace. I’m amazed no one’s shot him yet.”

  “This is different. He’s been abducted this time.”

  Diva glided toward her. It was spooky how she could do that, and how her naturally husky voice could get even lower, blending a tinge of mystery like Harrison Ford in drag. She stopped in front of Harley and held up a folded sheet of paper and an envelope.

  “All right. Let me see the letter.” When Diva held it out, Harley took the sheet of typing paper and flipped it open, expecting a notice from the city animal shelter. Crude letters cut out of magazines and newsprint met her startled gaze:

  BrINg WHaT YOU KnOw We WaNT Or ThE DoG diEs

  Do iT Or YoU GEt YoUR DOg BAcK A LItTLE At a TimE

  A huge clump of black and white dog hair clung to some of the pasted letters. “Oh, this is stupid,” Harley said irritably. “It must be some kind of kid’s prank. What do you have that anyone could possibly want?”

  “Nothing.” Distress mixed with anger in Yogi’s voice, and he flapped his arms in the air in frustration. “There’s no reason for anyone to take my dog.”

  While she could think of a dozen different reasons, Harley stuck to diplomacy. “Did you see who left this letter? Where’d you find it?”

  “It was in the mailbox on the front gate,” Diva said, “but I don’t think the mailman left it.”

  “Well, he’d certainly have a strong motivation to see King gone since he gets chased every time he delivers the mail,” Harley pointed out.

  “It’s the cheese,” Yogi said indignantly. “He’s always delivering some kind of Cheese of the Month Club to old man Burbage down the street, and King can smell it in his bag.”

  “Still, he’s had to Mace King twice just to deliver your mail. Why do you think the post office no longer delivers to the front porch like they used to? Never mind—that’s not the issue here. This may be a prank, or someone’s trying to make a point. Did you talk to the neighbors? You know Mrs. Shipley sees, knows, and tells everything that happens within a two mile radius.”

  “Not this time,” Diva said with a shake of her head that set the tiny bells tinkling. “But our new next-door neighbor is involved somehow. It’s not his fault. Destiny brought him here. Still, it’s really too bad Mrs. Sherman had to sell her house and go into the nursing home.”

  Harley stared at her mother. There were times that Diva’s belief in karma and her psychic abilities was more irritating than enlightening. In fact, most of the time. It didn’t help that she was right often enough to validate those beliefs.

  “Bruno Jett has King,” Yogi said with a dark glance out the front windows as if their new neighbor skulked on the front porch. “He has to. He’s made some threats before.”

  That wasn’t good—she’d met the new neighbor. Bruno Jett was tall, dark, and dangerous in a good-looking, rough sort of way. “Threats? To you?”

  “No,” Yogi said, “but he did threaten King.”

  “Oh, well, that’s understandable.”

  “And he had a gun.”

  “That’s not. Damn, Yogi, why didn’t you tell me about this before now? No one should be allowed to go around waving a gun at people.”

  “He wasn’t exactly waving it, Harley, but I saw it. And he did say my dog was a menace and I needed to keep him up before there was trouble.”

  “Oh.”

  “You’re supposed to go talk to him, Harley,” Diva said softly.

  Eying her mother, Harley bit her tongue to keep from asking why. She was sure she didn’t want to know. Not that it did her any good. Diva reached out to take her hands, holding them snugly between her palms. Heat radiated from her long graceful fingers. Her eyelashes fluttered, a precursor to one of her psychic conversations that were usually obscure and always irritating.

  “My spirit guides tell me that there’s a strong connection with him and King’s abduction. I believe it’s ordained that you speak with Mr. Jett.”

  “No, I don’t think so.” She pulled gently free of Diva’s grasp, but managed a smile. “Tell your spirit guides to stop meddling.”

  “Rama and Ovid don’t meddle, they advise.” Diva smiled back to show there were no hard feelings. This was a familiar argument. “Speak to Mr. Jett. I think it’s vital.”

  “If you’re looking for a confession,” Harley said, “I doubt you’ll get one. If anybody took King, it’s probably Mrs. Trumble. Why is she still so mad after you paid for her car’s repairs? Are you sure you haven’t been back down there?”

  “Maybe just a little,” Yogi said after a moment, and his face crumpled. The Elvis CD changed to New Age pan pipes and bells. “King was gone all night. I thought maybe he’d gotten locked in her garage again somehow.”

  “Oh, Yogi.” Harley shook her head. “She’s probably calling the cops on you right now.”

  “Call Bobby. He’ll help us out,” Diva said, then turned to Yogi and took his hands in hers much as she had Harley’s only a moment before. A look passed between them t
hat made Harley feel invisible. There were times still that they were more like the runaway teenage lovers they’d once been, rather than middle-aged and holding on to the comfort of a world that had long since passed from the scene and become questions for Trivial Pursuit games.

  “I don’t think Bobby will get involved,” Harley said, “He’s a homicide detective. I can’t ask him to look for a dog. But I can ask him if Mrs. Trumble has filed charges again.”

  Really, there were times her parents asked too much of her. Calling Bobby was one thing. They’d been friends since they were both kids, and he was familiar with her parents’ eccentricities. Bruno Jett was an unknown entity, however. He hadn’t been especially friendly since he’d moved in last month, barely acknowledging Diva’s neighborly overtures. Not that she blamed him there. Diva’s idea of being neighborly involved principles of feng shui and an offer of a tarot reading. It could be daunting to the uninitiated. To be fair, Jett looked like he could use some good advice, or at least a shove in the right direction.

  “So, you’ll go talk to Mr. Jett, won’t you?” Diva said. “Just to set Yogi’s mind at ease.”

  “I don’t think he’s home,” she lied, hoping for the best. She needed a distraction, anything to get her out of this, but before she could invent one, the front door swung open and her younger brother arrived home from his morning classes at the university. Reprieve. She actually smiled at him.

  Slouching into the living room, tall and lanky and almost too thin to cast a shadow, Eric blinked in surprise at her obvious pleasure in seeing him.

  “Hey chick.”

  “Hey dude.”

  Their standard greetings over, she eyed his hair with interest. It was bright blue, almost matching his sleepy eyes. An improvement over last week, when he’d dyed it purple.

  “You’ll be bald before you’re thirty if you keep abusing your hair,” she said next, and he shrugged.

  “I’m thinking of shaving my head anyway.”

  “Great. Another interesting look. What’s that?”

  He lifted his hand, stared down at the chain with neon green plastic strips woven into the metal links, then said as if just remembering, “Oh yeah. I found this on the curb in front of scary dude’s house.”

  Yogi’s hand shook slightly as he reached for it, and Harley recognized the shape of the required rabies tag on its S hook dangling from the end of the chain. Uh oh. This could not be good.

  “It’s King’s,” Yogi choked out, fingers closing on the chain. “So Jett does have my dog.”

  All eyes turned to Harley.

  Two

  “Maybe King just lost his collar,” she suggested, but not even she believed that. “It could be true. It could. Really.”

  It was obvious they thought otherwise. Yogi turned toward the kitchen, and Harley heard him mutter something about finding a tire iron. Alarm bells rang in her head.

  “Uh, Yogi, I hope you remember you’re a pacifist,” she called after him, but the slamming of the door leading to the screened porch was his only reply. Oh holy shit, she thought, and gave her mother a pleading glance.

  “Perhaps you’d better talk to him,” Diva said softly, and Harley wasn’t sure if she meant Yogi or Bruno Jett, but decided not to take any chances. Yogi first, then Jett only if she had to. Her brother was right. The man really was kinda scary.

  Harley glanced toward her brother for help, but he was already on his way to the kitchen. Private moments eluded him, as he dwelled in a world of art classes at the university and his own diverse entertainments, which usually included a baggie of weed at some point. His real name was Eric but his friends called him Toke, for obvious reasons. He’d be no help, that was plain.

  She found Yogi in his workshop sorting through piles of discarded wire and coffee cans full of the crystals Diva used to make her dream catchers, beaded jewelry, and sun catchers for the windows. They took the stuff to the local flea markets every week or so and made a tidy sum that Yogi then hid somewhere. His trust in banks was on par with his trust in the Federal government—at a very low level. If not for the fact he’d inherited this house from his parents, they’d probably still be living in communes out in California.

  Communal life was a memory she’d tried hard to forget, but occasionally it reared its ugly head at unexpected times. Tarantulas stood out vividly in her mind, as did foraging rats as big as raccoons, and a near-fall from a high cliff while looking for the outhouse in the dark. The move to Memphis had been one of convenience for her parents, and an Act of a Merciful God for her. She thrived on things like clean sheets and indoor plumbing, even though Diva had never seemed to mind having the stars for night-lights. But Yogi had been as glad as Harley to move into a real house, she thought, and seemed happiest making his metal sculptures and jewelry out here in his workshop behind the garage.

  “Hey,” she said, and Yogi glanced briefly up without pausing in his search through wire, crystals, and half-finished pieces of jewelry, “what are you looking for?”

  Empty McDonald’s hamburger wrappers fell onto the floor from the big plastic trash can, and he picked them up quickly and stuffed them back into the bin. So much for sticking to Diva’s vegetarian regime. No wonder he liked hiding out here so much, with King always at his feet hoping for crumbs, no doubt. A couple of closet cow carnivores.

  “A weapon,” Yogi muttered. He stopped when he found an iron bar as thick as his thumb. Anger flickered in his eyes. “Someone took my dog. If it wasn’t the new guy next door, then who’d do such a thing?”

  “I don’t know, but I’d say Mrs. Trumble’s a pretty safe bet.” She let Yogi absorb that for a moment, then added gently, “If you’ll stay here, I’ll go talk to Jett first. Okay?”

  After a tense moment, he nodded. “Okay.”

  “Good. Give me the tire iron.”

  “It’s part of a hydraulic jack,” he said, but handed it over and she tucked it under her arm with a relieved smile. Most of the time Yogi adhered to his pacifist leanings, but as there had been a few notable exceptions that were still sharp in her memory, there was no point in taking any chances. Especially when it came to his dog, a maddening creature with absolutely no redeeming qualities that Harley could see—save for inspiring such intense devotion from her father.

  That knowledge sent her tromping through the front yard a few moments later. This small section of real estate comprised Diva’s ecological statement. Crabgrass, dandelions, chickweeds, and nutsedge grew right along with four o’clocks, asters, purple coneflowers, and cannabis. The latter was cultivated in the backyard, lovingly tended right next to the tomato plants. Salsa with a real buzz, another holdover from the sixties counterculture.

  While the Davidson house on Douglass was comfortable, a bungalow style built in the thirties, with a wide front porch, thick stone columns painted white, and a stained glass transom over the front door, Mrs. Sherman’s former house was smaller, a two bedroom deal with wrought-iron bars on the front windows, and a small front porch.

  The last time she’d been on this porch had been to retrieve poor Pooky for reburial in Mrs. Sherman’s back yard after King had thoughtfully dug up the dead cat and put it on her porch—an event that had immediately preceded Mrs. Sherman going into a nursing home. But then the door windows hadn’t been blacked out like they were now. It looked a little eerie. Some kind of dark curtains hung in the front bay window, as if Bruno Jett didn’t want anyone peering in, not even the sun. What was he, a vampire?

  Dredging up her rapidly flagging courage, she opened the screen door to rap sharply on the front door. Nothing. She used the brass door knocker. The sound seemed to echo through the house. He had to hear it if he was home. She knocked again. Hope flared. Maybe she’d been right after all and he wasn’t home. Maybe he was having trouble getting the coffin lid up—

  The front door jerked open. Not exactly short herself, Harley had to crane her head way back to see his face. Her eyes widened, probably looking a glow-in-the-dark green by
now.

  He stared down at her with a scowl normally reserved for someone finding a bug on their fried bologna sandwich. Or half a bug. It took her back, but she didn’t intend to leave without at least asking about King.

  “Mister Jett,” she said in an embarrassing squeak that made his eyebrows go up, “have you seen the dog that belongs next door?”

  It was difficult to stay focused on his face. Not only was she getting a crick in her neck, but she was far too aware that Bruno Jett was one nice hunk of masculinity. He had a chest and broad shoulders that were unencumbered by any hint of a shirt, a washboard set of abs she’d only seen on TV commercials, and stonewashed Levi’s unsnapped at the waist and suggesting even more raging masculinity below a nonexistent belt. Jeez, at close proximity, this guy was sexy enough to give her night sweats for a month.

  As she’d expected, he denied seeing King. His voice seemed to come from his toes, deep and raspy: “Not since I chased his ass away from my garbage cans.”

  “Was that recently?”

  “Yesterday. Can’t you keep him inside a fence?”

  “He’s very resourceful. So, you haven’t seen him today?” Bruno Jett made her fidgety. He had black hair in need of a trim, a beard-shadowed jaw line, and dark blue eyes that seemed to see things she didn’t want him to know. Like the way her heart had started beating double time and her breathing went shallow. Lean, hard muscle seemed to do that to her lately. She really needed a steady boyfriend. It’d been way too long.

  Straightening from his lazy slouch against the doorframe, he shook his head. “I don’t keep up with neighborhood pests. That includes my next door neighbors.”

  Her brows snapped down over her eyes and she opened her mouth to say something sharp, when a sparkle of rainbow light behind him caught her attention. She stood with her mouth open, coherence vanishing like smoke.