Pickups and Pirates (Southern Relics Cozy Mysteries Book 3) Read online

  “You comin’ or goin’, butter bean?” Dad asked from behind me.

  I stood in the doorway. “Waiting on Luke to make it back. Is that fried chicken I smell?”

  My father offered me a warm hug. “You know Granny. If there’s a problem or situation, like a good Southern woman, she thinks it can be fixed with food. Let’s get your stuff up to your room first and then we’ll let her try to fatten you up so you can survive the coming hurricane.”

  Staying in a house protected by magic during a hurricane sounded like a great idea, especially knowing the number of people out there without the benefit of the protection I lived with. But with all of the windows boarded up and the electricity out, it felt a little bit too much like a tomb. The wind and rain howled and thrashed against the exterior. Once in a while, the house shook or thunder boomed and rolled outside, but we could only exchange worried looks with each other in the glow of lit candles and a few floating light orbs.

  Sometime after midnight, we all decided to try and get what rest we could. Dani gave me a hug before heading to her room across the hall from mine. Luke followed behind me and gasped in surprise when he entered.

  “There’s a double bed in here,” he observed. “That’s new.”

  I made a running jump and landed in the middle of the soft mattress. “I know. Dad told me he thought I was too old for that old single one anymore. When I asked him why, he didn’t give me much more than saying I was an adult who could make her own choices.”

  “Wow. That’s very mature of him.” Luke closed the door behind him, his expression turning from astonishment to heated. “So, we have the blessing of your father.”

  “Don’t get too cocky there, mister. Granny Jo threatened to suddenly appear and ruin the mood if things got a little too active for her liking,” I warned. “Based on her old-fashioned values, she thinks there should be a more permanent commitment between the two of us first.”

  I couldn’t bring myself to say the word “ring” or “marriage” in front of him. He’d hinted at the possibility before, but nothing more, and I didn’t want to scare him away. It might be hard to commit to someone he’d have to watch die unless he turned me, which is something he was worried about ever since letting me consume a drop of his blood and watching what it did to me.

  Luke placed a finger to his lips. “Then we’ll have to stay quiet.” He stalked over to the bed and joined me with a slow kiss.

  Something large crashed on the roof above us and I jumped. “Well, that’s not gonna help the mood. I hope whatever magic is protecting this house holds through the storm.”

  My boyfriend slid off the bed and pulled the covers back. “Get in and I’ll protect you tonight.”

  Shucking off my pants and socks, I crawled in underneath the hand-stitched quilt. He propped pillows up behind his back and let me snuggle against him. The weight of the covers plus the comfort of his embrace gave me more peace than I’d expected, and I yawned in his face instead of planting my lips on his.

  “Ooh, sorry,” I apologized, covering my mouth.

  He pulled me against him and stroked my hair. “It’s fine. Why don’t you try to get some rest? You’re going to need it once this is all over and we have to clean everything up.”

  The howl of the wind picked up and I shivered, crushing myself against Luke. “How about I tell you a story?” The deep timbre of his voice vibrated under my cheek resting on his chest.

  “Does it start with ‘Once upon a time’?” I joked.

  He chuckled and tugged gently on my hair. “Sure.”

  “And is there some kind of charming prince involved?”

  His body tensed for a brief moment. “Actually, there is. One that doesn’t like being a royal and wants to defy his family and go out into the world and live his own life.”

  I yawned through my next question. “But what about the prince getting the girl?”

  Luke kissed the tip of his finger and laid it on my lips to hush me. “This is my story to tell. Once upon a time, there was this dashing young prince…”

  I dozed off somewhere between rooting for the prince as he sailed away from his kingdom and him reaching a strange land where he could start a new life. When I woke up sometime later, my head rested on a fluffy pillow instead of Luke’s chest. I felt around for him but found the other side of the bed cold. The wind outside still gusted from time to time but with less intensity. Figuring he was somewhere searching for the room he’d lost before, I snuggled down under the quilt and fell back asleep.

  A constant buzzing woke me up, and I sat up in bed, searching through groggy eyes for the source of the sound. Something dropped on the floor with a plastic thud. Realizing what it was, I lurched over the side of the bed to pick up my spell phone, relieved to find it unharmed.

  “Hello?” I answered, flopping back on my pillow.

  “Ruby Mae?” a woman’s distraught voice called out. “This is Rissa Ward. I’m sorry to bother you so early.”

  I sat up and stared into the dark. “What time is it?”

  “Just after six. I came out here as soon as it was clear enough because I was worried about her,” she rambled.

  Luke opened the door and light from the hallway and the scent of bacon invaded my room. “What’s up?” he mouthed at me.

  “Rissa, I don’t understand. Is there something I can help you with?” I asked, just as confused as my boyfriend was. “What’s going on?”

  The voice on the other side spoke with alarm. “She wasn’t staying in a safe place and with everything I had to do to protect the museum as well as my own home, I didn’t think to make her come stay with me or somewhere else. And now, everything is all wrong and it’s my fault.”

  I stood up and paced in front of my bed. “I’m sure that’s not true, Rissa, but you need to focus and speak clearly because I don’t understand who you’re talking about and what’s happened.”

  “It’s Auggie!” she sobbed into the phone. “I think she’s dead!”

  Chapter Four

  The emergency call from Rissa, plus waking up in a different room than normal, scrambled what little sense I could muster. It didn’t take long for the rest of the family to catch up and jump into action, encouraging me to go figure out what my friend meant and letting me off the hook from cleaning up our property after the storm.

  Aunt Celia met me at the bottom of the stairs with a large basket. “Here, sugar. There’s a little breakfast for you and Luke in there to get you started plus something for your friend and the person she thinks might be missing.”

  The scent of her signature ooey gooey cinnamon buns didn’t quell the ball of doubt brewing in my stomach. “I think it might be way worse than that, Auntie.”

  She patted my shoulder. “Keep your head facing the sun and your feet planted on the earth and you’ll be ready for what comes next no matter what it is. But whatever you find out, don’t let your friend grieve on an empty stomach.”

  A horn honked from outside, and my aunt opened the front door for me. Dad hopped out of his beat-up truck and hustled over to take the basket from me. “It’s all gassed up, and I added some tools in the box in case you find the need. Where’s Luke?”

  As fast as the wind from last night, my vampire boyfriend blurred and slowed to a walk right beside our porch. “Right here, sir. I fetched you some better shoes to wear, Ruby, since we might have to step through a fair amount of debris to get around.”

  Sitting down on one of the creaky stairs, I pushed Slobby Bobby off of me while tying up the laces of my muck boots, not caring that some of his drool ended up on my arm. “Is my little cottage still standing?”

  “I’ll have to take a closer look for any specific damage, but as far as I could tell, we’ll have to clean up all the downed branches and stuff from around it rather than do any repairs to the structure. It’s a tough little place,” my boyfriend admitted.

  Dad ruffled the top of my head on his way up the porch. “Your uncle and I will go down there
and pull the boards off your windows to inspect it for you. You worry about whether or not that woman your friend knows is hurt.”

  Dead. The word Rissa had sobbed was dead, not missing. We always expected for there to be lives lost when a hurricane hits, even more of them when it comes on fast and hard like this one had. But the loss of someone I had talked to very recently rocked me to my core. I couldn’t imagine how Rissa might feel.

  I approached the passenger side of the truck and got in, careful not to step on the basket of food. As distracted as my thoughts were, I didn’t need to be in charge of getting us there.

  Luke squeezed my leg and rolled down the window as he put the truck in reverse. “We’ll let you know more or if we need anything,” he called out to my Dad.

  Road crews were out in full force, clearing downed trees and branches from the roads. Despite my growling tummy, I couldn’t eat anything while we made our way past numerous scenes of devastation. Trailers and small houses that had been here for years were wiped out. We had to take a couple of detours to avoid washed out roads.

  Getting to the small bridge that led out to Radio Island took us three times as long as usual, but we made it across only to find the two-lane road a mile up ahead completely blocked by trees. A small sedan was parked off to the side on a dirt road, and we rolled to a stop and pulled off right behind it.

  “I’ll bet that’s Rissa’s car. There aren’t many places for people take shelter out here, and I hope that most of them went somewhere much safer.” Pulling out my spell phone, I dialed the number that had woken me up.

  A loud ringer chimed a couple of times off in the distance before Rissa picked up. “Hey, are you here?”

  “Yeah, I brought Luke with me. We’ve got some food and some tools with us. There might even be a first aid kit in here, too. What do you need?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” Rissa murmured on the other end. “I’m just sitting out front. I can’t go in there again.”

  My stomach dropped with renewed worry. “We’re on our way. Do we just keep going down this road?”

  “You should see a cabin on your left. If you hit the water, you’ve gone too far.” She hung up before I could ask her anything else.

  Luke slammed his door shut. “I can come back for supplies once we figure things out.” He came over to my side and pulled me into a hug I didn’t know I needed.

  Melting into the embrace, I heaved a huge sigh. “Guess I’m not as strong as I thought. I’m not sure I want to see another dead body.”

  He placed his lips on the top of my head. “Yes, you are. Out of all the people she could call, your friend contacted you for a reason. Let’s go help her first, and if there is a body, we’ll call someone else for help. I’ll be right there with you, okay?”

  We dodged the wreckage left from the hurricane and potholes full of water down the muddy road, and I made a mental note to thank Luke for getting me the different shoes to wear. Winged shadows passed over the ground in front of us and I looked up to see some pelicans flying overhead. The stillness of the morning contrasted with the tempest from the previous night. The further we pushed forward, the more I could hear the sounds of the tide.

  “That’s Auggie’s Land Rover. She brought it over from England, so the driver’s side is on the right.” Luke pointed out an old vehicle parked next to a tiny wood cabin. A large branch from a pine tree poked through one of the windows.

  Rissa wiped away fresh tears and stood up from a large tree trunk laying on its side by the front door. “Hey.” She offered a weak wave and wiped under her nose with the back of her hand. “Sorry I’m an absolute mess.”

  I rushed over and gave her a big hug, rubbing her back. “It’s fine.”

  Luke closed the distance between us but stopped short of the open door. He closed his eyes and scented the air. A slight nod of his head confirmed what I knew he was looking for. There was blood somewhere inside the cabin.

  “Rissa, why did you call me and tell me you think something happened to your former professor? Shouldn’t you have contacted the police?” I pressed in a soft voice, trying not to upset her.

  She sniffed. “I guess I wanted someone who would understand why I couldn’t call them. See, Auggie always said someday, someone would figure out that what she knew could be very valuable. She made me swear that if something ever happened, that I would preserve her work before anyone else got involved. Including the police.”

  Luke stroked his chin. “I don’t want to seem indelicate, but that’s a pretty big promise to make. Shouldn’t you be inside tending to her injuries instead of sitting out here, worrying about whether or not she’ll be mad at you for not upholding your end of a foolish pact?”

  Confused and getting a little impatient, I stepped back and crossed my arms. “Is your professor dead or just hurt?”

  “I don’t know,” Rissa replied, big tears flowing down her cheeks. “I’m aware I might not be making any sense, but…” She stopped and drew in a deep breath. “Here, come see for yourself.”

  Watching where we walked, we followed her through the open front door and into the darkened one-room cabin. Needing some light, I conjured an orb to help. From my initial assessment, the storm hadn’t raged solely on the outside. The contents of the cabin lay strewn about in ruins. Furniture lay out of place and upended everywhere. Books were open or tossed without care, the pages bent or torn out. Random papers were scattered across every surface. The tree that had broken through the window outside lay on the bed, covering the tattered blanket with its branches and needles. But there was no sign of the professor.

  Rissa walked around a spot on the floor. “That’s why I’m sure something happened to her.”

  Luke stilled for a moment before crouching down. His finger pointed at the dark drops of liquid on the floor. “Someone got injured or cut. But it’s not a copious amount.”

  “That’s a good thing, right?” I asked, shooting a hopeful glance at Rissa, who began picking up papers to avoid the uncomfortable situation.

  When I checked with Luke, I could sense the internal debate going on inside his head. Having seen what tasting even a small amount of blood did to him and not wanting him to pull away from me like he had before, I shook my head no to refuse that optional shortcut. His shoulders relaxed, and he nodded once in silent gratitude.

  “Rissa, leave the stuff alone. You probably shouldn’t be touching all that much if this is the scene of a crime,” I scolded, and then chose to try and trigger Rissa into thinking with her head instead of her heart. “Since she’s clearly not here, it’s hard to tell what might have happened to her. Let’s go through the possibilities.”

  “Her car’s still here, so if she left, she’d be walking,” Luke stated.

  My friend stopped messing with the papers and paid attention. “There wasn’t any water on the floor when I came in. If she’d gone out and left the door open during the hurricane, there’d be a huge puddle inside, wouldn’t there?”

  My spell phone buzzed in my pocket, and when I checked it, Ebonee, the coven leader’s name flashed on the screen.

  “That’s a good point,” I encouraged, ignoring the call for fear of losing our momentum. “So, that narrows down the timeline. Without moving from where we are, what else do you notice?”

  The three of us observed the nearby area. Luke pointed at a worn-out chair pushed away from a bookshelf and an ottoman toppled over. “There’s an old blanket piled on the floor next to those. Maybe it got dumped there when she stood up.”

  “Auggie often fell asleep in a chair rather than in bed,” Rissa confirmed with a sentimental grin, but held up a finger when a thought dawned on her. “Just a second. There’s too much of a mess in here if she left the cabin early this morning. It looks like things got blown about by the wind at first. But why are all the drawers pulled out and turned upside down in the kitchen?” She cast her own light orb and rushed into that part of the cabin.

  Agreeing that we might be witnessing
a staged scene, I chose to move around more, picking up the remains of a brown box that had been used at some point to mail something. The cardboard panel with the address label was completely torn off, and it would be impossible to identify what had been inside it out of all the mess on the floor.

  The mattress of the bed creaked while Luke pressed on it. “Completely dry. However, this branch broke through the glass, it didn’t happen when there was rain.”

  “Another attempt at making it look like all this happened during the storm?” I suggested. More glass crunched under my boot as I made my way toward him, but my foot caught something metal and kicked it under the bed. “What was that?”

  Luke lifted up the tattered and faded quilt hanging off the edge of the mattress. He reached under the frame and grunted until he pulled out the item and held it up. “It’s a key.”

  “And a potential clue,” added Rissa, joining us. “Let’s see if it fits any locks around here.”

  The key was too small for the front door and too big for a small dented metal box we discovered on a shelf.

  “Could it be too something not here?” I considered. “This isn’t her primary residency, is it?”

  Rissa thought for a moment. “No, last I knew she had an apartment in the mountains. She always called this place her bolt hole, but when I looked in the refrigerator and a couple of cabinets, there’s an awful lot of food. My guess is she’s been here longer than I was aware. Maybe even living here full time. But then, why wouldn’t she tell me?”

  The phone in my pocket vibrated again with Ebonee’s name. With one click of a button, it stopped, and I moved more of the mess around to try to find the lock to go with the key. After a few manic moments, frustration outweighed my curiosity.

  “Wait a minute, Rissa,” Luke said, gaining our attention. “You said she called this place her bolt-hole? Did she use that term specifically?”