Private Eye: A Tiger’s Eye Mystery

W
hen Tess Callahan
, new owner of Dead End Pawn, meets her grandmother the banshee, life is about to get complicated. When Tess’s partner Jack Shepherd, tiger shapeshifter and P.I., gets involved to help them investigate a banshee-kidnapping spree, life is about to get deadly. Because nothing is ever simple in Dead End, Florida, and sometimes it takes a tiger’s eye to see the truth.

T
he banshee
in my pawn shop told me she was my grandmother.

Oddly enough, this was not the weirdest thing I’d ever heard in my years as manager (and now owner) of Dead End Pawn—or even the weirdest thing I’d heard this
week
.

I pointed to the sign behind the counter that my late boss had installed probably a quarter of a century before:

“If you’re going for a discount, sorry. Nice try, though. And Fluffy isn’t for sale.”

Fluffy was our shop mascot and, yes, that was
a
very
long story. She was a taxidermied alligator with a penchant for sequined scarves, and my newly adopted sister Shelley had done a good job camouflaging and decorating the bullet hole in Fluffy’s tail with designer duct tape. (I’d only had silver. I was hopelessly uncool at an ancient twenty-six to Shelley’s nine, as she delighted in telling me.) The woman had been eyeing Fluffy just before hitting me with the grandmother news.

“I beg your pardon, Tess Callahan, but you don’t seem to understand me. I’m Leona Carstairs, your mother Kate’s mother. I’m so pleased to see you again!”

Then she rushed around the counter and tried to hug me.

There were three problems with this: 1) I’m not a hugger, because I don’t touch strangers, 2) I don’t have any living grandparents, and—
see above
—3) banshee. I ducked out of the way, fast.

“Tess, I am so happy to see you again, but we have a pressing problem. We want to hire your friend Jack Shepherd, the ex-rebel commander. Is he around?”

“We?” I said weakly, looking around for her nonexistent companions.

“Me and NABR. The North American organization for Banshee Rights,” she said proudly. “I’m the president.”

Of
course
she was.

I backed out from behind the counter, so she’d follow me, and then studied my self-proclaimed grandmother. She had white hair that she wore in a shoulder-length bob, blue eyes the exact same shade as mine, and a kind of regal bearing that made her look like she was going to a duchess’s tea party. She wore a pale pink suit with a knee-length hem and tailored jacket, and she even had the requisite double strand of pearls around her neck.

In other words, she was polished, professional, and perfect—three “P” words that would never apply to me. I gave a rueful glance at my old jeans and green
Dead End Pawn
t-shirt. My “P”s were more polite, practical, and procrastinating.

“I don’t understand,” I finally said, both because it bought me time and because I really didn’t understand this at all.

A shadow crossed her elegant face. “I know. It’s my fault, really. Well, mine and your grandfather’s, but I should have had the courage to tell him no. Or leave the tyrant. But I was afraid if I left him, he’d come after you, and I wasn’t strong enough to fight him, then.”

Okay. I suddenly needed a drink, and it was eleven o’clock in the morning.

“I have a
grandfather
, too?”

“Not anymore. He died last week, may his soul burn in hell forever,” she said, the bitterness in her voice a bizarre counterpoint to her pleasant smile.

This set off my psycho alert, which was keenly honed after the events of the Blood Moon in January.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” I said automatically, but clearly it hadn’t been a happy marriage. “Look, I’m sure you’re a perfectly lovely person, but you have the wrong girl. I’m not your granddaughter. I’m not anybody’s granddaughter. I only have two living relatives—”

“Ah, yes. Mike and
Ruby
.” She frowned at me. “I’m sure that’s what they told you, but it’s not true.”

“But—”

“You’re my granddaughter. You look just like Kate. She was tall, too. You have the same wavy red hair, and the same blue eyes that all the women in my family have.”

My brain was whirling. In the pictures I had of my mother, she did look almost exactly like me. She’d been about my age in those pictures, too, I realized suddenly, since she’d died of cancer when I was three.

“But—”

“It’s the truth,” she said firmly, peering down at the jewelry counter. “This is a darling little emerald bracelet. If we weren’t in crisis mode, I’d definitely be in the mood for jewelry shopping. You have a lovely shop, dear. I can see you’ve made a few changes from how it used to be.”

Okay. So my grandmother was a little flaky. Also, I wasn’t happy about the implied slight to my former boss and dear friend, Jeremiah Shepherd, who’d been brutally murdered for trying to save my new sister Shelley from a witch.

Leona noticed the expression on my face. “No criticism to Jeremiah. He was a fine man, and I was so sorry to hear about his passing. I just noticed that you’ve updated the place. Added some feminine touches. The shop feels more welcoming.”

“Thank you,” I said. “I did a little reorganizing.”

Understatement, that. I’d gone into a frenzy of cleaning and organizing in the weeks after Jeremiah’s death, when I’d been drowning in grief and couldn’t find any other way to work myself into exhaustion each night so I could sleep. The shop where I’d worked for the past ten years was all mine now, and I was justifiably proud of it. The glass countertops sparkled from daily cleaning, every wood surface was polished to within an inch of its life, and I’d rearranged the for-sale items in what I thought were more buyer-friendly arrangements.

Jeremiah, an avid collector, had been fascinated by the weird, the unusual, and the magical. After he purchased an item, though, the thrill of the chase was gone, so he shoved it on a shelf somewhere with little to no regard to eye-pleasing displays that would tempt buyers. I was changing things up, inside and out. When my friend Dave had been building an addition next door for Jack’s new Tiger’s Eye Investigations office, I’d asked for the entire building to be painted a bright, cheerful yellow. Jack and Dave had given each other looks of disgust, but I’d gotten my wish. Bright teal shutters and a new coat of white trim completed the look, so the outdoors was as refreshed as the indoors.

“I’m very busy today, nice of you to stop by, but…” I pointedly glanced at the door. I’d had enough of crazy to last me a lifetime, so I didn’t need wannabe grandmas in my life.

She sighed in exasperation and put her hands on her hips, not moving. “Tess, think about it. You’re even named after me.”

I shook my head. “Sorry, ma’am, but Tess and Leona aren’t even in the same galaxy. Maybe Jack can help you find your actual granddaughter. He’s a private investigator, and—”

“Your
middle
name.”

“Close, but still no. My middle name—”

“Is Lenore. Because your idiot drunk of a father thought Leona was too
old-fashioned
. Ha. Like Edgar Allen Poe was so
modern
,” she said, looking down her aristocratic nose at the small, hand-lettered sign I’d posted recently on the curiosities cabinet that said:

“Smart move,” Leona said, tapping the sign with one polished fingernail, while my brain was still chewing on the Leona-Lenore similarity.

Suddenly, I knew how to get out of this ridiculous conversation. “I’ll just call Mike and ask him about you, if you don’t mind.”

She waved one slender hand in a languid gesture, like a lady of the manor giving permission for a servant to clear the table. “Please do. The sooner we clear this up, the sooner we can get on with things.”

“What things…you know what? Never mind.” I grabbed my phone and called Mike, because Ruby had a tendency to get too worked up.

“Hey, sweet pea, how’s it going?” Mike’s cheerful rumble filled my ear, and I relaxed. Ever since I was a little girl, Uncle Mike had been there to help me through the tough times, the weird times, and even the hormonal O-M-G-my-life-is-over-the-cute-boy-doesn’t-like-me times.

“Uncle Mike, hi. I’m fine. Sorry to bother you, but there’s a banshee in my shop named Leona Carstairs who claims to be my grandmother. I told her that she’s…mistaken,” I said, because
mistaken
was less rude than
a nut job,
and Aunt Ruby had supplied me with excellent southern manners and sugar cookies all my life.

Mike blew out a long breath. “Damn. She promised she’d let us know before she showed up. I’ll be right there.”

With that, he hung up, leaving me staring at my phone in shock. That was not the answer I’d expected.

“So it’s true? You’re my grandmother?”

Leona nodded briskly. “Now that we have that cleared up, will you please call Mr. Shepherd? We have an urgent problem, and we need his help. Somebody has been abducting banshees all across the country, and we think we’ve traced them to Dead End.”

I blinked at her, having no idea how to respond to my
grandmother,
who was talking to me about missing banshees, right there in my pawn shop. Twenty minutes earlier, the biggest problem in my life had been that my part-time employee and good friend Eleanor was out sick, and I was alone in the shop with the Golden Years Senior Tours bus on its way.

“I can’t…I don’t—”

She interrupted me again. “How did you know I was a banshee?”

“What?”

“You just told Mike that there was a banshee in your shop. How did you know? I certainly didn’t tell you,” she said, tapping the toe of one elegant black shoe on the floor.

I thought back. She was right. She
hadn’t
told me. Somehow, I’d just known. How was that even possible?

The tiny bell over the door jingled and Jack walked in, carrying a bakery bag that normally would have had me drooling in anticipation of hot, sugary goodness. But right then I wasn’t in the mood.

“Jack, this isn’t a good time. I have a problem I need to deal with.”

His eyes narrowed, and he gave Leona an unfriendly look, which made her take a quick step back.

Nobody can give unfriendly looks like a tiger.

“Do I need to kill somebody for you?”

I smiled in spite of the situation, because he was totally serious. It’s nice to know that somebody’s got your back. Especially when that somebody is an unbelievably hot, six-foot, four-inch, bronze-haired, green-eyed hunk of deadly shapeshifter.

“That’s very sweet, but no, thanks,” I told him.

“That’s very
sweet
?” Leona gasped. “What kind of things have Mike and Ruby been teaching you?”

“She’s a banshee, and she might be my grandmother,” I said, my voice only trembling a little bit.

Jack’s gaze snapped to Leona. “Is that right? Is that where you get your death visions from?”

“Of course it is. She’s a banshee, too,” my grandmother said, and I almost fell over.

“Really?” Jack gave me a speculative look. “That would explain a lot.”

“I am not
a banshee.”

“I’m afraid you are, dear,” Leona said, not unkindly. “At least in part.”

“I am
not
a banshee,” I repeated loudly. “I’ve never screamed a foretelling of anybody’s death in my life.”

“But you sometimes see people’s deaths when you touch them,” Jack countered.

“You what?” Leona’s face turned pale. “How is that possible?”

“I guess you don’t watch a lot of CNN,” I said bitterly.

My first vision had gotten a lot of press, none of it good, and none of it endearing me to my small town of Dead End, Florida, population five thousand or so. Dead End was a beacon for misfits of all types—human, supernatural, and other. We hadn’t yet determined exactly what “other” meant, but if Bigfoot ever turned out to be real, we’d surely learn that he had a winter home in Dead End. We were practically hidden in the heart of the Everglades, could drive to Orlando in an hour or so, and had a special charter predating the founding of the U.S. that gave us immunity from federal and state laws. This all added up to a town that was weird, wild, and wonderful, and the place I called home.

Leona shook her head. “I don’t know what to do with that, so we’ll examine it later. Right now, we have more pressing matters. Mr. Shepherd, I need to hire you to help me. Somebody is abducting banshees, and we think we’ve traced them here.”

Brakes squealed as a car skidded to a stop in the parking lot. We heard a car door slam and seconds later my aunt threw the door open.

Aunt Ruby was the classic example of what northerners liked to call a Steel Magnolia. She was a strong woman, but she was always gracious, polite, and full of southern charm.

And right now she was carrying a rolling pin.

“I told you I’d kill you if you ever showed up here again, you banshee bitch,” my sweet, gentle aunt shouted at Leona.

Naturally, that’s when the first of the Golden Years tour bus folks walked into the shop.

I buried my face in my hands. Just another Monday morning in Dead End.