“Boys,” I said.
“Chief Reed,” Jame replied.
Jame wasn’t a vampire—he was a werewolf. Big family of them owned the rock quarry south of town.
It had been quite the gossip—well, among those who knew about the supernatural inhabitants of the place—when Ben and Jame had moved in together. There had been more than a little speculation as to how the cross-species relationship would be handled. So far, they seemed to be dealing with it just fine: both the gossip and the relationship.
“About time you got here!” Dan Perkin yelled at the firefighters. “My whole house could have burned down by the time you showed up.”
“He’s not very happy,” Pearl said.
Right about then, Dan zeroed in on me. “Chief!”
Dan Perkin was a small man—mortal—in his sixties, thin as a plucked feather. He was wearing a baseball hat, dirt-stained jeans, and John Deere jacket. He was also dusty, angry, and pacing the dirt in front of the burn pile.
He stopped pacing and stomped right up to me instead.
“Cuff him to the wreck at the bottom of the lake and throw away the keys!” he yelled.
“Mr. Perkin.” I put one hand on his upper arm and guided him to the overhang of his back porch. I tried to get him to sit, but he was having none of it.
“Can you tell me what happened?”
“Canoe dummy wet napkin?” he yelled. “What are you talking about?”
“Blast blew his ears,” Pearl said. “You’ll need to speak up.”
I raised my voice. “What happened?”
“I almost died is what happened! Heard something out here. Came to look. Then: boom! Worse than that, my patch, all of it is gone! Blown to bits.”
“Patch?”
“My garden. Myrhubarb.” He pointed his finger at the sky. “As God is my witness, I’m telling you it was Chris Lagon.”
I was pretty sure that the gods really couldn’t be bothered to stand witness to most of anything Dan claimed to be true. He was always mad at someone, always convinced he’d been cheated, walked over, victimized.
Still, someone had just blown up his brush pile.
“Chris Lagon blew up your rhubarb?” I asked. “Did you see him?”
“No. But he knew I was going to enter the contest this year. Knew I was going to beat him in the drink category. Rhubarb root beer. It’s gonna make me millions.”
It was probably terrible, but I nodded and pulled out the notepad I kept in my pocket. I clicked the pen and jotted down Chris’s name.
“He threatened me!”
“When? What exactly did he say?”
“Yesterday. At his place.”
“House or business?”
“Brewery. Bum sleeps there in the boat. Did you know that? That must be a health violation.”
I knew exactly where Chris slept, and why. Saltwater creatures always stayed near water.
“He threatened you at the brewery?” I said in an attempt to derail his next rant.
