Nut job was buying it. He wrapped his arms around her, nuzzling against her tasty ribs.
“But you need to eat, honey. You're getting thinner and thinner.”
“Tack a couple of tomatoes to my chest. I'll look a lot better.”
Bert began to laugh. A chilling laugh that chilled me. He spun, pointing the cleaver at my nose.
“You idiot! Do you think I'm that stupid?”
“Yes.”
“What good husband doesn't know the sound of my wife's own voice?”
“You, I was hoping.”
“Enough of this tomfoolery! This ends now!”
He launched himself at me, screaming and drooling insanely, his probably very sharp cleaver raised for the killing blow.
Then Lieutenant Jackie Daniels shot him in the head.
Chapter 14
“You're an idiot, McGlade,” Jackie said, using the cleaver to cut away the ropes.
Carl was dead on the floor. He was finally with his wife. Because she was dead on the floor too. Jack had made me sit there until the Crime Scene Unit arrived, taking pictures and gathering evidence. They cut the bodies down before they freed me.
“So how did you know I was here?” I asked.
Jack wore a short skirt and heels that probably cost a fortune but still looked kind of slutty, just how I liked them.
“Norma Cauldridge,” she said.
“Who?”
“George Cauldridge's wife.”
“Who?”
“She called me, wanted me to arrest you for trying to poison her. I asked where you were, and she said probably here. After we nabbed those necrophiliacs at the cemetery last night, I needed to find you anyway to get your statement. Lucky I heard your girlish screams which gave me probable cause to bust in here without a warrant.”
I wasn't listening, because it sounded like a boring infodump.
“Can I give you my statement tomorrow?” I asked. “I gotta take a monster dump. I had some hot dogs earlier that are going to look better coming out than going in.”
Jackie leaned in close. I braced myself for the kiss. It didn't come.
“Did you give Norma a bottle full of your urine and tell her it was apple juice?”
“Maybe. Did she drink any?”
“She said the second glass went down rough. She's going to sue you, McGlade.”
“She can take a number. Seriously. I've got one of those number things. I swiped it from the deli.” I grinned. “You can come over later, and watch me cut the cheese. You know you want to.”
“I'd rather gouge out my own eyes with forks.”
“Don't be coy. This could be a way to pay back what you owe me.”
She cocked her hips, hot and sexy. “Excuse me? I just saved your ass, McGlade.”
“Are you kidding? This is front page news. You'll probably get a promotion. There's no need to thank me. It's all part of the service I perform.”
“I really think I hate you.”
“Really, Jackie?” I raised an eyebrow. “Really?”
She nodded. “Yeah, really. Be in my office tomorrow morning for your statement. And try to stay of trouble until then.”
I stood up, stretched, and gave her one of my famous Harry McGlade smiles.
“I'll try. But trouble is my business.” I winked. “And business is good.”
Read the Jack Daniels series by JA Konrath: ?Whiskey Sour?Bloody Mary?Rusty Nail?Dirty Martini?Fuzzy Navel?Cherry Bomb
Shaken
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Excerpt from SUCKERS by J.A. Konrath and Jeff Strand
- 1 -
Andrew
It all started with mushrooms.
Of course, lots of bad things start with mushrooms, but these were the non-hallucinogenic variety. My wife Helen despises mushrooms. I mean, she loathes them with every ounce of her being, and while she's admittedly a rather petite woman, she's able to cram a lot of loathing into those ounces.
I myself am no big fan of mushrooms or other fungi products, although in college we had a lot of fun with fungus when my best friend Roger got Athlete's Foot. We called him “Itchy Roger” over and over and over and over again. I have to admit that it seems a lot less funny now than it was at the time, almost a bit pathetic in fact, but trust me, it was hysterical and kept us entertained for hours on end. The next semester, we entertained ourselves by playing darts with slices of pizza.
Anyway, I was thirty-three and long out of college (well, not that long, but that's another story) and I'd spent the evening out drinking with Roger. Of course, we were drinking coffee, and only one cup each because that stuff was expensive as hell. I'd been given two tasks to complete before I returned home:
a) Purchase a jar of spaghetti sauce.
b) Ensure that the jar of spaghetti sauce did not include mushrooms.
When I got to the grocery store, I selected a jar of sauce. It had fancy calligraphy on it and a drawing of a smiling man in a chef's hat. The part of my brain that should have been saying “Hey, dumb-ass, don't forget about the no-mushrooms rule!” instead said “Gee, I wonder if this place has any sour gummi bears?” I bought the sauce and the gummi bears and left the store.
As it turns out, the drawing was not a smiling man in a chef's hat. It was a giant mushroom. Damn those poofy chef's hats.
Now, I don't want you to think that my wife is the kind of person who would throw a screaming temper tantrum over me purchasing the wrong variety of spaghetti sauce. Instead, she's the kind of person who would bottle up rage over my lack of a job, my questionable babysitting habits, the incident where I accidentally didn't shut the freezer door securely and ruined hundreds of dollars' worth of frozen meat, and a few dozen other infractions, and let it all come exploding out of her petite frame in the form of extremely strong disapproval over my choice of spaghetti sauce.
I shouted back at her (though an onlooker might have mistaken it for shameful cowering and groveling) and headed out to do a sauce exchange. As I walked into the driveway, I realized that I'd left my car keys on the kitchen table. Having just been lectured for my lack of responsibility, I didn't think it was a good idea to walk back into the house and sheepishly say “Uh, forgot my keys.” The store was only ten blocks away. I'd walk.
To keep the walking time to a minimum, I cut through several backyards. I didn't notice the man breaking into an unfamiliar house until I practically bumped into him. I'm not very observant.
He had wavy brown hair and a two-day beard that looked like dirt on his cheeks in the semi-darkness. Clenched in his teeth was a penlight, aimed down at the doorjamb where he wiggled a pry bar. Upon hearing me he dropped the tool and dug into his trenchcoat, removing a handgun the size of a loaf of handgun-shaped French bread.
“Beeb, brubbubber!” he said.
“I beg your pardon?”
He removed the penlight from his mouth. “Freeze, bloodsucker!”
“I beg your pardon?”
I'd been called a lot of things in my life, many of them only a few minutes ago, but “bloodsucker” was a new one.
The man pointed the gun at me and glanced down at the jar in my hand. “What's that? A jar of Type O positive?”
“It's Momma Helga's Spaghetti Sauce.”
“Why does it have a penis on the label?”