Bad To The Bone

Bad to the Bone

By Katy Munger

A Casey Jones Mystery

Copyright © 2011 by Katy Munger

Smashwords Edition Published
by Thalia Press

This novel is a work of
fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the
product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any
resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons,
living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of
either the author or publisher.
 

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It was one of those desolate, bone-ringing
winter days that sweep through the South a handful of times in a
century, freezing street bums to building grates and sending the
downtown whores shivering home to their grandmas. Anyone with a
lick of sense in Raleigh, North Carolina, was huddled indoors,
contemplating the bourbon botde and praying for sunshine.

My ex-husband never had a lick of sense in
his life. Except when he married me, of course.

Bobby D. was the first to spot him. "Look at
that moron," he said.

I joined him at the window and we stared out
at a tall figure hunched against the icy winds. The man was wearing
a fleece-lined denim jacket and a cowboy hat—clearly no match for
the cold.

Reality slapped me upside of the head. I
knew that hat. I knew that hunch. In fact, I knew that moron.
Worse, I had slept with him approximately 2,623 times before I
wised up. Not that I was counting or anything.

"I can't believe it," I said. "That's my
husband."

"Your husband?" Bobby's mouth dropped open.
A half-gnawed French fry toppled out and landed on the toe of my
boot.

"My ex-husband." How the hell had I made
that mistake after so many years?

"It's okay, Casey," Bobby said with annoying
sympathy. "The tongue is always the last to know." He spoke with
the authority of a man who has been married so many times he keeps
a separate little black book just for ex-wives.

We stood, shoulder to shoulder, watching the
cocky bastard who had once been mine swagger down the deserted
sidewalk toward our door. I'd know his walk anywhere. It was the
bow-legged cowboy rock of a Florida panhandle hotshot, a strut that
could carry him from a hot bean field to a dark beer joint to the
deck of a forty-foot cabin cruiser—all on someone else's credit
card.

Jeffrey Carmichael Jones. There was a time
when he had been my life. But that was then. And this was now.

"What do you want me to do?" Bobby asked
nervously. Was my beloved 360-pound boss quaking in his faux
leather boots?

"Shoot him dead?" I suggested.

"What?" That stopped him, French fry halfway
to his mouth.

"Just kidding. I'll take care of it. But
stay close, in case I need help kicking his sorry butt back out the
door."

"That's what I like about you, Casey," Bobby
said. "You're so sentimental."

The door opened and Jeff walked back into my
life. Just for a millisecond, my heart—which had failed to
communicate with my brain in the matter—improvised a brief
fandango. Then good sense took over. I wanted to rip his head off
and stuff it up his ass.

"Surprise." Jeff spread his hands wide, as
if ending a vaudeville act.

"Fuck off." I followed this suggestion with
a look that was enough to wither a lot more than his
enthusiasm.

"Ah, honey." He sounded hurt as only Jeff
could sound hurt. "You don't mean that. It's me. The love of your
life."

"The love of my life?" I was astonished.
"You're the human equivalent of herpes. Even when I can't see you,
I know you're there. And every day I live in dread that you might
pop up again."

"Honey Bunny," he protested in a
slow-as-sludge Florida drawl. "You can't mean that."

"Don't ever call me that idiotic nickname
again," I warned him. "My name is Casey. Use it. You're lucky I
don't make you call me Ms. Jones."

"You kept my name," he pointed out. "That
must mean something."

"Yeah. It means I'm ashamed to go back to my
own name. Thanks to you."

Wordlessly, Bobby D. headed for the
bathroom. He knew what was coming. Bobby is the only person in the
state of North Carolina who knows that I have served time, operate
with a forged P.I. license and carry a gun that I have no business
packing. At least, not legally. All thanks to my ex-husband.

It was not good news that Jeff was here. He
had a big mouth.

"What the hell do you want?" I asked him.
Believe me, it was a lot more polite than what I really wanted to
say.

"What makes you think I want something?"
Jeff took off his cowboy hat and twisted it in his hands. But he
wasn't cute enough these days to pull off the "aw, shucks" routine.
At least, not with me. His hair was starting to gray and he had
gained weight. A lot of weight. One more Twinkie and he'd explode
into just another beach bum whose bloated belly dangled over his
belt, gleaming like blubber under the Florida sun.

A stab of satisfaction warmed my innards—is
there anything sweeter in life than an ex-spouse who has aged worse
than you?

"What do you want?" I demanded again.

"It's private," he mumbled, looking around
the office with the same skeptical look a lot of visitors get. Hey,
we're a shoestring operation. We don't go in for curtains. Venetian
blinds are good enough for me. So is recycled metal furniture and a
token plastic plant. Most clients don't complain.

"Back here," I said grimly. I led him to my
office. He looked around it, as if fascinated by the peeling green
walls. I didn't say a word. He finally sat in the one chair
reserved for clients—an uncomfortable leather contraption fished
from a Dumpster behind the Legislative Building. I think it's the
electric chair the state threw out when they got religion. Too bad
I didn't have it hooked up.

I took my seat across the desk from him and
waited.

"You look real good, Casey," he said. "Real
good."

"I know," I admitted and waited some
more.

Jeff shifted uncomfortably. He was a one-hit
wonder. If he couldn't sweet-talk a woman into liking him, he had
no idea what to do next.

"Why don't you tell me why you're here?" I
suggested, once his feigned fascination with the dead plant on my
file cabinet had stretched to embarrassing proportions. "Just spit
it out." I propped my boots up on the desk and looked at him.

He stared back, mute.

"What?" I asked.

"You have a French fry on your boot." He
pointed to it as proof.

I flicked it off, annoyed at how flustered I
felt. I refused to give him the satisfaction of commenting.

He fidgeted some more, twisting that damn
cowboy hat like a lime above a glass of tequila. Up close, I could
see that he had aged a lot more than the fourteen years since I'd
last seen him. I didn't much like the reminder that we were both
growing old. His hair still flowed to his shoulders in blond waves,
streaked with darker, almost black, strands. But gray had invaded
his temples and his chin was sandpapered with a salt-and-pepper
shadow.

It shocked me. I never thought he'd get old.
I guess I imagined he'd also remain the same golden-haired,
reckless devil of my long-gone youth. What had I been thinking? We
all got old. If we were lucky. Even Jeffrey "Mad Dog" Jones.

Jeff was a Florida cowboy of the
beach-and-boat variety, a man who plied his trade beneath the
noonday sun. The damage was starting to show. His broad face melted
into deep wrinkles around his mouth, and his skin had a sickly
green tint to it if you looked beneath the surface tan. I suspected
his drinking, always heavy, had grown worse in the years since I'd
last seen him. And god knows what new pharmaceuticals he'd been
popping. His blue eyes had a milky quality to them, as if any spark
inside had been extinguished in a sea of chemicals.

"What are you looking at?" he asked
defensively.

I was looking at his feet. He was, as
always, wearing cowboy boots. They were pale green, lizardskin
shit-kickers that looked like cloven hooves if you squinted at
them. How very appropriate.

"Nothing," I lied. "I was just wondering
when you were going to explain why you've popped up after almost
fifteen years of conspicuous silence."

"Conspicuous silence? Big words for a little
lady."

"My words got bigger in prison. There was
nothing to do but read."

An even more awkward silence descended. We
both knew why I had spent a year and a half in a Jacksonville
prison, and we both knew that Jeff had not bothered to visit me
once during that time. Which was why the first thing I did when I
got paroled was to visit a Tampa divorce lawyer. And why the first
thing I did when parole was over was to leave Jeff far behind.

"You could have visited me," I said.

He wouldn't meet my eyes. "They were
watching me. Waiting for me to take that chance. We could both have
ended up behind bars. Can't we just let all that go? I'm sure we've
both changed a lot since then."

"I know I've changed," I said, thinking of
the naive, lovesick sap I'd been. I was smarter, stronger, more
cynical—and a hell of a lot happier—without him.

"I've changed, too," he claimed.

"How?" I asked, annoyed that he had strung
me along this far.

"Have you ever wanted something really
badly?" he began.

"Sure. The lead singer for the Goo Goo
Dolls. Ask me something hard."

"I'm serious. Like respect from other
people?"

"What kind of trouble are you in?" I asked,
disgusted that Jeff hadn't changed a bit. He was still hot on the
trail of some get-rich-quick scheme. "Don't bullshit me about it."
I checked my watch. "You have two minutes."

Panic added years to his already haggard
expression. "I had the money," he said. "I was going to give it to
them."

"Stop," I warned him. "Start at the
beginning. You have ninety seconds left."

His explanation gushed out in a rush of
words. "These guys fronted me some blow. I was supposed to pay them
in a couple of days, but the girl I was with disappeared with the
money and the flake. I got left holding nothing. No money. No bump.
They'll kill me if I don't come up with something."

"How much coke?" I asked wearily.

"Three kilos. I was just doing it once to
get back on my feet."

I lost it at that improbable announcement. I
had heard that phrase from him so many times, so long ago, that it
just didn't seem possible I could be sucked back into the vortex of
time and spewed out into the same old pool of shit.

"Shut up," I said, rising to my feet. "Get
out of my office. I don't want to hear any more. Don't insult my
intelligence. You don't get fronted three kilos unless you know the
sellers pretty damn well. Which means you've been dealing a hell of
a lot more than just that once. I told you eighteen years ago to
lay off selling that poison and I have not a shred of doubt that
you have ignored that advice every day since." My voice had climbed
to a screech. I stopped to regain control.

"I swore to myself that when you lied to me
about that car being clean, it was going to be the last time you
ever lied to me," I told him. "I paid for that lie with a chunk of
my life, while you were on the outside drinking margaritas with
teenage honeypots and stuffing coke up your nose and popping more
pills than Jacqueline Fucking Susann. So don't barge into my life
again after almost fifteen years and insult me with the same old
prairie shit. You've gotten yourself into real trouble now, Jeff.
That's too bad. I saw it coming a long time ago. But I'm not going
to bail you out."

"I can't go to the cops," he pleaded.

"No, you can't," I agreed. "And I guess this
is one time your parents won't be able to bail you out,
either."

"But she's here," he said, his voice almost
triumphant, as if the news would surely make me change my mind.
"The girl who took off with my stash is in North Carolina. Someone
saw her in Charlotte. Even if she's spent the cash, I could still
sell the coke, if she has it. If I can get it back, will you help
me unload it? They'll kill me if I don't come up with the money,
Casey. They'll kill me."

"I don't care. Get out of my office. I
already lost almost two years of my life paying for something that
you did and I'm not wasting another second on you."