Tequila Mockingbird

Readers love

R
HYS
F
ORD

Whiskey and Wry

“Rhys Ford has a knack for creating quirky well-rounded characters. I love the ones peopling this story, especially Damien. The pace is fast, the romance nice and slow, and the mystery plot kept me on the edge of my seat. I stayed up too late several nights reading.”

—Love Romances & More

“The icing on the cake is the lyrics and friendship flashbacks that start each chapter. It’s one thing to write a great book. It’s a whole other level of talent to write song lyrics, too, and Rhys delivers.”

—Happily Ever After (USA Today)

Sinner’s Gin

“
Sinner’s Gin
starts out strong, it will reel you in right away. The characters Rhys Ford brings us are charming, sweet and funny.”

—World of Diversity Fiction Reviews

“This author is quickly becoming one of my favorites because of the oh-so-enjoyable romances and well written mysteries. If you haven’t read this author do yourself a favor and start here with
Sinner’s Gin
.”

—The Book Vixen

By RHYS FORD

Clockwork Tangerine

Fish and Ghosts

Grand Adventures (DSP Anthology)

COLE MCGINNIS MYSTERIES

Dirty Kiss

Dirty Secret

Dirty Laundry

Dirty Deeds

SINNERS SERIES

Sinner’s Gin

Whiskey and Wry

The Devil’s Brew

Tequila Mockingbird

Published by DREAMSPINNER PRESS

http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com

Published by

Dreamspinner Press

5032 Capital Circle SW
Suite 2, PMB# 279
Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886

USA

http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of author imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Tequila Mockingbird

© 2014 Rhys Ford.

Cover Art

© 2014 Reece Notley.

[email protected].

Cover content is for illustrative purposes only and any person depicted on the cover is a model.

All rights reserved. This book is licensed to the original purchaser only. Duplication or distribution via any means is illegal and a violation of international copyright law, subject to criminal prosecution and upon conviction, fines, and/or imprisonment. Any eBook format cannot be legally loaned or given to others. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law. To request permission and all other inquiries, contact Dreamspinner Press, 5032 Capital Circle SW, Suite 2, PMB# 279, Tallahassee, FL 32305-7886, USA, or http://www.dreamspinnerpress.com/.

ISBN: 978-1-63216-013-3

Digital ISBN: 978-1-63216-014-0

Printed in the United States of America

First Edition

June 2014

This book is dedicated to Lisa Horan, my sister in coffee, words, and sleepless nights spent talking and laughing. This one is for you, pookie, because you wanted Con’s story so badly. Love you.

To the Five: Lea, Penn, Jenn, and Tamm. Always and forever *breaks out in cheesy song*. My love also to my sisters, Lisa, Ree, and Ren. I treasure each and every one of you.

To everyone at Dreamspinner who polishes up the coal I give them into a beautiful diamond. I send you all a huge thank-you—Elizabeth North, Grace and her fine editing team, Lynn, Julianne, Mara, Ginnifer, Grace, lyric, Shannon, and everyone else there. Soooo many thank
-
yous.

And once again, my Beta readers and the Dirty Ford Guinea Pigs. You guys keep me sane, talk me off the ledge, and most of all, believe in the stuff that comes out of my brain. Thank you. God thank you.

Lastly, to everyone who ever thought about picking up a guitar, drumsticks, or any other instrument to make music. Whether you know it or not, you keep our lives moving at a steady beat. I could not write without music. Nearly every single word in every single document I’ve written has had a soundtrack forged in someone else’s heart, mind, and soul. There is not enough gratitude to give you for that so I can only say well done and keep going.

You cracked me open

Sucked out my filthy core

Held my heart in your hands

And gave in when I begged for more

—
Begging Again

“F
UCKING
HELL
,”
Forest spat as he fell back into the garbage again. The damned Dumpster’s sides were too tall. Or he was too short. Either way, he couldn’t get the hell out of the thing, and his arms were now shaking from the numerous times he’d tried.

The last thing he wanted was to be there in the morning. Someone would find him, and that someone would bring down the cops on his head. Cops meant social services, and
that
meant he’d be spending a good amount of time fighting to get out of plastered walls and plastic suburbia.

He’d rather die in the Dumpster.

He just didn’t know if he could try to get out again.

He hurt so damned much.

Mostly—this time—it was his face. It definitely was his jaw. Or maybe his cheek. Whichever. He just knew he hurt. He tried to remember who told him to always trust guys in a minivan, but Forest couldn’t recall where he’d gotten that information. Whoever it’d been, he’d kick the guy’s ass whenever he found him again.

Because apparently guys in minivans with those happy little sticker children on the back glass
really
didn’t want to pay for their hand jobs ahead of time.

Now Forest was in a Dumpster because minivan guy thought it would be fun to toss him in there when he was done beating the shit out of him, and he still didn’t have more than fifty cents on him.

Fifty cents did
not
go a long way when someone needed food. Even dog-food tacos cost two for a dollar, and tax ate up a nice piece of the money pie all on its own.

“Yeah, Mrs. Whatever-the-fuck-your-name-is, tell the principal I’m stupid,” Forest muttered as he glared at the Dumpster’s too-high edge. “Go hungry for a bit, bitch, and you learn math real fucking quick.”

He heard a door slamming—a heavy thick-sounding door—and he froze, hating himself for holding his breath because it was stupid, and doing so made his chest hurt. There were bruises there too, Forest was sure of it, and his back wasn’t doing too good either. From the familiar throbbing along his spine, he was going to be pissing blood as soon as he had to take a pee.

Something slippery under him gave, and Forest went down, biting his tongue when he hit the hard floor. He tasted blood—for the third or fourth time that night—and the light from the streetlamps spun, leaving trails of stars on his eyes.

Swallowing at the salty taste in his mouth, he sighed, “Fuck me.”

A
SCRATCHING
sound caught Franklin Marshall’s attention. It shouldn’t have. Not in the middle of San Francisco’s Chinatown where the rats grew fat and happy on some of the best cuisine from the other side of the Pacific. No, this sounded different than a rat or any other kind of vermin he normally found in the middle of the night when he was dumping out the empties from his recording studio.

This sounded oddly human. Not so much the scratching but the murmuring noises accompanying them.

And it was coming from the open Dumpster at the end of the alley.

The Sound was a legacy of a hippie co-op he’d once been a part of. As his former lovers shaved their beards, or armpits as the case may be, and drifted off to respectability, he’d remained behind, mixing records for young artists with more talent than money and certainly with less sense than most. A decade ago, he’d finally gotten sick of the restaurant next door changing hands more often than a five-year-old girl changed her clothes, and he’d bought the place out, called it Marshall’s Amps, and turned it into a lounging coffee shop where he could get a good cup of Big Island coffee whenever he wanted.

With the bad restaurant-roulette gone, the vermin population dropped dramatically, but every once in a while, something—or someone—came creeping around, and Frank was forced to move whatever or whomever it was along.

He was too tired to care. All Frank wanted was to toss the trash out and go pack a bowl.

And at three o’clock in the morning, rousting an undesirable from a Dumpster was sometimes quite dangerous, and Frank knew he wasn’t getting any younger. There was only so much more damage an aging hippie musician could take before he’d have to start begging one of the studio guys to come help him change a lightbulb because he’d gotten the shit kicked out of him by a crackhead.

He put the bottles into the recycle bin and set a box of leftover pizza on the café table he’d set up under his RV’s awning. Ever since the city banned smoking within spitting distance of anything or anyone, he’d given up living in the apartment over the studio and instead opted to toss his bag of bones onto a queen-sized mattress in an old motor home. Owning a building was a headache and a half, but owning a parking lot smack-dab in the middle of Chinatown more than made up for the hassle. Especially since he’d found he rather liked living in a quasi-Gypsy state.

It was a long, cold walk to the Dumpster. Set in the tiny alley between his building and the street-front strip of stores backing the private parking lot he’d parked his motor home on, he’d agreed to let the stores use it for their daily trash on the condition they kept it as clean as they could. Still, people had to eat, and they tossed their leftovers into the Dumpster without thinking to close the lid to keep scavengers out. Frank really hoped it was a possum like last time instead of some old man looking for something to eat.

He needed to go grocery shopping, and short of giving a homeless guy a half-eaten jar of peanut butter and a spoon, he had nothing in the RV for a handout. Sure, he could have sacrificed the pizza, but there was going to be a nice tight bowl of Tai before he crashed for the night, and his stomach might catch a second wind by then. Leftover pizza came in handy for second winds.

His sneakers squeaked on the rain-damp blacktop, and as Frank got closer, it became apparent his vermin didn’t walk on four legs and certainly wasn’t an old man. Not by a long shot. Instead, the Dumpster appeared to be hosting a different kind of scavenger—one in the form of a rather scrawny preteen boy.