The Grimrose Path (Trickster, #2)(69)
I gave up on my voyeuristic wishes and walked to the glass door and opened it. There was no old-fashioned tinkle of bells but there was the smell of burning sage. Someone was cleaning out the bad mojo or thought they were. Burning sage was an old custom and who was I to say it didn’t scrub out the invisible stain of foul intentions, but I did know it had never kept me out of a building or a village, and my intentions? That all depended on whom they were focused on.
I also smelled dog. Lots and lots of dog. A truly massive amount of doggy odor overpowering the sage.
The office was one small room but with very little furniture, making it seem roomier than it was. There were two chairs against one wall and a tiny round table in the middle. Opposite the wall the chairs were parked against was the Dog Wall. I wasn’t terribly surprised. There were at least thirty pictures of dogs. If you studied them, you’d see they boiled down to about six dogs. There was a gray-muzzled hound, a mutt (I had a soft spot for mutts) with a small head and big fat belly, a cocker spaniel with about four teeth left and the inability to keep its tongue in its mouth, a three-legged Siberian husky, a Chihuahua with an underbite (if there were hellhounds, Chihuahuas would be fighting for the job), and a German shepherd. I hoped the last wasn’t the one I’d tried to pick up while drunk in New York. Werewolves versus German shepherds—add a few gallons of alcohol and it was a mistake anyone could make—even another werewolf.
“I guess you see why they call me the dog lady.”
I’d heard the flush from behind a door and was already facing her when she came out. Her hands were pink from the recent washing and she had enough dog hair on the sweater she was wearing to have knit a second one and had enough left over for matching mittens. “Someone has to be the dog lady on your block. Why not you?” I had no problem with it. I liked dogs. I’d been a dog once or twice. Dogs were good people. Furry, but good people.
Her eyes were sharp behind bifocals. “That’s very true, young lady, if a bit slippery of tongue. Pull up a chair.” With her tightly permed short gray hair, she could’ve counted as a seventh dog herself, an intelligent poodle who might or might not nip you if she thought you deserved it. Rolling her wheelchair up to the table, she reached into a flower-patterned bag that hung from the armrest. It looked as if it ought to hold yarn and knitting needles, but it wasn’t a half-completed scarf she pulled out. No, it was a .357 Magnum to be laid on the table. “Nothing personal, dear. But I’ve been robbed once. I won’t be robbed again.”
“No problem, ma’am.” I pulled the chair up to the table and sat down. “I can honestly say I feel right at home.” Guns and dogs, so far she was fine by me.
“Good. Then everything is right as rain. I don’t believe in dragging things out. . . .” She lifted her eyebrows in inquiry and I hastily provided my name. “Ms. Trixa. I had a schnauzer named Trixie once. Good girl. Lived to be sixteen. Became a little senile in her old age and started doing her business in the bathtub, which is an annoying chore. Scrubbing the bathtub every day with bleach, but that’s neither here nor there. I’m Mrs. Smith. You may call me Mrs. Smith, and I’ll go ahead and tell you up front that whoever you want to talk to might not be around—probably won’t be around—but there are no refunds. If I call for them and they’ve already gone on to their heavenly reward, you’re still out two hundred bucks, Trixie, and don’t be whining to me about it. Think of me as a phone call. Whether that person you’re calling is home or not, you still have to pay for that call.” A plump pink palm presented itself. “And that was two hundred, Trixie.”
I started to correct her on the name, a pooping-in-the-bathtub schnauzer not the role model I longed to be connected to, but realistically, I’d been labeled worse. I put four fifties into her hand. “Now, I’d like to—”
She stopped me in my verbal tracks. “And don’t be asking me to talk to Elvis or any of that nonsense either. He’s not there. And anyone else famous who is, well, they’ll drive you to tears and medication with their sobbing all over the place with what they’ve lost and who wronged them and whom they wronged. It’s nothing but ego masturbation, Trixie, and I don’t have the patience for it.”
I gave a wary nod, beginning to lean away from the warm feeling that the guns and dogs had engendered. I hoped Elvis had moved on and Eli had been lying when he said he’d eaten him, but more than that, I hoped the woman let me finish a sentence. I had a mouth on me, yes, I did, and not being able to get a word in . . . That didn’t happen often. “No, no Elvis. I just want—”
“Don’t be expecting some sort of light show either. You want some two-bit magic, you have the whole strip to choose from. I talk to the dead. I don’t set off fire-crackers and crank up the dry ice machine.” She picked one hair off her sweater—one hair out of hundreds—and let it drift to the floor. “Well, Trixie, girl, let’s get going. I don’t have all day to waste on your dithering. Who is it you want to talk to?”
“Anybody,” I said quickly before her lips, covered in a thick coating of bubblegum pink lipstick, could part again. “Anybody at all. Can you just send out a general notice? ‘Dead person wanted. Big balls required.’” Back up went her eyebrows. “Or brave. Brave would get the point across. This is less of a chat and more of a job interview.”