Chapter One
I was doing decline push ups when my office door opened. Decline push ups cause a lot of blood to rush to your head and a fabulous burn across the upper pectorals. They also looked pretty damn silly in a professional environment. Luckily, this wasn't a professional environment.
Somebody was quietly watching me, probably admiring my near-perfect form or the way my tee shirt rippled across my broad shoulders. Either way, I rattled off twenty more, completing my set of a hundred.
In a distinctive country twang, a man's voice said, "I could come back."
"And miss my near-perfect form?"
I eased my running shoes off the desk and immediately felt a wave of light-headedness. Granted, I didn't entirely mind the light-headedness. I am, after all, a sucker for a good buzz.
The man who came swimmingly into view was wearing a cowboy hat and leaning against my door frame, a bemused expression on his weathered face. He was about twenty years my senior.
"Howdy partner," I said.
He tipped his Stetson. "So what are those push ups supposed to do, other than cause a lot of blood rush to your head?"
"That's enough for me," I said happily. "Oh, and they happen to be a hell of a chest workout."
"Seems like a lot of trouble," he said.
"It's not easy being beautiful."
"Ah," he said. "You must be Jim Knighthorse. I heard about you."
"Lucky you."
As he spoke, his Adam's apple bobbed up and down like a buoy in a storm. His white hat sported an excessively rolled brim - completely useless now against the sun or rain. Maybe he was a country music star.
"I was told you could be a cocky son of a bitch."
"You would be, too," I said. "If you were me."
He looked at me and shrugged. "Well, maybe. You're certainly a big son of a bitch."
I said nothing. My size spoke for itself. He looked around my small office, perhaps noting the many pictures and trophies that cluttered the walls and bookcases, all in recognition of my considerable prowess on the football field. Actually, all but one. There was a second place spelling bee trophy in there somewhere. Lost it on zumbooruk, a camel-mounted canon used in the Middle East. Hell of a shitty word to lose it on.
"I heard you could help me," he said finally, almost pitifully.
"Ah," I said. "Have a seat."
He did, moseying on into my small office. As he sat, I almost expected him to flip the client chair around and straddle it backward, cowboy-like. Instead, he used the chair as it was originally designed, although it was clearly not designed for someone as tall as he. His bony knees reached up to his ears and looked sharp enough to cut through his denim jeans. I sat behind the desk in a leather brass-studded chair that was entirely too ornate for its surroundings. The leather made rude noises.
Ever the professional detective, I kept a straight face and asked for his name.
"Jones," he answered. "Jones T. Jones, to be exact."
"That's a lot of Joneses."
"Well, yes," he said, blushing slightly. "It's not really my name, you see. It's sort of like a stage name. You know, a gimmick."
"So you're an actor?"
"No, I own a souvenir shop in Huntington Beach. But I've acted as the spokesperson in my own commercials." Ah. It came to me then. I'd seen Jones before, late at night on the local cable circuit. Usually right before I passed out in a drunken stupor. Damn cheesy commercials, too, many involving what appeared to be a rabid monkey. Sometimes Jones and the monkey danced. I was embarrassed for Jones. "Maybe you've heard of it," he continued. "Ye Olde Curiosity Shoppe."
"Heard of it?" I said. "Hell, I spelled old and shop with extra e's and p's up until the fifth grade. My teacher, Mrs. Franks, thought I was Chaucer reborn."
He laughed. "I wanted to change the name when I bought the store a number of years ago, but there was a big public uproar." He cracked a smile, and I realized that he enjoyed the big public uproar. "So I gave in to pressure and kept the damn name. I regret it to this day."
"Why?"
"No one can find us in the phone book...or even on the internet. They call us and ask: Are we under Y or O? Is it Ye or The?" He sighed and caught his breath, having worked himself up. "I mean, what were the original owners thinking?"
"Maybe they were English."
He shrugged. We were silent. Outside, in the nearby alley, a delivery truck was backing up, beeping away. I was one of the few people who appreciated the warning beeps.
"So what can I do for you, Mr. Jones?" I asked.
"I'd like to hire you."
"Zumbooruk!" I said.
"Excuse me?"
"Exactly."
Chapter Two
"You know about Sylvester the Mummy, then?" asked Jones.
"Still dead?" I asked.
"As a doornail."
Sylvester the Mummy was one of Huntington Beach's main attractions - ranking a distant third behind waves and babes - and currently resided at the back of the Ye Olde Curiosity Gift Shoppe in a cozy polyurethane case for all the world to see. Sylvester had been found in the California deserts over a hundred years ago near a ghost town called Rawhide. Since then, he'd been passed from museum to museum, exhibit to exhibit, until finally coming to rest at Ye Olde Gift Shoppe in Huntington Beach. Wouldn't his mother be proud? Although his identity is unknown, most historians figure Sylvester had once been a cowboy. Which, I figure, means he probably once owned a horse and a six shooter, ate beans from the can over an open campfire and sang lonesome songs about loose women. That is, of course, until someone put a bullet in his gut and left him for dead in the middle of the Mojave Desert. Experts figured the old boy had mummified within 24 hours due to a rare combination of extreme desert heat and chemicals in the sand. A true John Doe, he had been named after the very miner who discovered him, which I always found a little creepy.
"What about him?" I asked.
"Two months ago, as a publicity stunt, I hired a young historian fresh out of college to look into Sylvester's background. You know, generate some interest in my little store. Of course, I didn't really think the historian would find anything on Sylvester. But that wasn't the point."
"The point being to generate interest in your little store."
"Yes, exactly."
Ah, exploiting the dead.
"Go on," I said.
Jones shifted, suddenly looking uncomfortable, as if his tight jeans were giving him one hell of a wedgie. "The historian - a kid really - provided me regular reports. He did original research, digging through old records, even traveling out to Rawhide once or twice to interview the town historian."
He stopped talking. I waited. I sensed something ominous. I call this my sixth sense. Catchy, huh?
Jones' expression turned pained. The mother of all wedgies? "Then the reports stopped, and I didn't hear from him for a while. Shortly thereafter, his mother reported him missing. Soon after that, the sheriff's department found him dead."
"Found him where?"
"In the desert. Near Rawhide." He took a deep breath. "And just this morning I received word from the San Bernardino Sheriff's Department that his death was being officially ruled an accident. They figure he got lost in the desert, ran out of gas and died of thirst."
I sat back in my chair and rested my chin on my fingertips. Sweat had appeared on Jones's forehead. His flashy showmanship was out the window.
"I assume you disagree with their findings," I said.
He thought about it.
"I suppose so, yes."
"Why?"
He reached up and unconsciously rolled the brim of his Stetson, a nervous habit, which now explained why the thing looked like a Del Taco Macho Burrito.
My stomach growled. Lord help me.
"It's hard to say, Knighthorse. It's just a gut feeling I have. The kid...the kid was smart, you know. A recent college graduate. I was impressed by him, and not just by his book smarts. He seemed to have a sensible head on his shoulder; street smarts, too."
"Too sensible to get lost in the desert."
"Yes. Precisely. That's exactly why I'm here."
"That," I said, "and you feel guilty as hell for sending a kid out to his death."
He looked away, inhaled deeply. "Jesus, Knighthorse. Put it that way, and you make it seem like I killed him."
"So what do you want me to do?"
"I want you to look into his death. Make sure it was an accident."
"And if it wasn't an accident?"
"I want you to find the killer."
"Finding the killer is extra."
"Price is no object."
"Zumbooruk!"
"Why do you keep saying that? What does it mean?"
"It's a camel-mounted canon used in the Middle East."
"I don't get it."
"Neither do I."