Page 17 of Grave Danger

Demetrius put a hand on Cody’s leg and gave him a squeeze.

“As far as we know, the mayor dug his way out of his own grave and has been walking around town. He’s the one Cody hit with his truck last night.”

“Oh, pine trees,” Amelia whispered, putting a hand to her throat as she looked at Demetrius. “What are you boys going to do?”

CHAPTER FIVE

The raccoon stuck a paw through the wires of the live trap and fiddled with the latch. Cody gently tapped the slender, nimble fingers, and the paw retreated. With a quick, fluid move, Cody secured a small padlock on the trap’s door. He and Demmy had learned long ago how to keep a raccoon inside a live trap until it could be released out in the woods.

“I know there are spiders in my hair. Look again.”

The back end of the truck dipped as Jugs sat on the lowered tailgate. Cody tried not to smile as he took in Jugs’s condition. A big guy who was a bit more broad-shouldered than Cody but not quite as tall, Jugs was covered in dust and spiderwebs. Drifts of loose insulation had gathered on his shoulders, and a small tuft of it perched on top of his neatly trimmed afro.

“I keep telling you to wear a hat,” Cody said as he brushed the insulation away.

“That wouldn’t work with my hair,” Jugs said, his voice a rumble. “I don’t care about the dust and other crap, just make sure there aren’t any spiders on me.” He shuddered. “I hate spiders.”

“You were a big strong werewolf, and here you are still scared of spiders.” Cody jumped back as a rather large spider popped up from beneath the loose insulation. “Okay, don’t move.”

Jugs went very still. “What? What is it? It’s a spider, isn’t it? Oh hell, I knew it. Oh sweet Jesus and Mother Mary, pluck this multi-legged monster from my ‘fro. Oh my God, it’s not a centipede is it? Oh my God, I’m going to dip my head in the fry oil at Farrell’s Fish Fry and burn everything down to the skull.” A shiver went through him, but Cody was impressed with how quickly he managed to shut it down. “I can’t handle things with more than four legs. It’s not right. Get it off me, man. You gotta get it off me.”

“All right, it’s all right, just hold still.”

Cody carefully made a furrow in Jugs’s hair. He saw the spider duck away, and Jugs trembled.

“I felt it move. Oh God, I felt its legs on me.”

“Don’t you move, Darnell,” Cody said, using Jugs’s given name and a commanding tone. “Don’t you fucking move.” As he chased the spider through Jugs’s hair, Cody continued talking, encouraging Jugs to stay still. The raccoon sat watching with interest, fingers opening and closing as if in imitation of Cody’s movements. At last Cody managed to snag a leg and yanked his hand back, flinging the spider off into the trees and startling an excited chitter from the raccoon and a long shudder from Jugs.

“It was a tarantula, wasn’t it?” Jugs said as he collapsed on his back in the bed of the truck. “I could see it fly through the air when you plucked it off me. It was huge. Six inches around at least.”

“Dude, that was not a six inch spider. Is that how you measure things with Agatha? You know she’s gone through a lot of college, right? She’s tracked the dilation of cows and horses, so she knows how to measure things.”

“You’re an asshole,” Jugs said without opening his eyes.

He looked completely depleted, and Cody wondered how long he was going to have to stand around and wait for Jugs to recover. He had things to do that didn’t involve babysitting Jugs. To distract himself, Cody leaned against the side of the truck bed and sent some suggestive texts to Demmy, who was obviously busy handing a critter case of his own because he wasn’t responding. That took the fun out of it.

The raccoon finally got Jugs moving. The big critter had sat watching Jugs as he tried to deep-breathe himself down from what he called a “spider molestation” with some kind of self-affirmation mantra. In one quick move, the raccoon hunkered down, stuck a front leg through the wire cage, and grabbed Jugs by the nose.

Cody laughed. Jugs let out a scream that freaked the raccoon out and caused it to scrunch up into a tight ball in the back corner of the cage. Moving faster than Cody had seen him manage in the years since they’d played on opposing high school football teams—and even back then Jugs had been too big to be very fast—Jugs launched himself out of the bed of the truck and, without a look back, stomped toward his own truck.

“I am not paid enough to deal with shit like this!”

“You okay to drive?” Cody called to Jugs’s back.

Jugs responded with a very prominent middle finger held up over his shoulder. He yanked open the door to his preowned Chevy Silverado pickup, prompting a round of startled barking from Enid Helen, the Yorkie Jugs had rescued a few years prior while working a critter catching job. With Enid Helen’s yips Dopplering away, Jugs sped past Cody who was trying to hide his laughter. Once the truck had turned a corner, Cody slammed the tailgate of his own truck and gave the raccoon a thumbs up.

“Nice work, Trash Panda.”

He collected a check from the client and drove off, taking Route 118 to Morley Trail. It had once been a logging road used by a long gone lumber mill, and now it was a dirt and sand trail that made a circuitous route through hard wood and pine trees around Parson’s Pond. The pond was, in actuality, a small and rather deep lake, but nobody called it Parson’s Lake. Cody guessed alliteration won out over facts. No matter the size of the body of water, the woods surrounding it were the area he and Demmy most often came to release the critters they evicted from people’s homes.

After driving a good distance into the woods, Cody pulled off into a space between trees and got out. Sunlight shone through the new green leaves, and birds chirped and called, claiming their territories and trolling for mates. It reminded him of his time years ago when he’d go out to the bars to meet women, just with less chirping.

“What a difference a few years make, eh buddy?” Cody unhooked the bungee cord securing the trap in place and pulled the cage to the edge of the bed. He lifted it out of the truck, and groaned. “Oof, you need to eat better. You’ve put on a little weight.”

He walked out into the trees a short distance, then put the cage on the ground and sat beside it, looking in through the wires. The raccoon looked out at him, wringing its hands as he studied Cody.

“Lots for you to do out here. Just stay away from the road, okay? And watch out for hawks. There’s fish in the pond, and I know you’ll find a lot of worms and grubs and things to eat. You ready?”