Praise for Darynda Jones:
‘Hilarious and heart-felt, sexy and surprising, this paranormal has it all… An absolute must read – I’m already begging for the next one!’
J.R. Ward, No.1 New York Times bestselling author
‘From its unique premise to its wonderfully imaginative characters, Jones’s award-winning Charley Davidson mystery series, from First Grave on the Right onward to this fifth delectable installment, will continue to attract and delight a broad spectrum of readers’
Booklist (starred review)
‘Jones perfectly balances humour and suspense… will leave readers eager for the next instalment’
Publishers Weekly
Darynda Jones has won several awards, including a 2009 Golden Heart in the Paranormal Category for First Grave on the Right and the 2012 RITA awards for Best New Book.
She lives in New Mexico with her husband of more than 25 years and two sons, the mighty, mighty Jones boys.
Visit Darynda Jones online:
www.daryndajones.com
www.facebook.com/darynda.jones.official
www.twitter.com/Darynda
By Darynda Jones
First Grave on the Right
Second Grave on the Left
Third Grave Dead Ahead
Fourth Grave Beneath My Feet
Fifth Grave Past the Light
Sixth Grave on the Edge
COPYRIGHT
Published by Piatkus
978-0-3494-0346-5
All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2014 Darynda Jones
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
The publisher is not responsible for websites (or their content) that are not owned by the publisher.
PIATKUS
Little, Brown Book Group
100 Victoria Embankment
London, EC4Y 0DY
www.littlebrown.co.uk
www.hachette.co.uk
Sixth Grave on the Edge
Table of Contents
Praise for Darynda Jones:
About the Author
By Darynda Jones
COPYRIGHT
Dedication
Acknowledgments
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
Excerpt: Reyes’s POV
For Michael and Cathy,
who make Saturday nights more entertaining
than a night at the Comedy Club
Acknowledgments
First, thank you, wonderful readers, for braving another adventure into the world of Charley Davidson. Once more unto the breach, my friends. May this journey bring you joy, laughter, and lots of warm, fuzzy feelings.
A special thanks (and my undying gratitude) as always to my incredible agent, Alexandra “The Powerhouse” Machinist, my amazing editor, Jennifer “The Genius” Enderlin, and to all the teams at St. Martin’s Press, Macmillan Audio, and Janklow & Nesbit Associates. I’m ever so grateful to have you! And thank you to the ultra-talented narrator of the audiobooks, the lovely Lorelei King.
And a note to Loren… LOREN!… who left me for another writer. Or, well, a lot of other writers. But it’s okay. No, really, sniff I have Nick now. It’s all good. But I wish you the very best, mister!
Thank you to Eliani Torres! How you put up with me and my constant overuse of certain words that I’m not going to list here for fear of sending you into cardiac arrest, I’ll never know. Thank you so much for your wonderful, mad skill. And to my betas, Theresa, Cait, and Rhiannon. Your input and ideas were invaluable. Theresa, I owe you big-time! Thank you for coming through with such flying colors during that initial crunch.
Thank you thank you thank you to my extraordinary Grimlets! Your generosity is insane. Please know how much you mean to me. And a special thanks to Jowanna, aka Mama Grimlet, who makes me giggle in all the right places.
To all of my family and friends for your love and support. Where would I be without you? (Don’t answer that.) And a special thanks to my writing buddies, the incomparable Jacquelyn Frank and the super hot CL Parker. And since we’re on the subject, thank you so much to J.R. Ward for talking me down off the ledge seconds before I toppled over. Love you all!
And last but not even close to least, to my assistant Dana, the torrential, exuberant, effervescent, gale-force whirlwind beneath my wings. You amaze and inspire me to be the best I can be every single day.
1
A blank is the only thing I draw well.
— T-SHIRT
“A girl, a mocha latte, and a naked dead man walk into a bar,” I said, turning to the naked dead man sitting in my passenger seat. The elderly naked dead man who’d been riding shotgun in my cherry red Jeep Wrangler, aka Misery, for two days now. We were on a stakeout. Sort of. I was staking out a Mr. and Mrs. Foster, so I was definitely on a stakeout. No idea what Naked Dead Man was on. Considering the fact that he looked about 112, probably blood thinners. Cholesterol medication. And, judging from the state of his manhood, which I couldn’t stop seeing every single time I turned toward him, Viagra. If I were to hashtag that moment, my status would read something like #impressed.
I gave him two thumbs up, then looked back at the house again, happy to be sitting in Misery. The Jeep, not the emotion. I’d just picked her up from the car hospital two days earlier. She’d had several surgeries to fix her broken girlie bits because a raving lunatic rammed into her. He’d knocked her into a state of mangled disrepair and me, as I was in the driver’s seat at the time, into a state of oblivion. I stayed in that state long enough for Mr. Raving Lunatic to cart me off to a deserted bridge to kill me. He failed and died in the process, but Misery had paid a high price for his nefarious machinations. Why did bad guys always try to hurt the ones I loved?
And this one had succeeded. Misery was hurt. Bad. No one wanted to work on her. Said she couldn’t be saved. Said to give her over to the scrap yard. Thankfully, a family friend with a body shop and a few incriminating photos, which just happened to have found their way into my possession, agreed with great reluctance to try.
Noni kept her for two long weeks before calling to tell me that he’d almost lost her a couple of times, but she’d pulled through with flying colors. When I got the green light to go pick her up, I tore out of my apartment so fast, I left a dust trail behind me, along with a flummoxed best friend, who’d been telling me about the couple in 3C. They were apparently newlyweds, if their energy to do it – her words – all night every night was any indication. I hurried back to her, however, because I didn’t have a car and I needed a ride.
When we picked up Misery, Noni tried to tell me everything he’d had to do to her to get her up and running, but I held up a hand to stop him, unable to bear it. This was Misery he was talking about. Not some random Wrangler off the streets. This was my Wrangler. My best friend. My baby.
Holy cow, I needed a life.
I had to hand it to Noni, though. Misery was good as new. Better than I was, anyway. Ever si
nce that night, I’d been having problems sleeping. I suffered from debilitating nightmares that left me screaming into my pillow, and I jumped every time someone dropped a feather.
But at least Misery was okay. Like, really okay. It was weird. Her cough was gone. Her sluggish response time was no longer an issue. Her reluctance to wake up in the mornings as she sputtered in protest every time I tried to fire all engines was nonexistent. Now she started on the first try, no groaning or whining, and she purred like a newborn kitten. How Noni had managed to fix her insides as well as her outsides I’d never know, but the guy was good. And Noni was my new best friend. Well, after Misery. And Cookie, my real best friend. And Garrett, my kind of, sort of best friend. And Reyes, my… my…
What was Reyes? Besides the dark and sultry son of evil? My boy toy? My love slave? My 24/7 booty call?
No.
Well, yes.
He was all those things, but he was also my almost fiancé. All I had to do was say yes to the proposal he’d written on a sticky note, and he would be my fiancé for reals. Until then, however, he was my almost fiancé.
No, my soon-to-be fiancé.
No! My nigh fiancé.
Yeah, that’d work.
I turned back to the naked dead man, stuffed a couple of Cheez-Its into my mouth, and confessed my latest sin.
“I’m just kidding,” I said through the crackers, regretting the fact that I’d tempted him and now had no follow-up. No punch line. “I don’t know any ‘girl, mocha latte, dead man’ jokes. Sorry to get your hopes up like that.” He didn’t seem to mind, however. He sat staring straight ahead as always, his gray eyes clouded and watery with age, oblivious of my charm, my clever repartee, and my intellectual wit. He was ignoring me!
It happened.
“Cheez-It?” I offered him.
Nothing.
“Okay, but you have no idea what you’re missing here.”
I could only hope that one day he’d actually talk to me; otherwise, this was going to be a very one-sided relationship. I dusted Cheez-It gunk off my hands and went back to a drawing I’d been working on. Since he didn’t talk, I had no way of finding out his identity. And in my attempt to avoid eye contact with Naked Dead Man’s penis over the last couple of days, I’d also avoided several key clues as to said identity. First, he had a long scar that ran from under his left arm, over his rib cage, and down until it ended at his belly button. Whatever had caused it couldn’t be pleasant, but it could be vital in identifying him. Second, he had a tattoo on his left biceps that looked very old-school military. It was faded and the ink had spread, but I could still make out an eagle with its talons gripping a United States flag. And third, right underneath his tattoo was a surname, presumably his: ANDRULIS. I’d taken out my memo pad and pen and was drawing the tat, since I had yet to find a camera that could photograph the departed.
I did my darnedest to draw the tat while simultaneously balancing the Cheez-It box against the gearshift, within arm’s reach, and keeping an eye on the Fosters’ house. Sadly, I sucked at two out of three of those tasks. Mostly at drawing. I’d never gotten the hang of it. I failed finger painting in kindergarten, too. That should have been a clue, but I’d always wanted to be the next Vermeer or Picasso or, at the very least, the next Clyde Brewster, a boy I’d went to school with who drew exploding walls and houses and buildings. No idea why. Alas, my destiny did not lie within the lines of graphite or the strokes of a paintbrush, but at the whim of dead people with PTDD: post-traumatic death disorder.
Oh, well. It could have been worse. Clyde Brewster, for example, ended up in prison for trying to blow up a Sack-N-Save. Thankfully, he was better at art than at demolitions. He’d asked me out several times, too. #Dodgedabullet.
“I know you’re not really into baring your soul,” I said, eyeing Mr. Andrulis’s bare, naked soul, “figuratively speaking, but if there’s anything you want or need, I’m your girl. Mostly because not many people on Earth can see you.”
I added a shadow on the eagle’s face with my blue ink pen, trying to make it look noble. It didn’t help. It still looked cross-eyed.
“And those who can see the departed usually see only a gray mist where you might be. Or they’ll feel a rush of cold air when you walk past. But I can see you, touch you, hear you, pretty much anything you.”
Maybe if I added highlights on its beak, it would look more like an eagle and less like a duck.
“My name is Charley.”
But I was using a pen. I couldn’t erase. Damn it. I had to think ahead. Real artists thought ahead. I’d never get into the Louvre at this rate.
“Charley Davidson.”
I tried to scratch off some of the ink, bracing the memo pad against my steering wheel. I tore a tiny hole in the paper instead and cursed under my breath.
“I’m the grim reaper,” I said from between gritted teeth, “but don’t let that bother you. It’s not as bad as it sounds. I’m also a private investigator. That’s not as bad as it sounds either. And I shouldn’t have given your eagle eyelashes. He looks like Daffy Duck in drag.”
Giving up, I wrote the name underneath the eagle-ish-type drawing, consoling myself with the fact that abstract art was all the rage before pulling out my phone and snapping a shot of my masterpiece. After angling it this way and that, trying to get the focus just right, I realized the eagle looked better when turned on its side. More masculine. Less… water fowl.
I saved the best one and deleted the rest as a car pulled up to the Foster house. A nervous thrill rushed up my spine. I put down my pen and memo pad and took a sip of my whipped mocha latte, forcing myself to calm as I waited to see who was driving the gold Prius. I was spying on the Fosters, who lived in a modest neighborhood in the Northeast Heights, because I’d been asked to by a friend of mine. She was a special agent with the FBI, like her father before her, and this had been his case, one of the few that went unsolved under his watch. I was trying to help her solve it, though solving might be a strong word. If my hunch was correct, and I liked to think it was, I had insider information that my friend’s father was never privy to. Mr. Foster owned an insurance company, and Mrs. Foster ran the office of a local pediatrician. And approximately thirty years ago, their son was taken from them, never to be seen again. I was about 100 percent certain I knew what happened to him.
I eased forward and pressed against the steering wheel, angling for a better look at the driver when my aunt Lil’s voice wafted toward me from the backseat.
“Who’s the hottie?” she asked, her blue hair and floral muumuu solidifying around her as she materialized in my rearview.
I tossed a wink over my right shoulder. “Hey, Aunt Lil. How was your trip to Bangladesh?”
“Oh, the food!” She waved a hand extravagantly. “The people! I was in heaven, I tell ya. Not literally, though.” She cackled in delight at her joke.
Aunt Lil had died in the ’60s, a fact she’d only recently discovered. So, she couldn’t have actually eaten or interacted with the native population. At least, not the living native population. I’d never thought about her visiting the departed when she traveled. Now, that would be fascinating.
She hitched a thumb toward my newest friend and wriggled her penciled brows. “You gonna introduce us?”
The garage door rose and the driver pulled inside but didn’t close the door. It gave me hope. I just wanted a glimpse. A tiny peek.
“He’s not very talkative,” I said, squinting for a better view when the driver’s-side door opened, “but I think his last name is Andrulis. It’s on his tattoo.”
“He’s got some ink?” She leaned forward and spotted Mr. A’s package. It was hard to miss.
“Good heavens,” she said, her eyes rounding in appreciation.
Before I could get a look at the driver, the garage door started closing. “Darn,” I whispered, tilting my head in unison with the descending door until it completely blocked my view.
I’d seen a woman’s foot as she s
tepped out of the car before the door closed completely. That was about it.
“He’s certainly been blessed,” she said.
I laid my head against the steering wheel and expelled a loud breath as disappointment washed over me. I’d been handed a file that could hold many answers to the puzzle that was Reyes Alexander Farrow, my nigh fiancé, and the Fosters were a big piece of the puzzle. Their first son had been kidnapped while napping in his room. Because there was never a ransom demand and no witnesses, the trail went cold almost immediately despite a massive search and public pleas from the parents. But the FBI agent assigned to the case never gave up. He’d always believed there was more to the case than just a kidnapping. And so did his daughter. We’d worked a couple of cases together in the past. She knew about my rep for solving difficult crimes, and she’d asked me to look at this cold case that had been the bane of her father’s existence.
And that was the day that Reyes Farrow’s kidnapping fell into my lap. He was the child who had been abducted almost thirty years prior. I glanced down at the file stuffed between my seat and the console. So much potential there. So much heartache.