If You See Kay Jig Read online

  If You See Kay Jig

  A Badge Bunny Booze Humorous Mystery

  Quinn Glasneck

  Fiona Quinn

  Tina Glasneck

  If You See Kay …JIG is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  ©2018 Fiona Quinn and Tina Glasneck

  All Rights Reserved

  Cover created by Chandell Aikman Sites

  Publisher’s Note:

  Neither the publisher nor the authors have any control over and do not assume any responsibility for third-party websites and their content.

  No part of this book may be scanned, reproduced, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without the express written permission from the publisher or author. Doing any of these actions via the Internet or in any other way without express written permission from the author is illegal and punishable by law. It is considered piracy. Please purchase only authorized editions. In accordance with the US Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the authors at [email protected] and [email protected]

  Thank you for your support of the authors’ rights.

  Edition: 20190103-01

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  The series continues… If You See Kay Shift

  Did you enjoy IF YOU SEE KAY JIG?

  Also by the Authors

  Stay in touch with us!

  Acknowledgments

  About the Authors

  To men in kilts, thank you.

  1

  Thursday Night

  Hooch’s Bar

  “That’s quite the grin you’ve got on your face,” Kay said, pulling off her winter jacket and hanging it on the hook. The crisp, autumn-night air had followed her through the door of my bar along with the tinkling of the welcome bells. It was still early. Only a few of patrons had arrived.

  I held up my phone and waggled it at her as she headed to the counter. My text exchange was still lit up on the screen.

  Officer Goodman: I absolutely am UP for a good time ;) My break is in thirty. I’ll meet you out back.

  Me: Squad car? Lights flashing?

  Officer Goodman: It’ll be my pleasure to protect and serve, ma’am.

  Kay reached for my phone and read. “Officer Goodman, huh?” She handed my phone back to me, and I slipped it into my apron pocket.

  Hooch’s mascot, my Rottweiler, Twinkles, meandered over to her, and Kay bent to scratch his ears. “I thought Goodman was off the market.”

  “Back to being single.” I set a napkin and a wine glass in front of her.

  “Red, please.” She slid onto the stool. “This is Bill Goodman? He and his wife split up? I thought they’d just gotten married.”

  “This is Bill’s younger brother, Randy Goodman. Policing has become a family tradition.” I glugged Merlot into her glass. “And I’ve been waiting patiently for Randy to be single. I want to find out why the girls all lick their lips and say, ‘Yum, yum, good,’ when his name comes up.”

  Kay lifted her glass in a toast. “Here’s to family traditions. And mysteries to be solved − well, the fun kind of mysteries, anyway.”

  “Here. Here,” the guy sitting next to her said. He was more than mildly out of place.

  Hooch’s was a small-city cop bar. We were laid back about our clothing choices and our interactions. This guy looked like he could be a funeral director from somewhere up north. His hair was slicked back salt and pepper. Heavier on the salt, lighter on the pepper. He accented his mouth with a pencil-thin mustache. His tailored black suit matched perfectly to his black shirt and stood out in stark contrast to the gleaming white tie, carefully knotted and spotless. A fat hunk of gold encircled his pinky finger. His shoes were leather and polished to a gleam.

  Yes, when he came in, I looked.

  He could be an Italian mob guy from off the pay for view.

  I wondered if he was associated with Nicky’s Italian Restaurant next door. He had to be. I couldn’t come up with another explanation for a guy who looked and dressed like this to have found his way into Hooch’s bar − far from the restaurants and hotels that were found in the center of our fair city.

  A Nicky connection…

  That was a wholly unpleasant thought. Not that I should hold any association with Nicky against an innocent family member or white-tie-wearing by-stander.

  It was just that Nicky Stromboli was my evil nemesis.

  With a smile, I set a bowl of nibbles in front of him. Even if this guy were a Nicky stooge, I wasn’t going to let him spoil my Goodman mood.

  Besides, he had no idea what he was cheering on in this conversation with his “Here. Here.”

  I was what some people called a “Badge Bunny.” It was sort of like taking the police booster club to the next, more intimate level.

  Kay took a sip from her glass. “This is yummy, Bobbi Jax. What’s the name?”

  I held up the wine bottle so she could read the label. Bobbi Jax is what my dad and my oldest and dearest friends called me, I was BJ to everyone else. Though Robert Jacqueline Reid was what it said on my sadly underused passport.

  “Thanks.” She took another sip and set her glass down. “So Randy Goodman is the newest on your Bunny Hop Tour. Did he thank you for your patience?”

  I winked at her. “He said he’d do that tonight. Goodman things come to those who wait.”

  She snorted and looked down at her lap. A second later, my phone pinged.

  She’d texted: Or in your case − you waited to come for Goodman’s thing ;)

  “True story,” I said, sliding my phone back into my pocket and going to rinse my hands. I had been waiting ever since Randy had pinned the badge to his chest and taken the oath to serve and protect.

  Sometimes my Badge Bunny scruples got in the way of a good time. I loved a man in a blue uniform. Hard bodied, hardwired for do-gooding. There was hardly any reason to say no to a man with a fully equipped tool belt.

  Unless there was another woman in the picture in any way, shape, or form.

  I didn’t poach.

  There were so many blue fish in the sea, no reason to bait an officer who was already wriggling in someone else’s net. Up until this point Goodman had been dating. But for now, he was off the hook…so to speak.

  I reached into the fridge and pulled out some lemons to slice for garnishes. “Speaking of mysteries to be solved, where’s Terrance these days?”

  Terrance was Kay’s spectacularly famous boyfriend. They’d been dating for years and seemed to handle the long-distance part of their relationship pretty well. Every three weeks or so, he’d fly in to visit or fly her out to see him.

  “Switzerland.” She wrinkled her nose.

  I turned my head when I hear
d the alley door open and shut. I checked the clock, I still had twenty minutes before Officer Goodman. That must be Justice coming in a few minutes early for her shift. I focused back on Kay. “Chocolate, fondue, ski chalets, that sounds like fun. When are you going?” I asked.

  “I’m not going, ever.” And she set her glass down with enough emphasis that the wine sloshed onto the bar.

  Justice breezed in, tying an apron around her waist and taking in the scene.

  “It’s the ski thing isn’t it.” I wrinkled my nose.

  “You don’t like to ski?” Justice asked.

  Justice was my cyberpunk employee who helped pay her way through college by schlepping beers here at Hooch’s, the bar I quasi owned. Her service rat, Nicodemus, was sitting comfortably on her shoulder, flicking his long pink tail.

  I saw the godfather-looking guy startle when he saw Nicodemus. If stereotypes were right, I could understand why he didn’t like rats.

  Nobody likes that kind of rat.

  Everyone here at Hooch’s loved Nicodemus.

  Unlike his ancestral-rats who jumped ship before it went down, Nicodemus did the opposite. When Justice was about to have a seizure, he’d run up to her shoulder and nibble on her ear, thus giving her time to find a safe, soft place to lie down. He’d stay with her the whole time and attack anyone whom he perceived as a threat. Nicodemus was fierce when it came to Justice’s safety. And when he wasn’t acting out his role of guardian angel, with twitching ears, he hung out on her shoulder, nibbling treats, and enjoying the comradery at the bar.

  Right now, Nicodemus had quirked his head to the side, waiting for the story he knew would unfold.

  “Kay fell in a big hole,” I told Justice.

  “Skiing?” bar guy asked. “How do you fall in a hole skiing?”

  Kay reached for the rag I was using to swab up her spilled wine. “Girl Scouts. I was ten.”

  “Yeah, that explains nothing,” Justice said.

  I put a clean napkin down for Kay and refilled her glass. “Our Girl Scout troop went cross-country skiing. Kay was in the lead. She turned around to yell at us to catch up when whoomph the snow beneath her couldn’t handle her weight, and she fell into a hole.”

  “Straight in? Did your skis release?” bar guy asked.

  Kay was looking at her lap and sighed.

  “Straight down,” I said. “Arms pinned to her sides, snow filling back in around her. She looked like a snowman’s head that had been lopped off and rolled away from its body. It was kind of horrifying in a laugh-out-loud kind of way. We couldn’t get close enough to help her because it packed down the snow.”

  Bar guy spun on his stool to look directly at Kay. “How’d they get you out?”

  I grinned. “They had to get the safety patrol in, and their dogs helped dig Kay out, stopping every once in a while to lick her face.”

  “Dogs? They had dogs digging you out?” Justice asked. “Like a lost bone?”

  Kay tossed the rag back to me to put in the bucket I had for them under the counter. “The worst part about that was I twisted my knee, and I couldn’t dance for the rest of the year.”

  “Wait, you dance?” Justice asked.

  “She’s an Irish dancer. She does a mean jig. She wins almost every year at the Celtic Festival. See her t-shirt?” I asked.

  Justice moved over to the counter and looked at the Celtic knots spelling out FEIS. “How do you pronounce that?” she asked.

  “Fesh,” I said. “It’s an Irish dance competition. You should go see her this weekend at the Celtic Festival. She’s amazing.”

  “But she doesn’t ski,” bar guy said as if all other talents paled. “Because she fell in a hole. Once.”

  “The hole was just the first taste of skiing misery,” Kay countered. “Then there was the time I dated the ski instructor. I didn’t ski with him, mind you, I just dated him.”

  “Oh, I remember that,” I said. “It was that guy up at Massanutten.”

  She quirked her eyebrows. “Do you know the difference between a cactus and a ski instructor’s jacket?”

  “No, what?” I asked.

  “On a cactus, the prick is on the outside.” She sipped her wine. “Do you know the difference between God and a ski instructor?”

  “No, what?”

  “God doesn’t think he’s a ski instructor.”

  “I’m with the godfather here,” Justice said.

  So it wasn’t just me picking up that vibe.

  Justice rocked back on her heels and crossed her arms over her chest. “The only time you had problems actually skiing was when the dogs dug you out of the hole when you were ten? And that turned you off skiing for life? I mean, skiing in Switzerland sounds awesome.” Justice uncrossed her arms as she focused on a couple coming through the door. Justice glanced at Kay as she rounded the counter to go and take their order. “That little accident a half-a-life-time ago shouldn’t stop you.”

  “It didn’t. I’ve skied since then,” Kay muttered.

  “You have?” I winked as a squirt of lemon juice hit me dead in the eye and piled the slices into the garnish bin. Kay had been holding out, which meant there was a disaster attached to this story. “I didn’t know that. When did this skiing happen? Where did this skiing happen?”

  Kay took a slow sip of her wine.

  I waited.

  “Okay, the where was in the Italian Alps a couple of years ago. When? In the freaking summertime when no one should be skiing.”

  A smile stretched across my face. “But you went anyway.”

  “Terrance had arranged for us to have an adventure. He thought it would be fun for us to ski on an Alp.”

  “He thought you could ski down a hill?” bar guy asked, cranking his tie up to his Adam’s apple like a hangman adjusts a noose. “You couldn’t even ski in a straight line.”

  “I might have exaggerated my Girl Scout trip a tad bit.” Kay shuffled her glass around, then picked it up and drained it down her throat. She pushed the glass to me. I glugged it full of red wine again, knowing that she just needed a little priming to grease the story-telling wheels.

  Kay’s family roots were in Limerick, Ireland. When she and her brother Connor were younger, their family made a pilgrimage to the homeland. There, she bent over backwards, in the Irish tradition, to kiss the Blarney Stone. Ever since, she’s been full of shi − the gift of gab.

  “It was July on the Swiss-Italian border, and I found myself dressed in all the clothes I had brought with me for the long weekend. I knew I was going to fall, and I knew it was going to be cold. What I didn’t realize was that in the summer there was no snow on the Alp, it was basically a giant ice cube. The locals thought nothing of this. The women were all dressed in little string bikinis, in bright colors with matching ski boots. They were working on their tans as the rays of sun were reflecting off the ice. The toddlers, who were under say three years old, had on long pants, but that was because they fell when they toddled. They didn’t fall when they skied. They were much better at skiing than walking. I, on the other hand, was terrible at both toddling on the ice and skiing.”

  I stood there, thinking about how stupid the scenario was. “You can’t ski, and you were on the top of an ice-covered Alp? Surely you told Terrance you had no idea what you were doing.”

  “Surely not,” she said. “What I did was pretend that I knew exactly what I was doing, letting Terrance head down in front of me, so I could make my way back to the chalet to drink hot toddies.”

  “I get the feeling that wasn’t what happened.” Mafia guy chuckled.

  “Nope.” She wrapped her hands around her wine glass like it was a lifeline. “What happened was, Terrance skied down the ice cube. I was watching him go, thinking how graceful and handsome he looked. That’s when I lost my balance, spiraling my hands around. Some helpful do-gooder righted me, then gave me a push, and I started down the glacier.”

  “Skiing?” I asked.

  “That would be too generous of a
term. Flailing and tumbling might be better verbs.”

  Nicodemus clutched his seed-filled cheeks and was shaking his head in horror.

  “All the way to the bottom?” Justice put the new arrival’s tab on the bar, picked up a beer stein, and pushed it under the tap.

  “Eventually, yes. But on the way there, I got myself stopped a few times. The toddlers whizzed by, laughing at me. At one point I caught myself on a sign post. I spent a few moments translating. It said, get back to the path, you’re in danger of falling in a crevasse.”

  “Holy moly! A dog couldn’t dig you out of that!” I let the frisson of belated fear run through my system. I had no idea I had come that close to losing the person who had been my best friend since I was two.

  “Right? So there I am, breaking off my newly manicured nails, digging and crawling in what I hoped was the direction of the path. I had only angled myself away from it in the first place because I was tired of listening to the toddler’s mocking me.”

  “When was this again?” I asked, trying to remember a time when she’d said she was heading to Italy.

  “Terrance and I had just started dating. And I was still in the I-want-to-impress-you part of our relationship.”

  “Ah,” bar guy prompted. “So over you scramble to the path−”

  “I’d lost one of my ski poles. I was pretty sure I’d broken my elbow. I sat down on the back of my skis, holding them together with my hands, and tried to go the rest of the way down by sliding sideways, aiming for the ski lift shack I could see at the bottom.”