Red Rum: A Rosie Casket Mystery R.M. Wild (inspirational books .txt) 📖

“Strike!” And then collapsed on the old bed with a shriek of the springs that could only be described as two pallbearers dropping a metal casket.

I twisted on the bed to face him, the comforter wrapping me up like jungle vines that had come alive to conspire against me.

Captain Herrick closed the door behind him. “You know, just when I began to admire your work ethic and your composure under pressure, you totally break down. Now I don’t know what to think about you.”

I raised a hand like I was mocking him with a sock puppet. “Blah, blah, blabbety-blah.”

He rolled his eyes and came toward me. “I thought I had issues, but you are a genuine mess.”

I tried to sit up. “I need to get back upstairs and make breakfast,” I protested, the words dribbling down my chin.

Captain Herrick kneeled over me on the edge of the bed and pushed my shoulders back. “You ain’t goin nowhere.”

My head struck the pillow and triggered a flash of bright orange. I blinked. The room was spinning, the porthole flashing pink. Time had compressed to the absurd. How long had it taken us to make it upstairs?

“What are you doing?”

Captain Herrick was down at my feet, trying to untie my Bean boots. “If I learned anything from my first marriage, it was never make love with your boots on.”

“Love is a myth. Like the American Dream.”

He pulled the boots off my feet and tossed them in the corner. I widened my eyes to focus, but could barely make sense of his hovering shape at the foot of the bed.

He yanked the comforter out from underneath me and then reached for the button on my jeans. “Let’s get these off.”

I kicked my feet at him. “Hey, stop it!”

“Your pants are soaked,” he said. He thumbed the button apart and then ripped the zipper open.

11

Before I could muster the coordination to put my heel in his face, the door burst open.

“Get your rum-soaked hands off her!”

My head rolled to the side. A giant figure was standing in the door frame.

Captain Herrick put his hands up and unstraddled me. “I wasn’t doin nothin. I was puttin her to bed.”

Matt Mettle took two giant strides across the floor and grabbed him by the flannel collar.

“I’m serious man, I didn’t touch her! I swear to God. She’s wasted and she spilled herself. I was only tryin to help.”

But Mettle didn’t buy it. He cocked his fist back, drove it forward, and delivered a powerful blow across Captain Herrick’s chin. Herrick flopped back over my legs, fell over the side of the bed, and landed with a crash in a heap on the floor.

Mettle rounded the foot of the bed, ready to deliver more, but Herrick crabbed backward and pressed his back to the wall beneath the porthole. He was holding his chin, a trickle of blood escaping the corner of his lip.

So this is what Matt Mettle looked like when he got really angry. It was kind of sexy.

“Don’t hit me again, man,” Herrick pleaded. “I didn’t do nothin.”

Mettle bared his teeth and raised his punchers. “No worries. I’ve always been a Paci-FIST.”

Herrick clawed at the curtains to get to his feet. “This is assault, man. Police brutality. You better have a darn good lawyer.”

Then he scurried out the door.

“And don’t come back!” Mettle said. He shook out his fists and sat down on the edge of the bed beside me. The whole mattress shifted as if we were on a water bed and for a second, I thought I was about to pass out on the deck of The Moaning Lisa.

He shook my shoulder. “Rosie, can you hear me?”

My eyelids were half-closed. I was delirious. “I’m drunk, not deaf.”

“Are you okay? Did he hurt you?”

I tried to form the words, but they came out as a mumble. The next thing I knew, I was seeing flames and a certain Phyllis Martin, all crispy and holding a pitchfork, was welcoming me to her new home, adorned with fiery stalactites.

I stirred when the sunlight turned my eyelids red. I sat up quickly, my headache flopping forward like a bad wig and then settling back into the middle of my skull.

My glasses were on the nightstand next to a glass of water. I rubbed my eyes and grabbed them and fumbled to put them on.

“What time is it? Where are my guests? I need to make breakfast.”

“Relax,” Mettle said. He was sitting in a rocking chair across from the window, a faint shadow from the muntin tattooing a cross on his chest. “Your guest went home last night. There’s no one here except you and me.”

I massaged my temples. My mouth was dry. My head was pounding. I glanced at myself in the antique vanity across the room and then wished I hadn’t. I had a horrible case of bedhead, like someone had dumped Elmer’s glue in my hair and pasted every strand to the pillow. I lifted up the comforter and checked underneath. I was still in my clothes, including my pants. My crotch was wet. I think I remembered spilling my rum, but wasn’t sure. I checked my lady parts, all five of them (boobs and butt cheeks get counted separately).

Nothing was sore.

“We didn’t—?”

“Didn’t what?”

“You know.”

“I don’t.”

I made an “okay” symbol and stuck my pointer finger through it.

“Classy, but no,” Mettle said. “What do you take me for? I only sleep with conscious women.”

“A pretty high bar,” I said. “Did you sit there all night?”

“Yes,” he said.

I tried to remember what had happened, but it was all a blur. All I could picture were flashes of the guests and the fire and Captain Herrick grabbing my arm.

“What happened?”

“I came in the room to find Herrick on top of you. I slugged him pretty good and he scampered away like a scared little rat. I told you not to trust that guy.”

“How’d you know we were up here?”

“Eldritch called me. He said that you were