Coco Butternut Read online

  Coco Butternut Copyright © 2017 by

  Joe R. Lansdale. All rights reserved.

  Dust jacket illustration Copyright © 2017

  by Ken Laager. All rights reserved.

  Interior design Copyright © 2017 by Desert

  Isle Design, LLC. All rights reserved.

  Electronic Edition

  ISBN

  978-1-59606-804-9

  Subterranean Press

  PO Box 190106

  Burton, MI 48519

  subterraneanpress.com

  for Bill Crider

  “Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.”

  Mark Twain

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Quote

  Coco Butternut

  “All I want you to do is make the exchange. Give them the bag, and they’ll give you Coco Butternut.”

  We were all in the office of Brett Sawyer’s Investigations, me and Leonard and Brett, my daughter Chance, and this little, chubby guy, Jimmy Farmer who wore a very bad toupée. He wanted us to make an exchange for him. Give some blackmailer a bag full of money in exchange for a dog called Coco Butternut that had belonged to Farmer’s mother, as did the pet cemetery, a mortuary, and a cemetery for humans called Oak Rest.

  Our German shepherd, Buffy, was also present, lying on the couch, about as interested as a dog can be in conversations that don’t involve the words “treat” or “outside.”

  What was odd about all this was Coco Butternut was as dead as a stone and mummified.

  “Let me see here,” Leonard said. “You got a pickled dog stolen from you, and you want us to give some money to a guy that dug him up—”

  “Her,” Jimmy said. He had a condescending way of talking and a face that somehow made you want to punch it. He had all the personality of the Ebola virus. I hadn’t liked him on sight, and I wasn’t sure why.

  “Okay,” Leonard said. “Her. You want us to give a bag of money to a dead dog–napper and he gives us the mutt, and that’s it?”

  “That’s all,” Farmer said. “Only one of you can do it. He said to send one person to make the exchange. He said I could do it, but I’m not comfortable with that, and I told him so.”

  “You two talked person to person?” Brett said.

  “No, we… Does this girl work here?”

  “That’s my daughter, Chance,” I said. He had been eyeing her since he first came in, as if she might have designs on his wallet.

  “She can be discreet?” he said.

  “She certainly can,” Chance said. Chance had her thick black hair tied back in a ponytail, and she was dressed the same as Brett, tee-shirt and blue-jeans and tennis shoes. She looked like a fifties teeny bopper. Even in her twenties she could have easily passed for eighteen or nineteen. She was so sweet she broke my heart.

  Farmer paused a moment, taking time to consider how discreet Chance could be, I suppose.

  “Okay,” he said. “This thief, we didn’t talk face to face. First he sent me a note that said he had the dog. I went to the pet cemetery to look. There was a hole where she was buried, an empty grave. No question the body was gone.

  “There was a sealed plastic bag in the empty grave. Inside of it was a burner phone. There was a note with a number on it. I called the number. That’s how we spoke, and that’s when he told me what he wanted. I threw the phone away like he asked.”

  “You know the man’s voice?” Leonard asked.

  “No. It may even have not been a man.”

  “You keep saying he,” I said.

  “Look, it was one of those synthesizer things. You can’t tell who you’re talking to. Sounds more male than female on those things. I couldn’t tell the sex or age really. Voice said they had my mother’s dog, and he wanted money.”

  “They?” Brett asked.

  “What the voice said.”

  “Why was the dog pickled?” Leonard said.

  “Embalmed and wrapped like a mummy,” Farmer said. “Not pickled.”

  “Same thing,” Leonard said. “Except for the duct tape.”

  “No tape. Cloth. Mother had it done five years ago. She died shortly thereafter. The wrapping is stuck to the dog with some kind of adhesive. They embalmed her, and then wrapped her. It’s not duct tape.”

  “Can I ask why?” I said.

  “We own a pet mortuary and cemetery. Most dogs are cremated, but we offer a variety of services. Embalming and mummification for example. Coco Butternut was a show dog. A dachshund. She had won a number of dog show awards. Nothing big, but Mother adored her. She had all her dogs embalmed. Coco Butternut was the first one to be wrapped, mummified.”

  “I know we can become very attached to our pets,” Brett said. “But it isn’t your dog, and well, it’s dead. You sure you want to pay for a mummified dog corpse?”

  “I never really cared for the dog,” Farmer said. “It bit me a few times. Nasty animal. But Mother was sentimental about it, and I’m sentimental about her. The dog meant a lot to her.”

  I didn’t actually find Farmer all that sentimental, but you never really know someone at first blush, and truth is, you may not ever know someone even when you think you do.

  “When you say a lot,” Leonard said, “the next question is how much is this sentiment going to cost you?”

  “I’d rather not say. Just deliver the bag and bring home the dog.”

  “I got one more question,” Leonard said. “Who names a dog Coco Butternut?”

  “Mother,” Farmer said.

  “Not to step on your mother’s grave, but why the hell would she name a dog that,” Leonard said. “She just go by Coco, or Butter, or Nut?”

  “Dog had a chocolate body, but butternut colored paws. That’s how the name came about.”

  “Could have just called her Spot, or Socks or some such,” Leonard said. “Hell, Trixie. I had a dog named Trixie. That’s a good name.”

  Farmer was paying us good money to deliver the bag, and the good money was considerably more than what we normally made for a few hours’ work. He really wanted that dog back.

  Plan was I would make the drop and exchange, and Leonard would find a place to hide in case things went south. We weren’t hired to take the body snatcher down, and in fact, Farmer insisted we didn’t. Said things could go wrong if we tried to do that. Thing was make the exchange and keep it smooth and simple.

  Leonard went over to Farmer’s house, picked up the money and was bringing it to us. I was looking out the office window as he drove up. It was a nice spring day and bright and the young woman downstairs that owned the bicycle shop was wearing shorts and her legs were long and brown and Brett wasn’t looking at me right then and Chance was sorting out the lunch she had picked up from a Japanese restaurant. Buffy was watching me, but she didn’t care what I was doing.

  I kept a steady vigil as the fine looking shop owner leaned over a bike she was repairing. Those shorts certainly could ride high.

  It wasn’t that I wasn’t fine with my woman. I’m a one-woman man. But I still like to look. I think it’s good for my heart or something, maybe even the liver.

  Leonard parked and came across the lot, nodding at the blonde as he did. He looked up and saw me at the window and smiled. He came up the stairs and inside and placed the satchel on the desk. It had a clasp lock on it with a ring and through the ring was a tiny padlock.

  Leonard said, “Brett, I think Hap was looking at that blonde’s butt out there.”

  “Daddy,” Chance said.

  “I was merely looking out the window,” I said.

  “I’ve noticed you do that a lot when she’s out there,” Brett said. “Don’t con me
, Hap Collins.”

  “Okay, the con is over,” I said. “So I can look at will?”

  “I didn’t say that,” Brett said. “I prefer you think you’re being sneaky. It shows you have some pride.”

  “That’s one way of looking at it,” Leonard said. “Now, you all thinking what I’m thinking?”

  “How much money is in that bag,” I said.

  “That’s right,” Leonard said.

  “We don’t need to know,” Brett said. “And besides, it’s locked.”

  “Hap’s going into this with a bag of money, someone bringing a dead dog to him. I think it might be wise to see how much is in the bag. I don’t like that Farmer guy, anyway.”

  Brett came over and looked down at the satchel. “Like I said. We don’t need to know. But, my lock-pick kit is in the drawer.”

  Chance opened the drawer and removed the kit, handed it to Brett. She took out her tools and worked on the lock for a moment or two. It clicked open.

  “He gave me a key to give to the kidnapper,” Leonard said. “But I just wanted to see you work that lock.”

  Brett grinned at Leonard. “You rascal.”

  “And then some,” Leonard said.

  Brett opened the satchel. There were a lot of bills in it, stacks bound by paper binders. She took it out and thumbed through it.

  “Jesus,” she said. “There’s something like a hundred thousand dollars here.”

  “For a dead dog?” Leonard said.

  “This guy must be rich,” Chance said.

  “He is. Should have seen his house. You could park my apartment, your house, and this building in it. Well, there might not be room for the couch.”

  “Ha,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Leonard said, “that putting dead bodies in the ground pays mighty good.”

  Brett said, “Now we know,” closed the satchel and put the lock back on it.

  We decided first to have a recon mission before we made the actual drop. The team, as I like to think of us, drove out to the drop spot. That means me and Leonard, Brett and Chance. Chance decided she wanted to get in on things, and we decided to let her, as long as it wasn’t dangerous. It was pretty much a family business, so why not.

  Drop was to take place at a graveyard, which when you think about it is kind of ironic. Dog was dug up from a graveyard, and was to be returned in one.

  This one was an old graveyard for black citizens. It was called the Colored Graveyard by some, and there was a historical marker that called it a Negro Graveyard. It stopped being used mid-twentieth century, and though it was kept up, it was a piss-poor job. Someone hacked the weeds around the graves now and then with what appeared to be a stick. The drop was to happen at a grave for K. Hollis Colby. It was one of the few tombstones that was still intact. It was the only large tombstone and it was one of the few where you could see the name clearly on it. The dates of birth and death were not so clear. Looking at it I thought no matter who you are or where you are or when you’re from, time passes away, and so do you and the memory of you. Maybe someone keeps it alive for a few generations, but most of us aren’t remembered after the last shovelful of dirt is thrown in the hole.

  “So this kidnapper’s supposed to bring Coco Butterbutt here,” Leonard said.

  “Butternut,” I said.

  “I know. I just don’t like that guy, and by proxy I think his dog is an asshole. Who names a fucking dog Coco Butternut?”

  “His mother,” I said.

  “The dog’s mother?”

  “Now you’re being a jerk. Farmer’s mother.”

  “What kind of mother does that? Gives a dog a name like that.”

  Chance was coming across the graveyard to meet us. She had a device in her hand.

  When she came up, she said, “Kind of sad here, isn’t it?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Leonard said. “They’re dead. I’m kind of over it.”

  “Leonard,” Chance said, “you are a turd.”

  “Just a little bit,” he said, and tipped his fedora back. He had taken to wearing it all the time. It wasn’t a hat that irritated me, like some he wore. That goddamn deerstalker I took care of, and I don’t think he even missed it, which means he merely had it to mess with me. He walked around in that thing, strutting like a peacock, drawing attention to himself because he knew that drew attention to me, and he knew it embarrassed me to be seen with him in that damn thing. The fedora. That was cool.

  “Brett said you have to find some place to put this it can’t be seen. It picks up voices good. You plant it, and we’ll be back across the way, and we can hear everything.”

  “Where you’ll be,” Leonard said, “something goes down, by the time you or Brett get here with a big ole pistol or a long stick, Hap’ll be dead and bleeding on ole Colby here.”

  “Don’t be so morbid,” Chance said. “He’ll be all right. He’s got you closer by.”

  “Girl, you are what we call a goddamn optimist,” Leonard said. “You ain’t been around your dad enough to know trouble follows his ass around.”

  “Maybe it’s you trouble follows,” Chance said. “You two are always together.”

  “Might be something to that,” Leonard said.

  There was a thin pine sapling that had grown up in the graveyard, and it wasn’t far from the grave where we were supposed to make the exchange.

  “Put it there,” I said.

  Chance went over to the sapling and Leonard walked over to help her. I stood where I was thinking something about this whole thing smelled like the ass end of a dead elephant. Outside of what we were being asked to do, something else wasn’t right.

  “We got it,” Chance said.

  “I think I actually got it,” Leonard said.

  “I held it while you fastened it down,” she said.

  “Yeah, but I turned it on,” Leonard said.

  “Children,” I said. “Back to the car.”

  Driving us back to the office, Brett said, “We’ll get there before dark so Leonard can hide in the woods. He’s got a mike, and I got one. We can both hear what’s going down and Leonard will be close if something turns sideways.”

  “I can hear it too,” Chance said.

  “Of course you can,” Leonard said.

  “Uncle Leonard,” Chance said. “I am going to hit you in the eye.”

  Leonard laughed. “You are my kind of kid.”

  “I’m not a kid.”

  “Of course you aren’t,” Leonard said. “You are in your twenties, and therefore you are grown and know all there is to know.”

  Chance was in the front seat beside Brett. She leaned through the crack in the seats and popped a knuckle into the top of Leonard’s thigh.

  “Damn, Hap, I was hoping she wasn’t like you,” he said, rubbing his leg.

  “Me too,” I said.

  “What we could do,” Leonard said, “is we could keep the money and shoot the guy in the head and give Farmer back his dog and no one would be the wiser.”

  “You talk some shit,” Brett said, “but you wouldn’t do anything like that.”

  “Maybe it’s about time I did. I’m starting to look for retirement money.”

  “Retirement’s a long ways off,” Chance said.

  “That’s what Hap told me when I was thirty-five. Don’t worry. We got plenty of time, he said. How’d that work out, Hap?”

  “Not so well,” I said.

  We got there three hours early. Come too close to time, the man making the drop might see us and figure we were planning on nailing him. We weren’t planning that at all. We just had the microphones for insurance. Our plan was to make the drop and take Coco Butternut home to Farmer, who was waiting nervously. Then we would cash the check he gave us.

  I parked a pickup I had borrowed inside the graveyard, as that would be how I was to haul the coffin away. Farmer said it was a full sized coffin and wouldn’t fit in a trunk or backseat.

  Leonard hid in the tree line beyond the graveyard, an
d lay flat. I insisted he not bring a gun. I was sick of them. Instead he brought a baseball bat. I brought a Yawara stick; a little stick nubbed on both ends, used by Jujitsu folks to strike and lock with. I was fair with it. Nobody was going to give me a job making an instruction video, but I could fuck you up with it, I needed to. I had it in my back pocket under my coat.

  The days were mildly warm, but as winter moved in, some of the nights were a little brisk. I tugged my jacket tight and zipped it up. It was not only a chilly night, but a dark night, and maybe our kidnapper planned on that. I saw him or her coming in a large truck along the road toward the graveyard.

  The truck wound down the road and the headlights flashed through the thin run of trees along the edge of the graveyard, and then the truck roared down the dirt drive that led into it, the tires large as those of a semi. If the driver was being sneaky about it, I couldn’t tell it. I noticed the license plate had been removed from the front of the truck, and I guessed the back was the same. He’d probably slip them back on when he was out of our sight and continue on his merry way. The headlights were in my eyes, but there was enough residual light from them I could see the truck had been spotted with paint. Most likely a kind of paint you could hose off. It was too dark to know what color paint the spots were, and it didn’t matter; it wouldn’t be there long enough to make any difference should I want to identify it. The underneath paint was white, though, of that I was certain. Like me, the driver had showed up early, but me and my crew had shown up earlier.

  I stood framed in the headlights for a moment and then the driver backed the truck and turned it into the graveyard and bounced across a couple of headstones, knocking them over, snapping them underneath the truck tires like peanut hulls. Rest in peace. The bed of the truck was covered with a camper, and it looked cheap, and my guess was that was more camouflage, and once the job was done, the driver would get rid of that too.

  The driver’s door opened and someone got out of the truck, and it was high enough from cab to dirt, they had to drop to the ground instead of step.