City Slicker (Pistol Creek #1)

Chapter One

Dean

“Hey there, pardner?”

Dean Carlson turned from peering inside the storefront window and winced against the afternoon glare that greeted him. Tugging down the brim of his Storm River State ball cap, he squinted through the resulting shade to find a teenager glancing back over at him. “Who? Me?”

The teen frowned, glancing left and right around the deserted street beside them as mid-afternoon sunlight turned his pimply cheeks into a road map of adolescent angst. “You see anyone else around here, City Slicker?”

Dean did a little double take, struggling to make sure he’d heard the kid right.

City Slicker? City? Slicker? “I...” Dean stammered, peering down at his faded blue jeans, scruffy sneakers and nondescript powder blue t-shirt.

He’d dressed so casually for the three-hour road trip down from Southern Tennessee that it made Dean wonder what “city,” exactly, the kid was referring to? “Did you ... just ... call me...”

“Anyway,” said the teen, drifting from inside the hardware store next door and inching onto the cobblestone pavers that lined the quaint little store fronts up and down the aptly named Lonely Street that ran through downtown Pistol Creek, Kentucky. “He ain’t there.”

“Who ain’t there?” Dean blurted, shaking his head after falling so quickly into countrified speak. “I mean, who? Isn’t? There?” he enunciated more formally, turning to face the portly teenager as he drifted closer on big, dime store black sneakers.

“Sully,” the teen said, wiping his hands on the corner of his bright red Handy Dan’s Hardware work smock. “The fella you’re lookin’ for.”

Dean had known Pistol Creek was deep down in rural Kentucky, but he thought the townies from in and around Storm River, Tennessee had somehow helped him acclimate to their southern accents by now.

They’d done little to prepare him for this teenage cracker jack and his slow, lazy, almost indecipherable drawl.

“You mean the guy who runs Grayson’s Ghost Tours?”

The teenager brightened. Squinting slightly at the crooked nametag on one of his smock straps, Dean saw that his name was, amazingly, “Jason.” Funny, he thought as he stood on the sidewalk squaring up against the slack-jawed storekeep. He looks more like a Jasper or Judd. “That’d be the one.”

“Well, the business hours on his website says he should be open until 5:00, so...” Ridiculously, as if to prove it, Dean tugged on the clearly locked door handle.

Not surprisingly, he found that it was still locked.

The way it had been ever since he’d first tried tugging on it a solid five minutes earlier.

“That’s during the summertime,” Jason drawled, literally smacking his broad, pimply forehead with his big, beefy hand, as if to indicate just how much of a “city slicker” Dean was. “Ain’t nobody booking ghost tours in the spring, buddy.”

Dean wasn’t sure if “buddy” was an upgrade from “City Slicker” or not, but somehow it sounded better to his ears. Progress? he wondered. “Well, I am, so ... maybe he’d make an exception in my case?”

Jason looked Dean up and down, swirling a toothpick around his mottled pink lips. When the surly teen took his sweet ass time forming a reply, Dean grunted, “I’m sorry, are you his booking agent or...”

Jason’s face erupted in a vaguely charming burst of laughter, so sincere it helped to shatter the imposing presence he was clearly so eager to cultivate. “His what now, mister?”

“Booking agent,” Dean huffed, slowly and enunciating each syllable, just in case. “You know, for his ghost tours? That apparently only run in the summertime, even though his website says nothing of the sort.”

“More like a concerned citizen,” Jason insisted, nodding at the way Dean’s hand still lingered on the locked door handle. “You know, come to see what all the ruckus was about as you been fiddlin’ with that there door for the last hour or so.”

“Hardly,” Dean huffed, nodding at the faded yellow pickup truck parked crookedly in one of the mostly empty parking spots along Lonely Street.

Even with Jason’s swirling toothpick sucking and open mouth breathing, Dean could still hear the engine ticking from his long haul down the interstate to Pistol Creek. “I only just now got into town.”

“And promptly just started yanking on Sully’s door?”

“Sully?”

“Sully Grayson,” Jason explained patiently, as if he was in no hurry to return to Handy Dan’s and mix paint or stock shovels or grab another toothpick. “The fella you’re trying to book a ghost tour from, in the off season, when he’s clearly closed.”

“Okay, fine, yes we’ve established all that but...” Dean caught his breath, standing upright and counting to ten—well, at least seven—before adding in a much softer tone, “Is there any way? You might possibly? Tell me where to find him?”

“Who? Sully?”

Dean bit his tongue almost clean off and nodded, struggling not to let his usually expressive face reveal just how pissed off he was at the moment. “Yes,” he sighed. “Obviously.”

“Well, why didn’t you just say so, pardner?” Jason drawled, nodding toward the corner saloon across the street. “He’ll be in there pouring beers. Obviously.”

Dean noted the subtle tone of sarcasm and smiled in reply. Maybe the kid wasn’t such a thickheaded, slow-witted, knuckle dragging hayseed after all. “What? There?” Dean nodded toward Pappy’s Pub, a low-key, old-school, brick facade, neon beer signs in the window kind of bar.

“Sure, why not?” Jason looked offended, somehow.

“No reason, I just ... does he do that often? Tend bar, I mean?”

“Why wouldn’t he?” Jason asked, distracted by a wheezing red pickup truck gliding into a spot in front of Handy’s. “He owns the joint, don’t he?”

Dean did a double-take, wriggling the still locked door of the ghost tour office. “Owns this joint?” he tried to clarify.

“And that joint,” Jason added, nodding toward the bar across the empty street.

Dean frowned. “Well, who’s Pappy then?”

“His pappy,” Jason grumbled as an old salt in cowboy boots and overalls slid from the front seat of the antique truck like molasses oozing thick from an old Mason jar.

“His pappy,” Dean began before doing another grammar double-take. “Sorry, his father owns the bar?”

“Owned the bar,” Jason explained, nodding at the old man straightening his cowboy hat as he stood on the sidewalk in front of the hardware store. “Passed on a few years back and left the place to Sully.”

“The whole ass bar?” Dean was impressed. He’d been expecting some neck-bearded, beatnik, ghost hunter wannabe on the older, heavier side, not some redneck entrepreneur.

“Half the whole ass town,” Jason snorted, waving the chewed-up end of his toothpick toward the bar, the boot store next to it, then back across the street toward the ghost tour shop and even the hardware store itself. “Hell, Happy’s been paying Pappy as long as I’ve been working here.”

“Speaking of,” said the old man, who’d somehow managed to reach the hardware store door while they’d been discussing poor Sully’s far from poor finances. “Get your ass on in here, boy.”

The voice was gruff, the tone was not, the old man’s eyes winking merrily as he chuckled at his own joke. “Hold your horses, Gramps,” Jason said with the familiar air of a retail worker greeting a regular customer. “The hammers and nails ain’t going nowhere.”

He gave Dean a cute little wink, as if they’d become the best of friends in the ten minutes they’d stood on the sidewalk alongside Lonely Street, airing out their cultural differences for half the town to hear.

“All right, Pops,” Jason announced, turning abruptly to slip through the door his customer was still holding for him. “What’ll it be today? Ball peen hammer? Phillips head screwdriver? Or did you just come for more of those pickled pigs feet by the cash register?”