Little Moon: A Samantha Moon Story Read online

  LITTLE MOON

  A Samantha Moon Story

  by

  J.R. RAIN

  The World of Samantha Moon

  VAMPIRE FOR HIRE SERIES

  Moon Dance

  Vampire Moon

  American Vampire

  Moon Child

  Christmas Moon (novella)

  Vampire Dawn

  Vampire Games

  Moon Island

  Moon River

  Vampire Sun

  Moon Dragon

  Moon Shadow

  Vampire Fire

  Midnight Moon

  Moon Angel

  Vampire Sire

  Moon Master

  Dead Moon

  Lost Moon

  Vampire Destiny

  Infinite Moon

  Vampire Empress

  Moon Elder

  Wicked Moon

  SAMANTHA MOON SHORT STORY SINGLES

  Vampire Blues

  Vampire Dreams

  Halloween Moon

  Vampire Gold

  Dark Side of the Moon

  Vampire Requiem

  Moon Love

  Moon Beast

  Moon Maze

  Silver Hammer

  One Swallow

  Little Moon

  SAMANTHA MOON ADVENTURES

  (completed)

  Banshee Moon

  Moon Monster

  Moon Ripper

  Witch Moon

  Moon Goddess

  Moon Blaze

  Golem Moon

  Moon Maidens

  SAMANTHA MOON CASE FILES

  (completed)

  Moon Bayou

  Blood Moon

  Parallel Moon

  SAMANTHA MOON ORIGINS

  (completed)

  New Moon Rising

  Moon Mourning

  Haunted Moon

  SAMANTHA MOON COLLECTIONS

  Moon Tales

  Moon Shots

  Little Moon

  Published by Rain Press

  Copyright © 2021 by J.R. Rain

  All rights reserved.

  Ebook Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. All rights reserved.

  Little Moon

  1.

  “Hello,” I say, smiling down at the little face. “What’s your name?”

  “Bri.”

  “That’s a pretty name.”

  The little girl nods knowingly. She’s heard this before. “Thank you.”

  Standing behind her, resting a hand on her shoulder, is Bri’s mother. She smiles, looking both tired and a little embarrassed. “She wanted to see you. Well, not you, exactly.”

  “Are you a real private detective?” asks Bri, jumping in. I’d noticed the little girl hadn’t taken her eyes off me since stepping through the office door.

  “I am. And what do you know of private detectives?”

  “A lot! My favorite is Veronica Mars.” The girl, about ten, clasps her hands behind her and rocks back on her heels, nodding. Clearly, she’s an expert on all things private eye related.

  “I’ve never seen the show,” I said.

  “She is the best. The best!” She looks around at my office; my desk, Tammy’s desk, the coffee maker in the corner, paintings from a local artist. She nods her approval at it all. I think—and I could be wrong here—I might have just been elevated to super cool status.

  “Bri is also quite fond of Jessica Jones,” says her mom, who’s name is Brenda.

  Bri nods at the name Jessica Jones, but the excitement for her isn’t quite at the Veronica Mars level. “Jessica Jones is pretty good but sometimes I have to leave the room.”

  Brenda shrugs. “Adult content and all. I fill her in using, um, vague terms.”

  I nod. Good mother, right here.

  “I want to be a private eye someday, too.”

  “You don’t say?” I ask.

  “In fact...” Her little face instantly turns bright red.

  “Whoa. What is it?” I ask.

  But she shakes her head and hides behind her long bangs. In fact, she reaches up and pulls down her mom’s hands, hiding behind those, as well. Wow, this must be big.

  “Bri started her own private eye business.”

  “Oh, really?” I squat down to eye level. At present we’re standing in the space between my desk and my daughter’s desk, who works for me part time. Tammy’s in school at this time of day, though I expect to see her in a few hours. Which means Bri is likely missing school to come see me. Again, this must be big.

  I reach out and pull aside a lock of hair. A blue eyeball stares back at me. “Did you name your business?”

  She nods.

  “What’s it called?”

  She says nothing, just too embarrassed to talk. It spreads to her ears, which burn bright vermilion.

  I sit on my knees. “You know, I wanted to be a private investigator when I was about your age.”

  Bri separates her mother’s middle and index fingers. Now two eyeballs peer at me. “Really?”

  Actually, the desire to be a federal agent occurred to me my senior year in high school. At ten years old, I was still stealing my dinner from the neighbor’s farm. Not exactly the model of law-abiding. Then again, I was hungry, and my parents were stoned.

  “Yup. Pretty close to your age, give or take a few years.”

  The heat wafting from her cheeks might have been dialed down a notch or two. “Really?”

  “Really. But I wasn’t as clever as you. I never started my own business. I’m so impressed!”

  “Thank you,” she whispers, looking down, digging the toe of her sneaker into the carpet.

  “Have you solved any cases yet?” I ask.

  She nods, but can’t quite seem to get herself to tell me more.

  Brenda lifts her hands from her daughter’s face, exposing bright chubby cheeks and eyes that immediately dart away. “I hired her to look for my car keys the other day.” Brenda’s smile suggests that she herself hid the keys, possibly to give her daughter her first official case.

  “And did she—you—find them?”

  Bri nods, flips her hair out of her eyes. “They were in the trash. It was an easy case. I simply retraced all of her steps.” She looks up. “They were sitting right on top of the trash, Mom.”

  “Well, I couldn’t find them.”

  Bri’s eyes narrow suspiciously. “Anyone could have found them.”

  “Well, I couldn’t.”

  Not sure the kid is buying it, but either way, she solved her first case. She shrugs and levels her stare at me. There is a lot going on behind those eyes. Not much is getting past her. Hey, she might just make a fine investigator.

  I say, “Big case or small, that’s all part of the job. Trust me, your next case might not be so easy.”

  She glances up at her mom, who looks down at her. If I’m not mistaken, there’s some trepidation in both of their eyes.

  “Well,” says Brenda. “That’s kind of why we’re here.”

  “Oh?”

  “We need help—professional help,” says Bri, nodding.

  Had I been less professional, I might have cracked on the ‘needing professional help’ line. I’ll leave that for wittier detectives with drier senses of humor. Instead, I gesture at the two client chairs in front of my desk. “Then let’s talk.”

  2.

  Little Bri had come prepared.

  She’d made an actual case file from an old manila folder with the words “Receipts 2018” scratched off the tab, to be replaced by “The Bike Rack Mystery”, which had been written in neat, round let
ters underneath.

  She opened it, revealing precisely one sheet of lined paper. At the top of the paper it said, “Case Notes”, written in the same child-like shorthand. Under the title were about seven or eight handwritten lines, complete with starred bullet points. Some of the bullet points read:

  ● Mysterious bike racks appearing in the city?

  ● What could it mean?

  ● Need witnesses!

  The rest of the evidence consists of photographs on her cell phone. She asks if she can come around the desk and show me the pictures. I say she sure can. Now that her embarrassment is a thing of the past, the little detective veritably bursts at the seams.

  “I noticed the first bike rack four days ago.”

  “Bike racks are all over.”

  “I know, but this one appeared mysteriously.”

  “Why mysteriously?”

  “Because it wasn’t there the day before, then it disappeared the next day.”

  “That is mysterious.”

  “Plus, it was right next to a lake. Who puts a bike rack on the dirt next to water?”

  “Someone lame, obviously,” I say.

  Mom chuckles. Daughter frowns. She’s taking this very seriously.

  She explains further. Bri and her mom were on their way to school when she saw the bike rack next to the lake. I know the place well. An exceptionally long park, Yorba Linda Regional stretches from one major street to another, and features a half dozen lakes, softball fields, walking paths, oak copses, and lots and lots of green hills. And yes, one can see some of the lakes quite clearly from the road.

  The bike rack hadn’t been there before, she was sure of it. Though she pointed it out to her mom, Brenda admits she didn’t actually see the bike rack by the lake; that said, she remembers her daughter mentioning something about it. The next day—poof—the bike rack was gone.

  “So it wasn’t there. Then it was there. Then it was gone again.”

  “Yup!”

  “Okay, that’s a little weird.”

  “Look, I made a notation in the file.”

  She points to a line that reads: “Monday, 7:30 a.m. (roughly), bike rack appears. Tuesday, 7:30 a.m. (roughly) bike rack disappears.”

  “Solid note taking,” I say to her. She smiles brightly.

  “I can definitely vouch that it wasn’t there the next day. She made me stop.”

  “I took pictures of the crime scene,” says Bri, swiping through her phone, and landing on a group of lakeside pictures.

  “We don’t know that a crime was committed,” I said.

  “Well, someone stole a bike rack.”

  I nod. “Good point.”

  She next shows me a series of pictures of the lakeside... one that is very much bike-rack free. “I documented everything. Look, no evidence that a bike rack was ever there. Where did it go? Why was it there in the first place? It is so weird, Ms. Moon.”

  “Call me Sam, and I agree. Maybe someone moved it? There were footprints in the sand. Maybe some kids were messing around?”

  Bri vigorously shakes her head. “I already ruled that out.”

  “Oh?” My head nearly explodes with cuteness. This is sounding very much like an episode of Scooby-Doo; that is, if Scooby and the gang investigated disappearing bike racks and not creepy caretakers running amok in castles.

  The little detective continues, “I did a sweep of the entire park.”

  Mom nods, closing her eyes. I suspect Mom had done the sweep right along with her daughter.

  “I found other bike racks, but they looked different. Here look.” She shows me more pictures. The racks are triangular-shaped and capable of securing about eight bikes. “The bike rack I saw had three circular hoops, not triangles.”

  “You sure it was three?”

  “Pretty sure. I got a real good look at it.”

  “Okay. Go on.”

  She checks off days with her fingers. “So, day one, I saw the bike rack by the lake. Day two, I didn’t see the bike rack, and officially started my investigation.”

  “And you’re sure you saw the bike rack on day one?”

  She seems a bit hurt that I would question her observational skills. “Yes. Definitely. I stared at it the whole time we drove past it.”

  “Okay. I believe you.”

  She smiles and holds up three fingers. “This takes us to day three. That’s when I saw the bike rack in the grass field.”

  “Oh?” I look at Mom, who nods.

  Bri proceeds to show me pictures of, sure enough, a three-hooped bike rack sitting in the middle of an otherwise empty field. Whoa. I can’t quite place the location, but likely in Yorba Linda where there’s a bit more empty land. Lots and lots of pictures of the bike rack, which is rusted and slightly dented.

  “This looks exactly like the one I saw by the lake.” Little Bri looks triumphant... and a little vindicated.

  I swipe through the pictures, my interest legitimately piqued. “Where is this?”

  “About a mile from our home,” answers Brenda.

  “And was there a bike rack there before.”

  “I don’t think so...”

  “Mom, please. It’s just sitting there in the field. We would have seen it.” The girl looks at me. “It wasn’t there before. Now check this out, Sam.”

  She swipes through some more pictures and holds the phone out to me again. It’s of an empty field. Mom is in the picture, as well, along with a small Jeep SUV parked in the dirt near a road. I recognize the treeline in the background from the previous pictures. It’s the same location, minus one key object.

  “The bike rack is gone,” I say.

  “Yes! These were taken the very next day,” says Bri.

  The next series of photos show the dirt in the area I presume the bike rack had been just the day before. The dirt is very obviously undisturbed. No, wait I see a single series of footprints.

  “Someone was there,” I say.

  “But who?” asks the little detective.

  “It was the darndest thing,” says Brenda. “I actually couldn’t believe the bike thingie was gone. I mean, I had seen it just the day before. Bri made me stop while she took an ungodly amount of pictures. And the next... poof! It was gone. And she’s right. There was no indication the rack had ever been there. I mean, look at the pictures. That thing looked heavy, too. Made of steel. Really old-looking, too.”

  I drum my fingers on the desk, thinking. Bri stares at my drumming fingers, then at me, then at the office. She’s soaking everything in, my every gesture, every inch of my work environment. This, I suspect, is Disneyland to her. The thing is... she has a legitimate mystery on her hands.

  “Well,” says Brenda, sounding a bit on the tired side, “will you officially take the case of the appearing and disappearing bike rack?”

  I chuckle. “I will under one condition.”

  They both wait, Bri looking as if she might pop.

  “Bri has to help me.”

  She squeals and looks at her mom. “Please, mom. Please!”

  Brenda looks at me. “Will I have to do anything?”

  “Nope.”

  “Then it’s a deal.”

  3.

  “The question is... why is this little girl seeing the bike racks and no one else?”

  Allie reaches over and snatches an olive from an array of garnishes near us, pops it into her mouth. We’re at Hero’s Bar & Grill, sitting along the curved bar counter. I still love Hero’s despite my favorite bartender having left years ago.

  “Maybe others are seeing them, too,” I say. “But just not caring enough to report them.”

  “Or to start a case file,” says Allie. “That’s just too cute.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  Allison cocks her head in mid-chew. “Truthfully, if I saw an old rusted bike rack somewhere it didn’t belong, I’d likely not give it a second look.”

  “Unless,” I say, “it appeared randomly one day and was gone the next.”
br />   “Yeah, I suppose that would get my attention.” Allie sips from her Jack and Diet Coke and shivers a little. “But not enough to hire a private eye.”

  “Unless you were a kid who idolized private eyes. According to her mother, the girl lives and breathes Veronica Mars, and has been wanting to meet a ‘real’ PI for years.”

  “You think maybe she made up this bike rack thing just to meet you? Or any PI for that matter?”

  “The thought crossed my mind, except her mother was a witness to the appearing and disappearing bike rack. It was literally there one day and gone the next day.”

  “In an empty field?”

  “So they say.”

  “Maybe they’re both nuts.”

  “Heh. Maybe.”

  And after giving this two or three days thought, apparently little Bri told her mother she’d hit a dead end. At which point one of them (wasn’t sure who) floated the idea of bringing in a real private eye to help solve the case. And yeah, I could totally see Bri telling her mother she’d hit a “dead end.” Too cute.

  “You’re loving this, aren’t you, Sam?”

  “Being idolized? Of course!”

  I sip my second glass of wine, noting that something close to a buzz seems to be going on inside my head. But just as quickly as it appears, it gets eradicated by my super healing powers. Back in the day, it was all I could do to just keep wine down. Now, I can eat and drink as much as I want. The thing is... I don’t really want food all that much. It does little for me, and, quite frankly, doesn’t taste all that great. Siphoning energy is the way to go. Indeed, it’s what I crave. In fact...

  I spy a handsome foursome sitting a few tables away from the bar. Two couples laughing a little too loudly. Damn them for enjoying their lives. That said, I don’t feel too bad about ‘drinking’ from them, which I do so now. Soon, four multi-colored, wispy threads crackled and snapped in my redirection, stretching until I literally breathed them in.

  I felt it first in my solar plexus—pure, blissful energy—that spread to my outer extremities. While I never felt more alive, the laughing subsided somewhat at the table of four. As if a joke didn’t quite land. Now they yawned. One or two even rubbed their eyes.