Prologue

August snapped its suspenders against a proud chest of Santa Ana heat. Laboring against the invisible oppression of weather, I sprinkled aromatherapy oils on my clean bed linens and smoothed a pillowcase. When I bent down to gather the dirty sheets, I glanced toward the white ruffled bed skirt and saw a rattlesnake staring back at me.

Now what I knew about snakes you could hold in one hand --- preferably an unbitten one. But it doesn’t take much to know a rattler when you see one.

I looked at the specimen coiled on my bedroom floor about two feet away. He had cocoa diamonds along his back, blotches of taupe on his sides, and a definite pit viper head. I looked at his rattle. It wasn’t shakin’, but I was.

When the snake looked up at me, he saw a solid woman old enough to experience the occasional hot flash yet young enough to boogie. He saw thick chestnut hair with a few strands of silver. My ethnic print blouse belied remnants of my hippie days; the denim cutoffs just said it was Saturday. In all, I saw a handsome but dangerous snake; the snake saw a handsome but daunted woman.

Watching National Geographic, I can appreciate the beauty of snakes and their role in the ecosystem, but when they take me by surprise in my bedroom, I find my attitude less enlightened. I put one foot gingerly behind the other and started to back out of the room.

Suddenly the snake’s tail vibrated like a cicada with Parkinson’s. I stopped; quieted my breathing. The snake was between me and the phone on my nightstand; I couldn’t reach it. The tail stopped rattling. As beads of perspiration dripped down my cleavage, I inched backwards again.

Excerpted from Sticky Fingers © Copyright 2012 by Morgan Hunt. Reprinted with permission by Alyson Books. All rights reserved.