Dark Horse (A Jim Knighthorse Novel) (22 page)

Great.

“But you’re still a cutie,” said Pauline,
giggling, now almost entirely drunk.

And with those words and that infectious
giggle, my anger abated and I started fading away again.

“Tell me about your murdered friend,” said
Pauline.

“She wasn’t necessarily a friend.”

She explored my mind a bit more. “My
apologies. Your piano teacher from grade school.”

“Yes.”

“Why would someone kill her?” she asked.

“I don’t know.”

She paused, then nodded knowingly. “I see you
intend to find out.”

“Yes.”

“And perhaps save your soul in the
process?”

“That’s the plan,” I said. “For now.”

“You do realize you have limits to where you
can go and what you can do, right?”

I shrugged. “Minor technicalities.”

Now available on Smashwords.com:

Vampire for Hire #1

by

J.R. Rain

(read on for a sample)

1.

I was folding laundry in the dark and
watching Judge Judy rip this guy a new asshole when the doorbell
rang.

I flipped down a pair of Oakley wrap-around
sunglasses and, still holding a pair of little Anthony’s cotton
briefs in one hand, opened the front door.

The light, still painfully bright, poured in
from outside. I squinted behind my shades and could just made out
the image of a UPS deliveryman.

And, oh, what an image it was.

As my eyes adjusted to the light, a hunky guy
with tan legs and beefy arms materialized through the screen door
before me. He grinned at me easily, showing off a perfect row of
white teeth. Spiky yellow hair protruded from under his brown cap.
The guy should have been a model, or at least my new best
friend.

“Mrs. Moon?” he asked. His eyes seemed
particularly searching and hungry, and I wondered if I had stepped
onto the set of a porno movie. Interestingly, a sort of warning
bell sounded in my head. Warning bells are tricky to discern, and I
automatically assumed this one was telling me to stay away from Mr.
Beefy, or risk damaging my already rocky marriage.

“You got her,” I said easily, ignoring the
warning bells.

“I’ve got a package here for you.”

“You don’t say.”

“I’ll need for you to sign the delivery log.”
He held up an electronic gizmo-thingy that must have been the
aforementioned delivery log.

“I’m sure you do,” I said, and opened the
screen door and stuck a hand out. He looked at my very pale hand,
paused, and then placed the electronic thing-a-majig in it. As I
signed it, using a plastic-tipped pen, my signature appeared in the
display box as an arthritic mess. The deliveryman watched me
intently through the screen door. I don’t like to be watched
intently. In fact, I prefer to be ignored and forgotten.

“Do you always wear sunglasses indoors?” he
asked casually, but I sensed his hidden question: And what sort of
freak are you?

“Only during the day. I find them redundant
at night.” I opened the screen door again and exchanged the log
doohickey for a small square package. “Thank you,” I said. “Have a
good day.”

He nodded and left, and I watched his cute
little buns for a moment longer, and then shut the solid oak door
completely. Sweet darkness returned to my home. I pulled up the
sunglasses and sat down in a particularly worn dining room chair.
Someday I was going to get these things re-upholstered.

The package was heavily taped, but a few deft
strokes of my painted red nail took care of all that. I opened the
lid and peered inside. Shining inside was an ancient golden
medallion. An intricate Celtic cross was engraved across the face
of it, and embedded within the cross, formed by precisely cut
rubies, were three red roses.

In the living room, Judge Judy was calmly
explaining to the defendant what an idiot he was. Although I
agreed, I turned the TV off, deciding that this medallion needed my
full concentration.

After all, it was the same medallion worn by
my attacker six years earlier.

2.

There was no return address and no note.
Other than the medallion, the box was empty. I left the gleaming
artifact in the box and shut the lid. Seeing it again brought back
some horrible memories. Memories I have been doing my best to
forget.

I put the box in a cabinet beneath the china
hutch, and then went back to Judge Judy and putting away the
laundry. At 3:30 p.m., I lathered my skin with heaping amounts of
sun block, donned a wide gardening hat and carefully stepped
outside.

The pain, as always, was intense and searing.
Hell, I could have been cooking over an open fire pit. Truly, I had
no business being out in the sun, but I had my kids to pick up,
dammit.

So I hurried from the front steps and crossed
the driveway and into the open garage. My dream was to have a home
with an attached garage. But, for now, I had to make the daily
sprint.

Once in the garage and out of the direct
glare of the spring sun, I could breathe again. I could also smell
my burning flesh.

Blech!

Luckily, the Ford Windstar minivan was
heavily tinted, and so when I backed up and put the thing into
drive, I was doing okay again. Granted, not great, but okay.

I picked up my son and daughter from school,
got some cheeseburgers from Burger King and headed home. Yes, I
know, bad mom, but after doing chores all day, I definitely was not
going to cook.

Once at home, the kids went straight to their
room and I went straight to the bathroom where I removed my hat and
sunglasses, and used a washcloth to remove the extra sunscreen.
Hell, I ought to buy stock in Coppertone. Soon the kids were hard
at work saving our world from Haloes and had lapsed into a rare and
unsettling silence. Perhaps it was the quiet before the storm.

My only appointment for the day was right on
time, and since I work from home, I showed him to my office in the
back. His name was Kingsley Fulcrum and he sat across from me in a
client chair, filling it to capacity. He was tall and broad
shouldered and wore his tailored suit well. His thick black hair,
speckled with gray, was jauntily disheveled and worn long over his
collar. Kingsley was a striking man and would have been the poster
boy for dashing rogues if not for the two scars on his face. Then
again, maybe poster boys for rogue did have scars on their faces.
Anyway, one was on his left cheek and the other was on his
forehead, just above his left eye. Both were round and puffy. And
both were recent.

He caught me staring at the scars. I looked
away, embarrassed. “How can I help you, Mr. Fulcrum?”

“How long have you been a private
investigator, Mrs. Moon?” he asked.

“Six years,” I said.

“What did you do before that?”

“I was a federal agent.”

He didn’t say anything, and I could feel his
eyes on me. God, I hate when I can feel eyes on me. The silence
hung for longer than I was comfortable with and I answered his
unspoken question. “I had an accident and was forced to work at
home.”

“May I ask what kind of accident?”

“No.”

He raised his eyebrows and nodded. He might
have turned a pale shade of red. “Do you have a list of
references?”

“Of course.”

I turned to my computer, brought up the
reference file and printed him out the list. He took it and scanned
the names briefly. “Mayor Hartley?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“He hired you?”

“He did. I believe that’s the direct line to
his personal assistant.”

“Can I ask what sort of help you gave the
mayor?”

“No.”

“I understand. Of course you can’t divulge
that kind of information.”

“How exactly can I help you, Mr. Fulcrum?” I
asked again.

“I need you to find someone.”

“Who?”

“The man who shot me,” he said. “Five
times.”

3.

The furious sounds of my kids erupting into
an argument suddenly came through my closed office door. In
particular, Anthony’s high-pitched shriek. Sigh. The storm
broke.

I gave Kingsley an embarrassed smile. “Could
you please hold on?”

“Duty calls,” he said, smiling. Nice
smile.

I marched through my single story home and
into the small bedroom my children shared. Anthony was on top of
Tammy. Tammy was holding the remote control away from her body with
one hand and fending off her little brother with the other. I came
in just in time to witness him sinking his teeth into her hand. She
yelped and bopped him over the ear with the remote control. He had
just gathered himself to make a full-scale leap onto her back, when
I stepped into the room and grabbed each by their collar and
separated them. I felt as if I had separated two ravenous
wolverines. Anthony’s fingers clawed for his sister’s throat. I
wondered if they realized they were both hovering a few inches off
the floor. When they had both calmed down, I set them down on their
feet. Their collars were ruined.

“Anthony, we do not bite in this household.
Tammy, give me the remote control.”

“But mom,” said Anthony, in that shriekingly
high-pitched voice that he used to irritate me. “I was watching
‘Pokemon’ and she turned the channel.”

“We each get one half hour after school,”
Tammy said smugly. “And you were well into my half hour.”

“But you were on the phone talking to
Richaaard.”

“Tammy, give your brother the remote control.
He gets to finish his TV show. You lost your dibs by talking to
Richaaard.” They both laughed. “I have a client in my office. If I
hear any more loud voices, you will both be auctioned off on eBay.
I could use the extra money.”

I left them and headed back to the office.
Kingsley was perusing my bookshelves. He looked at me before I had
a chance to say anything and raised his eyebrows.

“You have an interest in the occult,” he
said, fingering a hardback book. “In particular, vampirism.”

“Yeah, well, we all need a hobby,” I
said.

“An interesting hobby, that,” he said.

I sat behind my desk. It was time to change
the subject. “So you want me to find the man who shot you five
times. Anything else?”

He moved away from my book shelves and sat
across from me again. He raised a fairly bushy eyebrow. On him, the
bushy eyebrow somehow worked.

“Anything else?” he asked, grinning. “No, I
think that will be quite enough.”

And then it hit me. I thought I recognized
the name and face. “You were on the news a few months back,” I said
suddenly.

He nodded once. “Aye, that was me. Shot five
times in the head for all the world to see. Not my proudest
moment.”

Did he just say aye? I had a strange sense
that I had suddenly gone back in time. How far back, I didn’t know,
but further enough back where men said aye.

“You were ambushed and shot. I can’t imagine
it would have been anyone’s proudest moment. But you survived, and
that’s all that matters, right?”

“For now,” he said. “Next on the list would
be to find the man who shot me.” He sat forward. “Everything you
need is at your disposal. Nothing of mine is off limits. Speak to
anyone you need to, although I ask you to be discreet.”

“Discretion is sometimes not possible.”

“Then I trust you to use your best
judgment.”

Good answer. He took out a business card and
wrote something on the back. “That’s my cell number. Please call me
if you need anything.” He wrote something under his number. “And
that’s the name and number of the acting homicide detective working
my case. His name is Sherbet, and although I found him to be
forthcoming and professional, I didn’t like his conclusions.”

“Which were?”

“He tends to think my attack was nothing but
a random shooting.”

“And you disagree?”

“Wholeheartedly.”

We discussed my retainer and he wrote me a
check. The check was bigger than we discussed.

“I don’t mean to be rude,” said Kingsley as
he stood and tucked his expensive fountain pen inside his expensive
jacket, “but are you ill?”

I’ve heard the question a thousand times.

“No, why?” I asked brightly.

“You seem pale.”

“Oh, that’s my Irish complexion, lad,” I
said, and winked.

He stared at me a moment longer, and then
returned my wink and left.

4.

When Kingsley was gone I punched his name
into my web browser.

Dozens of online newspaper articles came up,
and from these I garnered that Kingsley was a rather successful
defense attorney, known for doing whatever it took to get his
clients off the hook, often on seemingly inane technicalities. He
was apparently worth his weight in gold.

I thought of his beefy shoulders.

A lot of weight. Muscular weight.

Down girl.

I continued scanning the headlines until I
found the one I wanted. It was on a web page for a local LA TV
station. I clicked on a video link. Thank God for high speed
internet. A small media window appeared on my screen, and shortly
thereafter I watched a clip that had first appeared on local TV
news. The clip had gone national, due to its sensationally horrific
visuals.

A reporter appeared first in the screen, a
young Hispanic woman looking quite grave. Over her shoulder was a
picture of the Fullerton Municipal Courthouse. The next shot was a
grainy image from the courthouse security camera itself. In the
frame were two men and two women, all dressed impeccably, all
looking important. They were crossing in front of the courthouse
itself. In football terms, they formed a sort of moving huddle,
although I rarely think of things in football terms and understand
little of the stupid sport.