The Big Fix (32 page)

Mark and Laura edged themselves closer to Gunn, who was looking wilder by the second. “If you think I’m going down alone for this, that I won’t tell the world about Lily and Elizabeth, and those goddamned stock certificates you stole—”

Joe stepped on his words. “Calm down! I told you,
we can work this out.
”

Elizabeth was staring, lips parted, at her husband. “Joseph, what are you going to do? You can’t let him—”

Gunn stood, his face turning vicious. “Yeah, I know about the stock. Who else could have taken it? Certainly not Goody Two-Shoes Lily—she wouldn’t dirty her hands with Conrad money. But her sister’s husband? Now, that was another story. She was happy to get down and dirty there.”

I swung my head to gauge Joe’s reaction to Gunn’s accusation. Got tripped up by the look on Frannie’s face—and the gun in her hand.

Shit!
I lunged, trying to stop—

Too late. Three shots rang out in rapid succession. Within a second, I was on top of her. A fraction of an instant later, Mark was on top of both of us, hitting Frannie’s gun hand against the marble-topped end table.

“He was going to marry
me
! He said so!” Frannie screamed.

The gun fell to the floor; Mark kicked it toward Nigel, lifting himself enough that I could squeeze out of the human sandwich. Nigel reached down for the gun.

Frannie’s screams turned to quiet sobs. “He said he would marry me after … after … he
said.
”

Splotches grew, red and ugly, on Gunn’s shirt. Laura had run to him, catching him before he went down. Thomas was beside them, helping her lower him to the floor.

Fuck!
I couldn’t believe she’d shot him. My stomach rolled. I fought back the heave.

Laura put her bare hand over the wound that was bleeding the most profusely. She grabbed one of Thomas’s hands and placed it atop another wound. “Press here, firmly,” she said. “And here.” She put his other hand on the third wound.

“What do you need?” I asked, voice shaky, desperate to do something, anything, to keep me from throwing up or passing out.

“We could use some towels,” Laura said, calm as you please. Spooks. Always keeping their cool in an emergency.

I ran as fast as I could to the powder room across from the library, snatched a pile of snowy white hand towels (monogrammed with a “C”) from a basket beside the sink, and ran back. I gave one to Laura; she carefully lifted her hand, placed the towel over the gushing hole, and reapplied pressure. The towel was totally red in seconds.

Thomas’s hands were a gory mess when he lifted them for the towels, even though the bleeding wasn’t as profuse from the wounds he was covering. He was pale but composed. “Somebody call 911,” he said calmly.

“I already have,” Nigel said. Sure enough, he was putting his phone away.

Elizabeth appeared to be in shock. At least she wasn’t screaming. I would have taken her for a screamer. Maybe the wine had helped.

Mark had pushed Frannie facedown onto the sofa and secured her hands behind her back with a zip tie. Did everyone but me carry those? At least
she
didn’t look strong enough to break one.

“You … stupid … fool,” Jackson said, barely above a whisper, eyes glassy. “I
would
have … married you.”

Frannie tried desperately to push herself up, to wiggle her way toward Jack. “Oh, God,” she said, still sobbing. “Jack, I didn’t mean it. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry!”

Mark, knee planted in the center of her back, leaned down close to her ear. “You move and I’ll have to break your arm,” he said in a quiet tone that nonetheless carried a world of menace. She got very still. “Nigel, can you cover her?”

Nigel pointed the gun at Frannie’s head. “Got it.”

Once Mark seemed satisfied she was no longer a threat, he crossed to Jackson, and stood at his head. “Is he conscious?”

Laura gave a brief shake of her head.

“Good,” Joe said quietly. “
Good.
”

*   *   *

The EMTs pronounced Jackson dead at the scene. Laura and Thomas had done everything they could to keep him alive, but one bullet had hit an artery.

The cops showed up not long after, took tons of pictures, collected evidence, and arrested Frannie. By the time the body was removed from the house to be taken to the morgue, a whole host of reporters and paparazzi were stationed along the perimeter of the property. Didn’t take long for word to leak this close to Hollywood. Probably a reporter listening to a police scanner recognized the address.

Before the Conrads retired upstairs, I took a moment to tell them I knew about the forged stock certificates, implying I was some sort of private detective Jackson had hired to follow them in D.C. Maybe not precisely true, but close enough for horseshoes. Since I’m basically a nice person, I only let them panic for a minute or two before I told them it would remain our little secret as long as the certificates were transferred to Lily and they stayed off her back about the animals. They agreed readily enough, telling us to make ourselves at home for as long as we needed. We could see ourselves out.

As for the funeral shooting … well, Elizabeth hadn’t admitted to it outright, and even if she’d been the shooter, it wasn’t like she’d succeeded. Or maybe she had. Maybe she’d only ever intended to scare the shit out of Jackson. Besides, it was moot now. I’d tell Lily about it, and let her decide how to proceed. I suspected she’d let it go.

“Well, that was unexpected,” I said to the others once the Conrads were gone.

We’d come equipped to videotape Jackson confessing to hiring Angelica’s killer, figuring once he knew we had copies of the incriminating video of him with Frannie, he’d have no choice but to capitulate. Frannie had thrown us all a curveball.

“Looks like you have your work cut out for you, Nigel,” Thomas said. “If you decide to take the case.”

Nigel smiled. “Are you kidding? ‘Loyal Assistant Shoots Celebrity Abuser’? Piece of cake. But there’s the matter of Lily-Ann to finish up first.”

“We can still provide you with a video of the confession, if you want,” I said. “Right, guys? I can be Jackson”—ugh, another dead aura—“if somebody knows how to alter the time stamp so it looks like it was made before he died.”

“Easy,” Mark and Thomas said at the same time.

“Okay, then,” I said, “let’s get this thing done.”
Before I throw up.

Chapter 29

Within an hour, the video was mysteriously leaked to the press. Nigel had suggested it, saying it would make getting “Lily-Ann” released from jail that much faster, which none of us objected to in the slightest, least of all me. The press would eat it up.

When I thought closely about the ethics of everything we were doing, I had to admit to a twinge of conscience. But, really, whether it was technically ethical or not, it was
right
that Lily-Ann would be free, and without the taint of suspicion. Besides, I figured if what we were doing were truly bad, God would have zapped me with a thunderbolt by now.

We could only speculate as to why Gunn had done the job himself instead of hiring someone. Maybe he’d hated his wife that much. Or, as Mark thought likely, it could have been that he didn’t want to leave a hired killer in the position to blackmail him. When the opportunity for the perfect alibi arose, he couldn’t resist using it himself.

Laura had used an untraceable burner phone to record what appeared to be a secret video of Jackson hiring the killer (ably played by Mark, using an unrecognizable mixture of his oldest auras) in a secluded alley. Assuming Gunn’s aura again had been distasteful in the extreme, but I’d held my nose and done it in one take. Nigel, when presenting it to the judge (who’d been pulled from a dinner party to view it), said it had been sent to him anonymously after Gunn had refused to capitulate to the killer’s blackmail attempt. Hey, Mark’s thought about what Gunn might have been trying to avoid by killing Angelica himself had been a good one—why not use it?

“Lily-Ann” was released from prison in the middle of the night, so there weren’t as many paparazzi surrounding the place as there might have been. The few die-hards who showed up were charmed by Billy’s self-effacing performance. He even managed to plug some of her favorite charities, claiming more empathy than ever for the poor, abused animals who wound up—through no fault of their own—in substandard kill shelters.

“Lily-Ann could take a lesson in public relations from you,” I said when we were alone in the backmost seat of Nigel’s luxurious van. Nigel was next to the driver, having wheeled his chair into the spot specially modified for it. Since the middle row of seats had been removed to accommodate Nigel’s chair, we were far enough away to keep our conversation private, if we spoke low enough.

Fortunately, the Conrads would be hiding from the press in their Malibu mansion until the media frenzy abated. We told them Lily-Ann wanted a few days of much-needed recovery time. After that, it would be up to the real Lily-Ann to deal with her parents.

“I believe I’ll leave the crusading to her from here on,” Billy said, with a pained look on Lily-Ann’s face. I wished it were safe for him to drop her aura, but he couldn’t, not before we were back at Nigel’s.

“Are you all right?” I asked. Softly, so Nigel and the driver wouldn’t hear. “Nobody tried to … do anything … to you, did they?”

He reached out to touch my face, lightly tracing the eyebrow above my black eye, and my nose splint. “Jesus, Ciel, I … no, nobody did anything to me. I wish someone had tried,” he added in a fierce whisper.

“Billy, I’m fine. Nigel’s doctor checked me out, and it’s not serious. I’m not even going to have a crooked nose when the swelling goes down,” I said, hoping I was telling the truth.

“It never would have happened if I hadn’t gotten you the stupid job. It’s my fault,” he said.

“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. You had no way of knowing—”

“That’s just it. I
should
have known. If I weren’t so reckless—”

“Stop that! You had a job lined up. I needed work. You offered it to me, and I jumped on it. That’s all there was to it.”

“You got hurt because of me. There’s no getting around that, Ciel. Would you just let me fucking apologize?” he said, voice raised. “Sorry, Nigel,” he added when I put my finger to my lips.

“Fine. Okay. Apology accepted,” I said, bringing the volume level way down. “Can we move on? Because I’ve missed you. A
lot.
” I looked at him significantly.

He didn’t say anything, only pulled me against him, tucking me under his arm and cradling my head gently beneath his chin. It might have been Lily-Ann’s body I was snuggled up to, but it was Billy’s heart I heard beneath my ear. That would have to do for the moment.

*   *   *

The driver dropped us at the back entrance to Nigel’s house, where the van could pull closer to the door and the reporters were blocked by a tall stone wall and a sturdy gate. Nigel, pleading a long day, excused himself after he showed us to our adjoining rooms. Lawyers were so discreet. Billy changed at once into the clothes he’d left at Nigel’s when he’d borrowed the lawyer’s aura to visit me in jail. They’d been washed and folded.

“Shouldn’t we wait until morning to get Lily-Ann?” I asked.

“The sooner, the better—I want to put this whole cluster-fuck behind us. And I’m going by myself.”

“What? Why?” I said.

“A, because you hate flying and you’ve had to do too much of it lately—”

“But I’m getting better at it!” I interjected.

“And B, on the off chance that somebody official comes looking for Lily-Ann for any sort of follow-up, you need to be here to fill in.” He was already walking toward the back door, the press being camped out in front of the house. “Call Dave and tell him I’m on my way.”

“Wait. Aren’t you forgetting something?” I asked.

He stopped and looked at me, his eyes not quite connecting with mine. I stood on tiptoe, pulled his head down to my level, and kissed him. He hesitated at first, then wrapped his arms around me and kissed me back with a passion that bordered on desperation. Finally, he tore his mouth from mine and set me away from him.

“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” he said.

My stomach clenched as I watched him leave. Something was very wrong.

*   *   *

I called Dave, told him Billy was on his way, and asked him to make sure Lily-Ann was ready to leave. Then I kicked off my shoes, brushed my teeth, lay down on top of the bed covers, and proceeded to not sleep.

What in the heck was up with Billy? It wasn’t like him to pass up happy time in the boudoir, even if circumstances dictated a quickie. With him, quality never suffered when you added speed.

Had he been hurt in jail, and wasn’t telling me? The idea of that made me feel sick to my stomach. Or was it me? I rushed to the full-length mirror in the bathroom. Maybe he’d been turned off? My splinted nose sure wasn’t the sexiest thing going. The bruising around my eye still looked pretty gross, too. Maybe I should have adapted that away before I saw him. But Billy had always been the last person I couldn’t be myself with, so I hadn’t thought of it.

I finally gave up analyzing and lay back down. I must have drifted off eventually, because the next thing I knew, it was morning and voices were drifting through the bedroom door I’d purposely left open for Billy. They must have returned.

I made a quick pit stop, washed my hands and face, brushed my teeth and tidied my hair with the grooming implements thoughtfully left on the bathroom vanity, and ran downstairs.

Lily-Ann was in the kitchen with Nigel, Thomas, and Laura. Her face lit up as soon as she saw me, and fell when she saw the bruises and splint. “Thank you. Thank you so much for everything.”

“I’m glad it worked out. But, hey, what’s this about hating my pony?” I said.

She chuckled dryly. “You mean the demented creature who bit me when I tried to feed him?”

“Crap. Sorry about that. Eeyore’s kind of an asshole sometimes. I hope it won’t scar.”

“Only a nip, and not in a place that’s generally on display.” She winked, but still looked concerned. “It’s not nearly as bad as what you went through for me. I should be the sorry one,” she said.