The Lady in Pink - Deadly Ever After 2 (17 page)

I
n the wee hours of the night I found what I was looking for. Oddly enough it wasn’t inside the stack of Post-it notes, but a paper clinging to the side of the box. I’d been at my wits’ end, and then I’d noticed the white edge of the paper between the flaps of the cardboard box. I’d pulled the paper free, my eyes rounding when I realized what I held in my hands. A final bill from Shady Wings Nursing Home. My find had so excited me, the edge of the paper where my fingers gripped began to burn. I quickly blew the smoldering paper out.

I picked up my phone and dialed.

Alice’s sleepy voice answered on the fourth ring. “What?”

“It’s Blue.”

“I don’t care what color it is, you freak.” And she hung up the phone.

I waited, counting off the seconds. My phone rang three minutes and thirty-four seconds later. I answered sweetly. “Hello?”

“Um, hi,” Alice said, her voice husky. “Sorry about that. I was asleep . . .”

“No problem,” I said enjoying her discomfort. “I have a job for you.”

“Okay,” she said slowly, as if weighing my mental status. Not that I blamed her. The last time we’d talked I’d nearly burned up the entire office. “What do you need?”

I quickly filled her in on what I’d found. She listened while I explained what I wanted her to do, only interrupting to ask one question. “I’m getting paid double time for this, right?”

I grinned. “Consider it hazard pay.”

With that she hung up the phone and went to work.

I, on the other hand, spread out on my cramped couch, my feet hanging over the edge. I shifted to my side, my gaze falling on the lone figure lying behind the curtain in my bed, her wings rising and falling as she slept the sleep of angels. I watched her until my eyes finally grew heavy and I fell into a dreamless sleep.

 

Three hours later Izzy poked me awake with the end of a rolled-up magazine. I groaned once, slowly cracking my sandman-riddled eyelids open. I ran my tongue over my teeth, thirty-one in total. A habit I had yet to break. It came from spending too much time around fairies.

Izzy apparently noticed, for she smacked me in the head with the magazine and walked away with a softly spoken threat. “If I wanted your teeth, I’d take them. Anytime. Anywhere. Count on it.”

I rolled to a sitting position and grinned, feeling better than I had in a week, even on less than three hours of sleep. Today I would find the man and woman behind the machine. I just knew it. In celebration only, I added a good amount of Irish to my morning coffee, the burn of which eased some of the burning still left in my loins after last night’s amorous debacle.

My phone rang shortly after I finished the very last drop of spiked coffee. I picked it up, glanced at the caller ID, and pressed the talk button. “You got something?” I asked, a little surprised since I’d given Alice the task only three hours ago.

“It’s why you pay me the less-than-big-but-better-than-eating-cat-food bucks,” she answered smartly. She sounded like she needed a nap, which made me smile. “The address you gave me off the Shady Wings bill came back to a holding company.”

I bit my lip, my good mood slowly fading. I’d thought for sure the bill would lead to my parents. How else would a woman with no family or money to speak of live her last days in a private-care nursing home? Most in Christine’s situation ended up in a state-run facility wearing ratty bathrobes and smelling like week-old diapers. So either Christine had stocked away all her Tooth Fairy cash along with every penny she ever made or someone else was footing the bill. But why? What was it exactly that Christine had known?

Alice wasn’t finished. “I hacked the New Never City assessor’s records and found the names of the officers of the holding company.”

Goody, I thought but didn’t voice my sarcasm.

“One name popped out at me during the search.”

“Yeah?” I gripped the phone tighter, half expecting to hear the name Smith.

“James W. Jones.”

“The
W
stand for ‘Wild’ by any chance? As in our intern James Wild?”

“Oh, yes.”

I let out a laugh. “Nice job. I’ll see you at the office in a couple of hours.”

“Okay . . . but . . . ,” she said with a tension-filled pause.

“What?”

The pause grew longer. “This could very well be a trap.”

I cracked my knuckles in anticipation, my pulse buzzing with electrical current. “I sincerely hope so.”

A
n hour later I stood outside the high-rise of James Wild’s last known residence. His real residence, not the one I’d visited a few days ago. The one Alice had uncovered during a search of New Never City records. Records I would’ve never been able to access on my own. Computer-savvy investigators had really put a damper on the leg-breaking aspects of the business.

Man, how I longed for the good old days.

Much to my disgust, James owned a loft in the heart of the city, a place where you had to wipe your feet before walking on the street, let alone the sidewalk. The rent in the city was astronomical. I could only imagine what the price of a loft in a swanky high-rise would be.

Not that I’d ever want to live there. I liked my run-down apartment in my less-than-desirable neighborhood. What it lacked in physical safety it more than made up for in fairy-dust-addicted hookers and the sweet smell of spray paint in the morning.

I fingered the lock picks in my jacket, sneaking a glance at Izzy. She stood a little behind me in a tight black dress, her wings invisible and a set of diamonds around her neck. The dress was hers. She kept it at the office for just such an emergency. The diamonds we’d borrowed from one of our more notorious clients. They belonged to his mistress, and if we didn’t return them in their original pristine condition, I wouldn’t have to worry about some faceless killer anymore.

Risking my life for a valuable set of baubles didn’t worry me overmuch. Not nearly as much as having Izzy watching my back. I wanted her as far away from danger as she could get. But she had other ideas. Mainly she wouldn’t listen to a word I said, nor would she let me leave the apartment without her and her fairyguards, who stood silently judging me. Even though I tried. I’d even gone as far as electrocuting the doorknob. Much to my dismay, they’d used the fire escape. But if things went bad, those two might be useful.

“I go in and you wait here until I give the all clear,” I said to Izzy. Right and Left had agreed to stay there, ensuring no one arrived for a sneak attack. Izzy agreed with a nod to stay put until I ushered her forward, though I doubted her sincerity.

I adjusted the silk tie around my neck, ducking inside the high-rise where James had lived. Surprisingly the doorman held the door wide, truly a miracle given the electric-blue hue of my hair. I was surprised he didn’t immediately call the cops. I looked like a thug, no matter how shiny my loafers. And the doorman knew it. You could put lipstick on each of the three little pigs, but those pre–pork rinds would still bite.

Then again, who really questioned a man in a three-thousand-dollar suit?

Not to mention one with the power to burn the place to the ground with a flick of the wrist. I motioned Izzy to follow, which she did, stumbling twice on the four-inch heels two sizes too big she had borrowed from Doreen, the bitchy receptionist.

The second time she stumbled, the doorman caught her before she hit the floor, and she shot him a thankful smile, fluttering her eyelashes as she did so. I rolled my eyes. When would she learn not to overplay her hand? Though I saw through her innocent act, her awkwardness worked like a charm on the guards. Like his partner, the guy with the gun on his hip manning the security desk fell for it too, waving us through without question.

I guess there was something to say for having Izzy along for a little B and E.

Without a word we boarded the elevator with access from the parking garage below to the penthouse suit. The only problem was you needed an electronic key card to go anywhere. A key card I didn’t possess. Damn secure buildings. It made one want to steal something just for the hell of it.

“Shit,” I said quietly. We needed to search the loft, and we needed to do it soon, before this building “accidently” caught fire as well. I scratched the blue hairs on my chin, thinking. I could probably shock the guard into giving up his key card, but that would draw too much attention. I wanted time to thoroughly search the loft without being interrupted by half a dozen armed cops. The NNPD tended to frown on any illegal activity around here. Go figure.

“What’s wrong?” Izzy asked, patting the blond wing she wore over her fiery-red hair. “We’re inside like you wanted.”

I motioned to the control panel on the elevator. “We need a key card, and unless you have one hidden in that dress”—a fact I doubted since it barely contained Izzy—“we’re screwed.”

She reached in the dress, down between her breasts, and pulled a card no bigger than a driver’s license from her cleavage. I did my best not to look, though I might’ve glimpsed a bit of boob before she covered up. “Voilà,” she said, holding out the card.

“How’d you . . .” I grabbed the slightly heated card from her hand.

“I picked the doorman’s pocket.” Izzy smiled, shifting her breasts back into the confines of the much-too-tight dress. “I took a class on pickpocketing a few months ago.” She grinned. “At the adult annex. They teach everything at the annex.”

Damn, I guess they did.

“This summer I’m going to learn how to white-water raft.” She smiled. “A girl’s got to keep her options open.”

Not nearly as useful as pickpocketing considering we didn’t live within four hours of a drop of white water. Putrid green and smelling of dead dwarf mobsters was more New Never City’s style. But I just nodded, wanting to stay on Izzy’s good side. Who knew what else they taught at the adult annex?

The elevator began to rise once I slipped in the key card and pressed the button for the thirty-fourth floor. I counted off the numbers as we rose into the sky, wondering what sort of secrets my former intern’s loft would reveal. It was hard to think of James as anything more than a kid who brought me coffee and checked my mail. But he was more.

Much more.

Now I just had to figure out who’d pulled his strings.

A
s the numbers whizzed by on the elevator console I considered the evidence against James. As thin as it was, I knew it was true. He’d used Izzy’s key to enter my apartment, supposedly to bring my tuxedo home, but he had a very different mission in mind. Had he not accidently dropped the bottle of water into the rock-salt-and-electricity mixture, I would’ve walked right into a death trap.

Smart plan overall, as long as one didn’t possess butterfingers. I smiled, which quickly turned to a frown when I considered the very real possibility that we might be walking into another trap. Were my parents waiting for their electrified offspring a few floors above? A part of me hoped so. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Izzy biting her bottom lip.

I slammed my hand against the stop button on the console. The elevator jolted to a halt, knocking us both forward. I steadied myself against the doors, but Izzy wasn’t so lucky. Already unsteady on her borrowed heels, she stumbled, crashing to the floor. I reached out to steady her but only ended up shocking her instead. Once the Taser-like effect wore off, Izzy raised an eyebrow in question. I winced. “Sorry about that.”

“Why did you stop the elevator?” she asked as she stumbled to her feet, brushing at the dress clinging to her every curve.

I shot her a guilty smile. “I was trying to protect you.”

She gazed down at the scorch marks on her arm where I’d tried to steady her. “Is that so?”

I shrugged. “Anyway . . .”

“No,” she responded in a cold, curt tone. “I am not about to let you walk into what could very well be a trap without backup.” She paused, her eyes boring into mine. “We’re partners, Blue. For better and worse.”

I raised a blue eyebrow. “Till death do we part. I don’t think so. This is my fight. Not yours.”

Instead of getting angry like I expected, Izzy let out a loud laugh. “This is a Reynolds & Davis fight. If you remember correctly, I hired that killer intern, and I’ll be damned if I let you play hero while I am relegated to dim-witted damsel.”

“But—”

“Forget it,” she said, slamming her hand against the stop control. The elevator jerked again in response, once again rising into the sky. I closed my eyes, praying I wouldn’t live to regret the next few minutes.

When the elevator quietly slid to a stop, I prepared myself, my body buzzing with electricity. Izzy stood a foot behind me. I could feel her body tense as the doors glided open.

I took a calming breath and then stepped forward into a killer’s domain.

 

When nothing immediately killed me, much to my surprise and relief, I took yet another step inside. And another. And another. Still breathing, I moved deeper into the loft. At my signal Izzy slowly followed. The only sound in the loft besides the crackle of electrical current sparking through me was the clicking of her heels on the hardwood floor. I held up my hand for her to stop when we approached a closed door, a door that turned out to lead into a bathroom the size of the puddle left following the giant’s fall from the beanstalk after Jack bungled the giant’s palace.

Since nothing appeared wanting to do us harm in the tub, I closed the door once more, continuing the room-by-room search. Pretty easy, considering that the loft, while huge, was basically one large space with a bathroom off to the side. A bed the size of the most jovial of giants sat up against one wall. The bedsheets were crumpled, both pillows dented. James hadn’t spent his last night on earth alone.

Sadly it wasn’t some brilliant investigational prowess that led me to that conclusion, but the used condom I’d noticed in the bathroom trash. So where was this clandestine crumpet? I peered closer at the pillows, noting a long, shiny golden hair trapped in the fabric. It shone like a diamond, all but screaming the word “clue.” I frowned, considering the long blond strand.

Since I didn’t see any knickknacks or lacy crap everywhere, I doubted James’s companion spent much time at the loft. Which made me wonder how well she had known him. Did she know he was a hired killer? Did she care? Women, I’d learned long ago, could forgive and forget many things, especially when a guy owned a loft this size. I inhaled deeply, nearly gagging as stale air filled my lungs. By the smell, it was obvious that no one, including the blonde, had been inside this loft for a few days. Izzy echoed my words a short time later. “No one lives here,” she said. “Not anymore.”

I nodded. “James did, though.”

“How do you know?”

I pointed to the desk in the far corner of the loft. It looked out over the city like a king over his less-than-noble subjects. But it was the stack of papers piled atop that drew my notice. “The kid never could keep his desk straight.”

Izzy let out a laugh, her eyes alight with relief. “I doubt we’ll find anything useful in that mess.”

But I just shook my head, crossing the room to the messy desk without another word. Investigators thrived on chaos, on mess. It was how we solved cases. James hadn’t expected to die that day at my apartment, and unless his cohorts in crime or the blonde had cleaned up—and it didn’t look like anyone had—there would be a clue among the clutter. I just had to separate evidence from ... I frowned as I pulled a two-week-old éclair from the mess. But my point was the same.

The simple lack of clutter in the room at the frat house had been my first clue that there was more to James Wild than what I knew. I hadn’t realized the significance then, but it shone like a neon sign now. People were messy by nature. We left a trail behind wherever we went. James Wild was no different. He would lead me to the answers I sought.

I opened the top drawer of his desk, taking a quick inventory. Nothing much of interest grabbed my attention. Paper clips, rubber bands, a few wayward staples stuck to the bottom of the mostly bare cupboard. I closed that drawer and opened the next. Still nothing except copies of invoices from the Shady Wings Nursing Home. I was right about James paying Christine’s bills in order to keep her silence, but not for the reason I first suspected. I had a feeling James had kept Christine’s location a secret from my parents as some sort of leverage. It was something I would’ve done in his shoes. Maybe the kid had learned something from me after all.

The guilt I felt over Christine’s death intensified. Had I not found her, maybe they never would’ve either. Maybe Christine would still be alive and safe. Izzy’s cell phone buzzed, tearing me from my dark thoughts. She silenced it with a stab of her finger.

Damn. How could I have missed it? Whoever had hired James to kill me had to contact him somehow, which meant there would be a trail. How I loved a trail, especially one that an idiot could follow. I pulled out my cell phone, dialing quickly.

Izzy nodded at the phone in my hand. “Who are you calling?”

“Alice,” I mouthed to Izzy when my sleep-deprived employee answered. “I need you to run a search for any e-mail addresses or phones listed to James or his phony corporation.” I paused to listen while Alice worked her magic. The sound of her fingers across the keyboard was much like the furious pounding of a hare at the start of a footrace.

“Okay,” she said half a minute later. “Sorry, boss, but no dice. No phones registered to James, let alone paid for with any of his credit cards. And I don’t remember ever seeing him with one, which is weird, since even a guy like you has a—”

“Watch it.”

“Right,” she said. “I couldn’t find any e-mail addresses either, other than our company one.”

Damn. “Okay, thanks,” I said, hanging up with a frown. How was that possible? James had to be in contact with my parents somehow. Was Alice wrong? I quickly shook off that thought. Alice’s computer searches were never wrong. I turned to Izzy. “Looks like this trip was a waste of time.” From the grin on Izzy’s face, I guessed she didn’t agree. “What?” I asked.

“What?”

I shook my head. “Don’t play with me, Isabella. You are keeping something from me.”

“I keep a lot of things from you.”

I took a menacing step forward. “Like what?”

“Relax,” she said quickly. “I’m kidding.” Even though she had sounded damn sincere. Add in our past history and I’d be a fool to believe her. Then again, things were different now. We were partners. “Blue,” she began. “What happened to James’s cell phone?”

“What?”

“His phone.” She ran her index finger over her bottom lip. “He had a cell phone the day he went to your apartment. I remember it ringing as I handed him my key to your place.” She gave a slight wince. “Again, sorry about that.”

I rolled my eyes. “Alice said he didn’t own a phone. At least not one registered to him. And he wasn’t paying a mobile bill either.”

She shook her head. “What if he had a secret burner phone? You know the kind most of our cheating spouses invest in?”

“You’re right.” I clapped my hands together with excitement. A rainbow of sparks floated down, leaving tiny scorch marks on the hardwood. Not that James would notice or care. Being dead seemed to have that effect on people.

“So where is it?” Izzy asked, biting her lip as she surveyed the loft.

“I know exactly where it is.” A slow smile spread across my mouth. Finding it would probably cost me no more than a box of jelly doughnuts, but it would be well worth it in the end.

Or did cops prefer sprinkles?