The Lady in Pink - Deadly Ever After 2 (4 page)

I
walked down the long corridor to my office, my footfalls swallowed up by the thick carpeting, with the exception of the sharp crackle of static electricity building around me. Outside my office door, I pulled to a stop. The shiny nameplate on my door brought a smile to my lips—“Blue Reynolds, CEO.”

Not that the title mattered. I could say I was a CEO all I wanted, but when the chips were down, Reynolds & Davis was Izzy’s baby. I appreciated her attempt at including me in the daily operations, but I was and always would be a PI, a private dick, ready and willing to kick ass and take names in order to solve a case, not some corporate stuffed shirt. Not that there was much ass kicking to do. Investigating in this day and age was all about computers, the Internet, and electronic clouds filled with everything a PI needed to know.

I missed the old days.

But I wasn’t a true Luddite. I used computers and other electronic gadgetry when the investigation called for it, which seemed like more and more often.

I sat down in my high-backed office chair, running my hand over the desktop, feeling as worn as the wood under my fingers. The desk was the only piece of furniture from my old office. Each pit, scar, and fingerprint scorch mark told a story I’d explained when Izzy first protested my choice in furnishings. I’d pointed to a gouge mark on the side where I’d smashed a gnome’s head into the wood when he failed to pay for an array of photographic evidence that his lovely bride-to-be had quite the billy-goat fetish.

In the end Izzy had agreed to keep the desk, but everything else in my office, including the half-empty bottle of year-old scotch, had gone straight to the Dumpster. Though I missed my old office at times, missed the smell of mold and case files, I had to admit my new office wasn’t too shabby. For one thing, it was three times the size, smelled like a new car, and lacked the general chaos and clutter of the old office. When I needed a file now, I pressed the intercom buzzer and some lowly file clerk set it on my desk a few minutes later. Sort of like an investigational drive-through.

To my surprise, when I opened the laptop computer on my desktop it flickered to life. Odd, since I could have sworn I’d shut it down the day before so it could do some random updates or whatever it was computers did when their users weren’t around. I suspected it was something to do with plotting to take over the world.

A file folder sat open on the screen, displaying it for the world to see. Not that the world cared one way or another about my quest to find a former nurse at the New Never City Hospital named Christine Connors. Only I cared about her, since she very well might hold the key to finding out my true identity and ending my electrified curse.

Not that I’d had a single break in my search for the elusive Ms. Connors. The file I kept locked in my bottom desk drawer, a file only three people knew of—well, two now that James was dead—was only about an inch thick, but it held years’ and years’ worth of my life. Years I’d spent searching for the truth behind my birth and the subsequent electric curse. I often asked myself why my parents had abandoned me on the steps of an orphanage. Was it because of my electrical curse? Was said curse genetic? Or more of a freak mutation? But even more important, was there a way to end it? Would I ever be free?

I shook off my wayward thoughts, closed the computer file, and got down to business. Fairy business. I did a quick search on all the interwebs for any mention of the disappearing fairies. Finding nothing, I moved on to my less straightforward investigational methods. I contacted my informants in the underworlds, both figurative and literal, offering a reward for any information pertaining to the missing fairies or my attempted murder.

As I was making my last call, a knock sounded on my half-open office door. “Come in,” I called, but no one entered. At least as far as I could tell. Then a small, high-pitched voice reached my ears and I glanced over the edge of my desk to see a green-winged fairy named Jonas. I sighed, annoyed by the never-ending assortment of winged demons in my life. If it wasn’t for Izzy I would’ve wiped my hands clean of the lot of them or, better yet, electrocuted the entire batch as a public service.

“What do you want, Jonas?” I asked, ending my call with a less-than-noble prince with ties to every villain in the surrounding countryside.

Jonas crawled into the chair in front of my desk, his cherub face as innocent and clear as a baby’s. I didn’t buy it for a second. Fairies were far from innocent, this one in particular. I repeated my question in a tone destined for an answer.

“I don’t want anything, Blue,” he said. “I have something for you.”

I snorted.

“No. Really.”

“Okay.” I rubbed my hands together in warning of what would happen if Jonas was playing games. “I’ll bite. What is it you have for me?”

“Information.”

My eyebrow rose. “Is that so?”

He nodded. “I . . . kind of figure I owe you . . . for giving me a job after the council fired me . . .”

Considering it was Izzy who’d forced me to employ Jonas as a nighttime office security guard after the Fairy Council had canned his ass following his role in last year’s toothy folly, his gratitude was a bit misplaced, but I wasn’t one to let a little thing like the truth muddy up the waters. “So what sort of information do you have?” I asked.

He licked his lips. “Two nights ago, while I was on duty, one of the alarms went off.”

Now he’d caught my interest. I leaned forward. My chair creaked in response. “Did you check it out?”

“Yes.” He nodded vigorously. “It turned out to be nothing, really. Just someone working late. But when I was looking around I noticed something else.”

I rolled my eyes. Jonas was not one for making a long story short. “What?” I snapped when I couldn’t stand his rambling anymore. He jumped in the chair, which made me instantly sorry for the chair, as a burst of fairy dust rained down from Jonas’s wings. Guess he hadn’t had his morning dust off just yet. I inhaled the barest of whiffs of dust, just enough to take the edge off our continued conversation.

Jonas glared at me but continued his tale, brushing off the dust on his sleeves. “A light was on in your office. I checked around, but nobody was inside. Since only you and Isabella have a key . . .”

Damn her. Izzy had no business sneaking around my office, let alone sneaking around late at night. We were partners. If she wanted to know something, she should’ve asked. Not that I would’ve necessarily shared whatever information she wanted with her, but it was the thought that counted. Another thought occurred to me at the mention of Izzy and keys. Since she was the only other person with a key to my apartment too, how had James gotten inside? Had he stolen her key or mine? If so, why? I needed to find out why James was at my apartment in the first place. I decided my best course of action was to search James’s cubicle.

“Sorry I couldn’t be of more help,” he said, drawing me back to the conversation at hand.

“Yeah,” I said waving him off, my mind still focused on James’s death. “Thanks.”

He nodded, hefting his small body from the chair and heading for the door. “Blue,” he said, stopping in the doorway, “I hear you might have an opening for a new intern . . .”

A
round three in the afternoon, just as my eyes had begun to cross from hours behind the computer, another knock sounded at my open door. I glanced up, smiling when Izzy appeared in the doorway looking as fresh as a morning glory at first light, while I felt much like the stuff used to fertilize said flower. I’d spent most of my afternoon searching James’s cubicle, which sadly turned up nothing of interest. The kid didn’t even keep a calendar, let alone a list of possible murder suspects. The most I found was a matchbook from a Fairyland strip club, Wings, known for its fruity drinks, winged pole dancers, and short, seedy clientele. The kind of place one could order chicken wings and a hit man for less than I paid in taxes. James didn’t seem like the chicken-wing or short-hooker type, so I had to wonder why he’d ventured to the strip club in the first place.

“Maybe you should take a vacation,” Izzy began, rubbing her fingers against her neck, a sure sign she wasn’t comfortable with the conversation. “Go someplace fun. A beach.”

I snorted, half rising from my office chair. “This coming from the same woman who complains when I’m in the office less than fifty hours a week.” I rubbed my chin, raising my bluish five-o’clock shadow with static electricity. “I can’t help but wonder, are you trying to get rid of me?”

“Of course not,” she said. “I just think you’d be safer out of town.”

“Worried about me?” I grinned. “How sweet. I didn’t know you cared.”

Rather than respond with a smart-mouthed comment as I expected, she said, “I wouldn’t know what to do if something happened to you.”

“Is that so?”

“I wouldn’t know what to do with the company.” A small smile graced her face. “The investigation part is your baby.”

“Right,” I said. “Reynolds & Davis comes first.” To her it always would. A part of me welcomed her cold-blooded business sense. Too much was at stake to mess it up with emotional declarations.

“So about your trip . . .”

I shook my head. “I’m not leaving, Izzy.”

“But—”

“Let it go,” I ordered.

Her hands flew to her hips and her eyes turned violet. A sure sign I was in for a fight. I steeled myself for the onslaught. It wasn’t long in coming. “Do you have any idea how dangerous it is for you to be here?”

I winced, picturing James’s burned corpse. His death was my fault. No matter how much I denied it. He died because of me. Maybe she was right. If I left, no one else would get hurt. Including her.

“I didn’t mean—”

I waved her off. “I know.”

“James was a sweet guy,” she said, wrapping her arms over her chest as if to ward off whatever evil had befallen him. “A good worker too.”

I shrugged, a rush of guilt sparking along my nerves. I should’ve paid more attention to him, thanked him more often, or, at the very least, kept him out of harm’s way.

“He idolized you,” Izzy was saying. “Wanted to become a hard-broiled PI one day.”

I ignored the “broiled” part of her comment and asked instead, “Do you have any idea why he was at my apartment?”

“Yes.”

My forehead wrinkled. “And?”

“It was my fault.”

“I don’t understand.”

“It was my fault.” Her face crumpled under the weight of her words. “I killed James.”

U
nder normal circumstances, Izzy wasn’t prone to dramatics like her fairy brethren. But no sooner had she admitted to killing James than she spun on her high heels and dashed from my office, her face in her hands. I ran after her, but I was too late.

She’d already barreled straight into the path of our new VP of marketing. He caught her with one hand before she hit the ground. My dislike of him intensified as his hand slid up the small of her back. “Are you all right?” he asked her, glaring over the top of her head at me. I raised a blue eyebrow. He seemed to remember his place, for he quit glaring and refocused his attention on the half fairy in his arms.

She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “I’m so sorry. Please don’t get the wrong impression of our company. For the most part, we don’t condone nervous breakdowns.”

I reached for Izzy’s shoulder but dropped my hand before I made contact. The last thing I wanted to do was hurt her. I looked up at Clark. “But we do offer full medical”—my lips curved into an affected smile—“so don’t be afraid to try BASE jumping. Now, if you’ll excuse Ms. Davis and me, we have an important matter to discuss.”

“Of course,” Clark said, holding Izzy a few moments too long before finally releasing her. “If you need me . . .” He motioned to his office, next to Izzy’s. While his office was smaller than mine, it was closer to Izzy, which bugged me for reasons I didn’t want to explore too deeply.

I smiled tightly. “I doubt we’ll need your social media expertise for this one, but thanks anyway.” I motioned Izzy forward. “After you, Isabella.”

She glanced at me through veiled lashes, nodded once, and slowly walked to her office, her head held high. I followed, wondering what the hell was going on.

As soon as I entered Izzy’s office my questions flew from my mind. Or most of them, at least, with the exception of who the two three-foot guys with red wings wearing ninja outfits and standing on each side of her desk were. Izzy stood in front of her desk, her face pale in the fluorescent light. She looked far more beautiful than a confessed murderess should.

“What’s all this about you being responsible for James’s death?” I asked her, ignoring the two red-winged interlopers. I wanted to get to the truth as quickly as possible, sort of like ripping a Band-Aid from a fresh wound. Not that I believed for a second that Izzy had actually killed James. But something was going on in her devious mind. That something didn’t bode well for me or anyone else.

She took a shuddering breath. “I asked him to do me a favor.”

“What?”

“I knew you’d forget, so I asked James to pick up your tuxedo from the dry cleaners and then bring it to your apartment.” She paused, her bottom lip trembling. “I gave him my spare key.”

I closed my eyes, remembering the burned piece of black tie clutched in James’s locked fist. “Clayton’s fund-raiser.”

“It’s tomorrow night.” She sniffed once. “I didn’t . . . I would’ve never . . .”

A hot burst of anger filled me. “Stop it,” I said in a tight voice. “This wasn’t your fault.”

“But if I—”

“No,” I said, quickly filling her in on what the Ferns had claimed to see, a woman with hair as blond as spun gold discussing my murder. “Since you don’t have that color hair, let alone drink in places like that, you are not responsible. Get it?”

Her eyes met mine. “You have to promise me something.”

“I’m not running from this.” I cracked my knuckles, causing sparks to burst from my fingertips. “I will find whoever did this . . .”

“Good.”

I smiled, glad to have her support. For once.

“Just one more thing . . .”

Shit. I waited for the other glass slipper to drop. It wasn’t long in coming. “I’d like you to meet Right and Left,” she said, motioning to the fairies on either side of her. They were dressed in the typical black
keikogis
worn by the Fairy Council’s elite forces, which were known as the Tooth Unit, warriors in the fight against oppression and tooth decay. “To protect and floss” was their motto. Unappealing for sure, but they worked hard at guarding the Tooth Fairy.

I was pretty sure I could take both of them without breaking a sweat. I began to say as much, but Izzy’s glare shut me up. “Since you won’t remove yourself from danger, I’ve hired Right”—she pointed to the fairy on her left—“and Left”—this time she motioned to the toothy ninja on her right—“to watch your back.”

“No.”

She laughed without an ounce of humor. “You have no choice.”

That’s where Izzy and I disagreed.

Blue Reynolds always had a choice.

I just usually picked the wrong one.

But not this time.

I shot Izzy my most sincere of smiles, one guaranteed to ease even the purest of princesses from her chastity belt. “Whatever you say, sweetheart.” I paused, my gaze hot on hers. “You’re the boss.”