This Case Is Gonna Kill Me (7 page)

“Stupid shoes,” I muttered. “All that money and the heel breaks—”

Which took me right back to a vision of blood-smeared muzzle and red teeth as the werewolf leaped at me. I shuddered and tears burned my eyes. Snatching up the phone, I called my parents’ house. Still no answer. That could only mean Dad was on an airplane coming to me. That made me feel a little better, but I wanted to talk to somebody.

I called Mom. She and my little brother were in Paris on Charlie’s Congratulations! You Graduated From High School trip.

“Linnet,
hello
,” my mother’s odd intonations and emphasis on the wrong syllables came through the phone.

“Mommy.” The word emerged thick and tear filled. “I’m okay.”

“Well, why wouldn’t you be? My big grown-
up
girl with a
job
.”

I wasn’t feeling teary any longer. I was remembering why my mother drove me crazy. “Didn’t Daddy call you?”

“Yes, and called and called, but Charlie and I were
exploring
the flesh
pots
, and I didn’t want to be disturbed, so I didn’t
answer
.”

I tried to figure out what “exploring the flesh pots” meant and then decided I didn’t really want to know.

“Did something wonderful
happen
?” my mother trilled.

“No, something horrib—”

“Paris is
won
derful, darling. You should have postponed
starting
work, and come with us.”

“Mommy, listen!”

“I am listening, dear. OH WAITER, ANOTHER CHAMPAGNE,
si’l vous plait.
”

“My boss was murdered last night. I almost got killed.” I was shouting into the phone. This was always how things ended up between us. Why had I called?

“Oh, my dear,
how
terrible for you. Let’s not
dwell
.
We’ll
talk of pleasant things. The new
exhibit
at the Louvre is wonderful.”

“I don’t care about that!”

“Linnet, really. What do you
expect
me to do? We
can’t
just pack
up
and come home. This is your brother’s graduation present.
How
selfish of you.”

Charles Grantham Ellery. Little brother. Big pain. The beloved male heir. He had been born eight months before I was sent away to the Bainbridge house. In those first lonely weeks in the Sag Harbor house, I had wondered if my parents had given me away because now they had a boy. I was older now, and intellectually I knew that was silly, but that little girl deep inside me still felt like I was second best.

“He’s going to be eighteen in three weeks,” I muttered resentfully. “He could manage on his own. In fact he’d probably be glad not to have his mother along.”

“Which is precisely
why
I can’t
leave
,” my mother said in an odd moment of clarity. I had to admit she had a point. For the golden child, Charlie managed to fall into shit piles with astonishing regularity. “Oh, here, your brother wants to talk to you. Should we get a little tray of olives?”

“What?” And then I realized she wasn’t talking to me.

Charlie came on the line. “Hey, sis, what’s up? Are you once more a chaos magnet?” His cheerful voice crossing thousands of miles had me torn between wanting to cry and wanting to bite his head off—it wasn’t fair that he was having fun.

The snark won out over family affection. Somebody needed to suffer as much as I was, and my mother was clueless. “Charlie, it wasn’t like that. I was so scared and it was so awful. He was literally torn apart. There was so much blood.” My voice started shaking and my words were thick with tears. What had started out as spite became an actual need for comfort.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, what happened?”

“My boss was killed. I was there. I saw it.”

There was a long silence on the French end of the call, and my baby brother surprised me by saying in an astonishingly adult voice, “I think we should come home. I’ll tell Mom.”

I was touched, and despite our rivalry I realized I loved this kid. “No, you stay. Finish the trip. I got my European trip after high school. You shouldn’t lose out on yours.”

“All right, but if you change your mind…”

“Believe me, I’ll tell you.”

I toggled through the rest of the messages, erasing all the ones from the press. I listened to only two.

The first was from Shade. “Linnet, I hope you’re recovering. The police will want to talk to you again after the holiday, and you
must not
mention any of our cases. Gold is on the warpath, threatening to fire you and report you to the ethics committee. Don’t worry, I’ll handle this, but please don’t make any more waves.”

Don’t worry.
Yeah, right. I was shaking again, chilled to my core.

The second message was from Pete. “Hey, Linnet … wow. When you said things had come up at work, I thought you meant, like … well, work. This is weird, no offense, but I don’t think I can deal with this kind of thing in my life right now.”

And now I really didn’t mind missing the date. I wondered if I might hear from Devon. If he was already in Dubai, he wouldn’t see the news unless someone sent a link to him. I wished he would call. I wished somebody who cared about me would call.

I headed back to the bath and hot water.

*   *   *

After this second, long bath, I realized I was hungry. I didn’t want to be alone, so I called Ray. Gregory answered.

“Hi, I was calling to see if you and Ray wanted to have late lunch or early dinner.”

“Linnet, my God, are you all right? It’s all over the papers. My God.”

“Papers?” I repeated dully.

“Oh, honey, you sound wasted. I wish we could, but Ray’s doing a matinee.”

“Oh,” I said, and felt my throat tighten again with unshed tears.

“I’d offer my poor self as a substitute, but I have a date with my old professor, and I’ve got to catch the train out to Long Island.” He hesitated. “I could cancel.”

“No, no. You go. I’ll be okay.”

“Well, I don’t know how. You get yourself onto a couch, sweetie. I can give you the name of my therapist if you don’t have one.”

“Thanks, Gregory, that’s really sweet. I’ll think about it.” And I hung up before I actually burst into tears. I tried Dad again. Again no answer.

Gregory’s mention of the papers sent me to my computer. I brought up both the
New York Times
and the
New York Post
. The
Times
had the headline below the fold on the front page, and it was an appropriately gray statement of fact.
MURDER AT LAW FIRM
. I noted that the name of the deceased had not been made public pending “notification of next of kin.”

The
Post
was less discreet. My picture was plastered across the front page. I was huddled against Ryan, and they had used a shot that showed a flash of bosom because my beautiful blouse had been pulled aside by Ryan’s arm, and the photographer was shooting from the side. The headline screamed
SEXY ASSOCIATE SURVIVES BIZARRE DEATH RITUAL!
I laid my head down on the table next to the laptop and moaned.

A knock at the door brought my head up like a gazelle that had heard a lion cough. Stiff legged, my gut shivering like Jell-O, I approached the door. I pictured ravening claws and slavering jaws.

Don’t be an idiot. Killers don’t normally
knock.

My voice quavered as I called, “Who is it?”

“Linnet, dear heart, it’s all right.” Meredith Bainbridge’s reedy voice was muffled by the door, but unmistakable.

I threw it open and fell into his cold but welcome embrace. After the initial hug, he pushed an embroidered handkerchief into my hands and escorted me back inside the apartment. He removed his wraparound sunglasses and wide-brimmed panama hat. Placing firm but gentle hands on my shoulders, he sat me down on the sofa.

Bainbridge wasn’t what people picture when they think
vampire
. Movies push the image of tall, brooding, slender, smoky, sexy vampires, and indeed they often are. Vampires are attracted to attractive people just like people are attracted to attractive people. Bainbridge, however, was more like Mr. Fezziwig from
A Christmas Carol
, and
jolly
was the only word that applied. He had twinkling blue eyes, a short, rotund frame, and curly nut-brown hair. Rather than downplay his belly, he wore loud vests as if trying to draw attention to it.

He pulled over a chair from the dinette table and sat down in front of me. “All right, now tell me what happened,” he ordered.

“I really don’t want to talk about it.”

“Yes, yes, you really do. Freud and I had some long conversations about the dangers of repression. Horrific events lose power if they’re acknowledged.”

The casual way he threw out the name of the father of modern psychoanalysis made me snort with laughter. “That’s better,” he said gently, and wiped a tear off my cheek with his thumb.

So, haltingly, I recounted the events of the night before while my stupid phone rang and buzzed and danced on the table. I ended the tale by saying, “And I got in trouble with the partners for mentioning a case. But the police asked me what might have been behind the killing, and it was a werewolf that killed him, and Securitech is owned by a werewolf and employs lots of werewolves.… Oh God, I did it again.”

He patted me as if I were a terrified puppy. “It’s all right. If there’s one thing a vampire knows how to be, it’s discreet. Is that infernal thing never going to shut up?” he asked, referring to the cell phone.

“Let me turn it off.” I went to the table and shut down the phone. Then I slowly turned back to face him. “Mr. Bainbridge. I know you put your prestige behind me to get me this job, but I just don’t know if I can go back into that office.”

He waved it off, then asked, “If you don’t go back, what will you do?”

“I don’t know.”

“What’s important to you right now?”

I remembered Chip’s screams of terror and agony. “Seeing that Chip gets justice.”

“Then do that.” Meredith gave the tight vampire smile. “And you truly have absorbed the vampiric code.”

“Grasshopper,” I added.

This time Meredith didn’t bother with the polite vampire smirk. He grinned at me. “Yes, I have taught you well, young Skywalker.”

“Let’s not confuse our pop culture references,” I said, and we shared a laugh.

“Keep that sense of humor, Linnet—it’s going to get you through this,” Meredith said as he stood and put his hat and glasses back on.

“Or get me fired,” I said as I walked him to the door.

“If you need a bolt-hole for a few days, you know you can come home.”

“I know that, and thank you. I just want to stay close so Dad can find me.”

“There are these things called phones, much as I hate them,” Meredith said.

“I know, but he hasn’t been answering, and I just want…” But I wasn’t sure what I wanted, so my voice trailed away.

“I understand. You want human contact. Nothing wrong with that. I’ll be in touch, and don’t worry about Gold. The day I can’t intimidate that youngster…” He kissed me on the forehead, his lips cold but comforting. “Now go take a walk. It will make you feel better. It’s a beautiful day and you’re not dead.”

“Yeah, the not dead thing. That’s a good thing, right?”

“Yes, it’s a good thing.”

He left and I turned the phone back on. It rang. It was the
New York Post
again. I donned a big straw hat and Greta Garbo sunglasses and, looking like a vampire myself, I fled the apartment. Central Park on a holiday weekend would be crawling with people, and I could lose myself among them.

*   *   *

I was sitting by the carousel, flicking my eyes between the monotonous rise and fall of the horses and nervously scanning the crowds for werewolves. The nasal toot of the calliope playing a spritely waltz was an odd counterpoint to the shrieks of joy or terror erupting from the urchins on the prancing horses. Somewhere nearby, a Jamaican steel drum band was playing, and in another direction I heard the breathy sound of a Peruvian flute.

Food vendors pushed their carts along the paved paths of the park. The smells of pretzels and hotdogs warred for primacy. Added to that was the pungent smell of horse manure from the carriage horses waiting patiently at the curbs and clopping slowly through the park, as the drivers cranked around and gave their spiels to the tourists riding behind them.

My phone rang. An hour ago, the constant calls from the press had stopped. There had either been another salacious murder or sex scandal to replace mine, or the reporters had given up. They were probably writing that I’d been implicated in Chip’s murder, out of spite.

But this call was from a friend. Ray was on the line. “What are you doing?” he asked.

“Watching the carousel go round and round.”

“Well, get over to our place.”

“I thought you were performing?”

“I called in sick and convinced Greg to put off Dr. Findle. Dinner on the roof, and fireworks to follow. You know we have a great view from our place.”

“What can I bring?” I asked automatically.

“Don’t be an idiot. Just yourself, of course.”

He hung up. I put away my phone and headed for the edge of the park and taxis. I hadn’t heard from my father, which made me feel teary all over again. Where was he? Well, he could find me at Ray and Gregory’s. With cell phones no one was really ever out of touch. Unless they were in Dubai.

5

Ray handed me another mojito. I’d started with a margarita, but Ray had insisted I try his “fabulous” mojitos. He was making them with saki, rum, and fresh mint plucked from the pots that dotted the rooftop garden. Traffic sounds floated up from the streets seventeen stories below us. It was a clear night, and I could see Jupiter even through the city’s light haze.

Gregory and Ray lived on the edge of Wall Street in a top-floor apartment. They had been given permission by the building owner to put up a cedar fence on one quarter of the roof, which they turned into a garden. Most rooftop gardens in Manhattan are paltry affairs: a table and two chairs, a few potted plants, and a hibachi. Ray and Gregory had thrown themselves into the project. It didn’t hurt that Gregory came from money, and the money flowed to him so long as he stayed far, far away from the rest of his rock-ribbed Republican family back in Kansas.