Caroline, her stomach in turmoil and her brunch quite forgotten, surged outside with the other diners and hovered at the edge of the gathering crowd with Stephen’s arm wrapped protectively around her.arrived within a few minutes and were attempting to revive the victim. From the amount of blood pooling on the tiles beneath the woman’s head and by the odd angle of her neck in relation to her shoulders, Caroline was skeptical. But then, she had never seen a dead person before.
Sirens screamed, followed in short order by the police. “She was pushed!” a man at the edge of the crowd shouted when the first officer appeared. “I saw a man. Up there!” The witness waved a wild finger in the direction of a terraced balcony. Caroline’s eyes followed. The balcony stood empty, but hanging plants dangled in ragged tendrils from where they had been torn away when the woman went over.
Two uniformed officers held the crowds aside, making way for the EMTs carrying the victim away on a stretcher. Caroline swallowed a sob as they passed. An oxygen mask covered the woman’s beautiful, surprisingly serene, and unmarked face. A sea breeze ruffled her dark brown hair and lifted the name tag clipped to her jacket.
Caroline shuddered, then clutched Stephen’s arm so hard he winced. “Stephen! I’ve got to talk to the police. Now! I think I know who pushed that young woman and why.”
* * * *
“So that’s how it happened.” It was after dinner and Caroline sat with Stephen and George in the terrace bar where a jack-o’-lantern grinned mischievously from the planter behind her brother’s head. Stephen stirred his martini. “Clever of you to notice the name tag, Caroline.”
“Well, I knew the person on the stretcher wasn’t the real Mavis Grant because we’d just had brunch with her. Tiffany must have thought she’d be doing her boss a favor by giving Townsend the bad news about his rejection. Mavis remembered that when she went to brunch she left her name tag sitting right next to the telephone. So when Townsend called the room —”
“Tiffany grabbed her boss’s name tag . . .” Stephen cut in.
“And toddled up here to meet him in her stead.” George finished the sentence for both of them. He shook his head. “Mavis told me she’d never met the bloke, just talked to him on the phone. She’s despondent, poor old dear. Claims it will be impossible to replace the girl.”
George stared into his lager, a look of profound sadness on his suntanned face. “Want to know the ironic thing? Mavis said that chap’s book wasn’t half-bad. Needed a bit of punching up is all. But he was such a colossal pain in the ass—calling her two or three times a week—she’d decided to give it a pass.”
* * * *
A few weeks later, in Stephen’s New York apartment, Caroline took a brown envelope out of a desk and addressed it in a loopy, flowing hand. Stephen observed his sister in silence, watching over her shoulder as she affixed five forty-nine-cent stamps to the envelope. “San Diego Central Jail? Caroline, are you crazy?”
Caroline looked up, a half smile on her lips. “Paradoxical, really. When ‘Mavis’ rejected his novel, Townsend flew into a rage. It wasn’t part of his plan, you see. But now, think of all the time he’ll have to write.” She picked up a copy of Writer’s Digest and turned to a page she had marked with a yellow Post-it note. “Here, in the Markets column.” She tapped a neatly manicured finger on the page. “It says prison fiction is big these days.” She slipped the magazine into the envelope and smiled up at her brother. “I think it’s a good idea to encourage aspiring writers, don’t you?”
Stephen took the envelope from her outstretched hand, licked the flap, and sealed it securely. “I do. And I’m sure Grandma and Grandpa would thoroughly agree.”
* * * *
A slightly different version of this story was originally published in Malice Domestic 9 (Avon, 2000).
DJINN AND TONIC, by Neil Plakcy
There was real magic in the world, and false magic, and it took a genie to tell the difference. That was the basis of Biff Andromeda’s private investigation business—using his skills to grant wishes and solve problems for customers.
The shrill ring of his cell phone woke him from a very pleasant dream involving his girlfriend, Farishta, and a Turkish carpet that flew in lazy circles around the dome of the Hagia Sophia mosque in Istanbul.
He grabbed the phone from the bedside table and groggily said, “Hello?”
“Biff? It’s Yegor Kleyman. Sorry to call you so early but I’m in terrible trouble, and I need your help.”
That was the problem with being a private eye, Biff thought, as he sat up in bed. People always needed something. If only he could use his magical powers on his own behalf, instead of having to grant wishes to clients in exchange for the money to support himself, he could be on that carpet in Istanbul with Farishta.
Though the body Biff inhabited was just a construct, it still required regular exercise, food, and other human maintenance. So he had opened a private investigation agency in the suburbs of Miami, Florida, where the climate and the cosmopolitan atmosphere reminded him of the good old days when Istanbul was called Constantinople, and he and Farishta had lived together in a gilded palace.
Now his palace was a townhouse, his magic carpet a Mini Cooper, and he needed a steady stream of clients to pay his bills. Yegor was one of those humans with a very slight degree of magic inside him—he could see people’s auras, and he’d mentioned that Biff’s was very unusual, a royal blue with white sparkles, indicative of a desire to help people coupled with a high level of spirituality.
“What’s the problem, Yegor?” Biff asked.
“Remember I told you I was signed up for a booth at the Life Extension Conference at the Ambassador Hotel in Hollywood? I figured I could sell a ton of my bubbie’s tonic to this crowd. But the conference is about to start, and I have no product to sell. All the packages I had shipped here have disappeared.”
“Disappeared? How?”
“One of the valets signed for the delivery, but it’s not in their storage room. Somebody must have stolen them. You’ve got to help me, Biff. This is going to bankrupt me.”
“I can be there in fifteen minutes.”
Biff rolled out of his ornately carved wooden bed, which had been built for the seraglio of a minor sultan a few hundred years before, then yawned and stretched. He pointed his index finger at the brass samovar across the room, and the flame beneath it ignited. There was already a clean glass in an enameled holder beneath the spout.
He pulled on a pair of khaki slacks and a bright blue polo shirt that highlighted his impressive upper body and ran a comb through his short dark hair. By the time he was dressed his tea had brewed, and the scent of oolong and coconut swirled around his bedroom. He grabbed the handle of the tea glass and drank it quickly, the hot liquid refreshing him.
It was dark and misty, about a half hour before dawn, and he shivered as he opened the door of his Mini Cooper. He wished he had one of Yegor’s tonics himself. He’d sampled one a few weeks before and liked the taste, a mix of cranberry, chocolate, and chai tea. The herbs brewed into it provided a natural boost of energy.
He got into the car, but before he could close the door, a squirrel hopped inside, jumped across him, and settled on the seat beside him. “Watch the claws, Raki,” Biff said.
One day outside his office, Biff had pointed his index finger at a bothersome squirrel on a tree branch, intending only to give it a minor electric shock. Instead, the squirrel fell to the ground, dead, and Biff felt bad, so he drew a burst of healing energy from the ground beneath his feet and brought the little rodent back to life. Since then, Raki wouldn’t leave him alone.
There were only a few cars and delivery trucks on the road so early in the morning and he made good time, the squirrel dozing on the seat beside him, his front and back paws outstretched like a dog. The Ambassador Hotel was a forty-story glass tower that hugged the narrow strip of land between State
Road A1A and the ocean a few miles from Biff’s townhouse. He parked in the garage across the street from the hotel and hurried across the second-floor walkway, with the squirrel on his shoulder.
Before Biff walked through the sliding glass doors, Raki jumped off and scampered across the pavement to where a palm tree leaned close to the walkway. He leaped across the void, grabbing a frond that shook with his weight. “Yeah, have fun with your acrobatics while I work,” Biff grumbled. “Maybe you can get a gig with the Cirque du Squirrel.”
Though it was only six thirty in the morning, the two-story marble lobby was crowded. Biff hurried past a gaggle of young women in yoga pants, their hair pulled up in matching ponytails, and an elderly Indian man in a long, high-collared coat.
Yegor, an American-born son of Russian immigrants, tall and skinny with a hipster goatee, paced back and forth in front of the valet desk. “Thanks for coming. I’m going crazy.”
Biff’s clients were often drawn to him by the small bits of magic they themselves had, as in Yegor’s case, or by some intuitive attraction to his aura. Most of the work he did could be handled by an ordinary PI, but occasionally he was pulled into cases where he had to use his special abilities. He never knew from case to case what would happen, but he was always interested to see the wackiness that had drawn him to South Florida play out in people’s lives.
“No need to go crazy,” Biff said. “Let’s figure out what we can do.”
Yegor introduced Biff to the head valet, a portly Hispanic whose name tag read Bernardo. “I don’t know what happen,” he said with a heavy accent. “See, I sign for boxes myself.” He showed Biff a handwritten ledger that indicated a delivery the day before for Yegor, care of the conference organizers. “These my initials.”
Biff nodded. “Where do you store packages?”
“A locker in the basement,” Bernardo said. “I show you.”
When the elevator door opened, Bernardo stepped in and slid his ID card into a reader, then hit the button marked SB. The door opened on the subbasement across from a locked wire cage, about twenty feet long and ten feet deep, filled with all manner of boxes, shipping tubes, and luggage.
“Packages stay here until the guest arrive,” Bernardo said. “Everything locked up, and only valets have card key and know combination.”
He slid his ID card into another reader, punched in a sequence of numbers on a keypad, and the electronic door lock opened. “How many valets do you have on staff?” Biff asked.
“Five, including me. I talk to all of them this morning. Nobody took Mr. Kleyman’s package out.”
Biff turned to Yegor. “How big a shipment are we talking about?”
“The manufacturer shrink-wraps a hundred spout packs together. I had ten packages shipped here.” From his own purchases at the gym, Biff knew that a spout pack was simply a heavy-duty stand-up pouch with a pour spout at the top. They were easy to tuck into kids’ lunch boxes or into the pocket of a pair of workout shorts.
Biff had seen one of the spout packs, with a photo of Yegor’s grandmother who had come up with the recipe back in Russia. In the picture, she had a floral scarf wrapped around her head and tied under her neck. Her face was creased with wrinkles, her nose beaky, and her smile warm and inviting.
Biff noted the hand truck by the wall. “No security cameras down here?” he asked Bernardo.
“No need. Only staff have access.”
“Can I have a minute, please?” Biff asked. He had an acute sense of smell, fifty times better than any bloodhound, and like a dog, he could hear up to one hundred thousand vibrations per second. He also could read a license plate on a moving car a quarter of a mile away.
He opened his third eye, the metaphysical gate to higher realms, and saw the shipment of Yegor’s tonic packs in a corner of the room. But someone had placed an enchantment over them, so that they were invisible to the human eye.
Because of its cosmopolitan location, Miami attracted many with metaphysical powers, from fully magical beings like genies to humans with a touch of ESP. Only the most sophisticated had the talent to create an invisibility spell.
Each being, from the tiniest sylph to the most powerful genie, left traces behind, which a midlevel genie like Biff could recognize. But whoever had made the spout packs invisible had the ability to mask a signature, and all Biff could sense around him was the detritus that humans who had been in the area had left behind.
Biff opened his eyes and thanked Bernardo for the help. The valet apologized again, and promised to call Yegor if anything turned up.
“What am I going to do?” Yegor asked as he and Biff emerged from the elevator back into the lobby. “I’m going to lose my shirt if I can’t sell product today.”
“I have a couple of ideas.” Biff couldn’t tell Yegor that the spout packs were right there in the storage room, though enchanted. He nodded toward the coffee shop shoehorned into a corner of the lobby between a pair of tall Egyptian-style columns. “I don’t know about you, but I could use a coffee.” It was nearly seven o’clock, and there was already a line snaking away from the counter.
“Sure,” Yegor said. “I could use a pick-me-up myself. I was going to drink one of my tonics while I set up the booth.”
They stepped to the end of the line, behind a pair of young women in Roman-style white togas decorated with gold ankhs. The women were both blond and had their hair piled up on their heads. They carried tote bags that read, “Ask me about the ancient Roman secrets of eternal life.” Biff shook his head at the colossal ignorance of most humans. Whoever designed the costumes hadn’t realized that the ankh was an Egyptian symbol, not a Roman one.
He was willing to bet he knew a lot more about eternal life than any huckster, and that the people behind the product had never seen the Roman coliseum when it was still intact and hosting gladiator contests, as he had. “When does this show start?” he asked.
“The show floor opens at eight,” Yegor said.
Once they had their drinks, Biff led Yegor toward the pool. The sun was rising above the ocean, and one of the pool boys was laying out mats on the wooden lounge chairs. “Let’s start with the basics,” Biff said as they sat at one of the round tables by the pool. “Who knew you were going to be exhibiting here?”
“Everybody. I put up big notices on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, every other social network. I took out an ad in the conference program, too.”
“You have any rivals, Yegor? Anybody who would want to sabotage your business?”
“It’s a competitive niche,” Yegor said. “I’m a little fish in a big pond. I can’t imagine somebody from Monster or Red Bull worrying about me.”
“You have any other employees? Maybe one who’s interested in competing with you?”
Yegor shook his head. “It’s just me. I contract out manufacturing and packaging.”
Biff sat back in his chair and sipped his coffee. Someone with magical powers had sabotaged Yegor’s operation. Who? Why?
“Are there other companies selling similar products to yours at the show?” Biff asked.
“I haven’t walked the floor yet,” Yegor said.
“Then that’s where we start,” Biff said. “I’ve got a couple of things to check, and then I’ll join you.”
Yegor was energized for the first time that morning. “I’ll look around.” He left, and Biff pulled out his cell phone. He sent a quick message to [email protected], an associate he’d used on other cases in the past. Syl was a kind of air spirit that often inhabited butterflies, and he and his cohorts could spread around the hotel more quickly than Biff could, checking every corner for magical beings.
When he finished, he rode the escalator down to the lower level. He didn’t have an ID, so he stood off to the side of the registration desk where a couple of harried women were taking credit cards and handing over badges. He focused his thought
s on a blank badge at the edge of the table, and moved it by tiny increments until it fell to the floor. Then he strolled over and picked it up. No one around him seemed to notice.
He used a pen on the table to write his name on the badge, then slung the attached cord around his neck and walked inside the huge ballroom. A dais at the far end had been set up for speakers, with rows of folding chairs facing it. Booths of different sizes and styles lined the walls and created two aisles as well. The noise was overwhelming to Biff’s sensitive hearing, and he had to focus on shutting out most of it.
Displays of exercise equipment lined both sides of aisle one. He scanned the crowd and the vendors for magic and found no magic there, just hard work and sweat, until he entered the personal service zone. The air there twinkled with a low level of enchantment, though it took him a while to find the source. It wasn’t coming from the reiki or yoga practitioners, but instead was focused around the booth with a sign that proclaimed, “Your Akashic records are the energetic records of your past, present, and possible future lives.”
A very tall, very muscular African-American man in a tight-fitting T-shirt and compression shorts greeted him. “Good morning, sir,” the man said in a lilting Jamaican accent. “Do you want to understand how your past can inform your future?”
Given that he had centuries of past to cover, Biff doubted that his Akashic record could be that complete. He realized that the man before him had only an ability to read auras and channel the occasional spirit. He wasn’t nearly powerful enough to create an invisibility spell. “The unexamined life is a lot simpler to explain to strangers,” Biff said and kept on walking.
A white butterfly landed on Biff’s shoulder, and Biff left the show and rode the escalator up to the lobby level. With the butterfly flitting around him, he walked back out to the pool area, and found a secluded corner. Sheltered by a screen of bright red hibiscus, the butterfly’s antennae lengthened into human arms and legs and his body blossomed into that of a tall, lanky young man dressed in a white Cuban-style guayabera shirt, white slacks, and white track shoes.
Murder Most Conventional Page 3
