by Lotta Smith
It was sad that Rowling missed so many colorful things in front of his eyes. Still, at the same time, he was lucky, since he didn’t see the huge laceration on the side of Jackie’s abdomen, or the little portion of intestines peekabooing from the wound. On top of all that, Jackie was acting a little bit too intimate toward Rowling—for example, raining him with kisses, trying to grope his derrière, and so on. Though Jackie’s hands always went through Rowling’s body instead of actually landing on his private areas, my boss seemed somewhat uncomfortable whenever he was touched on his butt. So, he might have been feeling something….
Anyway, I happened to be the hot topic du jour. To be more precise, my newly discovered ability to interact with Jackie was.
“You know what, Mandy? So far, you’ve totally nailed it. All the details you mentioned were accurate. You even correctly described the parts yet to be disclosed to the media, which means you’re actually communicating with Jackie. Holy crap, you’re phenomenal!” Rick Rowling announced enthusiastically. “By utilizing your new skill, our case closure rate’s guaranteed to hit a new high.”
“Well, I don’t know…,” I mumbled in uncertainty. I glanced at Jackie, who was standing by my side. “Maybe he’s the only dead person I can communicate with, or maybe—” He might be my imagination, illusion, or hallucination
“Okay, Mandy. Relax.” Rowling reached for my shoulder, but before his hand touched me, Jackie butted in between us.
“So, Mandy, are you ready to find the SOB who stabbed me to death? Now that I have shared all the juicy details about my case with you,” Jackie, who turned into a ghost after getting murdered, said expectantly.
Yeah, you heard me right. I said Jackie is a ghost. Actually, he’s not one of those common, boring ghosts, because he’s a ghost of a drag queen, and he’s urging me to help catch his killer.
“Of course, I know you’re ready to kick ass, considering you’ve got this hottie hunk FBI agent as a partner. No offence, but I’d love to team up with him without you between us as a translator, and it’d be way nicer if only I could touch him.” The ghost of a drag queen chattered nonstop. “By the way, I told you that I preferred to be referred to as she, not he. I might be a super actor who can be anybody, but I’m a girl at heart.” Jackie had the audacity to make tsk-tsk sounds and correct me.
“Um… sorry about that,” I mumbled in apology, thinking, Seriously? A girl at heart? A diva to the bone sounds way more accurate.
Meanwhile, Jackie went on. “By the way, Mandy, don’t even think about pretending you don’t see me. You can try shutting your eyes and covering your ears, but you just can’t ditch me like old undergarments infesting your closet. I have waited for three years, for Pete’s sake! If you abandon me, I’ll haunt you like the devil till you go totally cuckoo yourself.”
As he—no, she—threatened me, the gut peeking out of the wound seemed to be vibrating, as if it represented his—not his, her—anger.
Man, she sounds serious… “Oh, no, Jackie, I’ve never thought about abandoning you!” I flashed a reassuring smile, but inside I wanted to scream and run away. Deep in my mind, I was skeptical about Jackie—like if she really exists—and I wanted to state my skepticism loud and clear. But at the same time, if I was a ghost of a murder victim and someone who can hear my voice treats me like I don’t exist, I'd be devastated—as if I got murdered not just once but twice. Also, it wouldn’t be pretty if the ghost kept to her promise of haunting me like hell. Gosh, I needed a psychiatrist… or a drink strong enough to knock me down unconscious.
“Good.” She nodded.
At this time, I knew the chances of the ghost diva departing to a better place like most dead people were practically nonexistent.
“And think of the cool prospects, Mandy.” While I was being threatened by Jackie, Rowling’s hand had already gone through Jackie and was patting my shoulder. “We can interview dead politicians and high-profile bureaucrats, make them spill their guts, and put our hands on dirty little secrets of our highest-ranking personnel—such as the President of the United States.”
“E-excuse me? We? Did you just say we?” I stuttered.
“Hmm, that sounds good,” Jackie chimed in. “Grasping the VIP’s dirty secrets is always good because you can use them as leverage.”
“Yeah, it’s awesome!” Rowling beamed. “We can practically control the government by utilizing the intel obtained from dead people. Can it get any better?”
I took a deep breath and looked my boss in the eye. “Excuse me, Rick. You told me you can’t see or hear Jackie, right?”
“Yup.” His intensely deep green eyes looked straight back at me. “Why do you ask that?”
“Hey, Mandy, is there any chance he’s gay?” Jackie interjected, trying without success to pick up a lock of brown hair hanging over Rowling’s forehead. Before I answered, she continued. “No, he’s not gay. I can tell. I can just tell. Assuming he’s a straight guy, shouldn’t he be swatting me like a bug when I’m getting a little bit too intimate with him? You’re so skeptical, Mandy. He’s telling you the truth. There is no way he can see or hear me. I recommend you stop doubting. Joy and happiness will run away from you if you keep on taking a dim view of everything.”
She had a point. Considering they weren’t channeling with each other, I was stuck not only with Rick Rowling but also with Jackie the ghost, who was as outrageous as Rowling.
“Oh, I found another reason to conclude that he can’t see me.” Jackie went on. “If he’s gay or bi, he should be cooing whenever I touch him, shouldn’t he?”
Slapping my forehead, I groaned.
“What’s up, Mandy?” Rowling and Jackie said in unison as if they had no clue why I looked so grim.
“Never mind,” I said, wishing it were just a weird, wicked dream and not my life, or my career….
* * *
Once being born to this world, every life is destined to die—eventually, sooner or later, and at least once. Everybody knows that, but most people do not expect people close to them to suddenly go cold, motionless, and totally uncommunicative, as in a deathly silence, especially when they had no existing serious health problems.
“Holy smoke!”
When Marcus heard those words in Willow’s high-pitched voice, he nervously twitched his impeccably trimmed and manicured eyebrows.
It was the moment he heard the telltale thud! He was almost certain that the maid had committed another faux pas—like dropping a heavy object, or falling a few steps down the grand staircase—without seeing it for himself, because he had witnessed Willow flopping more often than he wished to see.
Marcus looked at the clock. It was just a few minutes to 9:00 p.m. He couldn’t help wondering why the maid had to make another blunder just minutes before finishing her shift and leaving. He sighed, thinking that Willow wouldn’t be happy to help fix whatever mess she had created. But when her next wail came saying, “Madame… Madame! Are you all right?” he could no longer sit quietly in his waiting room.
As soon as he burst into the foyer, he demanded, “What is the matter, Willow?”
“Oh… Mr. Marcus, I’m so glad you’re here!” the maid said breathlessly, without standing.
“Are you—” Marcus started to ask, but then gasped. “Oh my goodness, Madame Giselle!”
To his horror, it was Giselle Carolynn Axtell McCambridge, the head of the McCambridge family, and his very own employer, who was helplessly lying over the bottom steps of the grand staircase. She was bleeding from her head, and the blood was oozing over the white marble step.
Rushing to her side, Marcus inquired, “Madame Giselle? Madame Giselle! Please wake up.”
By his side, Willow shrieked, “Madame Giselle!”
“Come on, Willow! Stop shrieking and give me the phone! Now, go and open the gate to secure the access for the ambulance, and notify Mr. Wilfred and Mrs. Wilma-Diane.” As Marcus, the butler of the McCambridge mansion, shushed away the maid, Giselle let out a low groa
n.
“Madame Giselle! Are you all right? Are you hurting?” As soon as he finished speaking to the 911 operator, he peppered his employer with questions.
“Marcus…” twitching her delicate eyebrows, Giselle whispered in her usual commanding voice. “You don’t need to scream at me. I haven’t gone deaf.” Then she grimaced. “Ow… it’s so painful!”
Her voice was strong, and her pale gray eyes were piercing as always, but obviously, she was in pain.
“Madame, the ambulance is on the way. Please relax and rest assured—”
“Ambulance? Did I just hear that I’d be riding an ambulance? How embarrassing!” Touching her head, Giselle frowned. “No McCambridge has ever ridden an ambulance.”
“Which means you’re the very first McCambridge given the honor,” Marcus responded, forcing himself to display some humor and a reassuring smile.
“By the way, Marcus,” Giselle said, looking at her now bloodstained fingertips, “you need to call the police as well, because someone pushed me off the stairs.”
“Oh, my…” The butler gasped, but soon regained his composure. “Who committed such dreadfulness?”
“Marcus, will you collaborate with the police to catch the culprit?” Giselle reached for the butler.
Taking the mistress’s hand, Marcus consoled her. “Madame Giselle, you will soon feel better. The doctors at Beth Israel will make sure you’ll be as good as…” He stopped talking when he realized Giselle was writing the letter W on his palm in blood—over and over. “Madame Giselle?”
He intended to ask her for the meaning of W.
“It is by no means acceptable to push someone off the stairs.” Before Marcus spoke, Giselle did, looking the butler straight in his eyes. “Marcus, I recall that you like Jeeves, am I correct?”
“Yes, Madame. You are correct. I’m a huge fan of Jeeves.” Even though Marcus was dying to ask more about W, he knew his mistress too well to butt in. When Giselle McCambridge had something to say, she had to say it, and there was no room for the butler to change the subject.
“Good. Make sure that this crooked criminal who hurt me gets caught and justice is served. Be my Jeeves.”
“I will, Madame Giselle. I will be your Jeeves. By the way, who is W?”
“W is… I mean… find…” As Giselle started to talk, she grimaced and gasped for air. Her entire body convulsed for a moment. Then she closed her eyes, never to open them again.
Find W—these were the last words of Giselle Carolynn Axtell McCambridge.
By the time the family members and the visitors came to see what the commotion was about, Giselle had become unresponsive.
The paramedics arrived and took her to Beth Israel, but even the world’s greatest physicians couldn’t bring her back to life.
Giselle’s death was a total shock to Marcus. Considering her advanced age—seventy-seven, that was, though she stopped counting since hitting fifty—Giselle was extremely healthy, and her death was unexpected. At the same time, Marcus knew that solving the assault, which was upgraded to a murder, of Giselle McCambridge had become the last mission assigned by his employer for the past twenty-five years. By filling the blanks and reading between the lines of his previous conversation with his employer, he knew that W was the culprit.
Under normal circumstances, the most straightforward answer would be someone with names starting with W. And considering that there was no burglar at McCambridge mansion at the time of the crime, it was only natural to assume that whoever committed this crime would be someone at the house.
The only problem was everyone at the McCambridge mansion at the time of the crime had at least one W as the initial of their names—including Marcus Warne-Smith himself.
PI Assistant Extraordinaire Mysteries:
Book 1: Ghostly Murder: http://amzn.to/204aWJ4
A murder in a locked room…
A faceless ghost…
Throw in a cross-dressing detective-savant plus his assistant extraordinaire in this new mystery series!
A high profile murder calls for a high profile detective.
When the famous Sushi Czar is found dead in a room that’s locked from the inside, the evidence just doesn’t add up. Of course a killer ghost (supernatural killer) is no match for the deductive skills of Michael Archangel. The fabulous cross-dressing former FBI agent can rock a set of sky high stilettos and assemble clues like puzzle pieces, but can he actually prove a ghost committed murder?
Only his assistant knows for sure. Former housewife and London socialite Kelly Kinki (it’s Kinki ending with an I not a Y) may someday be the Watson to Archangel’s Holmes, but for now, she’s following orders, coveting his fashion sense and learning from the master PI that there’s something truly fishy about this case.
CHAPTER 1
There’s a first time for everything.
I was walking in the forest all by myself. It was a sunny day in late March, but in the shadows of tall trees, it was dark, cold, and creepy. Also, having a group of crows—a.k.a. a murder of crows—squawking over my head did nothing to calm my nerves.
Don’t get me wrong. I was not an adventurer wannabe or a plant hunter wandering about some exotic forest in the middle of nowhere with a totally unpronounceable name, such as Tweebuffelsmeteenskootmorsdoodgeskietfontein in Africa. On the contrary, I was one of those so-called city workers. My job title was the personal assistant to a certain private investigator based in McLean, Virginia.
I was in Arlington, the ‘good’ suburb of Washington DC. Though there was a metro station in walking distance, this part of the town was very quiet, giving it the feel of a godforsaken land. I wasn’t exaggerating. Maybe the fact that a man’s dead body was found nearby had something to do with my perception. In addition, considering he was stabbed to death, this neighborhood might not be such a good area. Oh, did I mention there was some wacko serial rapist still running loose in the neighborhood? As a woman with no expertise in martial arts, I had a gazillion reasons to be spooked.
Walking in the forest wasn’t something I was doing by choice. Michael Archangel, my eccentric employer with a diva personality, made me do so. My mission was to look for either pantyhose, a ski mask, or big granny panties. Any of those items were supposed to help my employer with his most recent case, but I couldn’t figure out why or how. Anyway, I had never dreamed about going treasure-hunting for potentially used undergarments in the urban forest at the age of twenty-nine.
When I was a kid, I wanted to be an alchemist or a doctor. But the reality wasn’t rosy enough to realize either of my childhood dreams. First of all, there was no alchemist school. In addition, my test score wasn’t good enough for premed programs. So my mom and fifth—or was it sixth?—faux-dad sent me to a finishing school in Switzerland where I mastered the art of eating an orange using a knife and a fork. After that, I became a housewife in London, obtained a bachelor’s degree in art, and then I got a divorce. People in Europe, especially rich people in London, still called me ‘the bitch who used to be married to that swindler’ a.k.a. the man who had committed the largest investment scam in the history of Great Britain.
Here’s my point: Education is so overrated.
My name is Kelly Kinki. Yes, it’s my real name as written on my birth certificate. No, my surname is not a joke. And no, I’m not into kinky sex. Kinky or otherwise, it had been a while since I had sex.
As I thought about sex, I realized how much I hated walking through the creepy woods. I could think of much better things to do—such as tackling crossword puzzles or building a robot vacuum cleaner from scratch—but sometimes, you had to do what you had to do.
All of the sudden, one of the crows let out an especially menacing squawk as something started chirping and vibrating at the same time, startling me.
“Holy crap!”
A second later, I realized it was coming from my purse and reached for my phone.
“Hello? What can I do for you, Mr. Archangel?” I said to the person on t
he other end, who happened to be the one responsible for my current situation.
There was no response.
“Hello? Mr. Archangel?”
Still nothing.
From the other end, I could hear muffled voices. I recalled a bunch of retired gentlemen, who resided in the neighborhood, gathering at the crime scene. When I left there, they were busy gossiping. In my mind’s eyes, I could almost see and hear them cracking jokes and laughing their as—I mean, laughing their pants off. A moment later, I finally got a whispered response from Archangel.
“Password.”
“What? Password? What are you talking about?” I said, puzzled.
“You need to provide the password of Michael Archangel Investigations.”
“Excuse me? I’ve got your name on my caller ID. And it’s my voice. You can recognize me from my voice, can’t you?”
“No. You sound different,” he said. “Actually, you sound pretty much annoyed.”
“Come on, so I’m pretty much annoyed right now, but still, it’s me. Besides that, you’re the one who’s calling my phone, so you should know—” I was tempted to go on with my rant, but I realized it was easier to just tell the password.
“All right! I’ll tell the password.” Then I stopped short. What was the password? I knitted my eyebrows. It was something about artists. Oh yeah—Matisse, Bonnard, and Rothko—that was it.
“Matisse, Bonnard,” I said my part and waited for him to say “Rothko” but—
“Okay, let’s get to the point.”
“Hey!” I protested. “You’re supposed to finish the password before getting to the point. I said ‘Matisse, Bonnard’ and you’re supposed to say ‘Rothko.’ Without your finishing, the password isn’t complete!”
“What are you babbling, Kelly? It’s me, Michael Archangel. You should be able to recognize me from my voice. Otherwise, you must be affected with an early-onset of Alzheimer’s.”
All right, he had a point. The password was pretty much worthless since I knew I was talking to Archangel. His voice was deep, husky, and somewhat seductive, per usual. In addition, I knew no one else as fuc—I mean, freaking annoying as him.
