The Big Fix

by Linda Grimes

  “And besides, somebody tried to kill him at the funeral,” Lily said.

  “Or possibly your father,” I added for the sake of keeping the facts straight.

  “Or my father,” she conceded. “But you can’t tell me Jackson would have set up something so risky for himself. According to the news, that bullet missed him by inches. Maybe I was wrong about him. Maybe he didn’t have Angelica killed.”

  “About that…” I said. Damn, I hoped I wasn’t going to regret this. I’d done enough regrettable things recently—I didn’t need to add to the list. “Look, before I go any further, I’m going to have to ask that this stay between the three of us. In fact, I shouldn’t say anything at all, not before I have you sign one of my nondisclosure agreements. Would you be willing to do that?”

  Nigel was looking wary. “If you give me time to read it carefully, and I find nothing egregious about it, I suppose so.”

  Lily-Ann inclined her head toward Nigel. “If he says it’s okay to sign, I’ll sign.”

  “Great! I don’t think you’ll find anything confusing about it. Thomas drew it up for me himself, and he’s pretty clear cut. Do you have a computer and a printer I can borrow? I can access it online.”

  * * *

  Nigel finished paging through my standard contract. He was a fast reader, but I could tell he hadn’t skipped a line of it.

  “So,” he said, “as I understand it, in exchange for your services, we agree not to disclose anything about how you go about performing said services, or anything we learn, advertently or inadvertently, about you or your associates during the course of your performing said services. Is that about it?”

  “That covers it nicely. Of course, for our purposes here today, my ‘services’ entail telling you certain information I’m privy to, and demonstrating how I came to be privy to it. Also, you’ll notice I nulled out the portion of the contract that deals with my fee. I’m not charging you anything, of course.”

  He studied my face, considering God knew what. Coming to a decision, he signed with a flourish. Lily-Ann followed suit with her copy of the contract, which she’d given only a cursory glance. Guess she trusted Nigel.

  I collected both contracts and checked the signatures, to make sure they hadn’t signed “Mickey Mouse” or “Donald Duck.” Not that it would matter much if they had. Thomas had creative ways of dealing with clients who willfully broke a contract, no matter how cute they got with their signatures.

  Satisfied, I folded the documents and stuffed them into my purse. This was the tricky part with all new clients. (If I was honest, it was also kind of fun.) Deep down, they were always sure the person who had referred them to me was mistaken. They never really believed it until they saw it for themselves. Some of them even fainted. And those were the ones who’d heard about aura adaptors through the grapevine before they approached me. Nigel and Lily-Ann were getting it cold.

  “Okay,” I said. “The reason we can’t rule out Jack just because there was a probable attempt on his life is because that wasn’t the real Jack.”

  Nigel looked skeptical in the I’m-listening-politely-but-I’m-not-buying-it way lawyers have. (Thomas was a master at that look.) “What? Are you saying Jack sent some sort of stunt double to his wife’s funeral? Does he have a twin brother we don’t know about?”

  “Not exactly a stunt double, no. Or a twin. More like … me.”

  “What are you talking about?” Lily-Ann said.

  “I’m saying I was standing in for Jackson at the funeral, just as I was when Angelica was shot. It’s my job.”

  They both stared at me, saying nothing. I took that as an indication to continue.

  “It was while I was pretending to be Jackson on the set that he left my client hideaway—a guest ranch in Arizona—for several hours. In other words, there was, at the least, a window of opportunity for him to kill your sister, and to hide what could be the murder weapon in my barn for later retrieval.”

  Lily spoke first, sounding like a kid who’d been offered an ice cream cone, only to have it snatched away at the last second. “Nigel, she’s crazy. Get her out of here.”

  Nigel ignored her. “You found the gun in your barn? I was told the police didn’t have it.”

  “Uh … well, they don’t. Not last time I checked, anyway. I’ll explain that part later,” I said, loosening my belt and kicking off my shoes.

  I called up Jackson’s aura and waited for their reaction.

  Lily jumped up and backed away from me, almost tripping over a small table in her rush. “What the fuck?” she said, looking decidedly pale. I hoped she wasn’t a fainter, because it was a marble floor. Guess that worked better than carpet with Nigel’s wheelchair.

  Nigel stared, processing. Finally he asked, “What are you?”

  I dropped the aura and refastened my belt. Left my shoes off, though, because, hey, barefoot is always better than wearing shoes.

  “I’m an aura adaptor. So is Thomas, by the way.”

  “There are more of you? Are you … human?” This from Lily, who was keeping her distance.

  “Completely and totally human,” I said, doing a slow spin so they could see I was still me from all angles. Then I went into my spiel about how we had a genetic quirk that allowed us to project the aura of anyone whose energy we touched, yadda yadda yadda. I had to go over it with all my clients, after which I typically reminded them of the contract they had signed and pointed out, ever so politely, that my legal shark brother would divest them of all their worldly possessions if they ever divulged what I had shown them.

  I somehow didn’t think I would need to state that to Nigel, who was no longer looking shocked, only highly curious.

  “You say you can become anyone?” he said.

  “Not become. I’m always still me on the inside. All I can do is project their aura. In other words, take on their physical appearance.”

  “Can you do me?” he asked.

  “Sure,” I said, and loosened my belt again. “Give me your hand.”

  He extended his arm, I took some energy, and voilà! I was him. Only I was still standing, and could walk around.

  “But you’re not paralyzed,” he said.

  “Nope. I took care not to project your injured spine and I left some muscle tone in my legs.”

  “You can pick and choose parts?” Lily said, gradually becoming less fearful and more fascinated.

  “Yeah. Though usually it’s easier to project the whole package. Requires less concentration, and less effort to keep it up. It doesn’t make much difference for short adaptions, though.”

  I had, of course, been speaking in Nigel’s voice, and had unconsciously mimicked the rhythms of his speech. I tend to do that automatically—Mom says I have a good ear. Nigel couldn’t quit staring at me.

  Finally, he gave himself a shake (only his upper body and head moved) and said, “Could you stop, please? It’s … rather disconcerting to talk to myself.”

  I dropped his aura at once.

  “So, do you see what I mean about Jackson now? I don’t know for sure he’s the guilty one, but I sure as heck know he could be. That’s something, right?”

  Hope sparked in Lily-Ann’s eyes for the first time since I’d arrived. Nigel squashed it with a brutal truth.

  “But judging from the impressive stack of papers your brother drafted, and we signed, knowing how it’s possible isn’t going to do us a bit of good in court, is it?”

  “Not in court, no. But I swear I will find a way to help you. I won’t let an innocent person go to prison. You have to believe that.”

  Chapter 18

  Billy and I picked up food at the In-N-Out drive-thru and checked into a hotel, where we proceeded to stuff our faces with their legendary Animal Style burgers (the grilled onions were fabulous) and Animal Style fries (topped with cheese, secret sauce, and more grilled onions) from the not-so-secret menu as we discussed our findings. He hadn’t gathered much of any use, either from the funeral guests or
from his shopping spree with Frannie.

  I’d left Nigel and Lily-Ann, both still somewhat agog from my revelation, with a promise to get back to them soon. I told them to stay the course, that I was meeting with a trusted friend who was helping me work on a plan to find out who the real killer was.

  Yeah, “plan” might have been an overstatement. We were still at the bouncing-around-one-ridiculous-idea-after-another stage, hoping something would fall into place. But I didn’t want Lily-Ann to worry. I had faith Billy would come up with something—he was a master at getting out of trouble.

  The first thing I told Billy was that I’d had to tell Nigel and Lily-Ann about adaptors. Not nearly as uptight about revealing our ability as Mark was, he shrugged it off. All he asked was if I’d made them sign the nondisclosure agreement.

  “Duh. Of course I did,” I said, around a mouthful of fries.

  “Shouldn’t be a problem, then. Thomas’s contracts are the best muzzles I know.”

  “Yeah, me too. Of course, Mark will probably jump down my—” I stopped myself. “Sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”

  He shrugged it off with no more than a slight clenching of his jaw. “It’s okay. It would be stupid to pretend he doesn’t exist. So, have you talked to him since…?”

  He courteously left off “he screwed your brains out,” but it reverberated in my head anyway. “Yeah,” I said. “I, um, explained the circumstances to him.”

  “And how was that received?” Billy asked wryly.

  “Not well. He was … understandably … angry with me.”

  He nodded. “He texted me to cancel the job we had scheduled. Said he could handle it alone.”

  “Are you still mad at him?” I asked after I got up the courage.

  “Fuck yeah.” He expelled an exasperated breath “No. Not really. If I’m honest with myself, I probably would have done the exact same thing in his position. Doesn’t mean I’m not glad he’ll be gone for a while.”

  “Billy, I can’t tell you how sorry I—”

  “It’s done, cuz. Let’s try to forget it.” He took a huge bite of his burger, without dribbling any of it down his chin.

  Okay, I was cool with forgetting. I could do that. I looked at the array of wadded up mustard- and ketchup-stained napkins on my side of the small table.

  “I still don’t understand how you can eat something this messy without spilling any of it,” I said, more than willing to change the subject.

  He lifted a fry and let the cheese and onions drip into his mouth before finishing it off. “Practice. Loads and loads of practice.”

  I shook my head. “Even with an adaptor metabolism, by all rights you should be three hundred pounds.”

  “Maybe I am,” he said, waggling his eyebrows.

  “Nah. You enjoy being comfortable too much. I would have caught you by now.”

  “Comfortable” was adaptor code for being yourself. It was possible to hold a secondary aura for extended periods, but it did require more energy, so most adaptors liked to relax in their own forms. Even me; otherwise, I’d maintain an extra four inches of height indefinitely.

  “True,” he said. “Anyway, you eat almost as much as I do, and you’re still a shrimp.”

  The fact is, you’ll rarely see an obese aura adaptor. Apparently projecting other people’s auras burns a lot of calories.

  “Yeah? Well, you’re a big doofus,” I said, and threw a particularly dirty napkin at him, which he caught handily and lobbed back at me.

  I batted it out of the way and was rearming myself when he picked me up and tossed me on the bed.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” I suppressed a huge grin, because I knew exactly what he was doing.

  He landed on the bed next to me. “Now that I’ve topped off your tank, I’m taking you for a spin.”

  “Oh, boy, a joy ride!” I said.

  Turned out his choice of metaphor was apt—my head was spinning within seconds after he started kissing me. And no onion breath at all. One of the nicer perks of being an adaptor.

  This, I thought while I was still capable of thinking at all. This was why I couldn’t let go of Billy. This playfulness. This teasing. This fun. Laughter was as essential for me as food and water, and he provided it better than anyone else I knew.

  But it wasn’t only the laughter. “Billy,” I said hesitantly, later, as I lay cradled to his chest during a lull in our activities, “I found the parachute. It’s beautiful. Thank you.”

  I felt him shrug beneath my cheek. “It made me think of you. I was hoping it would make you think of me.”

  “It will. It’s perfect—I love it.” I lifted my head and looked at his face. Curls, damp with sweat from our exertions, spilled onto his forehead. “You know, you’ve never said it to me either. Not seriously.”

  The humor in his eyes was instantly replaced by something deeper. “I love you, Ciel. I always will.”

  * * *

  Guards. Jackson had hired guards. Every door, every ground-floor window, and even some guy on the roof dressed in workman’s gear who might have been hired to fix the terra-cotta tile, but I wouldn’t put money on it, because he was scanning the grounds a lot more than he was working.

  Either our Jack was terribly worried someone was out to kill him, too, or else he hadn’t found Angelica’s file yet, and didn’t want anyone to beat him to it.

  “Shit,” I said.

  Billy nodded. “Agreed. I can’t see a good way in.”

  We’d hopped into Billy’s rental car first thing that morning (thank God his Mooney was being serviced) and resumed brainstorming on our way to Vegas. The only concrete part of our plan so far was “find the file.” Anything else we did would depend on what was in it. Trouble was, Jackson seemed to be avoiding my calls. I’d tried his landline and his cell phone (which the messenger I’d hired had assured me had been delivered at precisely three minutes before ten the night before) several times each. Shunted to voice mail every time.

  “I suppose we could just knock on the door and ask to speak with him. One of us could keep him busy while the other searched,” I said.

  Billy shook his head slowly. “That might work if we knew where it was—if he let us in to begin with—but I think those guards are a good indicator of Jack’s level of paranoia. I doubt there’d be the opportunity for a lengthy search. Also, we know he has guns. And, if he is our culprit, obviously isn’t afraid to use them should we get caught.”

  I gave him a sideways look. “I thought you were the king of risk takers.”

  He draped an arm over my shoulders and gave me a squeeze. “Not where you’re concerned.”

  I thought about arguing with him. Saw how firmly his mouth was set, thought ahead to the likely outcome, and didn’t waste my breath. My mind tumbled crazy ideas around. Skidded to a stop at one that was insanely simple.

  “Hey,” I said, “what if I could walk right past the guard and search the whole house without ever being seen?”

  “And you would do this how, precisely?”

  “Easy. I’d be invisible.”

  A few months earlier, while working on a solution to a particularly tricky aura-adapting glitch Molly had been dealing with, James (my nonadaptor scientist brother) had come up with a formula that had had an interesting side effect. It had suppressed his primary aura—the only aura he was capable of projecting. As a result, he’d disappeared. But only visually. He’d been as solid as ever if you happened to bump into him.

  Billy hadn’t seen it, but I’d told him all about it afterward.

  “I thought that only happened to James because he’s not an adaptor. Besides, didn’t you tell me it made him sick?”

  “He was a little washed out—so to speak—but not until it was wearing off. He was perfectly fine while he was invisible, and he recovered quickly enough. As for it working on an adaptor … well, we won’t know until we try, huh?”

  Billy still looked skeptical. “It might be worth a shot, but only if I’m the one
doing it.”

  “Oh, geez. Are you getting all macho on me again? It doesn’t make sense for you to do it. I’ve studied Jackson’s house”—the plans were in his dossier—“so I know it better than you do.”

  “I doubt that. Remember, I was going to do the snake job until I passed it along to you. I met with him at his house, so I’ve been inside it, which is more than you can say. Plus, I have infinitely more experience than you when it comes to moving stealthily through houses where I don’t belong.”

  I quirked my mouth. “No doubt. Never mind. We’ll discuss it later. It might be moot, anyway, if James’s magic potion doesn’t work on adaptors.”

  He tugged my hair. “Dibs on testing it.”

  * * *

  “No. Absolutely not. I can’t let you risk it.” James’s face was set.

  We were at his lab, James having refused point-blank to simply send the damn potion via the fastest possible courier. One thing I’ll say, flying was getting easier for me, if not more pleasant. I hadn’t even needed any medicinal gin. Instead, Billy had spent most of the flight giving me hand massages. He claimed the acupressure would help with my anxiety. Maybe it had, but it was more likely the naughty suggestions he kept whispering in my ear that had distracted me.

  I cocked my head and asked Billy, who’d been trying, along with me, to make James see reason, “Do I look that sour when I get all stubborn about something?”

  “No, you look positively adorable when you get stubborn. Cuter than a speckled setter pup.”

  I growled at him.

  “See, that’s when you look sour,” he said with a wink.

  James shook his head at our banter. “Amusing. The answer is still no.”

  I tugged the sleeve of his white lab coat. “Come on, James, I explained why we need it. If we test it out—”

  “And by ‘we,’ she means me, if that’s your concern. No sisters will be harmed while conducting the test,” Billy said.