Back in Black

by Rhys Ford

  “I love you, hyung,” Jae whispered, pressing his mouth against mine and stealing away my breath in more ways than one. “I think you’re right. Let’s skip the shower. But get rid of the tennis ball first.”

  THE MORNING came in fits and starts, sunbeams breaking through the low-lying cloud layer with an enthusiasm I normally only saw in sullen teenagers dressed in all-black baggy clothes and trudging behind their parents while shopping at the Grove. With daylight expressing a fierce reluctance to participate in the sun’s scheduled rise, I dressed as warmly as I could, pulling a leather-and-wool Chicago Cubs jacket from my closet. I’d gotten halfway down the stairs when Jae spotted me and made an all-too-familiar turnaround motion with his index finger.

  “What?” I looked down the stairwell, then at my clothes. “Black jeans, gray shirt, and a Cubs jacket. The jacket’s gray and red. This should all go together.”

  “That shirt isn’t gray. It’s closer to Pantone 559, and it belongs to Bobby. He must’ve left it here, and it got mixed up in your laundry.” He made the motion again, emphasizing his point by stabbing at the air toward our bedroom. “It’s like the universe hates me. I got rid of everything in colors you can’t see, and they still show up in your dresser. Go change your shirt. You look like a washed-out Christmas tree.”

  I came back downstairs and got permission to leave the house after grabbing another T-shirt I was fairly certain was gray. I wasn’t sure if they were all just fucking with me or if they were really greens I couldn’t see, but since everyone including Claudia had opinions about my sartorial attempts, I just changed my clothes.

  Opening the front door, I found Bobby standing on the stoop, about to ring the doorbell. He grunted a quick hello to Jae, who offered to give him a cup of coffee, but he held up a steel tumbler, sloshing it about.

  “What are you doing here? Did you want to come with me to the hospital?” I checked the time, calculating how long it would take me to get to the medical center they’d taken Arthur Brinkerhoff to. I wouldn’t be allowed into the ward for another hour, but it would take me about that just to get through the Wilshire traffic. “Isn’t your car at the shop? How’d you get here? I didn’t hear your bike.”

  “Ichi dropped me off,” he rumbled, picking Honey up when she danced over to his feet. “How’s my baby girl?”

  I peered down the walk toward the front of the Craftsman, not seeing my brother’s car or his Harley. “My brother can’t come in now? He just drops you off and leaves?”

  “He does when he’s driving the crazy old cat lady to LAX. Not only did he agree to take her to the airport, I’m stuck with her cats for two weeks while she’s out of town.” Honey slobbered all over his face, not happy unless she covered every inch of his skin with spit. Her tongue made scraping noises against his unshaven chin, and she wiggled happily in his hands. “Yeah, I was planning on going with you on whatever you were doing today. Considering you’ve been shot at two days in a row, it probably isn’t a bad idea for you to have backup. You might want to reconsider carrying while you work this case. You might need it.”

  I was very much aware of Jae still standing in the doorway. I felt the weight of his anxiety when his expression flickered with concern before he buried it beneath a placid mask. I was still licensed to carry a concealed weapon and routinely went down to the range with Mike and Bobby to keep my marksmanship up, but it had been a long time since I actually carried a gun with me. A darkness had consumed me when a madman hunted through my family, nearly killing Mike and injuring practically everybody else. Jae had that man’s blood on his hands, and I had the burden of that guilt on my conscience. It was probably foolish not to take a weapon with me. It was certainly naïve for me to have faith I wouldn’t be shot at because I didn’t have a gun on me, but… the pain and worry in Jae’s eyes kept me from opening up the gun safe in the hall closet and taking out my Glock.

  “Let’s see where this takes us first,” I replied. Then I leaned over to kiss Jae goodbye. “Saranghae-yo. I’ll call you later. Text me if you want me to bring food home for dinner.”

  “I love you,” he murmured back, twisting his fingers into the fabric of my T-shirt, refusing to let me go. “Maybe Bobby is right. Maybe—”

  “I’m just going to talk to an old man in the hospital,” I reassured him, tucking some of his hair behind his ear, mostly to trail my fingers along the soft skin at the nape of his neck. “I’ve got a lot of questions for him, and he hasn’t even really hired me. If things start to look dangerous, I’ll consider it, but for right now, the gun can stay where it is. And you better let me go. My husband picked the shirt, and if you wrinkle it, he might get mad.”

  “Yeah, I hear he’s a real asshole sometimes,” he teased back, giving me a silly smile.

  “I think you’re talking about Bobby,” I corrected haughtily, sniffing with mock indignance. Bobby barked a short laugh, and Honey joined in, trotting back into the living room with a few yips. “My husband is a delight. I worship the ground he walks on.”

  “Can we get going before I throw my stomach up like a starfish? The two of you are making me sick,” Bobby groused loudly, scraping the heels of his boots against the cement stoop.

  “Good thing you’re going to the hospital, then,” Jae snarled back playfully. “Just take care of my hyung. We’ve got an anniversary coming up. Anything happens to him, I’m taking Ichi with me to Catalina, and the two of you can sit here and rot.”

  Seven

  “YOU GOING to be okay going in there?” Bobby asked, glancing at the shards of glass and concrete poking up into the Los Angeles sky.

  “Why wouldn’t I be?” I gave him a quick glance, but past anguishes were building the pressure inside of my chest. As a best friend, Bobby was both fantastic and maddening. He knew me well enough to know when to push and when to back off, but me and Bobby usually chose to do the exact opposite. Stupidly enough, that’s exactly what I needed in a best friend, but in this case, I told myself I was going to be okay. “Hell, I haven’t been here in so long they’re starting to send me Please Get Shot postcards in the mail because they miss me.”

  It’d been forever and a day since I’d spent hours on my knees in this hospital’s chapel, praying for my brother Mike to survive a bullet meant for me. There was so much blood on my hands, some of it so old it stained my skin and I was never going to be able to scrub it off. Sitting in the Rover, bracing myself to wander around halls I knew too well and knowing I’d never get the stink of death and antiseptic out of my nose for days afterward, I wondered if chasing after Adele Brinkerhoff’s murderer wouldn’t bring me right back here again.

  “Am I doing the right thing?” The steering wheel had an odd bumpy pattern along its inside ridge, and it sang with a bass moan when I ran my thumb over it. “Jae says I can’t help myself, that I wouldn’t be able to put this aside because that’s not who I am, but I’m wondering what I’m bringing to my front door if I pursue this.”

  There was a kernel of self-loathing in my gut twisting into existence just for thinking about walking away. It was difficult to even consider, much less do, but there I sat, debating starting the Rover and going back to a life dominated by taking pictures of cheating spouses and finding lost dogs. I didn’t know if that life was enough for me, but it certainly seemed safer for everyone I loved. I’d already lost so much and risked so many. I didn’t want to lose anyone else. I couldn’t afford it. My heart was already taped up and stapled together. Another tap from the ball-peen hammer of Fate, and it would shatter.

  Bobby turned to face me, leaning against the Rover’s passenger window. He was staring at something past my shoulder, but that was just how he thought. It was a way for him to gather up his ideas, bundling them into a tight cannonball before he shot a hole through my chest. I could always depend upon him to give me the truth, unvarnished, mostly painful, but always accurate. We disagreed on a few things in life—I still hadn’t quite gotten over him sneaking around with my younger brother behind
my back—but I loved and respected him.

  And while not diplomatic, his heart was always in the right place, and whatever he told me, it was always said with a modicum of objectivity. He’d been a good cop, balancing the law with what was the right thing to do, since sometimes they didn’t go hand in hand. He would sooner buy groceries and diapers for a woman caught shoplifting because she was desperate to feed her kids. Still, there were times when he wanted to protect me from myself, and while I could understand that, right now I needed that objectivity.

  “You and I have been through a lot of shit,” he rumbled, rubbing at his eyes, then blinking rapidly, probably trying to clear his vision. “It’s been a long time since you opened a can of worms. And that’s kind of what your cases end up being sometimes—a very large can of poisonous, Cole-chomping worms.”

  “I think those would be called snakes,” I broke in, trying for some levity. But the stern look I got told me it wasn’t appreciated. “Sorry. And?”

  “Jae is right. You’ve always got to climb up on that white horse and ride to the rescue. And when you do, we’re all scared as shit that one day you’re going to run into a dragon too big for you to take down.” He sloshed his coffee tumbler back and forth, then popped it open to take a sip. “The question is right now, is this that dragon? How deep does this go? Because the pieces of this puzzle aren’t lining up. You’ve got a dead geriatric dominatrix with a handful of diamonds, and her husband is lying in the hospital after getting worked over by some guy in a hoodie who took a few shots at us. On top of that, the only reason you were there was because you were doing recon for a cat burglar who says he’s given up that life, but who knows for sure?”

  “You think Montoya would be with him if he wasn’t?” I didn’t know Dante Montoya, not like Bobby did. My gut told me Montoya was not the kind of man who would be in bed with a criminal—metaphorically or physically—but sometimes love did weird things, and ethical corners get cut when the heart is involved. “I talked to Stevens. I couldn’t get a good read on him.”

  “I think Montoya would need proof Stevens was out there pulling jobs, but no, he wouldn’t be there unless Stevens was riding the straight-and-narrow line.” Bobby frowned at his tumbler, then fit it back into the cup holder between us. “Let’s assume you’re not going to get paid for this. And I know money isn’t a problem, but you’re going to need some kind of legal standing to get your foot into a lot of doors, especially since you and I both know you’re going to have to shove that foot in between a few cracks to get inside what’s going on.

  “You feel responsible for her being dead. Don’t deny it. And I know it doesn’t make any sense, but that’s just how you think. You found her body, and now you need to find her murderer, even though O’Byrne will be working it on her end.” He glanced up at the hospital, peering at it through the somewhat bug-speckled windshield. “And up there is a man whose heart is broken because somebody took away the love of his life. You know how that feels, and you know what it’s like to live without answers to the questions that keep you up at night. So yeah, I don’t expect you to do anything but chase this down, Cole. I’m just going to have to be right beside you in case that dragon is too big.”

  “I appreciate that, Bobby.” I patted his shoulder, lightly squeezing it before letting go. “Thank you.”

  “You act like I have a choice,” he grumbled at me, opening the door. “Don’t forget, Princess, I married your baby brother. I come home without you and there’s not going to be enough left of me to sleep in a dog bed, much less a couch.”

  ARTHUR BRINKERHOFF was asleep, hooked up to what looked and sounded like a DJ mixing board more than any medical device I’d ever seen, but it had been a while since I’d been lying in a hospital bed, waking up to a new litany of pains and bruises. He was frail, his nearly translucent skin draped over his bones like tissue paper dampened by ugly blotches of purpling watercolor splashes. His eyes were practically slits in his face, and his upper lip swollen to a plumpness big enough to touch the tip of his hooked nose. His chest rattled beneath the hospital gown decorated with thin yellow stripes—probably meant to be a cheerful touch of color, but it only served to highlight the sallowness of his skin. Dried blood flecks dappled his forehead—dribbles from a cut closed with a butterfly adhesive—but there were stitches along his jaw and neck, clear-cut evidence of deeper wounds.

  He looked exactly as I thought he would, so I wasn’t surprised when I came into the room and found him lying in the hospital bed looking like a Ramses the Second cosplayer who’d gone too far.

  The drop-dead gorgeous blond sitting in the chair beside the bed definitely was a shock, though.

  She was everything a detective novel needed to ratchet up the suspense—icy golden hair, long legs, and a face gorgeous enough to launch a thousand ships, be they Viking or gondola. I was used to beautiful. I spent most of my days around Jae, Scarlet, and Claudia, so while I wasn’t immune to beauty, it took a lot to steal my breath away.

  This woman certainly had that a lot.

  If I were straight, I would’ve been in trouble. When she glanced up at me with her wide baby blues and gave me a small shy smile just a hair short of sexy and a finger breadth away from wicked, that look told me all I needed to know about her. I wouldn’t be able to trust her as far as I could throw her… well, if she was carrying something heavy, because she didn’t look like she weighed that much.

  She was dressed to kill, a pair of red stiletto heels giving a splash of color to her black pencil skirt and dove-gray blouse. But then, for all I knew, the tucked-in, fitted boyfriend shirt was actually some shade of pink I couldn’t see. I still wasn’t buying the whole “there were colors I couldn’t see quite right,” but I was reluctantly being drawn over the line of accepting a reality outside of my control.

  Much like this case.

  “Cole McGinnis. I’m a private investigator hired by Mister Brinkerhoff,” I said, nodding at the old man in the bed. “I came to see if he was up to answering any questions.”

  “McGinnis,” she purred at me in a smoky voice reminiscent of speakeasies and cigarettes. She was a walking cliché, but it seemed like I was stuck with her, at least until I could figure out what she was doing there. “You’re the man who rescued Poppa. One of the police officers last night told me you’d be coming by.”

  I took the hand she offered and shook it. Her fingers were cool to the touch, without a hint of clammy nervousness. “And you are?”

  I was really beginning to regret letting Bobby go on a coffee run for us. Neither one of us liked what any hospital had to offer, and there was a Starbucks drive-through not more than three blocks away. As much as I wanted more coffee, I could’ve used him as a foil. She was an unknown quantity, and from the looks of things—her phone charging on the side table and the thick book she’d been reading left to rest on the old man’s bed—she was a woman who was a part of the Brinkerhoffs’ life. Every bone in my body screamed at me, trying to get my brain to understand. This woman was a complication in an already fucked-up case.

  Like I needed even more convincing about how much trouble she could potentially be.

  “I’m Marlena Brinkerhoff. Adele is… was my grandmother.” Every pitch and fall of her voice was filled with the poignant sorrow of a woman in mourning, and her elegant hand clasped the unconscious Arthur’s fingers in a gentle embrace. It was all so very perfect and yet felt quite theatrically practiced. “I flew down from San Francisco as soon as I could. Poppa called me when Grandma was found, so I was in the air when he was attacked. I didn’t discover what happened until I showed up at the house and found the police….”

  She gave a little sob, closing her eyes tightly and bringing her clenched fist up to her ripe, red-lipsticked mouth. As wary as I was, my heart went out to her, and I reached over to touch her arm, probably falling into the web that she wove.

  That was the problem with being a private investigator, or at least that was my problem with being a privat
e investigator. I could never really see the cobweb strands, and my gut had often proven to be a liar.

  “I’m very sorry for your loss.” She folded herself into my arms before I could stop her, and I was left to stand awkwardly as I patted her back. “I met your grandmother before all of this. A few years ago. She seemed like a strong woman.”

  “She was. She would push me to be my best,” she murmured through a series of hiccupping sobs. I wasn’t sure if my shirt was going to be able to absorb all of her tears, but I also wasn’t in a position to protest. The woman had lost someone dear to her, and I needed to find out who took Adele Brinkerhoff from her family. “A lot of people thought she was too stern, too strict, but I knew she loved me.”

  “Did she ever bake you cookies?” I had to ask. If I took anything out of this entire experience, I wanted to be reassured that grandmothers baked cookies.

  The look Marlena gave me when she pulled back from my chest was an odd one, but it was a strange question. I wasn’t going to be the one to tell her Adele Brinkerhoff and I met over the business end of a shotgun after I caught her doing the spank-and-tickle with another woman, but the cookie thing was important, at least in my own twisted little brain.

  “She baked cookies all the time. Usually shortbread,” she said with a small smile that seemed more genuine than the one she’d given me as I walked into the room. “Poppa’s favorites are shortbread and peanut butter. I like chocolate chip, but her shortbread could just melt in your mouth.”

  “It’s good you have that,” I murmured, putting a little distance between us. “I can come back later when your grandfather wakes up. I just need to ask him about what your grandmother was doing that night.”

  “Poppa isn’t able to talk to you. The doctors are concerned he hasn’t regained consciousness, and they’re worried there’s brain damage,” Marlena whispered breathlessly. “He told me he was hiring a private investigator to look into Grandma’s death. And that you were the one who’d found her. He was just so upset. I told him we could talk when I got there, but now… I’m just hoping he wakes up.”