Beauty In Death

by D E Dennis

  “So, this was a complete waste of time. It was an accident like we assumed all along.”

  “We still haven’t found the missing phone and three brushes with death are odd no matter how you look at it.”

  Spencer screwed up his face. “Three brushes with death?”

  Samira nodded. “I would also like some clarification on that.”

  Monica filled them both in on what the Cadals told them.

  Spencer cursed. “No wonder they’re paranoid.”

  “They have reason to be,” Michael said, “especially after tonight.”

  Samira looked at Spencer. “We should go. We need to talk to the chief and see if she’ll give us leeway to investigate this as an attempted murder.”

  “Wait,” Michael said as the two began to walk off. He glanced at Samira. “What about dinner?”

  She lifted her chin, looking at him steadily. “I told you, Michael. The next time we have dinner is up to you.”

  She sidestepped him and kept walking. She did not look back.

  MICHAEL WOKE BEFORE his alarm the next morning. For a while, he just lay there staring at the ceiling while trying to piece things together.

  Charles Cadal.

  Wealthy. Doting father.

  Claudia Cadal.

  Scared and feeling guilty that some unknown malice haunted their daughter and struck from under their nose.

  Emma French.

  Resentment boiling beneath the surface, but does it stem from insecurity or a genuine slight?

  Gabriel Silva.

  Michael paused to chew this one over a bit more.

  Beauty’s boyfriend. Handsome and he knows it. He didn’t seem concerned over her many accidents or her falling down the stairs. Finally showed an emotion over the thought of Beauty being attacked, but why did it come so late?

  Michael didn’t know how long he lay there musing, but this part couldn’t be rushed. People always remarked on how weird that Grimm boy was. How he was always sitting, staring, and watching. Taking everything in but making no move to take part. But Michael couldn’t help the way he was built and now that he was free of the prison they called prep school, he could appreciate this trait within himself.

  He had never been too good with people, but he was good at figuring them out. Most people believed murder cases were solved with forensics and high-tech gadgets, but the truth was it was all about the people. Once he understood the people surrounding the victim, what made them tick, how they thought, what motivated them, then it was only a matter of time before he discovered what could drive them to murder.

  Although Michael had only spent a short time with the people around Beauty, he was already starting to form a picture...

  ...and the picture of Gabriel wasn’t quite clear.

  Michael filed him away under people he needed to speak to again and sat up in bed. It was Sunday and he had nowhere to be any time soon, so there was only one thing to do.

  It took him ten minutes to brush his teeth, change into his running clothes, and head out the door. Michael had two regular routes and as he jogged away from his apartment building he got on the path for his longer one.

  Letting his mind go blank, Michael sprinted past neighbors, dropping careless waves as he went. He ran through the square and smiled at the screaming kids splashing each other in the Castle Rock fountain. Michael ran all the way out of town, until he reached the spot where gravel and buildings gave way to Siren Woods.

  He ran all that way, and by the end, he still had no idea how someone could have pushed Beauty down the stairs and have been in the ballroom waiting for the main event to start at the same time.

  So much for a run helping me think, he thought wryly.

  He skidded to a stop and turned back. Michael didn’t run in Siren Woods. He didn’t go into the woods at all.

  Michael sped back the way he came, until he reached the fountain. Taking a left instead of a right, he ended up in front of the Little Pigs café. Michael stepped inside and went straight to the bathroom. He freshened up as best he could and then stepped out to join the line.

  The Little Pigs was the most popular café in town as shown by the long line that awaited him. Michael’s empty stomach complained, but he paid it no mind. It would soon be satisfied by waffles, mushrooms, and eggs Benedict. He salivated at the very thought.

  The line took its time but soon he placed the order, took his number, and sat down to wait.

  He rubbed his hands together when the waiter finally headed for his table.

  “Here you are, Michael.”

  “Thank you.”

  He wasted no time in picking up his fork and spearing a mushroom. He was bringing it to his mouth when the bell over the door chimed and a voice rang out.

  “Detective Samira! Would you like the usual?”

  Michael’s head shot up and their eyes met immediately. Samira looked at him, her expression impassive, then she shook her head.

  “No, thank you. I have to go.”

  The door closed behind her and Michael’s fork clattered to his plate.

  He wasn’t hungry anymore.

  MICHAEL TURNED HIS key in the lock and let himself in.

  “Michael, is that you?”

  “Yes, Mom. It’s me.”

  Kimona Grimm appeared in the hallway. Spots of flour were on her smooth cheeks, forehead, hands, and clothes, but of course, there was no apron because his mother never wore them when she cooked.

  “Baby,” she exclaimed. She rushed him and scooped him up in a fierce hug that would have squeezed his breakfast right out of him if he had been able to eat any.

  Michael kissed his mother on the cheek before stepping out of her hold. “What are you making, Mom? I’ll help.”

  She patted his cheek. “My sweet boy.”

  His mother almost exclusively referred to him as “baby” and “sweet boy” despite him reaching adulthood fourteen years ago. But whenever Michael reminded her that he wasn’t a boy or a baby, he was treated to a rant about twenty-four hours of labor and a head the size of a watermelon. That usually got him to admit defeat. “I’m making festival and ackee,” she announced. “You can take over the festival until your sister gets here.”

  “Yes, Mom.”

  They walked about three steps from the front door and arrived in the kitchen. His childhood home was just that small. A little cramped house in a row of other little cramped houses, but they made due.

  Michael unbuttoned his cuffs and rolled up his sleeves to get to work. Michael loved festival, which was no doubt why his mother put it on the menu for Sunday lunch. Festival was a delicious concoction of flour, sugar, nutmeg, cornmeal, and butter. He would take the dough, shape it, and then fry it to golden brown perfection.

  For the next several minutes, they worked in silence. Michael and his mother were the chefs in the family, and they both preferred quiet in the kitchen. Monica on the other hand—

  “Mom! Michael! I’m here.”

  The ackee was abandoned while his mother ran out to give Monica the same warm greeting.

  “There’s my princess.”

  Michael looked up from his perfectly formed rolls of dough as both mother and daughter joined him. He was struck sometimes by how similar Monica and his mother looked. They both had the same curly hair, although his mother cut hers short nowadays. They had the same button nose, same brown eyes, and gave him the same head smack when he got “fresh.”

  “Michael, did you tell Mom about the case?” Monica asked as she hung her purse on the back of a dining room chair. “The case of the stalking phantom who can be in two places at once.”

  Kimona lifted a brow. “What’s this now? Two places at once? Don’t tell me you have another awful murder to investigate.”

  “No, not murder,” Michael clarified. “Attempted murder. A young woman might have been pushed down the stairs.”

  Kimona gasped. Her eyes grew bigger as Michael told her the details of the case.

  “That p
oor girl. How are you supposed to find this devil?”

  Monica hopped on the kitchen counter. “That’s a great question, Mom. How are we supposed to find them when everyone was gathered in the ballroom at the time she was pushed? We took a look around last night after everyone had gone and there is only one way out of the ballroom. Everyone would have had to pass the guards to leave the room. You exit the ballroom and walk down the hall until you get to the living room and the staircase where she was found. That’s also the way to the kitchen, which did have a back door, but again, you can’t go through the back door without leaving the ballroom and passing the guards. I don’t know how we can get around an alibi that foolproof.”

  “It seems foolproof, but no matter what the guards claim, someone obviously wasn’t in there,” Michael said as he went back to his chore. “We just have to find out who.”

  Monica sighed. “I love it when you say things like it’s going to just be that easy. Remember the last case we had in Fairy Tails? Rich people don’t like getting caught up in murder investigations and they have lawyers charging five hundred dollars an hour to make sure they aren’t.”

  Kimona hummed, tapping her chin. “You said the woman’s name was Beauty Cadal? I remember a Beauty. Kind of hard to forget a name like that. I believe your father is a friend of the family. You should go to him if you get stuck. He may know of someone who held a grudge against the Cadals.”

  Monica clapped. “That’s a good idea. Daddy can be our man on the inside. Scoping out the seedy underbelly hiding behind the glitz and glamour of Fairy Tails.”

  The dough burst through the cracks of his fingers as he squeezed it a bit too tightly. “We don’t need Dad’s help,” he said curtly. “The Cadals are giving all the help and information they can and Samira will hop on the case if we can prove this wasn’t an accident. We’ll be fine.”

  “It can’t hurt to ask Dad—”

  “No.”

  Monica groaned and hopped off the counter. “You’re so stubborn.”

  “I’m not stubborn,” he replied evenly. “I have faith we can solve this puzzle on our own. What’s wrong with that?”

  The look on Monica’s face said she believed that as much as she believed in curses and fairy godmothers. “Whatever, bro. Just finish up. I’m starving.” Monica hooked an arm through Kimona’s. “Come sit down. Michael will cook while I tell you what’s been going on. You know my friend just opened a restaurant...”

  Michael shook his head as his family walked out and left him with the cooking. He would be more bothered about it, but honestly, he would rather stand in silence over a bowl of dough than talk about his father.

  Michael let the repetitiveness of the task consume him. Rip off a piece of dough. Shape it into a finger. Place it on the plate.

  Rip. Shape. Plate. Rip. Shape. Plate.

  He was so lost in it he almost didn’t notice his phone vibrating in his pocket. He hurried to wipe his hands and answer before it went to voicemail.

  “Hello?”

  “Michael Grimm? This is Charles Cadal. Do you have information on the case?”

  Michael stepped away from the counter. “I’m afraid there isn’t much to report. We briefly spoke to Beauty’s friends and boyfriend, and Malia Diragoni is working on a list of all the people employed to work the party, but so far no one can point us to someone who would want to hurt your daughter, or even how they could have left the room to do it without being noticed.”

  A frantic voice sounded in Michael’s ear. “Charles? Charles!”

  “I can’t talk now. Come by the hospital in an hour and we can talk next steps.”

  “But, Mr. Cad—”

  Click.

  Michael looked down at the beginnings of a fantastic meal and sighed.

  I guess I’m skipping lunch too.

  MICHAEL DRAGGED HIS protesting sister out of the house and into the car for the long drive to Hart Hospital. Fairy Tails was on the opposite side of town, far from the modest neighborhood they grew up in and it took a while to drive through Castle Rock, wait to be checked at the gate, then navigate the twisty lanes of the Fairy Tails community.

  Michael always felt like he was stepping into another world when he came through those gates. Every lawn was immaculate. There were no patches of brown, no wilting flowers, but there were also no people. He didn’t see attractive couples strolling hand in hand on the sidewalk. No mothers pushing strollers out in the fresh air. No laughing kids riding their bikes in the street.

  Except for passing the occasional sports car or limo, Michael rarely saw anyone out and about in Fairy Tails. The residents clearly preferred to stay behind their massive wrought-iron fences, cut off from each other and the simple townspeople they looked down their noses on.

  “What’s that look, bro?” Monica interrupted his thoughts. “You okay?”

  He nodded. “Yeah, I was just thinking about how different life is on the other side. We were lucky to grow up the way we did.”

  She laughed. “We were lucky? They have ponies, and butlers, and chefs that make you cheesecake every night, not just on special occasions. What did we have that made us so lucky?”

  “Each other.”

  She snorted. “Mom’s the best, but you’re no great prize.”

  “What was that?” He reached over, quick as a flick, and smooshed his hands in her hair, ratting it all up.

  Monica squealed, trying to bat his hands away. “Michael, stop!”

  “I’m the best big brother in the world,” he teased. “That’s what you meant to say, right?”

  By the time they got to the hospital, Monica’s hair was a disaster and Michael’s sides were sore from laughing. She was glaring at him hard enough to burn the eyebrows off a lesser man but he laughed harder every time he caught sight of her.

  “Come on, let’s go,” Michael said, glancing at his watch. “We are five minutes late.”

  “Whose fault is that?” she cried. “Too busy harassing your sister to make the right turn for the hospital.” She yanked her comb out of her purse and began trying to tame the mess he made.

  Michael led the way inside and followed the directions Charles texted him to find Beauty’s room.

  They stepped out of the elevators onto the 4th floor, the tile shining in the artificial lights. It was eerily quiet up here. The only sounds being the faint beeps of machines and the whispered conversations between nurses.

  The siblings stopped at the nursing station and gave their names.

  “Hello,” Monica greeted. “Where is room 203? Cadal.”

  “Ah, you mean Sleeping Beauty,” the nurse said, “or at least that is what we have been calling her. Poor girl. Such an ugly thing to have happened to someone so beautiful.” The nurse stood and leaned over the counter. She pointed down the hall. “Turn right and 203 will be on your left.”

  Monica thanked her and they strode down the hall to room 203. They paused and knocked, waiting until the voice on the other side told them to come in.

  Charles and Claudia looked up from their positions at Beauty’s bedside. Their eyes were rimmed with red, noses raw from wiping, and exhaustion was written in the lines of their faces, but Beauty herself...

  Michael’s feet carried him in, drawing him to the figure on the bed. He stopped just short of Charles and his breath caught.

  The photos and portraits had not done her justice. Even with her arm in a sling and her head wrapped in bandages, Michael was certain she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, maybe even the most beautiful woman in the world. Full, bow-shaped lips, a turned-up nose, and smooth flawless skin that had most likely never seen a pimple or blemish. Her thick, curly black hair cascaded along the pillow, covering up the stark, clinical white fabric.

  She looked so peaceful. If it wasn’t for the multiple machines she was hooked up to, she could appear to be simply sleeping.

  Michael cleared his throat. “I see why you named her Beauty.”

  Claudia smiled, patting
her daughter’s hand. “She didn’t look this way when we first met her. She was a red, squalling, wrinkly little thing.” She laughed. “But in our eyes, she was perfect. Beautiful.”

  “I’m so sorry about what’s happened,” Monica said, joining Michael at his side.

  Charles rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand. “Thank you, but we don’t need sorrys. We need to find the trash who did this to her. Please tell us you have something.”

  Monica shook her head. “We’ve just started investigating, Mr. Cadal. We don’t have any suspects yet, but we are going to look into these accidents. You said you never received any threats against Beauty, but from what we gathered last night, Beauty did not take the accidents seriously. Is it possible she could have received the threats herself and just ignored them, like she did the nasty comments on her blog?”

  Claudia took a shuddering breath. “We told her to come to us if something like that happened, but it’s true, she didn’t think she was in danger. She refused to let the guards follow her around school, but we did convince her to spend more nights at home.”

  “More nights at home?” Michael piped up. “I thought she lived with you.”

  “She does,” said Charles. “But when she turned eighteen, she wanted more independence, so we got her an apartment near campus.”

  Michael and Monica shared a look. “We’ll need to check out her apartment and her room in Cadal Manor,” Monica said. “We might find something that will point to a suspect. Once we find out who wanted to hurt her, we can focus on how they manage to do it.”

  Charles nodded along. “Anything you need. I’ve already told the guard at the manor to let you both in without question, and I’ll have the staff there in an hour waiting for you when you get to Beauty’s apartment.”

  Michael held up a hand. “Actually, we’ll visit the apartment tomorrow morning. Today we would like to start at the manor and do a more thorough sweep of the place. Since that is where all of this happened.”

  Claudia nodded. “Of course. As Charles said you have full access.” She stuck her hand in her pocket and pulled out a key. “Here.”