twenty
The Overnight Tomb is a dirty bar located downtown under a parking garage for the mall across the street. It’s filled with a steady cloud of smoke and it smells like a dog rolled around in a tub of diseased beer.
It’s the Graves sisters other favorite bar.
Avery and Brooke are seated in a booth along the back. There’s a bowl of cashews between them. It’s taken a few cups of beer, and at least one Jell-O shot for Brooke, to calm the sisters’ nerves down.
“It should be noted that I didn’t pee my pants or anything,” Brooke says.
“You want an award or something?” Avery asks.
“I wouldn’t mind an award,” Brooke responds. “Maybe we could get some kind of financial bonus out of Lori? I’m just saying, I didn’t pee my pants.”
Avery takes a deep, calming breath and grabs a handful of nuts. “Okay. So what do we know?”
“There’s something really creepy in that house,” Brooke says.
“That’s not all.” Avery pulls out the piece of plastic she found under the bed. She sets it on the table.
“What’s that?” Brooke asks, eyeing the plastic.
“I found it back at Lori’s house.”
Brooke picks up the piece of plastic and turns it over in her hands. “What is it?”
Avery takes the plastic from her sister’s hand. “I have no idea.”
“That’s not very helpful.”
“No, it isn’t,” Avery agrees, placing it back on the table. She folds her hands. “Okay. Let’s assume that Gamboa did his job.”
“And why are we assuming that?” Brooke interrupts.
“Because we really can’t prove that he didn’t.”
“So why aren’t we going at it from that angle?”
“Because first we need to know what’s in that house,” Avery says. “All we know for certain is that Lori has an unwanted houseguest. Maybe it’s her mom, maybe it’s not. For now, we’ll go with the assumption it’s not her mom. And if it’s not her mom who or what is it?”
“Fine,” Brooke exhales. “Gamboa did his job. He showed up and took Lori’s mom to the afterlife. It was all on the up and up.”
“Which means there’s something else in that house,” Avery says.
Brooke watches her sister for a minute. “Which is what you’ve been thinking from the beginning.”
“I have been,” Avery agrees, washing down the cashews with some beer.
“Why?”
“Because why would her loving mother be haunting her?” Avery asks. “Think about it. If our Mom dies tomorrow-”
“I like where this is going,” Brooke interrupts.
“That’s not nice,” Avery chides her.
“Yeah, well, she doesn’t meddle in your life on a regular basis,” Brooke says.
“That’s because I don’t whore around with bartenders and loan sharks,” Avery replies.
“And how would Mom know about any of that?” Brooke asks.
“I need something to talk about with her,” Avery says. “We can always agree on how much your screwing up your life.”
“So I bring you and Mom closer together?”
“Pretty much,” Avery says. “Anyway, Mom dies tomorrow, but doesn’t move on for some reason. Instead she hangs around the office. Can you really imagine blood on the walls, weeping photos and furniture flung around the place?”
Brooke exhales, puffing her cheeks out as she thinks about it. “I suppose not.”
“So why would Lori’s mom do that?”
Brooke shrugs. “Maybe Lori and her mom didn’t get along as well as we do with our Mom?”
“Or maybe,” Avery says, “it’s not Lori’s mother there.”
Brooke and Avery stare at each for a minute. The background noise of the bar becomes muted to their ears.
“If it’s not Lori’s mother, then what is?” Brooke finally asks.
“It’s the smell of cookies.”
Adam Harris drops his messenger bag on the table with a thud, snapping Brooke and Avery out of their daze. Adam’s been drinking so much coffee in the last ten hours that if someone were to cut him he’d bleed Irish Cream. His eyes are wide enough that his eyeballs are threatening to pop out and roll down the table.
“Hi, Adam,” Avery says carefully. His eyebrow is twitching uncontrollably and it’s kind of freaking her out. “Are you okay?”
“I am fabulous,” Adam replies. He looks at Brooke. “Scoot over.”
“I don’t know if I want you to sit next to me,” Brooke says, eyeing him the same way she eyes the homeless man that makes phone calls with his coffee mug.
Adam frowns, but the frown passes so quickly across his face it looks like his mouth is twisting in some kind of weird grin. He looks around and grabs a chair from an empty table.
“Cookies,” he says again, sitting at the end of their booth.
“You said that already,” Avery points out.
Adam’s head is dancing around like a bobble head as he pulls out his laptop. “It’s your fault.”
“My fault?”
“That stupid cookie smell,” Adam says. His fingers dance across the keyboard like a man possessed.
“Adam, you keep saying that, but it’s not making any more sense than the first time you said it,” Brooke tells him. She looks at him with genuine concern. “Are you okay?”
He looks up from the laptop. “I’m running on almost forty cups of coffee.”
“That sounds like a lot of coffee,” Avery observes.
“It’s a tremendous amount of coffee,” Adam agrees. “But it makes me feel like I’m on fire.”
“I don’t know why anyone would want to feel that way,” Brooke says.
“Honestly, I didn’t think anything of it when you guys mentioned it yesterday,” he continues. “Cookie smell. Who cares about a cookie smell? But when I got home there was nothing on TV, so I fired up my search engines and you got lucky.” Adam flips his laptop around and taps the screen. There’s an image of an older, worn document pulled up.
Brooke glances at the screen. There’s a lot of words and weird mystical technobabble. It gives her a headache just glancing at it.
She shakes her head. “I don’t think ‘getting lucky’ means the same thing to you as it does to me.” She squints at the screen. “Is that even English?”
“Of course it’s English,” Adam says.
“Are you sure?” Brooke takes a pull from her beer. “I’ve seen chicken scratch that makes more sense than that. Why don’t you just give us the cliff notes?”
“You are so lazy,” Avery says to her sister.
Adam bobs his head. “Okay, okay. I can dig it.”
Brooke looks at her sister and mouths, “What the hell?”
Avery just shrugs.
“It’s the cookie smell,” Adam says, spinning the computer back to face him. “There are certain spiritual entities that leave an odorous trail.”
“Odorous trail?” Brooke repeats. “There’s no way that’s a real word.”
“It’s a real word,” Avery says.
“Odorous?” Brooke repeats doubtfully.
Avery looks at her sister. “Who’s the reigning Scrabble champion in our family?”
“That’s only because you cheat,” Brooke says. “If I read as much as you did, I could win all the time, too.”
Avery just shakes her head. “Keep going,” she says to Adam.
Adam continues, “Okay, so, I know it’s been awhile since your reaper certification, but this is Basic Reaping 101. Not all spiritual entities are created equal. You’ve got your standard dead souls. Then you’ve got ghosts, which are dead souls that slipped through the cracks. For whatever reason, these souls didn’t go to the afterlife and Council doesn’t know they’re floating around until someone reports it. After ghosts,” he pauses, “you have everything else.”
Brook frowns. “I hated this kind of theoretical spiritual crap in reaper training. I like it even l
ess now.”
“It’s not theoretical,” Adam says. His foot is jackhammering away under the table. “That cookie smell you told me about? It’s not cookies, it’s something that falls under the Everything Else category.”
Brooke wrinkles her nose. “I don’t like where this is going.”
“Okay, I see what Adam’s getting at,” Avery says.
“I think we can all see what Adam’s getting at,” Brooke replies. “It’s just another layer of creepy on top of an already creepy situation.”
“You know, for a grim reaper, you seem to get creeped out easily,” Adam observes.
“You have no idea.” Avery taps the piece of plastic. “Gamboa did his job perfectly. But I think that after he picked up Mrs. Stanford, he dropped something off.”
Brooke doesn’t respond. She just stares at her sister.
“Well?” Avery prompts.
“What do you want me to say?” Brooke asks. “I told you I don’t like this theoretical spiritual crap.”
“It’s not really theoretical,” Adam interjects. “There’s dozens of documented-”
Brooke cuts him off, still talking to her sister. “Gamboa couldn’t have done that.”
“Oh, yes he could have,” Avery says, grabbing another handful of cashews. “It’s not easy and it breaks a lot of the Council’s rules. But Gamboa could definitely have done that.”
Brooke shakes her head. “No.”
“You heard what Jackson had on Lori’s property,” Avery says. “Nothing. What else is going to be there?”
Adam shakes his head. "No, no. You guys are asking the wrong questions."
Brooke looks at him. “Oh? And what would be the right questions?”
“Well, for starters, not questions as question,” Adam corrects. “Just one question really: Has this happened anywhere else?”
He spins the laptop back around and this time there’s a map of Century City on the screen. Dozens of red dots placed throughout the city.
“What am I looking at?” Avery asks.
“It’s not that there’s a strange cookie smell at Lori Stanford’s home,” Adam says. “That’s not the problem. The problem is that there’s been similar incidents popping up all over Century City in the last few months.”
“How similar?”
Adam reaches around and hits the ENTER key. Several dozen reaper reports populate the screen. “Very similar.”
Avery skims the reports. They all say variations of the same thing: A soul was reaped at a location and then a few weeks later there was additional unusual spiritual entity activity. She peeks around the laptop at Adam. “How’d you get these reports?”
“Shirley Martinez,” Adam says.
Avery raises her eyebrows.
“Yeah,” Adam continues. “She’ll pretty much give anything up.”
“No kidding,” Brooke mutters.
“But wait, there’s more.” Adam reaches around and taps the ENTER key one more time. All the reapers names on the reports are highlighted.
“Those names mean nothing to me,” Avery says.
“That’s not surprising,” Adam says. “They all work for Messor and Decessus. Normally in cases of the Everything Else, the Council has to authorize an Alpha Reaper or an Exorcist to handle the situation.
“We know this already,” Brooke says impatiently.
Adam nods. “You mentioned a Gamboa. Would that be a Victor Gamboa?” He taps the ENTER key again. Gamboa’s picture appears, along with a half a dozen reports and proposals pertaining to the use of reaper technology.
“I think my brain box is going to explode,” Brooke mutters.
“You’re telling me,” Avery agrees. She looks at Adam. “How...?”
Adam smiles. “When I get on a caffeine high, you better watch out!” He gives a sudden shout. Brooke and Avery look around sheepishly to see if anyone’s paying attention to their caffeine-fried friend.
“So Council has been, what, assigning special cases to Messor and Decessus?” Avery asks.
“No, special cases have been finding their way to Messor and Decessus,” Adam says. “The firm has special disposition to use reaper technology, but the Council’s not fond of all those bells and whistles. They’ll hand out favors, but they won’t go out of their way to give Messor and Decessus any work.”
Brooke looks at Avery. “You know, that meeting with Gamboa we walked in on is starting to look all sorts of interesting.”
“It is, isn’t it?” Avery agrees.
Adam nods knowingly. “Okay, I’m going to blow your mind right now. You’re referring to Messor and Decessus’ petition to introduce reaper technology into the general reaping community,” Adam says.
Avery looks at him. “I’m confused, did you gain, like, super powers or something since yesterday.”
Adam taps ENTER again. An official petition from Messor & Decessus, showing a denied stamp from the Council, appears.
“How do you keep doing that thing with the enter key?” Brooke asks.
“But it gets better,” Adam says. “Remember that Veto Council your dad was part of? I found out who the other nine members are.” He pushes the ENTER key for the last time. “They now all work for Messor and Decessus. Within the last three years Messor and Decessus has been managed to convince every member of the Veto Council to come work for them. Except for two people.” He looks at the sisters.
“We hold Dad’s veto vote between the two of us,” Avery says.
“That’s why Decessus offered us the job,” Brooke says. “They’re trying to control the Veto Council.”
“For what?” Avery asks. “Reaper technology?”
“It seems silly,” Adam says, snapping his laptop closed. “Maybe even a little stupid. But in China reaper technology is a billion dollar industry.”
twenty-one
The sisters sent Adam home to begin a night-long caffeine detox and are now making their way through a cramped hallway. The building is a two-story apartment complex that is home to almost a dozen empty units.
"So," Brooke starts.
"Yeah," Avery agrees.
Brooke sees a cockroach crawl across the wall. "Ew. Why are we here again?"
"Proof," Avery says. "We don't have any."
"You don't think we can go to Russell with Adam's magic laptop?" Brooke asks.
"We can go to him," Avery replies. "Is he going to believe us?"
"Why wouldn't he believe us?"
"Well, for starters, he doesn't like us very much," Avery says.
"I don't think that's a prerequisite for believing someone," Brooke comments.
"No, but it helps," Avery says. "Second, what's to say he'll even care? Or for that matter, will the Council even care?"
Brooke stops. "Okay, now you're making it sound like we've stumbled upon some massive reaper conspiracy."
Avery looks back at her. "And you don't think so? Messor and Decessus is going around, at the very least, doing drop-offs, when they should only being doing pick-ups. They're manufacturing incidents that can only be solved with their reaper tech. I find it hard to believe that the Council hasn't heard about this already. Why hasn't an Alpha Reaper been sent to investigate? No, something's not right."
"So they're just ignoring it?"
Avery shrugs. "I don't know. Maybe."
"Messor and Decessus have enough power to get the Council to look the other way while they create exorcism incidents, but they don't have enough power to convince the Council to let them have a reaper tech contract?"
"You're forgetting the part about how the reaper tech contract is worth a billion dollars," Avery says. "Money makes men do strange things. Maybe it's not that the Council doesn't want reaper technology out there. Maybe they don't have a problem with entering the 21st century. Maybe they just have a problem with Messor and Decessus taking all the credit for it."
Brooke brushes a wayward strand of hair behind her ear. "That's a pretty big leap, Avery."
"Work's been dryi
ng for us ever since Messor and Decessus came into town," Avery says. Her face is a mask of grim determination. "We've been losing out on money and Decessus has been dangling a poisoned carrot in front of us. Doesn’t it feel like we're being manipulated? Because that's what it feels like to me and I don't like it. If Messor and Decessus want to play games like this, they can do it in someone else’s city."
Brooke sighs and shrugs her slender shoulders.
Avery rolls her eyes. "Really? I was hoping for something a little more impassioned."
"Maybe I don't feel as inconvenienced as you do," Brooke says.
"It's not inconvenience." Avery continues down the hallway. "It's being treated like an object that can be manipulated at will. I don't like it. Think about it like this: If Adam can find all this in one day, why hasn't the Council?"
Brooke shrugs. "I don't know. Because the Council doesn't know how to use a computer?"
"Or because they know and they choose to turn a blind eye to something they can't understand," Avery says. "Gamboa was right about one thing, the Council doesn't like change and when they see something being done that they don't understand..."
"...They're just going to ignore it and hope it goes away," Brooke finishes. "So, what, you want to frame it in a way they'll understand?"
They reach unit 2B and Avery pounds on the door.
"Something like that," Avery says.
The door opens to reveal the obscenely large form of Dicky Ramburg standing on the other end.
twenty-two
Dicky Ramburg is more of a walking grease ball than he is a human being. His face is so pudgy he only has squiggly lines where his mouth and eyes should be. He's dressed in a dark brown velour bathrobe that, somehow, actually manages to be baggy on him.
Ramburg recognizes Avery. The two have a pre-existing relationship, unbeknownst to most people, having done business together on a few rare occasions.
But he also recognizes Brooke. Which is a problem for Brooke, because she's only met him once and it was with Stanley. The meeting didn't go well and Stanley went out of his way to make sure Ramburg didn't know who Brooke was.
This is not who Brooke thought they were meeting tonight.
Death & Stilettos Page 39
