The Lady in Pink - Deadly Ever After 2

by J. A. Kazimer

  Me.

  As the thought crossed my mind, my office door creaked open.

  I turned toward the noise as a shot rang out.

  CHAPTER 56

  I awoke with a gasp, gulping large breaths of oxygen into my starved lungs. Thankfully the mask across my nose and mouth kept me from hyperventilating, though at the same time it added to my general anxiety. I blinked a few times and my eyes started to focus. White walls. White floors. White ceiling. Pink wings. The New Never City ER.

  I ran my hands over my body, searching for new holes.

  “Blue,” Izzy yelled. “Stay still.”

  Rather than listen to what I’m sure was pretty good advice, I moved my hands up my face and then across my head, noting the gauzy covering on the top of my head. “What the hell happened?” I asked, ripping off the mask. I couldn’t remember a damn thing that had happened past sitting in my office chair while I decided what my next move in the investigation should be.

  “You were shot,” Izzy said, her voice as sharp as nails on a chalkboard. “In the head.”

  I prodded the wound. “I’m guess it’s just a flesh wound or you wouldn’t be standing there glaring at me like it’s my fault.”

  “I’d still be pissed, as you put it,” she frowned, “but you’d be in a body bag.”

  Point taken. Someone had tried to kill me. Again. At this rate I was going to start taking these attempts to murder me personally. I guess Izzy was right, though. I really did have a hard head. I licked my dry lips, thankful to be alive. “Good thing we don’t hire better shots.”

  “What?” she asked in a near shout. “You think someone at the office did this?”

  Oops. Too late I remembered that I hadn’t filled Izzy in on my latest pool of suspects. Hell, I hadn’t even had the chance to tell her about Alice’s innocence. “Um, Izzy . . . ,” I began, and then told her about my suspicions. She watched me through veiled eyes, but the thinning of her lips and slight fluttering of her wings suggested she didn’t quite appreciate my forgetfulness. Not even a little bit. I quickly reminded her about her keeping my parents’ deaths a complete secret to even things up.

  “I can’t believe one of our employees did this.” She ran her finger over the wrapping on my head. “Why?”

  “What do you mean, why?” I laughed. “They wanted me dead. I thought that much was apparent from the extra hole in my head.”

  She rolled her eyes. “It’s not a hole. It’s more of a gouge.”

  “Gouge, huh?” I fingered the wound again, unable to feel anything through the heavy wrappings. “Bet it makes me look extra-manly.”

  She chuckled. “Not really. In fact, it makes you look like you just got a haircut from a blind mouse.” I winced, but Izzy wasn’t finished, “You really are lucky to be alive. If Clark hadn’t heard the shot and raced down the hall, who knows what might’ve happened?”

  Fucking Clark. The damn guy was underfoot every time I turned around. Now I owed him my life, when what I really wanted was to take his when I pictured Izzy’s mouth pressed to his. “I would’ve taken care of it,” I said.

  Neither of us believed a word of that.

  “Did he see anyone?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “He saw a shadowy figure escaping down the hallway but couldn’t give the cops a good description.” She paused, her wings fluttering slightly. “He was much too worried about you.”

  Great. I now felt even worse for wishing an STD on the guy.

  “What were you doing at your office anyway?” Izzy asked when silence filled the curtained room. “You never stay later than the first ten minutes of happy hour.”

  I laughed at her joke, which sent a wave of pain through my brain. I quickly quieted. “I was trying to learn more about my mother’s death and dear old dad’s subsequent prison stay. I thought ... if I found out more ... I might find out the who.”

  “The who?”

  I nodded, instantly regretting it. “Yeah. The who. As in who cares about a murder thirty years ago?”

  She frowned, rubbing her arms with her hands as if warding off a chill. “You can’t still think this is about your parents.”

  “What else could it be about?” Sure, I’d ruffled a few feathers of the winged and nonwinged variety, but most of those wings were either soothed by the former Tooth Fairy or now walked with a limp. This had to be about what had happened thirty years ago.

  Had to be.

  Because if it wasn’t about that, bullet to the head aside, we were in very serious danger.

  CHAPTER 57

  I walked out of the hospital a few hours later, wearing a pilfered hospital gown and slippers after Izzy refused to aid my escape by getting me clean clothes. Of course, the doctors had argued over my impending departure as well, but the bleeding had stopped and the bullet hadn’t hit anything vital. According to Izzy it would’ve had to travel pretty deep to hit my pea-sized brain.

  Ignoring her and the doctors, I shuffled out of the hospital, a large swath of blue hair missing from the top of my head. I wasn’t concerned, though. Not until I caught my reflection in the window of a passing taxi. I looked like death. Blood had stained my skin, turning my pale face the same color as a tomato.

  That explained why not a single taxi pulled to the curb in response to my whistle. Izzy walked up behind me, and a few seconds later, a cab tore across two lanes of traffic to stop in front of her. The driver barely paid me a single glance. Izzy helped me inside, much to my dismay, and we set off for my apartment.

  The cab hit a few bumps along the way, causing me to wince in pain. Izzy, true to her winged evilness, patted my arm and said, “Suck it up.”

  To which I replied with a manly whimper.

  When the cab pulled to the curb in front of my apartment building, I slowly got out, my head now pounding. I longed for an extra-large glass of whiskey and hours of uninterrupted sleep. Neither of which I would be getting this dark night.

  Not if Izzy had anything to do with it.

  She insisted, once we made the torturous climb up the stairs, on keeping the whiskey from me as well as denying me much-needed sleep. “The doctor said I need to wake you up every few hours,” she said, helping me into my bed. Once I was settled, she tucked a blanket around me and then sat on the edge of the bed next to me. Silence filled the room, as did a slight chill. “I’m scared, Blue,” she finally whispered.

  I shared her fear, but for a far different reason. A part of me, a stupid, foolish part, wanted to pull her into my arms, to take away the fear, but I couldn’t. I would only end up hurting her. Like my father had my own mother. Instead I feigned sleep, letting out a snore. Without another word, she slowly stood and left the bedroom, the glow of the moonlight reflecting off her wings and illuminating the room.

  Once she disappeared behind my bedroom curtain-door I sat up, running a finger through the swath of missing hair on top of my head. I really was lucky to be alive. I smiled into the darkness. Someone was getting nervous. And that was good. Nervous people made mistakes. And mistakes made it a hell of a lot easier to catch them.

  Then it would be over.

  And I would leave.

  Forever.

  After I ditched Right and Left, again, I headed to the oldest and wealthiest part of town. A place too good for streets of gold; instead they were paved with platinum. This was the sort of place a man like me would never fit in. Not that I cared one way or another. I wasn’t here for myself. I was here for Izzy. I sucked in a lungful of cigarette smoke as I gathered my courage. A woman in a black-sheep coat strolled passed, her upper lip rising with disgust. I tipped my invisible cap, showing off the swath of missing blue hair. The woman gasped and hurried away.

  Smiling, I threw my cigarette down, crushing it under the heel of my expensive loafers. I double-checked the snub-nosed .38 in the holster on my side. Better safe than sorry about last night’s attempted murder. My head still pounding as a vivid reminder of my near-death experience, I headed for the ornate doo
r of the fancy mansion in the heart of the city. My mind was focused on the mission at hand.

  A mission I was fairly sure would end badly.

  But it had to be done. I owed Izzy as much.

  CHAPTER 58

  I knocked on the door of the hundred-year-old mansion with apprehension. I shouldn’t be here, I thought again. But it was too late. A maid in a black dress and white apron, like you see in the old movies, opened the door. “Yes?” she asked politely.

  “Um . . . hi . . . I’m here to see Mr. Boyer.”

  A wrinkle grew on her forehead. “Mr. Boyer isn’t accepting visitors at the moment.”

  “Of course,” I said, remembering an article I’d read a few months ago about Clark’s grandfather, the patriarch and CEO of Boyer Industries, who was, by all reports, gravely ill. According to the reporter, there was no clear front-runner for his replacement. I wondered if Clark wanted the job. He seemed like a perfect choice, born and bred to take over the family business. I approved wholeheartedly, mostly so his ass would be out of my blue hair. Then I remembered that I wouldn’t be around after I closed this case. Izzy would need a partner.

  Damn it.

  I cleared my throat. “I’m here to see the youngest Mr. Boyer. Clark.” Doreen, the bitchy receptionist, had told me Clark would be here. I hoped she wasn’t wrong. I looked forward to searching the city for him nearly as much as I did having to offer up my thanks for his saving my life and then handing my business and my fairy over to him.

  The confusion cleared and she gave me a soft smile. “Yes, of course. Please come in while I tell Mr. Clark that you’re here.”

  I thanked her, wiped my feet on the doormat, which looked to be plated in gold-leaf lettering—the real stuff—and stepped inside a piece of New Never City history. The Boyer House stood on prime New Never City real estate, with more than twelve bedrooms, the same number of full baths, and enough art and other expensive knickknacks to tempt the most honest of citizens.

  One could only imagine how my fingers itched to case the place.

  “If you’ll wait in the library,” the maid said, motioning toward a room the size of the entire floor of Reynolds & Davis. It was filled with books bound in Kobe leather and embossed in gold. Books no one in his right mind would dare open, let alone read, for fear of devaluing them. “Mr. Clark will be with you momentarily,” she said, closing the library door behind me.

  I swallowed the temptation to shove a few first editions into my jacket as my gaze scanned the wealth and privilege Clark had grown up around. I knew Izzy came from a similar, albeit smaller and winged, background. I wondered if they talked about their wealthy pasts. Told stories about the desperate times they’d had to use a silver rather than a platinum spoon. I shook my head, ridding it of such hateful thoughts.

  Clark had no more choice in his lineage than I did in my own or Izzy did in the color of her wings. I needed to stop feeling jealous and thank him for saving me. I owed him that much. Hell, I owed the guy my life.

  The library door creaked open. I turned toward the sound, expecting to see Clark standing in the entry. But it wasn’t him. It was another man, an older man with slightly stooped shoulders and wrinkles lining his weathered face. Only a few wisps of blue-grey hair covered his balding head. This had to be Clark’s grandfather.

  His yellowed eyes slowly focused on me. “No. It can’t be.”

  My head swiveled to the left and then the right. “Sir?”

  “My God.” He staggered toward me, his full weight on the cane in his shaking hand. “My son,” he said. “You’ve come home. I knew you would.”

  Son? What the hell? “I think there’s been some sort of mistake,” I began, only to be interrupted when the library door opened for a second time. This time the man in the doorway froze, his eyes bouncing from me to the older man and back again.

  Clark looked terrified, his eyes wide and a sheen of sweat covering his forehead. “Grandfather,” he said in a high pitch to the older man as he pushed inside the library. “It’s time for your medication.”

  My eyes stayed locked on the confused older gentleman as Clark led him from the library. When he disappeared around the corner with a young, very hot nurse, Clark returned to the library, a tight smile on his lips. “You shouldn’t be here, Blue. My grandfather isn’t well.”

  Guilt filled me. “Sorry about that ... Doreen told me you’d be here, and I wanted to clear the air sooner rather than later.”

  “Clear the air?” he repeated. “How so?”

  I took a few steps toward the large marble fireplace. Thanking him for saving my life would be easier if I didn’t have to look at his perfectly straight teeth and overly waxed eyebrows. “About last night. The shooting . . .”

  “I thought that might be why you’re here.”

  “Yeah, well . . .” I stalled, unable to get the word “thanks” out of my mouth. “I just wanted to . . .” As the words left my lips, a bead of sweat slid down Clark’s forehead. I frowned at the dark-colored perspiration. My mind searched for a variety of diseases and other reasons for the odd color. I paused, studying his face.

  “You were saying?” he prompted.

  I blinked a few times. A missing piece of the puzzle, the one I’d been trying to solve for the last thirty years, slipped into place as the bead ran down his cheek. “Oh, shit,” I got out before a very heavy and expensive vase slammed into the back of my skull.

  CHAPTER 59

  “You should’ve let me kill him last night,” a woman’s voice screeched. I struggled to focus on the speaker, but my eyes refused to cooperate. “Now he’s bleeding all over the carpet . . .”

  Clark’s voice drifted from somewhere overhead. “I never thought he’d figure it out. But when I saw him in the library, I knew he knew.”

  Sadly I didn’t know shit. Other than Clark and his lady friend had bashed my head in. Oh, and that Clark and I shared similar DNA. Cousins, I guessed, as I lay gazing up at the portrait above the fireplace. A portrait of the original Boyer clan. Two blue-haired brothers—my father, for whom I was a dead ringer, and his brother, who could have been Clark’s twin—sat next to their smiling wives.

  Add in the fact that Grandfather Boyer had thought I was his son.

  A long-lost son.

  A blue-haired one.

  The very same color Clark was trying desperately to hide from the world. I knew from personal experience what black shoe polish looked like when applied to cover up blue hair.

  The pieces fell into place. I’d been so stupid. All along Clark had been right there. PI rule number one: The most obvious answer was usually the right one. Or was it something about getting drunk and naked with an ogre was bound to turn out poorly? Either way, the truth had been staring me in the face for weeks. Or rather had been in the office down the hall.

  Somehow Clark had arranged for James to join Reynolds & Davis; then he himself had come aboard. When James failed to kill me, Clark had turned to arson to keep his family secrets. I shook my head, causing it to ache even more.

  That wasn’t right.

  Two things bothered me about the scenario. First, Clark had an air-tight alibi for the night that Izzy’s brownstone burned to the ground. Me. I’d carried his drunken ass home. Unless he had wings, and big ones at that, he couldn’t have made it across town in time to torch the brownstone. And second, why would Clark care enough to hide something that happened almost thirty years ago?

  I was missing something. Something important. But for the life of me, literally, I couldn’t figure out what it was. I let out a small groan as the pounding in my brain intensified.

  “Welcome back,” the feminine voice whispered. “I was worried I’d hit you a little too hard.”

  My gaze started to focus on the blonde standing over me, broken shards of vase in her manicured hands. “Doreen,” I said through clenched teeth. Hell, I should’ve known she was in on it from day one. She’d been hired first, a few weeks before James. And more to the point, she had
never quite appreciated my wit or electrical charm.

  I wiped the back of my head, and my hand came away bright red with blood. Not a great sign. I glanced at Doreen and frowned. “Can’t say I’m real happy to see you.”

  She let out a calculated laugh. “Clark worried you knew the truth. But I told him he was wrong. You don’t know anything.”

  Given my current predicament, she wasn’t far off. Not that I’d admit it. I’d die first, which, seeing the cold look in her eyes, was much more than a slight possibility. I decided to go on the offensive, attacking the weakest link—Clark. “Attempting to kill your own cousin, your own flesh and blood,” I said to him. “That’s gotta be worth a few eons in hell.”

  He frowned. “I told you he knew he was a Boyer.”

  “Clark,” Doreen said. “Don’t be a fool. He’s fishing.”

  I laughed, slowly staggering to my feet. Doreen reached into her jacket, pulling out a snub-nosed .38. I patted my own pocket. My snub-nosed .38. Son of a bitch. “You plan to shoot me with my own gun? What kind of person does that?”

  “A smart one,” she sneered. “Everyone knows how depressed you’ve been since your darling Isabella started dating Clark . . . Add in your heavy drinking, and no one will be that surprised . . .”

  “Faking a suicide? Really?” I stifled a yawn. “Whose brilliant idea is that?” Clark flinched, and my eyes narrowed on his face. I took a leap of faith. “Ah, dear cousin, can’t say I’m surprised. No imagination.”

  His lips thinned. “I have plenty of imagination. I planned all of this, and you never suspected a thing.”

  Bastard had a point. “Why?” I asked. “What do you care if Boyer blood runs in my veins? It’s not like I’m the next in line for the Boyer fortune.” Even as I said it, I knew I’d made a grave mistake. I was the heir. The prodigal cousin Clark had talked about. That was why he wanted me out of the picture, to keep the fortune for himself. A part of me felt relieved. Greed I understood. It made people do things they normally wouldn’t.