Booked for Murder

by R. J. Blain

  “Where is Mr. Hampton, anyway?”

  “Covering for us. Dad’s aware, but he’s claiming Mom dragged me into the city for errands and meeting up with old friends.”

  It amazed me how so many lies could be told in so few words while technically telling the truth. “He’s doing okay, though?”

  “He’s a heart attack risk, but he’s been doing all right otherwise. If you feel like coming to the house, I’ve been told a good exsanguinator could deal with the problem, but he’s old and stubborn.”

  The Hampton family would drive me insane within a week. “Seriously, Bradley?”

  “He’s picky on top of being old and stubborn. He wants only the best, and you’re the best. You’re also the only registered exsanguinator with hundreds of hours of experience working in a hospital.”

  “What is the issue?”

  “Heart disease. He did start eating a better diet, but he’s paying the price for it. He’s been told a talented exsanguinator can clear out the blockages. He keeps refusing the surgeries.”

  “There’s a word for that, Bradley.”

  “Idiot?”

  “Yes, that’s one. I was going to go with stupid, but idiot fits.” Adding a full-body treatment would be the ultimate test of my abilities—and determine if I’d lost my touch. “Give me a week. If I’m in all right shape, I’ll go set him straight.”

  “If by set him straight, you mean verbally, I would like to watch.”

  “I meant magically, but if you want me to deal with him verbally at the same time, I can probably help you.”

  Bradley grabbed his phone, tapped at the screen, and a few moments later, he shoved the display in my face. “Is this the right type of bribe?”

  According to Bradley’s phone, he thought I’d enjoy a waterproofed e-reader. As he was not wrong, I nodded. “That would earn you three days of visitation with my cat while you’re at it. But I’d set him straight because he’s being stupid without the need of a bribe.”

  Bradley considered my cat, who worked her charms on my father and mother, enjoying her round with the brush. “Okay. Deal. I’ll bring it tomorrow morning with the coffee maker.”

  I pitied Ren, and I turned to the bodyguard. “I’m sorry.”

  He grinned at me. “Don’t worry about it, Janette. I have already made him an appointment to go to a car dealership this evening, and I have selected the make and model for him. They’re preparing the vehicle now. Usually it takes a few days, but the amount of money he’s spending convinced them to get it ready today.”

  Damn. What had they been doing while I’d been talking to the contractor? Rearranging my whole damned life? “Okay. Don’t let him pick out some prissy gun for me, Ren. I don’t know if I can be caught dead with a prissy gun.”

  “Your special needs will be accommodated, never fear.”

  I eyed my mangled foot, which handled the strain of the day much better than expected. “If I’m going to be spoiled anyway, pick me up a new cane.”

  “A new cane?” Ren hopped to his feet, snagged my cane from where it leaned against the wall by the door, and brought it to me. “What’s wrong with this one?”

  “It doesn’t have a sword in it.”

  Everyone stared at my cane in silence, and after several long minutes, Bradley asked, “Do you really want a cane with a sword in it?”

  “Well, it’d be pretty cool, but honestly, this one is getting a little old and worn, and it’d be nice to have a new one.”

  “Right. Ren? Add a new cane to the list. Do you have a measuring tape? We have to get one the right height, don’t we?”

  “Thirty-seven inches. You might have some trouble finding one meant for women, so check for men’s cane’s first. I’m a little taller than average. Most women want thirty-six inches, and that extra inch matters. I don’t need a broken back to go with my foot. I can make do with thirty-six inches if you can’t find the right size cane.”

  “We’ll get the right size. Anything specific you need?”

  “It just needs to support my weight.” I showed Bradley the bottom of my cane, which had gone through several rubber tips over the years. “That rubber tip is important, or else wet sidewalks become a peril.”

  “I’ll take care of it.”

  Bradley’s mother came out of the bathroom with a grip on Mickey’s ear, and my fellow librarian grimaced at her rough handling. “Pain works to distract him from fainting,” she announced. “It was a drop, not the end of the world. All right, maybe I should have warned you about how I take insulin, but it wasn’t that bad. I was told you were scared of blood, not needles. How was I supposed to know you’re also scared of needles?” Without any sign of being bothered by the situation, she dragged Mickey over to Beatrice. “The ear works the best. Just grab in a firm hold and twist. Brought him right out of his pre-faint and gave him something to worry about.”

  “That’s not the sort of exposure therapy I had in mind, Mom.”

  “Oh, stop your whining, Bradley. It worked. We don’t have months to work him up to watching Janette work. Just twist his ear a bit. It didn’t hurt you as a child, and it won’t hurt him, a full-grown man. It’s a lot easier to cope with the pained groaning, moaning, and squirming than it is to drag an unconscious body around.” Bradley’s mother released Mickey’s ear and patted his head. “You’ll be all right. Now, why don’t we all head on home so Janette can have a long talk with her parents before we get to serious work tomorrow. We all have jobs to do, and we’re not going to get everything done if we’re all here gossiping like hens. March!”

  To my amazement, everyone obeyed without protest or complaint.

  Thirteen

  A cat can’t talk to you properly.

  Change always came when I least expected it, and so much had happened in two days I struggled to cope with everything. My parents stayed on my couch while everyone else packed their belongings and left. Papers covered my coffee table, and I wondered where they’d all come from. I supposed Mickey or Meridian had brought them and dumped the work on my lap.

  My stove wouldn’t appreciate being used to destroy even more evidence of what I was up to.

  “Before you guilt yourself sick, neither one of us believed you’d offed yourself like the doctors claimed. You were born stubborn, and a little lady like you doesn’t quit just because of a gimp foot,” my father said, continuing to earn my cat’s affections through use of the brush. “I figured you’d gone somewhere you felt safe, doing something you liked, working on a way to handle the cards you’d been dealt. Your mother had bet on you becoming a nurse like you’d dreamed about growing up. I figured you’d become a teacher since you’d have a hard time hiding your magic while working as a nurse. A librarian? That hadn’t occurred to either one of us, but it suits you. From the day you could babble, you were always trying to help out.”

  “But I usually made a mess of things when trying,” I replied, limping to my couch and sitting beside my father. As always, I hurt, but the prescription bottles on my kitchen counter would give me something I hadn’t enjoyed in a long time: sound sleep. “Still, I’m sorry. I should have figured out a way to send word.”

  “Now, any other time, that might have earned you a round with the switch.”

  “No,” my mother announced, glaring at my father. “There are far more effective ways to punish her.”

  “Your methods constitute as cruel and unusual punishment. Mine just sting for a few minutes and might leave a bruise.”

  Uh oh. When my father determined something went overboard to that degree, my mother had something truly dire planned for me. “Please, no cruel and unusual punishment. I’ll do my best to behave.”

  “It’s not that bad,” my mother protested.

  My father snorted. “It’s that bad.”

  Uh oh. While my parents had fought from time to time, they’d done their best to avoid fighting in front of me, even after I’d entered the contract with the Hampton family. “Dad, you go first, please.
Why is it that bad?”

  “Your mother wants grandchildren, and while a cat will temporarily appease her, she believes being lonely isn’t healthy, and if you’ve been hiding out, you’re obviously lonely.”

  “I’m not lonely, Dad. I have a cat. How could I possibly be lonely with a cat?”

  “A cat can’t talk to you properly.”

  “Lies and blasphemy.”

  “There’s the issue of your for life contract,” my mother stated, and her tone promised I would not like what she’d say next. With a smile worthy of the devil, she continued, “As such, I have come up with an acceptable proposal.”

  I risked maiming and pet my cat. Thanks to my father’s tireless work with the brush, Ajani accepted my attention, and she even invited herself onto my lap for more attention from me. “Proposal?”

  “Yes. Proposal.”

  “What type of proposal are we discussing here?”

  “The kind where I take you to a boutique, dress you up, and make you someone else’s problem for the rest of your life. At some interval, you’ll surely provide me with one or more grandchildren, as you love kids and have wanted one or ten ever since the day we foolishly gave you the talk and informed you boys brought babies along with them,” my mother announced.

  My father grinned at my mother. “That talk really didn’t go as we’d hoped, did it?”

  “Well, fortunately for you, I’d also impressed upon her boys who brought babies along with them wanted little ladies who didn’t have babies with other boys. I got it partially right.”

  I thanked my lucky stars my parents had waited for everyone else to leave before starting in on me. “My for life contract was to be a bodyguard, Mom.”

  “Is. You’re still breathing. You can guard Bradley’s body in his bed while having plenty of little babies with him. It’s a very nice arrangement. Nobody is going to touch him when his wife is one of the world’s best exsanguinators. I think it’s a brilliant idea.”

  I froze, and my cat took offense to my hand not doing what she wanted, which involved petting her as the brushing had stopped. After several nips from my fluffy but demonic goddess, I resumed stroking my hand along her back. “Some things a daughter never wants to hear her mother say, and you said it all with zero shame.”

  “What’s wrong with him? He’s handsome in his own way, although that boy won’t ever be a model on a billboard. He won’t send you running and screaming from the bedroom at least.”

  Like hell he wasn’t handsome enough to be a model on a billboard. In good news, I had somehow managed to hide that I had an unhealthy interest in Bradley. No matter what, I couldn’t let my mother find that out.

  She’d never let me live it down; she’d go find Bradley, she’d expose my interest, and ruin me for life.

  My father sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “This isn’t exactly the best way to broach the subject with her, babe.”

  “Why not? She had him eating orange chicken practically out of her hand. The boy tangoed with milk because he wants to match her. It’s perfect. Well, except for that whole problem with lactose. That’s an issue, but I suppose it’s a tolerable one. We’ll just have to be careful what we feed the grandbabies.”

  Why me? “Mom!”

  “What? That boy’s been running up the miles on that old car of his because every time he’d catch even a hint of a rumor about someone who might be you, he’d go look into it personally. And don’t get me started on that car. He’s over at our place once a week looking for scraps, even if it meant he came all that way to peek into your childhood room. We always put him to work because it helps. It gives him something to do that’s not driving all across the country and handling his business affairs.”

  I could see him doing that, as he took his agreements and debts seriously, and I’d gone beyond what he viewed as the call of duty.

  While he was an adept, he’d never liked the idea that his life had more value than another’s solely due to his aptitude rating. In all my planning, I hadn’t considered that part of his personality. It filtered into my thoughts my mother had been using Bradley as free labor. “You’ve been putting Bradley to work at the house?”

  “He likes it,” my mother replied with a delicate sniff.

  “Bradley? Bradley Hampton? He works at the house and likes it?” I tried to match my memories of him with my mother’s reality and drew nothing but a blank. “Are you sure? Are you sure you’ve been luring the right man over to your house? Do you know how his mother punishes him? She makes him work in the garden.”

  “His mother’s sweet, but she’s not all that bright sometimes. It’s not much of a punishment if he likes it. That boy is a master deceiver. He loves working in the garden the best. The way I figure it, there isn’t much history in the soil, so he can work with his hands without his magic making a mess of things. Bless his heart, he tries so hard, but he has to work to keep his abilities from haunting him. For someone who likes working with his hands so much, his abilities seem more like a curse than anything else.”

  While my parents didn’t have nearly as much magic as I did, and theirs was far saner and safer than mine, they tended to see through to the heart of most matters with enviable ease. My mother could make any garden grow faster and better, and my father could illuminate even the darkest of spaces. Together, they’d somehow produced me, someone who scared most people half to death just by existing. “How’d you find that out?”

  “His mother sent him over after the accident to get some fresh country air and to keep him out of the media. Heartbreak doesn’t heal overnight, and he had more than his fair share of it. He’d tried to get you out of the car, but you were trapped in the wreckage, so all he could do was staunch the bleeding he could reach and wait. His magic told him the whole story.”

  “I don’t remember much about the crash,” I admitted.

  “Of course not. You took a pretty hard hit to the head, and that scrambles a brain,” my mother replied. “It’s surprising you remember anything at all, if you do.”

  “Right up until I turned the wheel and positioned the car for the crash I couldn’t avoid. There wasn’t anywhere else to go, and I had a choice. It was me or him, and that was that.” Rock cuts and shit terrain gave limited options, and with an idiot behind the wheel of the other car, I’d done the only thing I could. “He’d said he didn’t want to see me until I was back in my prime.”

  “He wanted to challenge you to get you back on your feet faster. That’s all. He’s a dumb boy sometimes.” My mother stood and strolled into my kitchen. “Now, what does my little lady want for dinner tonight? I feel like cooking.”

  “And this is when I get scolded for not having proper ingredients kicking around in my home. I’m ready. Begin your scolding.”

  “I’ll improvise. I appreciate a challenge. So, tell me your thoughts about this senator.”

  “An exsanguinator could do the job, but help would be needed. I couldn’t do the type of damage inflicted to the skull. I simply can’t make blood do that. I can bust through soft tissue, but the skull is way too dense and strong of a material for me to break in that fashion. Telekinesis might be able to pull it off, but I figure it’s a team of some sort. Three or four people working together—and have been practicing together, probably on livestock, specifically pigs. Pigs make excellent analogs for humans. I’ve practiced on cows, but pigs are better to experiment on if you want to work on humans later. And no, the animals were humanely killed prior to any experimentation. I’d usually handle that, as I could kill them painlessly. I was picky about that, and I could kill them a lot cleaner and faster than the butchers.”

  “So, we’d look for where someone might get a hold of pigs to practice on?” my father asked.

  “That might be a good start, assuming they’re practicing. With how closely the killings match, I can only assume they’ve been practicing somewhere. The precision of the damage to the brain tells me they’ve been practicing with cadavers of some s
ort—or live bodies.”

  “We could check the missing persons registries, too.” With a grimace, my father got up and joined my mother in the kitchen, rummaging through my refrigerator. “Janette, do you even eat food? All that’s in here is leftover Chinese.”

  “I usually get something cheap and easy. It’s hard being on my feet after work, so I tend to get the cheapest takeout I can or something that needs minimal attention from me. It’s hard to cook when your foot is throbbing after a long day.”

  My mother glared in my refrigerator. “You’re going to make us eat takeout, aren’t you?”

  “I have pasta in the cupboard, but most of the types I have need milk, which Bradley drank after trying to eat my favorite food.”

  The twin sighs from the kitchen broke me, and I giggled.

  “This is not funny!” my mother complained, stomping her foot.

  “It’s hilarious, Mom. I basically live in poverty, and you’re the kind to want to make masterpieces at home. Sorry, but I’m just not equipped for your wonderful cuisine.”

  My mother pulled a cell phone out of her pocket and dialed a number. “She’s hopeless. Absolutely hopeless. When you’re out looking at coffee makers, get a pot and pan set. I can’t work in these conditions, Bradley. How can I cook for my little lady when she has a few packages of processed chemicals with unnatural flavorings in her cupboard? Do you even own a pot, Janette?”

  I pointed at the appropriate cabinet with my lone frying pan and single pot.

  “She has the cheapest frying pan money can buy, and I’m taking this pot home with me so I can break it at my leisure. If you bring everything over tonight, I’ll cook for you and that poor bodyguard of yours, but this cannot be allowed. This must be fixed.”

  I held out my hand for my mother’s phone. “Let me talk to him, Mom.”

  “Hold on a moment, apparently, my daughter wishes to speak with you.” My mother marched into the living room and gave me her phone.