His Cold Blue Command

by A. J. Downey

  “I don’t know anything yet, other than I have to cancel on you so I can go to this meetup and find out and I feel really bad about –“

  “Don’t!” she cried. “Seriously, Ally. I understand. You can’t do this all by yourself, and I will always be here. I mean, seriously, best friends forever means forever.”

  “I love you,” I said, feeling more guilty, not less.

  “I love you, too. Find out the details and call me immediately. I want to know everything.”

  “I’ll tell you what I can,” I promised.

  “Like, all the gory details, Ally!”

  I laughed, “Okay, like what could be gory about the DA office's best attorney?” I asked.

  “I don’t know; maybe he leaves skid marks in his underwear.”

  “Dawnie!”

  “Oh, that’s a thing. I mean what kind of underwear does he wear?”

  “Dawnetta Marie! I am not telling you what kind of underwear my boss wears.” I hissed and glanced around the café to make sure no one had heard me. Millie was laughing at me behind the counter, but the rest of the shop was empty.

  She put on her best Yoda voice and said, “Mmm? Oh, you will; you will…”

  “Right, okay, Yoda.”

  She nearly had me in stitches and I could hear her smiling when she said, “I’ll see you soon, though?”

  “I promise. We have a date at the city’s talking book and braille library. Remember?”

  “Yeeeah, I am really liking the talk-to-text feature on the Kindle you got me for Christmas. It’s just a bitch I have to have somebody start it for me.”

  “I know, you would think they would have worked up something for the blind by now.”

  “Meh, a big company like that doesn’t care about us,” she declared, and I sighed.

  We chatted for a little while longer and I managed to have the café cleaned up just in time for the lunch rush to start trickling in.

  “I’ve got to go, Dawnie.”

  “Fine!” she declared, following a melodramatic sigh.

  I pulled my headphones out of my ears and shoved them into my apron pocket, greeting the customer who had come in. “Hello! What can I get for you?”

  “See you tomorrow!” Millie called, and I waved over my shoulder as I went out the door. I had looked up where the Calvert building was, surprised to find it on the nicer edge of Old Town, across the city. It would take three buses to get there, and I needed to leave from the café and go straight there. It was only two-thirty, and barring any catastrophes changing buses, it should only take forty-five minutes or so to get there.

  Still, I would much rather be early than late. I didn’t think Mr. Parnell would appreciate late.

  5

  Yale…

  I’d taken a cab that morning since my Mercedes was parked under the DA’s office, and then had completely forgotten that it was there and had taken another cab home. It pulled up in front of the green carpet, under the matching green awning that was trimmed in gold, leading into my building. Clive, the doorman, opened the back door of the car for me. I stepped out, but my eyes were on Ally, sitting on one of the stone benches flanking the door.

  “Mr. Parnell,” Clive said with a nod.

  “Hello, Clive. How long has she been here?”

  “A little over two hours, sir. She said she had a six o’clock with you?”

  “Yes. Yes, she does.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  The Calvert building was way above the pay-grade of a city-waged prosecuting attorney, but money hadn’t been why I’d taken the job. I had money, in spades. Granted, it was mostly my father’s money; when I’d turned twenty-five, he’d put me on a sort of payroll-without-conditions. His companies ran themselves, and I got a pay-out that was far more than enough to live on even for the Calvert building.

  I believed in living below my means, and for the fully-restored 1920’s building to be below my means? Well, that gives you an idea of just how much money I had at my disposal on a monthly basis.

  My father wasn’t greedy. My mother, on the other hand, loved to threaten to get my father to stop handing me a free paycheck anytime I displeased her ‒ which I believe I did just by virtue of drawing breath.

  Ally had her headphones in her ears and was reading on some sort of tablet device intently. I took a moment to take her in and admitted to myself that this was, very likely, one of the worst ideas I had ever impulsively decided to follow through on, which was so very unlike me.

  “Ms. Blaylock.” I called and didn’t receive any sort of answer. Clive and I exchanged a look of amusement before I strode up the green-carpeted walkway to put myself in front of her. My shadow fell on her, and she jumped, looking up guiltily from her e-reader.

  “Sorry,” she said, and popped the earbuds out of her ears. Music blared from them, and I raised an eyebrow.

  “You’re early,” I declared.

  “I’m sorry… it takes three buses to get here from the café; I didn’t want to be late,” she said defensively, coloring. I dismissed both the apology and the excuse and held out a hand. She took it, standing, and I gave it a firm but gentle shake.

  “That’s all right; I want to introduce you to Clive; he’s the doorman for the Calvert building. Clive, meet Ms. Allison Blaylock. She will be cleaning my place. I will be giving her a key and access to my security system so that she may come and go as she pleases and as it fits her schedule.”

  “Pleasure to meet you, Miss Blaylock,” Clive said politely and shook Ally’s hand.

  Ally smiled and said faintly, “Please, call me Ally.”

  Her shyness was absolutely adorable. As I watched the interaction, I realized how I, perhaps, took Clive’s presence here for granted a bit, realizing that Ally and he were almost on the same level, both of them hard-working, blue-collar individuals. Clive smiled and returned his white-gloved hand to the back of the other, equally white glove, clasping his hands neatly in front of himself as his position with the building dictated.

  “Come with me,” I murmured, and Clive opened the polished, brass-handled, glass-and-wooden door for Ally and me.

  She smiled at him and murmured a nervous, “Thank you,” and Clive beamed.

  “Not at all, miss.”

  I gave Clive a nod and followed her into the building’s ornate lobby. She froze, open-mouthed, and I nearly crashed into her, stopping short so I wouldn’t. I waited patiently for her to drink in all the brass and bronze. The walls glowed with a light golden paint past the fittings, the floor; a highly-polished honey oak parquet done in a chartreuse pattern.

  Of course, the only reason I knew that was because the real estate agent I had secured my condo through had used it as one of her selling points. I resisted the urge to tell Ally, though she struck me as the kind of girl who would both appreciate and absorb the information like a sponge. I had watched and listened to her exchanges with other customers in line at the café, and she always seemed genuinely interested in what they had to say, especially if it was a piece of information she hadn’t previously known.

  Not why she’s here, Parnell… Stick to the plan.

  I moved to the ornate stairs leading to the second floor and started up them. I preferred them to the old elevators by virtue of being somewhat of a fitness junkie. I had expected her to follow, but she was transfixed, her gaze thirsty for the beautiful things inside its reach. I let myself get nearly halfway up the staircase before I stopped and watched her look. Still, the spell must be broken; regrettably, I didn’t have all night, although I could surely watch her look at the building’s lobby for that long and more.

  She held such a beautiful and whimsical innocence to her and it exacerbated the urge to open her eyes to new things, darker things that held no less beauty to them, all the more. I frowned at myself, I couldn’t help it; and before I could stop myself, I called down to her.

  “Ms. Blaylock, if you will come this way?”

  She shook herself as if waking from a b
eautiful dream and looked up at me sharply. She blushed, flustered and stammered out yet another apology and said, “Of course, I’m coming right now.”

  She moved up the stairs with a feline grace that I secretly took pleasure in watching and when she was but two steps below me, I turned and put myself into motion again. I bypassed the landing on the second floor, taking the switchback to the next set of stairs leading to the third floor.

  Ally drifted up behind me nearly silently, following me along the hall, our footsteps hushed on the thick forest-green carpet with golden trim along the polished wood baseboards. She stopped with me at the heavy, dark wooden door under the Art Deco stained-glass light. Matching stained-glass sconces flared upwards like torches on the walls to either side of every door along the corridor, each portal labeled with bronze number plaques. Mine happened to be ‘3A.’

  I held out a ring with two keys on it to Ally; she blinked those brilliant green eyes and reached out a hand, grasping them lightly. I didn’t let go of the ring, not just yet.

  “You can come whenever it is convenient for you. I will leave an envelope with money on the dining room table. One hundred dollars a week for you, plus more for whatever incidentals you may need. Cleaning supplies, for the dry cleaning, et cetera. Do you understand and agree to these terms?”

  She blinked and nodded dumbly for a moment, in total shock and surprise, before her voice caught up and she said, “Yes! Absolutely.”

  I turned back to my door and stuck the key in the top lock, sliding back the bolt. I did the same to the lock in the doorknob, and, with no hesitation, opened it for the both of us, letting her into my home, my private space, my sanctuary.

  6

  Ally…

  His apartment was a near-seamless blend of the 1920’s décor of the building and the convenience and sleek lines of the modern day. The hardwood floors were deep, dark, and rich; the floor plan open. I turned to address the keening beep flowing from a little silver control panel on the wall behind the door as Mr. Parnell waved me forward to look.

  “The code is 092715, but you press this first,” he said indicating a button with a shield symbol on it. I scrambled through my purse at my hip.

  “I should write all of this down; I’m not familiar with alarm systems."

  “Don’t bother,” he said. “I’ve taken the liberty of doing it for you, but you need to commit the code to memory, now. I won’t have it written anywhere.”

  “What is it?”

  “Zero-nine-two-seven-fifteen,” he repeated, and I frowned.

  “A date, it’s a date… I don’t want to pry, but it might help me remember if I knew –“

  He held up a hand and nodded, “That’s fair. It’s the date a friend of mine died in the line of duty; it was his birthday.”

  “Oh, a police officer?”

  “Fire,” he said shortly, and I shut my mouth.

  “Oh-nine, twenty-seven; fifteen.” I repeated solemnly. His gaze remained cold but he nodded, and I realized it was so he would never forget. So he would remember, even subconsciously, every day. That was deep, but then again, I always suspected that he’d had hidden depths to him. It was part of his mysterious appeal, I guess.

  “What would you like me to do?” I asked.

  “I’ve put that in writing as well. Come with me; I’ll show you around.”

  Truthfully, I could see most of the apartment from where we stood. Straight ahead as you came through the door, the dining room table stood on a fancy, big, red-and-gold scrollwork area rug. The table was massive, seating eight people. To the right of it was the kitchen. Four tall barstools, all sturdy wooden legs and rich, padded black leather seats, were tucked up under the high granite breakfast bar.

  The kitchen alone, with its cool gray glass-tile backsplash and modern stainless steel appliances, was easily the size of the entire kitchen, living room, and dining room of my gran’s two-bedroom apartment combined. To the left of the table was a living room area: a deep brown leather couch against the bank of windows, the back of a wingback leather chair faced the dining room at one end of the heavy, dark wood coffee table. The chair had a matching ottoman and faced the television and heavy wooden entertainment center against the brick wall. The television felt larger than a movie theatre screen to me, and was easily visible from the kitchen stove.

  To the left, recessed into a nook, was a wooden desk, large, heavy, and old in that 1920’s style, the wood glowing and lighter than the rest of the apartment. There was a step up ‒ to reach it and the surrounding filing cabinets surrounding it – also made of the same rich, glowing wood. The only modern concession to the look was the laptop dock on its surface and once again, the design was perfect; everything modern and old fitting into their own spaces. Even though the floor plan was so open, it felt as if everything was its own room with walls like I was accustomed to; each space had its own personality.

  He stood, stock-still, behind me as I ranged cautiously into the center of it all, turning slowly, taking it all in and I felt star-struck. It probably looked completely unprofessional, but I had never been in the center of anything so posh or so nice, not even standing in the middle of furniture displays in the store.

  “You have a very lovely home,” I said nervously, suddenly self-conscious.

  He smiled, and it reached all the way into his eyes and put my heart at ease. I was struck by how he managed to do that with one look, and it caused me to give a tentative answering smile of my own, “Thank you, Ms. Blaylock. This way and I will show you the rest.”

  He jerked his head past what I presumed to be a closet or pantry and down a hall to the right, past the kitchen. Behind the kitchen, on the left down the hall, was a small guest bathroom ‒ just a toilet and sink, and a narrow, glassed-in shower past them both. It didn’t look like it received much use. In fact, I spied some plaster dust in the corner of the shower and realized that it probably had never been used. The toilet and sink were tidy and clean, but could use some attention and the towel on the towel bar could stand to be changed.

  Past the little closet door were some massive, shuttered folding doors on rails. He opened them for me, to reveal the front-loading washer and dryer and a shelving unit to the left of them that was fairly spartan, save for the home’s linens on one set of shelves. The other set of shelves contained toilet paper, paper towels, laundry detergent and the like. It was pretty barren of the other cleaning supplies I would expect to be there, but before I could ask, Mr. Parnell was speaking.

  “I will give you an allowance to start for cleaning supplies. I appear to be rather limited. Don’t bother with anything bargain-basement, unless it’s something that you know works, and works well. I prefer my home clean.”

  I didn’t let his words sting. After all, they weren’t geared towards my status as one of the city’s working poor. My gran liked our apartment clean too, and I had learned plenty of things from her, old-time things that got the job done with fantastic results and at an affordable price. Some of those things could clean twice as well as the biggest and best brand-name cleaners without nearly as many chemicals.

  Past the guest bathroom was the guest bedroom, which also looked as if it had never been used. I made a mental note to get in here and give it a thorough dusting, even though it didn’t look like it was too bad, but I didn’t have too much time to assess because he was already closing the door, and we were off to the door set into the wall at the very end of the hall. He opened it into the very spacious master bedroom.

  Cool gray walls, deep dark wood that gleamed, and a bed that was the size of my entire bedroom back home. The furniture was all very modern, and there was a walk-in closet across the plush, thick carpet to the right and a dark, open doorway set in the wall to the left, leading into a spacious master bathroom.

  The bathroom was incredible, the shower as big as my kitchen at home and lined on two sides with gray river-stone tiles, some long, some square, all grouted together. The other two walls out into the room were
clear tempered glass and it looked like a massive undertaking to keep clean.

  The vanity was meant for two and there was a deep bathtub that looked more like a hot tub, with jets and all, in the corner beyond the vanity. This was easily going to be the room that took me the most time and effort.

  “I may need to come twice a week,” I murmured.

  “Would you require more pay?”

  “What? No! No, no… that wasn’t what I was saying at all. It’s just so much bigger than I imagined.”

  “Twice a week would be fine if that is what you require.”

  “I can come Mondays and Fridays, after my shift at the café.”

  “As I said, whenever is convenient for you. I more than likely won’t be home.”

  I was vaguely disappointed by that, but didn’t let on. I smiled and said, “I’ll get started this Friday if you’d like.”

  “That would be fine. I will leave your money on the table. For now,” he pulled his wallet out of the back pocket of his suit pants and opened it, shelling out two crisp one-hundred-dollar bills, “this should get you the supplies you need. You needn’t worry about receipts or change.”

  He held out the money to me, and an odd sort of anxiety flitted in my chest. I don’t think I had ever held such high-denomination bills in my life. The amount, close to it, yes, but in twenties. I mean, Millie did the deposits at the café.

  “It’s not going to bite you, Ms. Blaylock,” he said gently. I swallowed hard and took it.

  “I’m sorry, I’m just nervous, I guess… I’m not used to people just handing me that kind of money.”

  He smiled. “I find you trustworthy. That trust is not misplaced, is it?” he asked and I felt my eyes go wide.

  “No!”

  He chuckled, and I realized he was actually teasing me. I blushed, and he laughed outright. It was a good sound, light and airy and he said, “I’m sorry,” and I knew he meant it.

  “It’s all right.”