Jewels And Panties: (Book 1-15) Billionaire Romance Series

by Brooke Kinsley

  It was Crystal herself who suggested I volunteer with them and I couldn't resist the opportunity.

  "Anything to help these women," I'd said and she'd kissed my cheek, leaving a powdery fuchsia pink stain on my face.

  Some people may have wondered why I did it. I didn't need the experience after all and I had enough things to busy myself with. Most of the time I felt as though I was spinning plates but there was something about the tragedy of the house that spurred me on to get involved.

  Now, five years after Crystal's death, the house was in need of some love and attention. As I pressed the doorbell, I saw how the paint was cracked and splintered and how the drains were backed up. Looking up into the first floor bedrooms, I saw the curtains were tatty and unwashed.

  Phaedra answered the door with her hair tied up in a tight bun and her face bare and pale.

  "Lincoln!" she exclaimed when she saw me. "I'm so glad you see you. I've been absolutely swamped."

  "Please, you can call me Linx," I said. "It's what my friends have always called me."

  "Of course, of course."

  She ushered me inside and led me to the lounge where the TV played Wheel of Fortune. The room was thick with a cloud of smoke. Beneath it, three women sat in silence with their eyes glossed over.

  "Isn't it illegal to smoke in these places now?" I asked as I waved a hand in front of my face and took a seat.

  Phaedra bunched up her shoulders and raised her hands.

  "A lot of things are illegal but they still happen, don't they?"

  I couldn't argue with that. Leaning forward, I looked to see if anyone was listening before lowering my voice.

  "I saw the news," I said with affected sadness.

  Phaedra nodded solemnly and clasped her hands together on her lap.

  "Terrible," she shook her head. "Just terrible. We had the police here earlier."

  "Berger?" I asked with a raised eyebrow.

  "The detective? Yeah. He didn't hold back I can tell you that but I don't know anything."

  Out the corner of my eye, I could make out the shape of the girl beside me turning her head, her hair a deep red that glowed like a halo of fire below the bare light bulb. Her eyes darted from me to Phaedra and back again before she stubbed out her cigarette and returned to the television.

  "What was he saying?"

  "Berger? He didn't say a whole lot although he asked a thousand questions."

  "He thinks they all knew each other, doesn't he?"

  Phaedra looked on the brink of tears but, with the composure of a nun, she straightened her back and scowled.

  "Well, they were all here, weren't they?"

  The red head looked back over, her eyes rimmed with smudged liner and her lips chapped and dry below her red lipstick.

  "The news isn't giving much away," I said.

  "Yeah they're real cagey right now, won't even admit to the public they know their names."

  I stood up and walked over to the bookshelf by the window. An assortment of romance books lined the shelves telling glamorous tales these women could escape into. Immediately, one of the titles jumped out at me.

  "What's this doing here?" I asked.

  Phaedra squinted before reaching for her glasses that were hanging on a chain around her neck. She blinked as she slid them on and took it from my hands.

  "Oh dear! Girls, who's is this?"

  They all looked up but said nothing.

  "Roberta?" she asked the redhead.

  The young girl shook her head and reached for the soda can at her feet.

  "The biography of Charles Manson," I said. "Not the best thing to have some place like this. I'm surprised Berger never picked up on it."

  Phaedra held it between her hands as though it could contaminate her.

  "It's just a book though, doesn't mean anything."

  I shot her a skeptical glance and she walked over to the trash can where she dropped it amongst the cigarette ends and takeout menus.

  "So... What's the score for today?" I asked, eager to get out the room.

  Phaedra reached for the notepad that she always kept by the phone. It detailed everything that ever happened in the house from messages and visitors to new tenants and shopping lists.

  She sniffed to hold her glasses in place and licked her thumb as she flicked through the pages.

  "Let me see... Yes, you have three appointments today. Roberta here would like to see you first."

  This time, she didn't look up but stared straight ahead as though she didn't hear.

  "Roberta?" Phaedra asked. "Are you listening?"

  She turned her head and reached for her cigarettes.

  "Yeah, I hear ya."

  I flinched as I heard her voice. It was gritty and harsh like a woman three times her age.

  "Nice to meet you," I smiled and reached out a hand which she promptly ignored.

  I thrust it back into my pocket and tried not to take it personally.

  "So what can I do for you?"

  She looked behind me to where Phaedra was standing, glaring at her as though she was trying to will her to leave.

  Sensing her unease I waved her into the hall.

  "Would you like to talk in private?"

  She nodded and grabbed her things.

  "Sure," she said as she hurried out the door and I couldn't help but notice the hostile look she fired at Phaedra, hateful and angry.

  Chapter Six

  Franklin

  The wind was icy as it drifted in off the Atlantic. I could taste the salt in the air and feel the grittiness of the sand between my teeth. Below me, the dried out weeds and crabgrass crunched beneath my worn out brogues. Helena always hated these, said it made me look like an old gumshoe, but that's why I wore them now as a small act of freedom.

  At the foot of the dune, the forensic team was still on the scene, processing every inch around the body. Even from here I could tell she was like the others. There was the same haunted look to her gaunt cheeks, the same almost skeletal frame and ragged clothes. And of course there was the tattoo on her ankle, the one that had so far left us all mystified.

  "Hey!" Dylan called up from below.

  I waved him up and he scrabbled up the sand in his white paper suit.

  "What have you found?" I asked, eager for any sort of clue.

  He paused and looked down at the body.

  "She looks so small from up here," he said, disappearing into his own thoughts.

  Behind us, the news trucks were rolling away after getting their fix. No doubt they were moving onto something else, another gruesome scene to feed their blood lust.

  "Bastards," Dylan said over his shoulder. "Fucking parasites."

  "I don't mind them," I said.

  He flashed me an angry look.

  "We need them as much as they need us."

  He didn't seem convinced and turned to the tablet in his hands.

  "Okay... so I'll be honest, it's not looking promising, not until we get her in for autopsy anyway."

  I looked back down. Her hair was like pale gossamer floating in the breeze, covering her face that was now turning a frigid blue.

  "Do you have anything at all?"

  He pursed his lips and fluttered his fingers across the screen.

  "A quick inspection of her gums showed petechiae but I couldn't see much else. Her teeth were intact, or rather they were decayed and broken but not by the cause of death. There were remnants of white powder in her nostrils but again, we can't be certain of what it is until it reaches the lab and just like the other two, two needle marks inserted into the crease of each elbow."

  "Hmmm..."

  It felt like there was a ball of moths in my stomach, dark and waiting to flap their wings and take me with them.

  "Did you say petechiae?" I asked, finally registering what he said.

  "Uhuh..."

  He tucked his tablet under his arm.

  "Did the other two?"

  He shook his head.

&nb
sp; "So it's likely this one was strangled. They're burst blood vessels, right? Only show up when the victim's being asphyxiated."

  "Not quite," he said as he began descending the dune. "I mean in theory, yes, but there can be other reasons where the airways were shut off. It might not have been intentional."

  "Like drowning?" I offered.

  "Like drowning," he confirmed. "If that was the case, she was alive when she hit the water, unlike the other two."

  "But we still don't know what killed them," I said and my heart sank at the realization that up until now I had no idea what I was doing.

  We were pissing in the wind, throwing leads out that went nowhere and making little progress. All we knew was that all three were residents at Walters House and they all had matching tattoos but that brought up nothing. All the girls were strays with no roots, no families, no ties to anything but each other. Not to mention their deaths were as mysterious as the spirals on their ankles. Apart from the needle marks, there was nothing else on their bodies.

  For a while we toyed with the idea they were drug users but so far tests had indicated they were clean of everything but alcohol and a little marijuana. The medical examiner Bertrand Sharpey noted the needle marks were neat too, tiny little puncture wounds that must have been done by a professional. This all brought me to two conclusions. If there was a murderer, they had to have experience in the medical field and a boat in which to take the girls out to sea. Yet, as I watched the dark gray waves ebb and flow beneath the steely sky, a thought struck me. Maybe they threw themselves into the sea. Was it a suicide pact? Dylan looked up at me as he reached the bottom.

  "Let's just hope there's not a fourth," he said. "Or the media will tear us apart."

  "I hope so too..."

  He stalled for a second before he walked away.

  "You were over at Walters earlier weren't you?"

  I nodded.

  "Anything?"

  I shook my head.

  "Nada."

  He slumped his shoulders and scratched his five o'clock shadow.

  "Fuck. This one's real strange."

  Behind him, Lucas, a new recruit still wet behind the ears and with a youthful enthusiasm that was soon to wear off, jumped to his feet and stumbled backward. He clutched a hand to his mouth and yelped out a noise that should not come from a grown man.

  Beside him, the body was moving as though it had sparked back to life.

  "What the fuck?"

  Dylan and I rushed forward, dumbstruck by what we were looking at. She looked as though she was retching, her whole torso arching forward as though she attempted to cough something up.

  "Jesus, fucking Christ what's happening!"

  There was a terror inside me I'd never felt before. The moths were desperate to escape, beating their wings against my ribcage.

  Chaos broke out, the team was scrambling backward, wide eyed and terrified. Someone screamed, meanwhile Lucas promptly threw up inside his suit.

  Then silence. The body finally lay still but my heart felt as though it was on the brink of exploding.

  Nervously, Dylan knelt down beside the body and placed a hand on her jaw to pull her mouth open.

  "Just as I suspected," he said.

  "What the fuck was that?" Lucas gasped while tearing his suit off. "That was some Exorcist shit right there."

  Dylan chuckled to himself and for a second I wondered if he had gone insane.

  "Expulsion of gasses," he explained. "Bodies, especially when they've been in the water for a long time, build up a vast supply of noxious gas, primarily in their stomach and large intestines. When the gas is expelled it can make it look as though they're alive. Rather frightening isn't it?"

  "I never want to see anything like that again," I said, clutching my chest as my heart finally began to slow down.

  Now I was starting to understand how myths of zombies and vampires were created. I crouched down beside Dylan and looked at the body that was now most definitely dead and unmoving.

  "I've never seen anything like that before," I said. "Not in all my years on the force."

  Dylan pulled the girls mouth open even further and peered inside as though he was looking for treasure.

  "I'll be honest. I've never seen anything quite like that either. It was pretty dramatic."

  "No shit," Lucas said as he fell to his knees and leaned over the body.

  "It's almost as though there was an obstruction making her retch like that," Dylan observed. "And what do we have here?"

  Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a set of forceps and pushed them down into her throat.

  Now what the hell is going on?

  As the forceps emerged from her mouth, we all stared slack-jawed at what was pinched between the tongs.

  "Is that a -"

  "Pacifier?" Dylan frowned.

  "That was in her throat?" I asked, horrified.

  We all watched as he plopped it into an evidence bag.

  "Well..." I took it from his gloved hands and stood up. "It looks as though things are about to get a whole lot stranger."

  Chapter Seven

  Etta

  Mom had tears in her eyes and a crumpled tissue in her hand. Her dyed blonde hair was pulled up into a messy braid and her usually neat makeup was smudged along the tops of her cheeks.

  "I was so worried I thought I was going to die," she said as she ran a hand through my hair. "It's a miracle you're okay. The police said the other driver, the young boy, he..." her face fell and she looked away, distressed. "He died..."

  As much as I prided myself on being usually empathetic, I was now glad he was dead. He'd nearly killed me with his stupidity.

  "Yeah, well he should have been watching where he was going."

  I stepped into my shoes and began pulling my clothes out the tiny cupboard beside the bed. It had been almost a week since the crash and the nurses were sure Dr Bosworth would be discharging me today.

  Bosworth... The man with the golden touch. There were times when I'd almost faked feeling unwell just to see him again but I knew how obvious it would have been. Having worked in hospitals, I knew how annoying attention seeking patients were when there were genuine sick people to attend to.

  But Dr. Bosworth, he was putting things in my mind I wasn't entirely comfortable with. Filthy things I'd never imagined before. Maybe it was the painkillers or being bedbound but my mind was running rampant. And when he came into the room and his eyes were on me, he spoke as if I was the only person in his life. When he pulled my gown to the side and tickled me with his stethoscope, I always felt my heart beat a little faster.

  "Etta? Sweetheart?"

  Mom shook my shoulder and gave me a concerned look.

  "I lost you there for a second."

  I shook my head.

  "Sorry I just... I dunno."

  Mom smiled and sat me down beside her. Pulling me into a warm hug, I relished the smell of her powdery perfume and how her skin was always so soft.

  "So I guess you'll be getting ready to go home," she said as she kissed the top of my head.

  I looked up, confused.

  "Home?"

  "Of course," she nodded, "Back to Craig."

  My stomach tightened.

  The son of a bitch. I hadn't told her all about him yet. With all the commotion of the crash, there just never seemed to be the right time.

  "Craig..."

  It felt like a filthy word.

  "What's wrong honey?"

  She pushed me at arm's length and looked into my eyes. With true mother's intuition, she had the uncanny ability to read my mind.

  "Is something the matter with Craig?"

  I opened my mouth to speak with the intention of letting everything spill out but for some reason, I couldn't bring myself to tell her. It could have been that she loved Craig as much as I did and had accepted her as a son since he was a teenager, or it could have been that I was ashamed of his behavior. Either way, I found myself saying, "Nothing's wrong.
It's just that... I was expecting to come back to your place and live with you."

  She bit her lower lip to stop it quivering.

  "Oh sweetheart!"

  She pulled me tight until I felt as though my lungs were exploding.

  "I'm so sorry! So sorry!"

  I pushed her away and slid off the bed.

  "Sorry?"

  She began playing with the tissue in her hands, ripping it apart before trying to strangely reconstruct the tear soaked mess like a miniature papier mache piece.

  "I'm sorry honey but you can't stay with us. Reginald and I..."

  The sound of his name made me flinch. My real dad had left when I was a baby and I'd grown up with only my mom. When she decided to finally pursue love again and get herself a boyfriend, I was sixteen and found Reginald to be both boring and creepy at the same time. Not to mention she didn't have much time for me after meeting him. He was always taking her to cha-cha lessons or some old timey movie.

  "Reginald and you..."

  She swallowed and pursed her lips, the tissue becoming smaller and more tattered by the second.

  "You know the house was on the market, right?"

  I frowned and took a step back not liking where this was going.

  "And? It was on the market for like three years."

  She took a deep breath and exhaled.

  "It finally sold," she smiled to herself.

  "What?"

  "Last week. That means Reginald and I can finally go sailing like we always wanted."

  Stunned, I leaned against the wall and blinked a couple times as though it could clear away the image of my mom talking about leaving me.

  "I'm sorry honey. If I knew you were going to have the crash I would never had arranged it all already but the yacht's leased and well, Reginald really has his heart set on going to the Bahamas."

  Fuck Reginald, I thought.

  "What about me? I need you!"

  She strode over and tried to hug me but I kept withdrawing until I was bunched up at the end of the room.