Noir Fatale

by Larry Correia

  “Please, Ms. Blake,” the granddaughter spoke at last, “please let me explain.”

  “Take your grandmother and go and take your weird issues with you.”

  “Is it wrong to want my grandson to marry someone that matches his beauty?”

  “I don’t know, maybe not, but it is wrong to hire private detectives to find dirt on her just because you don’t like the way the woman looks.”

  “My grandson comes into control of his trust fund this year. It is quite substantial. All our grandchildren have had fortune hunters after them thanks to how my late father-in-law arranged his will.”

  “Not my problem, not even sure it is a problem. How did you know they were fortune hunters, just because they came from poorer backgrounds?”

  “Not all of them were poor,” the granddaughter said, “just not as rich.”

  “Well, boo-hoo, take your rich kid problems out of my office.” I pointed at the door as if that would make them get up and leave.

  “You’re wearing a gun,” Mrs. Chadwick said, and she looked pale, a slender hand touching her thin chest. The hand looked older than the rest of her did, not bad, just closer to her actual age. I guess they can’t lift everything.

  Raising my arm to point had flashed the gun at my belt. I should have used my left hand instead of my right—my bad—but since I wasn’t taking her on as a client, I guess it didn’t matter that she didn’t like me being armed. I didn’t have to impress her, or even be nice. She was crazy, and I didn’t have to play along because she had money. Crazy was crazy, and I was done with it for the night.

  “Yeah, I have a gun, because I was out of state helping SWAT serve a warrant of execution when I got the message about this meeting. I inherited the warrant after another marshal died trying to serve it. I have been awake for nearly twenty-four hours and I am done with your shit.”

  The granddaughter asked, “Did you actually execute someone?”

  “None of your damn business, and now, for the third time, get out. If you make me say it again, the word fuck will be involved.” I pointed even more dramatically at the door, raising my shoulder up so that the gun was even more visible. It’s a Springfield Rangemaster .45, which is a full-frame 1911, which means it’s not a small gun. I couldn’t carry it concealed in civilian clothes, it was just too big, and I was just too short-waisted. I had female friends with longer torsos and they could hide bigger guns in places I couldn’t.

  “Ms. Blake, please, hear us out.”

  “No,” I said, but if they didn’t leave soon I was going to have to lower my arm; some positions you just can’t hold forever.

  Mrs. Chadwick glared up at me, so angry that I could see some of the lines on her face even through the makeup. She didn’t have smile lines: hers were frown lines, tight and pinched from disapproving of everyone and everything around her for too long.

  “You come in here dressed like a soldier from the waist down, with that rude T-shirt, and think that throwing a jacket from some lesser designer over it will make it acceptable attire for this meeting…I didn’t want to come here for so many reasons, but your attire and your attitude have convinced me that this has been a mistake. I came here seeking a seductress and all I see is an ill-mannered tomboy that no man would want on his arm.” She stood up, back still as rigid as when she’d sat down. “Come, Elgin, her reputation must be exaggerated.”

  The comment was so weird coming from her that it stopped me. I dropped my arm and asked one more question. “Did you say that you came here looking for a seductress?” I asked.

  “I did, but you obviously are not that…Well, look at you.” She waved a hand at what I was wearing, and she was right about me not having dressed for seduction. I’d dressed so I could move, run, and fight. Priorities, priorities.

  Elgin tugged on the older woman’s arm. She was trying to go to the door, but Elgin was young enough and strong enough to win the tug of war. “Please, Grandma Chadwick, she’s the only hope we have of proving that it’s an illegal spell being used on William.”

  “If it’s illegal magic, why not go to the regular police?” I asked.

  “We tried,” Elgin said, still holding onto Mrs. Chadwick’s arm.

  Mrs. Chadwick stopped trying to walk out and turned to look at me. “The police said that it’s not illegal for a man to change his mind about whom he wants to marry.”

  “It’s not,” I said.

  Elgin looked at me with tears glistening in her big, blue eyes. “William and I were in love with each other for years, Ms. Blake. We were planning to get married next year.”

  “Wait, you were going to marry your own cousin? I know that’s legal in some states, but isn’t that keeping the family money a little too close to home?”

  “Elgin is technically my step-granddaughter. Her mother was my son’s second wife, but she has been a part of our family from infancy.”

  “Willie and I grew up together, but we’re not related,” Elgin said sniffing and trying not to cry.

  “We are not some backwoods family to interbreed,” Mrs. Chadwick said.

  “Royal families did it for centuries,” I said.

  “Well, we are not royalty, just wealthy,” she said.

  “I think it was the being raised together that made me reject Willie for so many years. He was like a brother, I thought. Now I am in love with him and it’s too late.”

  “The venues are already booked,” Mrs. Chadwick said. “The designer is too far along on Elgin’s dress to stop now.”

  “Sounds like you’re more interested in the money you’re going to lose than anything else,” I said.

  “Why is it wrong to worry about the money I will lose just because I’m wealthy?”

  She had a point, I guess. I sipped my coffee, but it was too cold. If I was going to keep dealing with these two, I needed something hot and fresh.

  “You’re right; weddings aren’t cheap, especially big, designer weddings.” I’d been looking at price tags for my own recently and I had been shocked. I was more a small-outdoor-ceremony kind of girl, but I was engaged to a great-big-spectacle kind of guy, so that’s what we were doing. It wasn’t cheap.

  “Thank you for conceding that.”

  The tears began to trail down Elgin’s cheeks. “I made Willie happy for four years. He’d had a crush on me since we were children. He said that me loving him back was the most amazing thing that ever happened to him. How does a man go from that to dumping a woman less than a year before the wedding?” Her shoulders started to shake, and Mrs. Chadwick embraced her and let her cry into her designer-clad shoulder.

  “I don’t know,” I said, and had to repeat it louder to be heard above the crying.

  “Will you help us?” Mrs. Chadwick asked, patting her granddaughter’s perfect blond hair.

  “Help you how?” I asked and moved towards the coffee station that had been put to the side of the office. I drank too much coffee to be asking our receptionists for a refill all the time, plus some of my clients got emotional. Pouring my own fresh cup of coffee seemed less heartless than interrupting their grief for someone to bring me another cuppa.

  I offered them another chance at coffee as I moved across the office towards the coffeemaker. They refused again.

  “How can you think about coffee while my granddaughter is in such obvious pain?”

  I glanced back at them. “You know how you have the right to worry about money, even if you have money?”

  “What does that have to do with coffee?”

  “I’m sorry Elgin is broken-hearted. I’ve been there, and it sucks, but I have the right to need more coffee if I haven’t slept in twenty-four hours.”

  Elgin had calmed down enough to turn her face to me. Her expert makeup was smeared across one eye, though the other was holding up better. It made her look more real somehow and made it harder to turn them down.

  “I’ll ask one more time. Mrs. Chadwick, Elgin, how can I help you?”

  “We came here exp
ecting a siren,” Mrs. Chadwick said, “but instead we find a rude man of a woman.”

  “Grandma Chadwick, please,” Elgin said, and for the first time I saw a tenderness in the older woman’s face. She might be a vain pain in the ass, but she loved her granddaughter.

  I inhaled the scent of fresh, hot coffee to give me courage and tried one more time to get some sense from the two women. “Elgin, tell me what I can do to help you get some closure.”

  “Closure.” She laughed, and it sounded bitter, far too bitter for someone that looked closer to twenty-one than thirty.

  “Pick a different word if you want, but what can I do that the police, a private detective, and I’m assuming the family lawyers couldn’t do?”

  “How did you know we sent our lawyers to pay her off?” Mrs. Chadwick asked.

  “If you have enough money, you think people can be bought like things. I’ve seen it before, and I’ll see it again after you leave.” I sipped the coffee carefully, savoring it on my tongue and beginning to realize that I might need real food before I slept today. I tried to stay focused on the would-be clients, but I was too tired unless they came up with something that made sense to me soon.

  “There is no way that Willie chose that woman over me, unless she used some supernatural power. You have a certain reputation for sexual…conquests.”

  “Is that a polite way of saying I sleep around?”

  “No,” she said.

  “We were told that you were a siren, or a succubus, and could seduce men in a way that was unnatural just like what has been done to our William,” Mrs. Chadwick said.

  “So…what, it takes one to know one?” I asked, debating on if I wanted to sit back down at my desk and encourage them to stay longer, or if standing would shorten the interview. I stood.

  “Something like that,” the older woman said.

  I didn’t know whether to laugh or yell at them some more. “So, because I have a certain reputation you think I should be able to meet the woman and tell instantly if she’s using supernatural wiles on your William?”

  “Yes,” she said, very sure of herself.

  “When you say it that way, it sounds silly,” Elgin said, rubbing at the makeup on her good eye so that it began to smear to match the other one.

  “Even if I was some kind of supernatural siren, I don’t think it would be that easy.”

  “Can you at least meet her?” Elgin asked, and something about the smeared makeup or the earnestness in her face made her seem younger, vulnerable, someone that you needed to save, or at least help.

  “No promises but give me her name and whatever information you have on her, and maybe, just maybe, I’ll give her a look.”

  Elgin’s face lit up, suddenly so happy, and she managed to look young, hopeful, and more beautiful than the perfect model that had slunk in on her Louboutin stilettos. Beauty was great to look at, but I always needed something more real, vulnerable, added to that beauty, or it just didn’t move me much. Damn it, Elgin had become real to me.

  Mrs. Chadwick got a thumb drive out of her purse and held it out towards me. “It has everything we know about Miss Violet Carlin on it.”

  I took the small piece of technology from her perfectly manicured hand, but I was past worrying that my nails were short and unpainted. I was just glad I didn’t have blood under my nails; there were nights when I did.

  “If I find out that she’s using illegal magic on William, I’ll report it to the police first.”

  “For this much money I would expect you to report directly to me,” Mrs. Chadwick said.

  “But you can’t do anything to her, and if the police can prove she’s using magic to seduce people, then it could mean an automatic death sentence.”

  Elgin looked startled. “Oh, I don’t want her dead. I just want Willie back and to marry him.”

  Mrs. Chadwick gave me the full weight of her pale blue eyes, a small smile touching her lips. “That will be fine, Ms. Blake, whatever you think best.”

  With that they left my office. I popped the thumb drive into the desktop computer while I finished my coffee. It was good coffee and I didn’t want to waste it; besides, I wanted to see what kind of woman could have gotten the Chadwicks up in arms. Just a quick peek and I’d go home to bed.

  Violet Carlin was not much taller than me, but she had me beat for curves. In fact, Mrs. Chadwick probably wouldn’t be the only one who would call her fat, but she wasn’t exactly, she was just built round. It was a step above curvy, but not obese. She looked what once would have been called pleasingly plump. Back when no one thought to starve themselves to be thin, or even that thin was more attractive than curves. She was smiling in almost every photo. I thought her eyes were brown, but when I finally got a closeup they were hazel, or maybe even green with just a little brown in them. Her hair was short, thick, with waves, but not curls, so it looked good just below her ears. In some shots the hair looked darkest brunette, and then in other shots it was a warm chestnut. She was all rich, warm, autumn colors, smiling and plump and happy. She was the antithesis of Elgin and Mrs. Chadwick.

  There were pictures with her and William Chadwick together. He was over six feet tall, broad shoulders tapering down to a slender waist, tight hips, muscular legs. The arms, when I finally saw them bare, matched the legs. He wasn’t just in shape, he was in fierce shape in the first few pictures. He had that light golden tan that Elgin had had, so even their skin tone matched. Violet Carlin was pale-skinned and looked like she’d burn in the sun. William’s face was model perfect with the same high cheekbones that had made his grandmother a supermodel in her day. I dated some beautiful men, but William could have held his own to most of them. But in every picture of him with Violet, he was gazing down at her laughing, smiling, happy, and she looked up at him with the same expressions. I’d seen other people that were dating out of their league lookswise and they didn’t look this at ease. Hell, I’d been one of those people. It had taken me a long time to accept that if really beautiful men kept wanting to date me, I must be beautiful, too. Just thinking it made me want to squirm in my chair even now. I was engaged to marry one of those beautiful men, but I still wasn’t as comfortable in the beauty politics as Violet Carlin was in these pictures.

  It took me a few minutes to realize that William was changing in the photos. I had to go back through them to be sure, but the almost professional level of fitness that he had in the early photos started to soften. He wasn’t as lean, so the cut muscles started to be hidden under a little more flesh. He wasn’t fat, by any means. He wasn’t even overweight, he just wasn’t as lean and fiercely fit. She started to lose a little roundness, not much, but a little, about the time I saw a picture of them going into a gym together. Then I saw them go into a shop that read VIOLETS AND HEARTS, CAKES AND MORE on the big front window. Violet Carlin was a baker. She had a multitiered wedding cake in the window of her shop. It was a beautiful cake. There were pictures of them through a telephoto lens from what looked like a car across the street. William and Violet ate cupcakes together. They drank tea with sugar and cream in it. She brought out a pie and sliced it for him, fresh from the oven it looked like. I began to see where William was gaining his weight. Different days, different desserts, but always smiling, holding hands, kissing, just so in love in every picture.

  I wondered what had bothered Mrs. Chadwick the most, that William seemed happy with the fat girl, or that he was starting to gain weight himself? Had she taken that as a personal insult that someone in her family wouldn’t meet her standard of perfection? Had William losing that nearly harsh cut of muscle been enough to freak her out? Did she envision him getting plump like Violet? She didn’t have to worry about that; you carry weight very differently from barely over five feet to over six. As someone short that works out with taller partners, I knew that.

  Elgin was broken-hearted, but it must have been insult to injury to see the other woman. The Nordic goddess and the plump baker, it should have been a no-brainer
for William to choose, but it hadn’t been, or maybe it had, just not the way Elgin thought.

  If Elgin was insulted and hurt, what was Grandmother Chadwick? Angry, insulted, and incredulous, she just couldn’t believe that her beautiful grandson had chosen this woman. She couldn’t believe that Violet Carlin made him happy, it had to be an evil spell. I didn’t see anything evil between the two of them, but I understood some of his family’s confusion now. Their prince had abandoned his princess at the altar for a peasant, or that’s how Mrs. Chadwick seemed to see it.

  No wonder the police had sent them packing. I couldn’t help Elgin work the issues that this broken heart would give her, but I might be able to reassure Mrs. Chadwick that there was no magical malfeasance involved. I didn’t owe them anything else for their money. They’d paid to have a meeting with me and they’d had it, but maybe it was them paying so much for so little that made me want to give them something for it. Or maybe I was curious about how William and Violet had ended up together. Whether it was idle curiosity, or I felt sorry for Elgin and Mrs. Chadwick, I decided I’d visit the Violet and Hearts, Cakes and More after I’d had some sleep and some real food. I didn’t think it would be a good idea to go into the bakery on an empty stomach unless I wanted cake for lunch.

  By the time I’d eaten, slept for eight hours, and had “hello, honey, I didn’t get killed” sex with my sweeties, I was wondering why I’d lost sleep over Mrs. Chadwick and her problem. I chalked it up to the fact that both women had reminded me of my stepmother and I had serious issues attached to her, so I’d bent over backwards to be fair to them, just to make sure I wasn’t using them as scapegoats for my own issues. I’d finally realized I did that. It didn’t stop me from doing it, but I could let it go later when I figured it out. It was later, I let it go, and got on with my brand new day, which meant I was back at the office looking over potential clients.

  Unlike most U.S. Marshals, the Preternatural branch wasn’t a full-time job. No government agency wanted to admit they were employing assassins full-time, and no matter how you prettied it up with a badge and court orders of execution, we were government-sanctioned assassins who hunted down and killed supernatural citizens who had gone rogue. We saved lives by killing the predators before they found more prey, but it still meant that most of us had day jobs. Mine was raising the dead for Animators Inc., which made meeting with the two women last night so far outside my area of expertise it was laughable. They’d paid through the nose for that joke, and now I could get back to work.