Forever in Your Service

by Sandra Antonelli

  She had a seat beside Taittinger. The dog settled between them. Kitt bit back an urge to snarl. Mae had given him an advantage by blocking the tearful man’s line of sight. Sometimes she was too goddamned smart.

  Softly, softly Kitt walked around to the side. Nash lay on the floor, a hole in his temple. Blood pooled on the carpet beneath his head. Crimson paw prints dappled the white chair, the ottoman, and sofa where Taittinger sprawled, clothes dishevelled, tiny pistol pressed to his head.

  A wide-eyed shamefaced child, Taittinger sobbed. “Oh, I was only trying to help, to protect...to...make s-sure...”

  She put a hand on his, the one he had resting on the dog. “There now,” she said, as if she were an Irish nanny again and Taittinger her weepy young charge. “There now, hush. Hush and put that down. Tell me what happened.”

  “I-I-I...” Taittinger snivelled and looked at Nash. “No, no. I didn’t do that. I didn’t.”

  “Of course you didn’t. You’re an eejit, not a murderer.”

  He nodded furiously. “Yeah, yeah. I’m stupid, stupid, stupid.” He wailed and the hand holding the gun to his temple slumped into his lap.

  Kitt stepped in, snatching the single shot Heizer PS1. Someone had a real taste for these palm-sized handguns. He checked it. It had been fired. Pointlessly, he shoved it into the waistband of his trousers and pulled it out again, the metal painful against his bruised abdomen. “Wine is out, but selling artefacts looted from war-torn regions of the world is in,” he said quietly. “And you’re passing off fakes as the originals, aren’t you?”

  Bawling, Taittinger looked up at him, mouth open, a string of spit stretched from his top to bottom teeth. He nodded.

  Kitt took off the cowboy hat and flung it, his lips twisting with amusement.

  Mae had always wondered about that grin, and the way it made Taittinger squirm made her wonder about it now. The Germans had a word for it: schadenfreude—taking pleasure in the misery, in the misfortune of others. Or was it something else? Was it more like a game? Kitt had once told her intelligence work was a game, and maybe it was. The player on the sofa blubbered about the game he’d just lost.

  “I don’t st-steal. T-they’re...” sniffling, coughing, Taittinger pulled off his tear-spotted glasses, “re-re-reproductions.” He began to hiccup and pant.

  “Which makes you not just a thief, but a cheat as well. Would you say that’s a fair description, Mrs Valentine?”

  “Swindler, fraud, charlatan, con man, liar, those are all very fitting words to use, Mr Somerset.”

  “You don’t steal the pieces, but you have copies made, yes?” Kitt bounced the little pistol in his hand. “Breathe, Tatts.”

  Taittinger swallowed. “Yeah, yeah, I-I have copies made, p-pieces I know have been looted from museums, villages, homes, archaeological locations, or h-historic places, I have them reproduced in Ch-China. It’s...it’s to protect the originals.”

  “China, Dr Jools, really?”

  Taittinger swiped at snot and streaming tears, nodding.

  “You’re a counterfeiter on a noble crusade, but you’re full of shit.” Kitt ran a thumb and forefinger around the end of his beard, from moustache to chin. The hairy thing itched, and he looked forward to taking a razor to it. “Foley steals the pieces and you have the original for a while, just long enough for a reproduction to be made by your good friend Hector; after all, the Rodriguez family are sculptors, but I doubt they know how you’ve used them. You’ve given them money for their vineyard, you’ve put them on the map with the vintage they’ve named after their friend and benefactor, Milton Foley. Chichiltic.”

  Taittinger’s eye-squinting sobs dissolved into spittly, slack-mouthed surprise.

  It was time to shave and time to end this sodding disaster. Kitt regarded the dribbling dolt. “You know, I believe you are shocked and you still think you’re being philanthropic. I’d ask where you keep the originals,” he chuckled at what was obvious, “but I already know. Everything is shuffled about from freeports to here, to the Rodriguez winery back here, then to Foley’s museums.”

  “No,” Taittinger slobbered, “no, no! You’re wrong. You don’t understand. Ruby... It’s not. It’s not wh—”

  “Yes, it is.” Mae sighed. “Did Mr Nash figure out you two had defrauded him out of bottles of very expensive wine? That’s how they pay you for it, isn’t it? Wine for artefacts. That’s what Mr Grant knew, didn’t he?”

  Raw and desperate panic turned his voice to a squeal and Taittinger’s gaze fell to Nash. “I thought I was protecting... This wasn’t supposed to happen, this isn’t what I wanted! I thought I was protect—”

  Kitt cracked the tiny gun against Taittinger’s skull, knocking him out. “Give me your phone, Mae.” He stuffed the pistol into his pocket.

  She shook her head, glancing heavenward, and handed over her mobile.

  Kitt dialled Bryce and hoped the call connected. “Send a crew now. Locals are fine,” he said when Bryce answered. “I’ll cooperate.”

  “So much for Belize,” Mae removed her coat and laid it over Nash. She turned back to Taittinger, slumped and drooling on the sofa, and picked up Felix.

  Kitt slid a hand to the small of her back and led her to the foyer, the hallway and staircase. Without the usual easy listening music playing in the background, the house was eerily quiet. Upstairs, bright, morning sunlight poured in through high windows. They passed the room where the Chungs had been put to bed, and moved along, toward the bedroom Kitt had shared with Reed. Basil’s door stood open wide. Inside, near the foot of the bed, Ari Basil lay face up, dark eyes staring at the ceiling, a hole in his forehead.

  Turning, Kitt clamped a hand on Mae’s shoulder. “Stay here,” he whispered, eyes stern, commanding, “And if I say run, you bloody run. Do you understand?”

  She nodded and stared beyond him into the room. All right, maybe she wasn’t used to finding bodies. Blood had pooled beneath Basil’s head. A man sporting a blue El Salvador football team jacket, lay across his legs, side of his head caved in by an astrolabe once displayed in one of the hallway’s nichos, but he was still breathing.

  Kitt pushed Mae and the dog away from the door. He drew the tiny, useless gun from his pocket, checked the space between the door hinges and frame, and went into the room.

  Mae held Felix close. She had been here before, waiting for Kitt in a hallway. The previous time had been outside a kitchen in Sicily. A man had been sitting at a table listening to Cher, eating spaghetti puttanesca with his fingers while flipping through a girlie magazine. There’d been a struggle and gunfire, but she hadn’t made a promise like she had this time. Fear began to twist its way into her good sense. As it had in Sicily, her pulse rate kicked up, fear, indignation, exasperation over being told what to do made her take a step toward the room. Then Reed appeared in the doorway, sunlight turning his hair bright red.

  Mae froze and stared at Reed’s hair, at his red head. Red. Red was...chichiltic. Bryce had haltingly inquired about trusting Reed. She’d asked Kitt the same question and his half-brother crooked a finger, motioning for her to come to the room, and she stood there, hugging the dog, unable to move, staring at a half-brother, at sun-brightened red hair, at blood smeared on his hands, the word chichiltic a whisper in her ears until Kitt’s head poked out behind him.

  “Oh feckin’ hell,” she muttered, and Kitt put a hushing finger to his lips.

  Head cocking the same way Kitt’s sometimes did, Reed came out into the hallway, frowning. He reached her in three strides, wiping his hands with a face cloth. “You okay, possum?”

  Heart rate returning to normal, Mae took a deep breath. “What happened?”

  “I was in the kitchen looking for breakfast when Nash was shot downstairs. Basil was dead by the time I got up here. I... I had to...act.” Reed looked at his hands and the small towel he’d stained. “The Chungs are dead too. Jesus Christ,” he murmured, head shaking. “I put this bullshit behind me when I left Europol for Interpol.”


  The door at the end of the hall opened. Ruby staggered out, groping for the wall to steady herself, pink chenille dressing gown flapping open, silky, figure-hugging nude nightdress beneath.

  “Shit,” Reed muttered, stuffing the face cloth into his pocket.

  “Good morning, Miss Bleuville,” Mae said.

  Ruby squinted, “My God, Valentine, can you do anything about the sun out here?”

  Quietly, Kitt shut the door.

  Ruby wobbled along the hall. “Please say one of y’all has some aspirin or Tylenol,” she groaned.

  “Let me help you.” Reed advanced and took her elbow.

  “My Lord, Mr Case, I ’preciate you hurrying, but please, gently, gently.” Ruby shuffled and Reed led her to his room, Mae a few steps behind. Ruby sank onto the edge of the mattress, strawberry hair spilling into her face as she groaned and groped into the pocket of her thick dressing gown.

  Reed shut the door behind them and locked it. For a moment, he stood by the chair beside the door and looked at his hands, where blood had tainted his skin. He sighed harshly.

  Felix moved in Mae’s arms, she half smiled. “You’re quite different from your brother, aren’t you?”

  Reed’s head jerked up and he met her eyes.

  “I guessed.” Mae shrugged one shoulder.

  “This here is the worst hangover I have ever had.” Ruby moaned.

  Reed exhaled. “The little bugger used to follow me around. He was a sweet kid, but now he’s a cold-hearted prick—and I’m still looking out for him.”

  “Son of a bacon bit, what’s a girl gotta do to get a little pain relief?” Together, Reed and Mae turned to Ruby. She stood beside the bed, a small handgun pointing at them.

  For a split second, Mae thought she had another toy from Taittinger’s collection, but Ruby’s wry grin said otherwise. “Every woman knows you want somethin’ done right you got t’do it yourself,” she said.

  The gun fired.

  Reed blinked a few times, looked down at himself, and crumpled, bouncing against the chair near the door, hands clutching the wound in his thigh, incredulity on his face, dark red blooming on his jeans.

  Terrified, dog squirming in her arms, ears ringing, Mae remembered her promise to Kitt, but shock reset her brain to a practicality different to running away. Reed’s blood trickled onto the pale carpeting. The stain needed to be blotted up as soon as possible, before it spread farther, so that it wouldn’t set. She put Felix on his feet, lifted the hand towel Kitt had left on the chair last night, and pressed it to Reed’s leg.

  Reed let loose a torrent of obscenities. Ruby winced, finger massaging her right ear, one eye squinting, mouth open. “Dang it,” the strawberry-haired beauty said. “Sorry about that, David—I mean Simon. I’m usually a much better shot. I was aiming for your heart, but it’s this hangover,” she waved the weapon casually, “it hammers like a nutcracker, and it’s got me shootin’ sideways. ’Course, this ain’t no ordinary hangover, now is it? I’ve got a big ol’ black spot about what happened last night, and I’m not the only one feelin’ that way. Poor Jools is beside himself. He thinks he killed Nash. What did you have him put in the wine, Valentine?” She sighed. “That photographer Wally hired and those idiot boys had every chance to take care of you, honey, but Milt’s a honking fathead and if dumb was dirt those men would cover about an acre, because you’re still here.”

  Mae’s ears rang, a high eeeeeee dulling the sound of Reed’s grunting.

  “All righty now.” Ruby took a black wallet from her dressing gown and tossed it in Reed’s direction. It flopped open as it landed. “Since we’re here in your room, Agent Simon Reed of Interpol, have you got any aspirin or a pain reliever of any sort? And don’t lie, sugar, because who knows what part of you—or her—I’ll hit next.”

  Reed sucked in air through his teeth. “Shit, fuck, shit. There,” he jerked his head toward the bathroom, “in...fuck, fuck...in there with my toiletries.”

  “Good. Now, Valentine, you go into the bathroom and get me the aspirin. You might want to bring some for Simon here, although, to be honest, he won’t need it for long.”

  Felix padded over to Ruby and rubbed his lean body against her legs the way a cat did. “Aw, sugar, you are a pretty little thing who needs lots of attention and lovin.’ What the hell was Jools thinkin’ when he got you?” She shoved him aside with a knee.

  Fear turned to fury and Mae straightened. “Don’t you feckin’ hurt the dog.”

  “Don’t hurt the dog?” Reed looked up at her, brows knit together in disbelief and pain.

  “What kind of monster do you think I am?” Ruby made a face as Felix pranced over to Reed and lay down beside his outstretched legs, curling into a crescent, head on the man’s shin. “I would never hurt an animal, especially one as beautiful as Felix. Maybe he’s not the most obedient, and he’s about as sharp as mashed potatoes, but he’s sweet. No, no, I’d never deliberately cause one of God’s creatures pain. I’d put a bullet in his brain and he wouldn’t feel a thing. Can’t say if Grant was as lucky as Felix and ya’ll will be, seein’ as that nitwit Milt hired shot him in the face.”

  Mae felt the air move into her lungs. Time neither sped up nor moved at a snail’s pace. There was no roaring noise in her head, no deafness, no heart that tried to scrabble up her throat, no nausea. Emotion abandoned her and unexpected blankness settled in, as if she were already dead, and dead calm, she entered the en suite bathroom. When she found a blister packet of paracetamol in a toiletry bag, she reached for one of the two blue-tinted glasses on the vanity and knocked the toiletry bag to the tiled floor. Items spilled out noisily, bouncing and rolling. Leaving the glass on the vanity, Mae crouched, collecting dental floss, a deodorant stick, a tube of lip balm that had rolled across the tiles and stopped at the base of the toilet. She stretched for the tube and there, an arm’s length away, in a larger, fatter stainless-steel cylinder, sat the toilet brush.

  Five months ago, she’d killed a man with a toilet brush.

  For three seconds, she looked at the bristly brush, at the strip of headache pills sitting beside the glass, and the blankness became a canvas full of a single, deliberate, necessary thought. Still crouched, she half turned, placed the lip balm and other things on the vanity. Then she opened the small cupboard beneath the washbasin, pushed aside hand towels and extra loo paper, and found the denture cleaning tablets, the ones she sometimes used to remove mineral deposits and make the toilet bowl sparkling white.

  She rose, filled the glass with water, and walked into the bedroom, where Ruby held Reed and Felix at gunpoint. While they watched, Mae tore the little paper and foil packet and dropped two tablets into the water. The liquid effervesced, cheery and mint-scented. She held out the glass, hand shaking. “Ma’am,” she said, a quaver in her voice.

  Ruby eyed the liquid. “I haven’t had Alka-Seltzer in years.” She took the glass. “I can’t remember, do you drink it while it’s still bubblin’ or when it’s stopped?”

  “As it’s fizzing.”

  “Yeah, yeah, the bubbles make it work faster, like champagne.” Eyes and weapon trained on Reed, Ruby downed the entire glass of fizzling water. Mae stepped in front of Felix and Reed, and the corrosive, partially-dissolved tablets began to burn, frothing Ruby’s mouth. The water she had swallowed carried the caustic chemicals, torching her tongue, her gums, and oesophagus, and it came back up foaming and green-tinged.

  Coughing, gagging, Ruby’s lips began to swell and blister. The empty glass hit the rug, the handgun discharged. A thunderclap of noise, a sharp, powerful slap of angry, stinging wasps and jabbing needles mushroomed through Mae’s shoulder, up along her neck.

  Reed shouted, Felix raced about the room bark-bark-bark, and Mae stood rooted in one spot, torn foil packet in her fingers.

  Ruby staggered across the rug, choking, gasping, hissing, clawing at her throat as she lurched into the en suite, her actions desperate, frantic.

  Mae wondered if what the woman f
elt was anything like when her own throat had been squeezed until it was about to burst.

  The door exploded inward. Kitt shouted and Felix rocketed across the open threshold, skittering down the hall. Ruby collapsed back into the room, retching. Reed swore and Mae sank into the chair where she’d been shagged senseless the night before, the needles and wasp stings in her shoulder hot and wet.

  Chapter 20

  Mae lay on a narrow bed in the Los Alamos County Medical Center. The painkiller she’d been given had resulted in a low-level sense of euphoria and a very dry mouth. She smiled at Kitt and her lips stuck to her teeth. “The bullet passed through muscle. I’ll have a scar matching yours,” she said, top lip glued to incisors.

  “If I’d been faster you wouldn’t have a scar at all.”

  She laughed. “You actually kicked open the door.”

  “Heroic of me, wasn’t it?” Kitt moved to the side of her bed and set a plastic cup on the mattress. For a moment, he stared at her, eyes travelling over her, deadpan if not for the menacing fury that glowed like the hottest point of a flame.

  “What?”

  Kitt exhaled, a harsh rush of air from his nostrils. His head shook ever so minutely, before he touched her bruised throat and the hollow at the base. He kissed her then, mouth on hers solidly at first, then softening, remaining in place as his breath turned ragged. His tears trickled onto her cheek. She trembled, laughing or crying, he didn’t know which. She never cried when he expected her to. Mae never did what he expected her to.

  He pulled away and she touched his wet face, smiling. With a sniffle and a swipe at his eyes and nose, he reached for the plastic cup. It was full of ice chips. “These will help.” He lifted to the cup to her lips and shook a few bits of ice into her mouth.

  “How’s Reed?” she said, sucking cold chips.

  “Alive, pissed off, grumbling about a borrowed bottle of wine and how he’s going to lose his job. You were both lucky Ruby was such a bad shot. He’s going to limp for a while. He may lose his job. I’m not sure he’ll ever forgive me for this.”