A Dead and Stormy Night

by Steffanie Holmes

  “Holly, it’s a pleasure.” I gestured to a plush leather sofa and pouffe in the corner, under a floor-length window that looked down over Soho. “Shall we?”

  “Yes, of course. That’s an interesting bird.” Holly poked a finger at Quoth’s cage. He croaked at her by way of greeting.

  “We’re just taking him for a walk around London.” Morrie set the cage on the floor beside him, unlocking the latch surreptitiously, in case Quoth needed to escape in order to hide somewhere and shift. Holly opened her mouth, ready to say something more, but I shot her Ashley’s patented ‘what’s it to you’ look, and she remained silent.

  “We are alone?” I barked at Holly.

  “I’ve dismissed my assistant and briefly closed the boutique, as you suggested. I must admit, I’m intrigued. Why would Marcus Ribald want to talk to me, and so clandestinely? I’m open to a collaboration—”

  “Oh, I’m not here on Marcus’ behalf.” I drew out an image from my purse and laid it out on the coffee table.

  Holly gasped. Beside me, Morrie flinched. I felt a tickle of satisfaction that I’d pulled one over on him. You’re not the only one full of surprises, James Moriarty.

  “This…” Holly recoiled from the picture, her eyes flickering over the lines of Marcus’ ballgown sketch. “This is from Marcus’ upcoming collection. It hasn’t been released yet.”

  “But of course.” I gave my best imitation of Ashley’s cool smile. “It wouldn’t be much use to you if he’d already previewed it. The price is the same as before, but that offer is good today only, provided the remainder of your debt is paid. Once I leave this building, it doubles.”

  “What are you talking about? Why are you showing me this?” Holly’s red talons dug into the sofa fabric.

  “You don’t have to pretend with me, Holly. I know you’ve dealt with another girl during your last transaction, and I know you killed her in order to get out of your end of the bargain. That was a mistake. I’m in charge now. Even though you left this drawing behind in the bookshop, your agent saw it, probably photographed it. You have what you wanted, and yet I am without payment. My associate and I have come to collect.”

  “This is an outrage!” Holly screeched, shoving the drawing back across the coffee table so it flew off the end of the table. “I’ve never seen this drawing before in my life! What girl are you talking about? What bargain?”

  “I’d control my temper if I were you, Holly,” Morrie said, his voice taking on a singsong tone that was profoundly menacing. “We wouldn’t want this situation to escalate.”

  “Croak,” Quoth added from his perch.

  “You can sit on this and escalate,” Holly hissed, flashing him a perfectly manicured middle finger as she scrambled around the back of the sofa. “I don’t know what you two are doing here, but I’ll be reporting you to Marcus and the Fashion Group, of which I am a member. Of course I don’t want his drawings. I’m not going to steal his designs. I have plenty of my own.”

  “I know that’s not true,” I hissed. “You got away with it once before, in your Winter collection. The crimson coat with the Persian embroidery, or have you forgotten?”

  Holly flipped her sleek black hair over her shoulder. “Yeah, I admit it. I based my jacket off his design, but I didn’t even know it belonged to Marcus. I attended an appallingly dull gala dinner celebrating Marcus’ so-called genius. I left after before dessert because I couldn’t stand the stench of a ballroom filled with sycophants. As I descended the steps to meet my cab, a sheet of paper flew up and grazed my ankle. I picked it up, and there was a drawing of an embroidered coat. It was quite good. I balled it up and tossed it out the window of the taxi, but the idea stayed with me, and later it ended up part of my collection, but it wasn’t an exact copy by any means. I didn’t deliberately steal it from Marcus. He shouldn’t be so clumsy as to leave his designs fluttering around on the street!”

  I snorted. “I find this story highly improbable. Do you really believe it will hold up in court if we turn you over to the police? A woman was murdered, Holly. You’ll go down for it unless you give me what I want.”

  “Croak!” Quoth added, louder and more urgent.

  “You want me to pay you money for a drawing I don’t want, and admit to murdering someone I didn’t even know? When did this murder happen?”

  “Two nights ago, around nine, in a bookshop in Argleton,” Morrie said.

  Holly backed across the room, her cheeks reddening. “I didn’t murder anyone in a bookshop, and I can prove it.” She lunged across a desk and grabbed for a mobile phone.

  Panic shot through me. If she gets that phone, she’ll call the police.

  Morrie heaved himself off the chair and lunged across the room. But he wasn’t as fast a Quoth, who dived through his open cage door and swooped at the desk. Halfway there, his body buckled in midair, wing-bones elongating, legs twisting into a new shape, talons knitting together to become feet. Black feathers scattered across the floor as Quoth’s bones snapped and buckled, his features twisting into his human form.

  Shit shit shit.

  “Croooooooak,” Quoth warbled, the sound forming a human cry as his naked body sailed across the desk and knocked the phone to the ground. Morrie bent down and picked it up.

  “What the hell is going on?” Holly screamed, sliding off the desk and slamming into a rack of clothes. Dresses and jackets flew in all directions. “Where did that naked guy come from?”

  “He…” Remember, today you are Ashley. My heart hammered against my chest, but I straightened my back and glared at Holly. “He’s with us. He just prevented you from making a very stupid mistake. Now, we’ll be taking this phone, just to make sure you don’t call the police.”

  “I wasn’t calling anyone. I have photos on my Instagram that prove I’m innocent!” Holly cried, tossing a jacket at Quoth, who shrugged it on and went hunting through the pile for some pants. “It’s all there. Just take a look. Please.”

  Morrie was already flicking through the phone. “Look at this, gorgeous.” He held up the screen, scrolling through Holly’s Instagram feed. Sure enough, there was Holly with five other women – including the assistant downstairs – clinking Champagne glasses under the Eiffel Tower.

  “Even if I’d wanted to kill someone, which I don’t, I couldn’t have done it because I’ve been in Paris for the last week – I gave my staff the trip to say thank you for all their hard work this year. We got back yesterday, and I have the hotel receipts and plane tickets to prove it.”

  “You could have hired someone to do it,” I shot back. “It’s a convenient alibi.”

  “Everyone I would trust to do it was on that trip with me.” Her eyes blazed. “So you can take your accusations and your stolen drawings and your weird naked friend and shove them up your twat. Now, get out!”

  Chapter Nineteen

  “If it wasn’t Holly, who could it be?” I slumped over Heathcliff’s desk, staring at Marcus’ drawing with my head in my hands. It didn’t make sense. If Ashley had been killed for the drawing, why didn’t the killer take it with him?

  Morrie, Quoth and I arrived home an hour ago, just as Heathcliff was shutting up the shop. He was in a rotten mood because the place had been full of gawkers all day, but he’d also sold a record number of books, which means that he’d already lined up three bottles of mid-priced wine for us when we returned. I was too dejected to even make it up the stairs to the flat, so I slumped down opposite the desk. Morrie luxuriated under the window, his eyes fixed on his phone screen.

  Heathcliff set a glass down in front of me and I accepted it gratefully, letting the cold, fruity alcohol soothe off the weirdness of the day. Who knows, maybe wine was just what I needed to figure out what I was going to do about Morrie, about my mixed feelings for all of them, about Ashley… all of it.

  “It could still be Holly,” Morrie said without looking up from his phone. “She probably hired someone.”

  “I don’t believe that,” Quoth perched
on the edge of the table, swinging his legs while Grimalkin prowled around him. He still wore the jeans and shirt he’d ‘borrowed’ from Holly. They looked fucking amazing hugging his narrow hips and broad shoulders, the deep green of the shirt reflecting shimmering emerald strands through his hair. “A hired assassin wouldn’t have used that knife, or done the deed in the shop while we were upstairs, or left the drawing behind.”

  Morrie glanced up, his eyes sparkling. “You’re right. My genius is rubbing off on you.”

  “I’ve been reading a book about assassins, actually. It’s fascinating. Did you know that in ancient India, women called vishkanya dosed themselves with poison a bit at a time until they built up an immunity to it, and then got themselves invited into the presence of a rival king to cook and feed him poisoned food?”

  “That’s fascinating,” Heathcliff said, in a tone that implied it was not fascinating at all. “But it does not help with the mystery in front of us.”

  “I want to know more about these vishkanya,” I said, feeling weirdly protective of Quoth. After all, he’d leapt in to rescue us today when we thought Holly was calling the cops, risking exposure and capture to stop her getting that phone. Luckily, Holly had been too freaked out by the whole situation to have noticed Quoth’s shift.

  “Quoth knows all sorts of useless facts,” Morrie tap-tap-tapped the screen of his phone. “Useless facts for a useless animal.”

  Quoth’s face twisted with rage, like a switch flicking on behind his skull. Pain pooled in his eyes, those big brown orbs flaring with fire. I reached out toward him, to ask him what was the matter. But I never got the chance. Feathers flew in all directions as his body snapped and twisted, and a moment later the raven took off up the stairs, following by an excited Grimalkin.

  “Why did you say that?” I yanked Morrie’s phone out of his hand. “You hurt his feelings.”

  Heathcliff snorted, reaching across the desk to pour himself another wine. “Emotions are a human fault, and Quoth isn’t human.”

  “Relax, gorgeous. We say stuff like that all the time. Quoth knows we’re kidding.” Morrie reached for his phone, but I held it behind me back. Above our heads, footsteps pattered across the floor as Grimalkin chased Quoth around the shelves.

  “Yeah? Well, maybe you couldn’t see how that comment affected him, because you’re both insensitive wankers, but I did.”

  “I only said it because it’s true. Quoth can’t get upset about the truth – that would be impractical. You saw what he did today – he can’t even control his shift. He doesn’t go outside or work a job or help Heathcliff in the shop. He doesn’t even know how to talk to another human. All he does is hide up in the attic, drawing and reading, or flaps around down here pooping on the furniture.”

  “Croooooak!” Quoth yelled from upstairs. There was a crash, and Grimalkin howled.

  I stood up. “I’m going to talk to him.”

  “Don’t get between those two, or you’ll end up in hospital,” Morrie warned. “Quoth will settle down. He’s heard it all before. You can’t judge him by your standards, Mina. Heathcliff spoke the truth – Quoth isn’t human.”

  I stared at the ceiling, cringing as there was another crash and a yowl, and the sound of books thumping onto the floor.

  Don’t concern yourself with me, Mina. Quoth’s voice popped into my head. I’ve got that bastard cat right where I want her.

  “See?” Morrie grinned. “He’s fine. Nothing to worry about.”

  I rubbed my temple. It was going to take some getting used to hearing Quoth’s raven thoughts inside my head. Reluctantly, I sat back down – Morrie was right; Quoth’s talons were sharp, and Grimalkin was lethal when she wanted to be. It was better to wait until peace reigned.

  “I managed to get ahold of Ribald’s office,” Heathcliff said. “He wouldn’t come to the phone, but his assistant said he had back-to-back appointments and chortled when I suggested he might be in Martha’s Vineyard. So we know your friend lied.”

  “She’s not my friend,” I corrected him, waving my empty glass for him to refill.

  “Don’t you think it’s odd that the first drawing hasn’t appeared in the media yet?” Heathcliff refilled both our glasses. “If someone is paying money for these designs, wouldn’t they want to leak them as soon as possible?”

  “Not necessarily. It depends what they were going to do with them. Anyone paying Ashley that much money isn’t just wanting to leak the designs to the press – they want to add the garments to their own lines. But with Paris Fashion Week in January, they’re going to be scrambling to finish in time. This is haute couture. These garments are made from the finest natural fibers, hand-dyed and hand-stitched. Every single bead is attached by hand. That’s not the kind of thing you can just recreate in an afternoon.”

  “Maybe the idea wasn’t to recreate the pieces, but to blackmail this Ribald character?” Morrie suggested. “That’s what I would do, if I had these drawings in my possession. I’d dig up some dirt on this guy and force him to pay me cash and design my next collection in order to keep me quiet. And who better to blackmail him than his intern, who knows all the intricate details of his personal life?”

  Back when I thought Moriarty was just an eccentric computer nerd, that comment would have made me laugh. But I got caught up on the thought that he’d actually blackmailed people, actually gone through the process for setting up an elaborate scheme to ruin someone’s life, and that he thought nothing of doing it, and that smile of his lost a tiny bit of its luster.

  That wasn’t what you were thinking when he had you up against that wall, Quoth’s voice penetrated my thoughts.

  “What wall?” Heathcliff glanced up at me, his dark eyes boring into my soul. Shit. I didn’t want him to find out about Morrie and I. It would make it awkward for him in his own shop, especially since I didn’t know what I was going to do about Morrie, and I—

  Is that really the reason? Quoth asked. Or is it that you can’t choose between them?

  “Not a difficult choice,” Morrie said without looking up from his phone. “Brains over brawn every time.”

  “What are you choosing?” Heathcliff growled. “What’s that bloody bird talking about?”

  “Stay out of my head!” I yelled upstairs, my cheeks burning.

  “Croak!” came the reply.

  “So there might be something to this blackmail,” I said quickly, hoping to change the subject. “But how would we find out? I’m not going to have to talk to Marcus, am I?”

  “Not when we have the internet on our side.” Morrie tapped a few buttons on his phone. “Okay, I’ve pulled up Marcus’ Ribald’s financials. He’s made two large payments in the last year, one a few days before the gala dinner, and one just a week ago.”

  “They could be payments to do with Fashion Week.”

  “So he works with a lot of stylists who have anonymous Cayman Island accounts?”

  “Hmmm. You have a point.”

  “Of course I do. I’m very clever.” Morrie downed his glass in one gulp and picked up his phone again. “All we need to do is find out who these accounts belong to, and we’ve found our murderer.”

  “How do we do that?”

  “When you’re as brilliant as me, you don’t even need to answer that question.” Morrie tapped away on his phone. “Give me a minute, and I’ll have a name.”

  “But I don’t understand why Ashley was killed. She’s not the blackmailer. I just can’t see her setting up a Cayman Island account.”

  “I deduce one of three things happened. One, your dear friend was involved in this blackmail operation in some capacity, then decided she wanted out of the ring. She tried to leave and our blackmailer killed her to protect her identity. Two, your beloved Marcus Ribald hired someone to pose as the buyer and he killed Ashley to close the loop. Three, Ashley was working for Marcus all along, and she was killed because she threatened to report the blackmail. That’s usually how these things end.” Morrie paused. “No
t that I have any close personal experience with blackmail.”

  “No, not at all.” The back of my neck prickled, a reminder that this guy had been the foremost criminal in the world, the spider at the center of a vast, nefarious web.

  In a fictional world. Does it even count?

  “This is going to take me a little longer to break,” Morrie muttered, his fingers flying over his phone screen. “These Cayman banks are always tight with security.”

  I turned to Heathcliff. “Is this a ‘send out for pizza’ situation, or does he mean that he’s going to be working all night?”

  “Make mine a meatsplosion,” Morrie didn’t even look up from his screen, his fingers a blur. “I bet I’ll have this hacked by the time dinner arrives.”

  “You’re on,” I said. “Loser buys the next bottle of wine.”

  “Deal. I hope you’ve been saving your pennies, gorgeous, because I’ve got expensive taste.”

  Heathcliff picked up the phone on his desk. “Quoth,” he yelled. “You want your usual?”

  “Croak!”

  Heathcliff put in an other for three large pizzas, chips, and garlic bread, and endured a five minute conversation with the person on the other end reiterating that yes, his name really was Heathcliff, and no, he wasn’t some pimply-faced youth having a laugh.

  “It’s odd to think of the Heathcliff I know – the one from Wuthering Heights – eating pizza,” I said after he hung up.

  “We all of us agree one thing that’s improved from our fictional worlds is the cuisine,” Heathcliff said gruffly. “Nelly was a fair cook, but she cannot hold a candle to Tony’s Pizzeria. I’m grateful if I never see another mutton pie for the rest of my days.”