“No thanks.”
Disappointed, Brondon tugged on the collar of his plaid sport jacket. “Is this just sour grapes for the . . . unpleasantness with JLPN a few years ago? Water under the bridge! We’re a different company now—resurrected, if you will. Our new specialty products are designed to help unnaturals with all their hygiene needs.”
“No sour grapes on my part, Mr. Morris. I stand by my investigative work, and the courts upheld it.”
I had history with Jekyll Lifestyle Products and Necroceuticals. Case history. Personal history.
Four years into our partnership, Robin and I had worked on a class-action lawsuit against JLPN. The parent company had been a successful cosmetics and toiletries manufacturer for decades, but after the Big Uneasy, when much of the public shivered under the bedsheets in fear of monsters, the company’s CEO—Harvard Stanford Jekyll—realized there was an entirely new pool of customers for a line of specialized creams, shampoos, toothpaste, deodorants, perfumes, everything an unnatural needed for a happy and productive unlife.
In a rather embarrassing incident, some customers experienced problems with a conditioning shampoo developed for vampires. Specifically, it made their hair fall out. Vampire Pattern Baldness. And once undead hair fell out, it didn’t grow back. Vampires tend to be vain, banking on their sexual magnetism, imagining careers as cover models for bodice-ripping, jugular-puncturing romance novels. The shampoo users were distraught to watch their suaveness reduced with every stroke of a comb or brush.
So a group of newly bald vampires engaged the services of Chambeaux & Deyer. While Robin filed lawsuits, I did my detective work and discovered that two lots of the JLPN shampoo had “accidentally” been contaminated with garlic oil. After further investigation (impersonating a factory employee and surreptitiously copying confidential records, long after business hours), I found proof that the garlic oil was intentionally added by a disgruntled employee, who was later reprimanded and let go. The company pulled the vampire shampoo from the shelves, paid an undisclosed amount in damages—our cut of the settlement paid the rent for six months—and spent years recovering from the public-relations disaster.
Needless to say, I was persona non grata over there.
Brondon gave me an awkward smile now. “So let’s bury the hatchet. How about trying some of our products? Free samples—in the spirit of goodwill?”
Even though most unnaturals used the stuff, I really had no desire to. “I appreciate the offer, but sometimes I do undercover surveillance. I don’t want people to smell my cologne from a block away.”
Brondon brushed off the insult and turned his attention back to the three zombie cougars, who basked in his presence. Because of his daily sales routine, I could think of few humans who were so entirely at ease among unnaturals. Brondon bent close and said in a stage whisper, as if he imagined that none of us men could overhear him, “I’ll be at the Goblin Tavern later on tonight, ladies, if any of you care to join me for a drink. . . .”
Victoria, Cindy, and Sharon fervently promised that they would see Brondon there, come Hell or high water—and nowadays, floods and the underworld were well within the realm of possibility. Brondon packed up his sample case, gave a flirtatious wave to the cadaverous women, and sauntered out of the embalming parlor.
Bruno unhooked the needle and tube from my arm. “There you are, sir. All topped off. Good as new.”
“A reasonable facsimile, at least,” I said, and I did feel refreshed. I took a quick glance at the mirror, touched a fingertip to the mortician’s putty in my forehead. No sign of a bullet hole. Bruno had done a good job.
I paid him, gathered my hat and jacket, and headed back to the office.
CHAPTER 7
As I walked through the door, Sheyenne was arranging a stack of advertising flyers on the corner of her desk. I glanced down, trying to figure out what they were. “Another client?”
“A very dapper gentleman dropped these off, asking us to pass them out to our clientele. New business start-up in the Quarter. I figured we’d earn some goodwill by supporting our fellow entrepreneurs.”
I picked up one of the flyers. It was for a glassmaker’s shop that specialized in dark window tinting. Black Glass, Inc. Opacity Guaranteed. Blocks out all harmful purifying rays of the sun—UV, infrared, and visible. We also repair mirrors.
“Sure, go ahead and hand them out. I wonder if they install normal windows too.” I thought of the damage that had been done to the Hope & Salvation Mission. “I might have a customer for them.”
A few minutes later, Miranda Jekyll entered the office, cloaked in an aura of pomp and circumstance as if her very presence generated all the fanfare a person could need. She was dressed to the nines (or the tens, or however much she could afford), and she wasn’t afraid to show it. Miranda’s husband Harvey—Harvard Stanford Jekyll—paid for it all and resented every penny, especially now that he had filed for divorce, which only made her spend more extravagantly.
Her smile was as wide and dazzling as a great white shark’s; her red lipstick made blood look pallid by comparison. Her cinnamon-dyed hair was intricately coiffed and cemented into place by more hair spray and styling product than a salon used in a week. A lawn gnome could have jumped through her enormous hoop earrings.
Harvey Jekyll insisted that their prenuptial agreement was null and void because now that she had become a werewolf, Miranda was no longer the same person who had signed the document. Therefore, she was not entitled to half of Jekyll Lifestyle Products and Necroceuticals. Robin had been fighting on Miranda’s behalf for months, and I’d been working behind the scenes to gather leverage to use against Jekyll. After the vampire shampoo incident, Jekyll hadn’t been on my Favorite Persons list to begin with.
Now Miranda swished forward with lupine grace, her back straight, head erect, hands slightly outstretched as if she meant either to embrace or claw whoever came within her grasp. “Sweethearts!” she announced, pronouncing it “sweet-hots,” as if we were some kind of startlingly potent candy. “I’ve been dying to see you. I simply must have an update on my case.”
I extended my hand in a businesslike gesture, but when she took it in her own, it was a caress, not a shake. Her pointed nails traced little patterns on my pale skin. “Mr. Chambeaux, it’s always a pleasure to see you.”
When Sheyenne offered her a beverage, Miranda fluttered her fingers in a quick dismissive movement. “I doubt you carry anything that I’d drink. Not to worry, I can stay only a minute. Considering how long it’s taking your agency to solve my little problem, one might think I’m paying you by the hour. Oh wait, I am! But I don’t resent it a minute, because it’s my husband’s money anyway. However, I simply must impress upon you how desperate I am to get out of this marriage.”
“Come into the conference room, and we’ll go over what we have so far,” Robin said. “Is it all right if Dan sits in?” Technically, I wasn’t supposed to be in a confidential attorney-client meeting.
“I hired you both, sweethearts, and I don’t care whether this is solved in the courts or under the table . . . so long as it’s solved.”
I gestured Miranda into the conference room. “I’m sorry you’re dissatisfied with our progress, ma’am.”
“I didn’t say dissatisfied—just impatient. I long to be free.”
Sheyenne glided into the conference room, bringing the file; she set it in front of me, gave me a private wink, then left.
Robin sat down, serious. “If getting out of the marriage is most important, Mrs. Jekyll, your husband already wants a divorce, and you could sign the papers right now. Granted, you won’t walk away with any of his fortune, but at least you’ll have your self-esteem. You can be free to find true love, if that’s your highest priority.”
Miranda gave poor Robin a withering glare. “That would defeat the entire purpose of all those years I endured him, sweetheart. You simply must find a way to put him over a barrel in the courts. Or you, Mr. Chambeaux—catch him doin
g something very naughty . . . I’m sure he must be doing something. Aren’t we all? If I can hold a big nasty club over his head, then we’ll reach an amicable settlement.”
Considering how bitter the relationship was, I doubted any settlement short of Miranda’s slow torture and lingering death would feel “amicable” to Harvey Jekyll. Instead of pointing that out, I said, “I conducted intensive surveillance, Mrs. Jekyll, but my recent . . . setback created delays in several of our cases.”
“Yes, yes—your death,” Miranda said with a luxurious and dismissive brush of her clawlike hand. “I’m not an ogre, Mr. Chambeaux. Nobody expects the same sort of progress from a dead detective as from a live one, but that doesn’t make me any less miserable. We’ve got to break the prenup, somehow.”
Robin pulled out the inch-thick document and flipped through the pages. “Your husband’s reason for breaking the agreement is nonsense. It won’t stand up in court, despite his stalling tactics.”
“Harvey’s attorneys claim that the marriage itself has fundamentally changed, due to my transformation.”
And everything had changed for her. Two years earlier, Miranda Jekyll had been scratched, infected, and transformed into a werewolf. Harvey Jekyll subsequently claimed, through his coterie of lawyers, that his wife was no longer human, therefore not the person who had signed the agreement, and therefore and whereas, he was no longer bound to the terms, yadda yadda, and she was entitled to nothing.
Miranda, not surprisingly, held a different point of view.
In the newly changed world, so many legal questions had no precedents for lawyers to fall back on. The courts were clogged, and few judges wanted anything to do with the societal headaches caused by the unnaturals.
Robin scrutinized the document that she had read many times before. “Granted, the original contract you and Mr. Jekyll signed many years ago is quite thorough and ironclad—”
“It should be,” Miranda said. “Each side had seven lawyers at five hundred dollars an hour apiece, combing over every comma, period, semicolon, and exclamation point. Since when does a legal contract have an exclamation point? Well, this one has it.”
“I filed motions for outright dismissal, Mrs. Jekyll, taking the stance that you are still the same individual who signed the contract. How can anyone disagree?”
“Harvey has photos of me as a werewolf. Show those to an all-human jury, and he’ll have a ruling in an hour.”
“You are exactly the same person, except for during that time of the month.”
“Even then, I’m still me, regardless of whether I sprout hair and get more feisty—some men like that.” Miranda tossed her head, and not a single strand of her hair moved. “Throughout history, men have put up with women turning into bitches for a few days every month. Never been cause for breaking a prenup before.”
“Exactly!” Robin said with a grin. “I’m sure we can win this, if we get a sympathetic judge.”
I looked down at the files. “Robin may be confident, but I’d feel better if I could dredge up concrete evidence of something that your husband wouldn’t want displayed in open court.” I pressed my lips hard together. “We always do our best to help our clients, Mrs. Jekyll, but ever since the JLPN class-action suit, I also have my own grudge against the guy.”
She flashed her great-white-shark grin again. “Oh, that’s no surprise at all. It’s why I hired Chambeaux and Deyer in the first place! I was impressed with your work, even if it did cause severe financial losses to the company. Harvey deserved it.”
I took out a stack of my old surveillance photos. Miranda had seen them before, but I decided we could all use a fresh look. “After you engaged our services, I spent weeks following your husband after dark, but I never found any evidence of him having an affair.”
“No surprise. The man’s a sexless little worm. He never wanted to have sex with me—me!” Miranda pointed to herself, accentuating her breasts as if her sheer animal desirability was self-evident. “I can’t imagine him looking elsewhere for companionship, but who knows? In that twisted walnut-sized brain of his, maybe Harvey has needs, too, needs that I can’t meet, though I couldn’t imagine what they might be.”
Now, Miranda was our client, and the client is always innocent, always wronged, and always on the right side of justice. But I’m not naïve, and I assumed that the sultry and vivacious woman was fooling around as well. Undoubtedly, her husband had his own private investigators trying to find dirt on Miranda. I just hoped that she was good at hiding it—and that Harvey wasn’t. In the matter of the prenup, it would all come down to which person had the better mudslinging campaign.
I spread out the photos and tapped them, focusing the conversation on business before Miranda could go into detail about her own sex life. “Here’s a curious one. I followed your husband to the landfill outside the city, after dark. Some kind of off-books delivery or disposal. Shouldn’t a big corporate exec have underlings for jobs like that?”
“Harvey has underlings to do everything, sweetheart. It’s suspicious, but I don’t see how that helps us.”
“I plan to follow up and ask around.” I pulled out more photos. Twice, I had tracked Harvey Jekyll to clandestine nighttime meetings with shadowy figures, once accompanied by his chief sales rep, Brondon Morris. “I have no idea what those meetings were. I could never get close enough.”
“Could it be a sex parlor of some kind?” Robin sounded embarrassed. “Drugs? Gambling?”
“We can only hope,” Miranda said. “You’ll need proof.”
“I will step up the surveillance, Mrs. Jekyll.” As a zombie, I could put in long hours, day and night. “It’s taken me a few weeks to . . . get back on my feet. Don’t worry, I’m on the job now. The cases don’t solve themselves.”
“No, sweetheart, they don’t.” She reached into her handbag, which probably cost as much as a block of real estate in the Unnatural Quarter, and withdrew her checkbook. “I’m going to double your hourly fee this week in hopes that it encourages you.”
She wrote out a check from her husband’s account, blew us an air-kiss, and said her goodbyes.
CHAPTER 8
Seated at my desk, I spent half an hour studying the homicide file McGoo had delivered to me (unofficially) four days after I awakened from the grave. “Here you go, Shamble—do your stuff. The cases don’t solve themselves.”
I was grateful, though intimidated. “It’s not often a person gets a chance to catch his own murderer.”
“Consider this a do-it-yourself project. Besides, it’ll save me the work.”
Fortunately for me, the medical examiner relied on virtual autopsies and high-tech imaging of suspected murder victims. (In my case, there wasn’t much “suspected” about the murder.) My body had been buried intact, relatively speaking.
Now I reread the report, although I already had the words memorized: Classification of Death: Homicide. Cause of Death: Gunshot wound to head. Bullet entered lamboid suture of skull, completely penetrating brain and exiting forehead. Wound is consistent with .32 caliber bullet found at crime scene.
The slug had been embedded in a wooden door in the alley, having lost most of its momentum after passing through my skull. The bullet was damaged by striking the door (not to mention the back and front of my skull, which, according to McGoo, is quite thick). Even so, the lab had gotten good information:
Lead rim-fired bullet, five lands and grooves with a right-hand twist, consistent with a round from an antique Smith & Wesson No. 2 Army .32 caliber revolver. As best we could tell, the weapon was made around the time of the U.S. Civil War. No bullet casing found at the scene, but in that kind of gun, someone would have had to remove the casing manually, and only a stupid murderer would have left it on the ground. Anybody who could have killed me had to be reasonably smart, or lucky. Just for my own reputation, I preferred to imagine him, or her, as fiendishly smart.
A lot of unnaturals had a fondness for antiques. Gun shops specialized in exotic p
ieces, and in the Unnatural Quarter it was easy enough to get hold of unregistered weapons of all makes and types. I just needed to figure out who owned a hundred-fifty-year-old Smith & Wesson .32 revolver.
Piece of cake.
Chambeaux & Deyer dealt with the usual gamut of cases: missing persons, divorces, civil lawsuits, recovery of stolen objects.
Seven years ago, Robin had won her first legal case dealing with unnaturals—securing a victory for a monster-literacy charity—before the two of us ever joined forces. A prominent werewolf millionaire had died as a result of a tragic silver-letter-opener accident (another story entirely), and the will left his entire fortune to the literacy charity. The jilted family contested the will, alleging that becoming a werewolf each full moon had rendered the old man mentally incompetent; they showed video evidence of his slavering, bestial antics to prove their point.
Robin argued that—notwithstanding the allegation that a werewolf was by definition mentally incompetent—the decedent was indisputably competent during the rest of the month when the moon wasn’t full, and she entered lunar charts into evidence to prove that the moon had been in the gibbous phase at the time he signed the will. Based on her argument, the judge ruled that the monster-literacy charity was entitled to the full inheritance, as stated in the millionaire’s will.
A few years before that, I had put out my shingle offering my services as a detective around what would later become the Unnatural Quarter. After McGoo got himself punitively promoted to this part of town, he threw me a bone and set me up with my first unnatural case.
He put me in touch with a forlorn family who was desperately trying to track down their uncle Mel. I treated it like a regular missing persons case, even though Mel was one of the walking dead. He had died six months before the Big Uneasy, but his corpse was still fresh enough to rise up in the first wave of zombies after all the rules changed. When his family came to deliver flowers to the grave one day, they found the earth churned and a sunken hole left where Mel had battered his way out of the coffin and clawed himself back into the light of day.
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