by Mark Henry
“So you’re probably all wondering why I called you back here.”
They were quiet a moment. Hellary yawned. Why I expected them to cooperate was the real mystery. Maiko broke the silence…unfortunately.
“Isn’t it obvious?” She pulled out an excruciatingly long cigarette holder and started puffing away, no cigarette necessary. “You think you’ve solved mystery and want to torture us with long-winded reveal, no doubt implicating each one of us in order to celebrate your own brilliance as you unveil actual killer with theatrical flourish.”
Bitch.
“It isn’t the Maiko show. So why don’t you just sit there and drink your Tanuki piss or fold paper birds or whatever the hell you do and shut the fuck up.”
“Mee-yow.” Tanesha could always be counted on for smart commentary.
Maiko scowled and puffed fat rings of smoke into my path as I paced the room. I waved at them to break them up a bit, but some of the smoke clung to the back of my hands like Styrofoam packing peanuts. I rubbed it off on a table edge.
“Now,” I continued. “I’d like to call your attention to the premise of American Minions: the fact that Mr. Birch was in need of a bodyguard. Oddly enough, it wasn’t just for the show, as you’d imagine it would be. We met only two days prior to shooting to discuss several death threats he’d been receiving over the phone and through the mail. Including some quite disturbing dead things, which were really more gross than frightening and kinda stunk, but that’s beside the point. Johnny was certain that someone was plotting to kill him and, clearly, as he is apparently deceased, that must have been the case.”
Angie leaned forward, head threatening to teeter from her neck. “Why do you say ‘apparently’?”
“I’ll get to that.” I slipped behind the bar and poured myself a gin. “From the first night at the mansion, I was aware of tensions between Johnny and his agent, the show’s producer, Mama Montserrat.”
Mama gasped for air in her tent. “Oh child, you don’t mean to suggest…”
“I mean to suggest just that. The two of you were seen arguing in this very bar. Do you care to tell us what that argument was about?”
Mama’s mouth clamped shut for a moment, then, “There were problems with the crew, nothing more. No doubt you saw how quickly they abandoned the project, well, they’d been threatening that before the production began. We’ve had some financial difficulties as a result of a rapid decline in the ratings of the last season of Tapping Birch’s Syrup. It’s as simple as that. A financial argument.”
“Fine. Believable, I suppose. You didn’t quarrel about your sexual relationship with Johnny at all? Not a word?”
Mama’s mouth hung open, and she whispered something to Hellary, who waved her off summarily, in favor of the In Touch crossword on celebrity drunks.91 Mama huffed and crossed her arms.
“Now, on the night of the murder, if that’s what it was.”
“Why do you keep saying zat?” Absinthe asked. “Do you mean Johnny wasn’t killed. Zat he committed ze suicide?”
“I’m getting to that. Just relax.” I took a swallow of the gin and slammed the glass down on the bar for effect. Wendy gave me the thumbs-up and I continued. “Well, first off, we can only speculate what happened behind Johnny’s closed and very locked door. What we do know is that he was visited in his room just prior to our discovery by Hairy Sue, who brought him an envelope delivered by a courier, who just so happens to deliver at one o’clock in the morning, like anyone’s ever heard of a delivery that late.”
“So, the envelope busts this shit right open, right?” Tanesha fanned herself. “Is it gettin’ hot up in here? Anyone?”
“In a sense. But let me finish. When we got the door open, we found several things. Johnny’s extensive porn collection, a bottle of expensive scotch, two envelopes, both containing gross dead things, a herd of stuffed animals and a pile of ashes in the shape of one Johnny Birch. We each got stuffed animals in our room, so that doesn’t seem terribly dubious, or does it?”
“Does it?” Angie asked.
I shrugged. “The pile of ashes was definitely that, ashes, and after a little checking through the porn it didn’t appear that anyone here was sidelining as a scat queen or a fist-fucking enthusiast so that just left the scotch, the envelopes and the two dead carcasses.
“This is where things got interesting. We started interviewing you all and found that you each either had a motive to kill Birch or would have if you knew he planned to film your romantic escapades with his nanny cams.” I lifted up a stuffed animal, set it on a nearby table and patted it on the head.
Angie and Maiko gasped.
“I’m not saying we’ve collected any hardcore footage, I’m just sayin’ we might.”
Maiko scowled.
“It’s unlikely either of you knew you were on NannyCam, so you’re not high on my list of suspects. After all, neither of you were jilted as was the case with one…” I spun around and fingered the beautiful drag artist. “Tanesha Jones.”
“Drag Wulf,” she added, nonplussed.
The other women gasped, right on cue. The night was going exactly as planned, at least in my mind. I glanced at Scott, who nodded proudly—or maybe I’m projecting.
“It’s true,” Tanesha said. “I’d had a brief and tumultuous affair with Johnny that ended rather badly.”
“Wait a minute,” Mama Montserrat growled. “Are you trying to say that Johnny was gay? I don’t buy it for a second.”
“Like I done told Amanda, Johnny was certainly not gay and he never treated me like anythin’ but a lady.”
“But it was sexual?” Maiko’s eyes narrowed.
“Definitely.”
“Then how did he not know?” Mama hissed.
“Some secrets I’ll take to my fuckin’ grave, if you don’t mind, bitch.” Tanesha stood up, her claws snapping, crackling and popping into the long daggers of a werewolf, while the rest of her remained all lady…ish.
Scott’s eyebrows raised in admiration. That kind of control over specific body part transformations was the work of a highly controlled shifter. I’d only known one other and she was quite dead, or wished she was, living out an afterlife sentence in the bowels of the underworld courtesy of one Elizabeth Karkaroff, my boss, if you’ll recall.92
“Calm down, girl.” I stepped between her and Mama.
“I’ll pop her. Don’t think I won’t.” She reached an exceptionally long index claw at the voodoo priestess’s oxygen tent.
I stretched to put my hand on Tanesha’s arm. “I know you could, but I also know you’d feel bad about it, later.”
She lowered her claws and sighed. “It’s true. I’m sorry, Mama.”
“Well, I’m not!” she shouted from her bubble. “I know your kind, tried to change him didn’t you?”
I needed to rein it in before the tensions exploded. “If that’s the case then it didn’t work, did it, Mama? After all, Johnny started up a sexual relationship with you shortly after and you’re not hiding any tackle under that girth of yours, are you?
She scowled and Tanesha chuckled, relaxing back into her chair.
“But never mind that, I’m certain that you’re not Johnny’s killer. But you are a killer.”
Hellary glanced up from her rag for that one. “What?”
“That was an accident,” Mama spat. “And you know it, we’ve been over this.”
“You see, ladies, that expensive bottle of scotch wasn’t meant for Johnny. He doesn’t drink, never touches the stuff. But his lover did. Like a fish, though I’d have pegged her for a Mad Dog 20/20 grape wine kind of girl. I’m talking about, of course, Hairy Sue!”
The stripper broke her beer bottle on the edge of her table and started wheeling furiously at Mama Montserrat. “You tried to kill me twice, bitch? I’ll cut open that voodoo snow globe of yours and show you who’s gonna kill who.”
I stepped forward and planted a Louboutin on the front of Hairy Sue’s chair, kicking her back in t
he opposite direction. “True enough,” I said. “But she didn’t. She did, however, inadvertently dispatch Janice and Eunice.” Figuring we’d fit in some sort of photomontage of the crispy-haired sirens, I looked directly into the camera. “God bless their souls.”
“Okay,” Tanesha said. “That takes care of the booze, but you said the envelopes were the real clue.”
“And they were. Not so much because they were there. I’d already seen the first envelope at the Hooch and Cooch where I met Johnny.”
“You met him at a strip club? That’s kind of tacky.” Hellary peeked over her reading glasses.
I sighed. “We’re totally going to edit you out of the show, I hope you know that.”
“Whatever.” Her head rocked from side to side as she sing-sang the word.
“The real clue came when we searched Johnny’s room a second time and only one of the carcasses was present. I didn’t know what it meant at the time, but my impression was that the creepy bug-thing had come back to life. Having a bit of experience with that kind of thing myself, you can see how I’d make the jump to that conclusion. So we tore out of there.”
Hairy Sue glared at me venomously.
I slunk toward her.
“I’ve got you. The envelope you delivered was empty, wasn’t it?”
She didn’t even blink.
“It was a couple of days later that I found a photograph of one of those creatures in a book.” I crouched next to the frothy stripper, rage seething behind her gritted teeth. “Sue, would you like to tell the crowd what those little creatures are?”
Her head jerked away and she folded her arms across her chest.
“No? Didn’t think so.” I stood and took a spot in the center of the room.
Wendy and Scott took their places to get the reaction shots. Mouths were already open in anticipation. Tanesha even licked her lips.
“They were wood nymphs.”
Silence. Stares even.
Apparently I’d confused the gathering, but not Hairy Sue who was backing away silently into the shadows.
“You see. I wasn’t aware—and how could I be, really, it’s not like I study woodland creatures, that’d be boring—that when wood nymphs aren’t walking among us in human form, their natural state is this odd-looking twig-like insect. When threatened, they can and do go into a state of paralysis mimicking death. Some of them can even achieve this state through dehydration and exhaustion.”
“Are you saying that—” Tanesha began, but was cut off by a familiar voice.
“She’s saying that I poured out the ashes, transformed myself and slipped myself inside the empty envelope that Sue delivered and then snuck out while you bitches tried to claw each other’s eyes out.”
I twisted toward the voice and came face to face with the barrel of a gun.
Johnny Birch lurched out of the shadows wearing a dinner jacket, an ascot and a smarmy grin.
CHANNEL 21
Wednesday
12:00–1:00 A.M.
Cataclysm Jones
This week’s disaster takes us to Quito, Ecuador, where Cataclysm has a landslide of good times with some hillside villagers. Also, who knew Ecuadorian was so spicy?
“Terribly mediocre Poirot impersonation, Amanda. Maybe you ought to spend a little more time reading Agatha Christie and a little less time getting your skin to sag like her corpse.”
I offered my coldest stare, jutting both my jaw and hip violently.93
“Oh girl, I know you ain’t gonna let that twig-dicked motherfucker talk to your ass like that.” Tanesha stood up menacingly…and sat back down once Johnny aimed the gun at her.
“That’s right, love, just sit your pretty butt in that chair and be quiet.” Johnny sidestepped behind Hairy Sue’s wheelchair and laid a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “Everything will be fine, darling.”
“Like hell it will!” Mama Montserrat rolled over and pushed up on her knees, snatching at a pendant around her throat until it released, revealing a thin sliver of bone she wielded like a prison shank.
But before she could cut her way out of the bubble, Spew stood up and shook the entire contraption like a snow globe. Mama slipped around inside and settled on her back, winded and humiliated.
Johnny chuckled, but continued caressing Hairy Sue as he talked. “I’ve gotta say, I’m impressed with your perseverance, Amanda. I wouldn’t have believed you’d take this crazy show idea of yours and run with it.”
“What else could I do? We all need this to work. Well, maybe not the contestants, since I’m guessing prize money is out of the question.”
“What?” The word rose up from four different points in the room, though it wasn’t so much a question as a threat. Tanesha’s jaw shook, Maiko’s hands turned a translucent gray and were stretching across the table, Absinthe’s jaw started cracking and popping (and we all know what that means), while Angie simply glowered.
“I think you better explain yourself. You might be able to take out a couple of them, but it’s doubtful you’ll make it out of here alive after coming between a girl and her money.”
“I’m not explaining shit, rotter.” He stepped forward and pressed the muzzle of the gun to my forehead, much to the delight of Hellary, who clapped her hands excitedly.
Scott growled through shifting vocal cords. I didn’t have to turn to know that the pops and shredding I heard was his shirt coming apart at the seams and buttons bouncing off the walls; likewise, Wendy’s jaw echoed with the ratcheting of bone and sinew, her mouth stretching open for a brutal feeding.
“Saint Francis on a fuckin’ fritter!” Hairy Sue screamed, her eyes wide with fear and warning. “Johnny, watch out!”
Johnny inched backward, glancing sideways and quickly ducking as Hairy Sue’s casts blew out in a massive blast of chalky powder and chunks, her legs thick as tree trunks and clothes dangling in strips off her waist and neck. The wheelchair blasted away behind her, crashing into the wall and busting a table clean in half.
She roared, also, but that was really just overkill.
Scott jumped into her path. He was smaller than the yeti, but only by a hair and lean with muscle rather than the bulbous pouches of fat covering Hairy Sue’s gargantuan frame.
“Now now,” Johnny said, trying to soothe his lover. “We don’t want any trouble, do we, Sue?”
“I think she wants trouble.” I peered around Scott and took note of the blood pooling in the corners of the yeti’s eyes. “I’m pretty sure.”
“So do I.” A man I’d never seen before marched into the room with a gun in one hand and nose spray in the other.
Gil gasped and stood up, slamming one fist on the table—he might have managed both, for added effect, had he not been nursing a rather large goblet of the red stuff.94 “Chase. You motherfucker.”
Johnny spun on the newcomer, biting his lip with schoolgirl glee. “Chase.”
“Don’t ‘Chase’ me, I’ve been tracking you for days.” Chase squinted, searching the depths of the bar for the other voice. “Jesus, is that Gil?”
“Uh, yeah.” Gil pursed his lips, reached down and brushed Vance’s (or whatever his name is) face gently with the back of his hand. “And this is my new boyfriend.”
Chase shrugged and rolled his eyes. Gil sneered.
“Zat’s him!” Absinthe pointed at Chase. “Zat’s ze guy I saw come from around ze side of the house.”
Hairy Sue’s head swung from Johnny to Chase, thin ribbons of spittle dangling from her fangs. She shifted from one leg to the other, anxious for violence, ready to pounce—or possibly needing to pee. Either way, I wished I had an Uzi and some training.
I kept my distance, but not my mouth shut.95 “I smell love triangle.”
“Shut up!” Johnny yelled. “You don’t know.”
“She knows,” Chase advanced. “She’s figuring it out, just like everyone else is.”
I wasn’t really, but who’s gonna argue? I mean really, they both have guns and looked pretty e
dgy, maybe they’d take care of each other.
Hairy Sue stopped growling and cocked her head, eyes narrowing to slits.
Gil stepped out of the shadows. “Are you here to tell Johnny about the venereal disease you gave him, too?”
“Gave him!” Chase barked. “Try the other way around.”
Hairy Sue roared and spun on Birch, snatching him up by his throat before he could cast his bluesy magic. His legs kicked out from under him and he hung for a moment, gagging, clawing at Hairy Sue’s enormous fist with one hand as his face turned a nasty shade of Violet Beauregarde blue.96
“Oh shit, someone else besides Mama gots the pejohos in their fapuna!” Tanesha was nothing if not colorful, but if she was trying to turn that into a trendy saying, I was afraid she was facing an uphill battle.
“She means,” I interpreted for the slow. “Someone else received the gift that keeps on giving.”
I’d nearly expected it to be the end of the show. Wendy was already advancing for a close-up when Johnny brought the gun up to the yeti’s head and, without the slightest hesitation or change in his stoic demeanor, fired. The blast plastered both the ceiling and the portrait of Samuel Harcourt with Hairy Sue’s brains and shards of bloody skull—it dripped from the patriarch’s teeth like sloppy summer watermelon.97 Her body slammed to the floor, splintering the hardwood. Cracks radiated through the room.
Chase moved toward Birch, cocking the pistol, even as he snorted nasal spray from his other hand with a great heave.