Beauty & the Beast: Vendetta

by Nancy Holder

  “He just got engaged.” Cat pointed to Dre. “They’re going to get married on the cruise.”

  “Ooh, do you have a song?” Fidela clapped her hands. “Did you alert the kitchen? They can make a wedding cake for you. What about a wedding dress for your bride?”

  “I have a groom,” Dre said. “We were eyeing Cat’s jacket. Look at this fabric. Isn’t it wonderful?”

  “It is,” Fidela said. “I just love this cut.” Now she was caressing Cat’s jacket. “My parents own a tailor shop in the garment district in Los Angeles. I used to help with the alterations and I can tell you that this is beautifully made.”

  “Thank you.” Goosebumps danced along Cat’s arms as the flush of heat transformed into an icy chill. She turned to Dre. “Will you tell my husband that I went to the cabin? I’m not feeling well.”

  Dre lightly touched her forearm. “But that thing we talked about…”

  “Not an issue. Honest.” Cat managed a smile. “This was acquired in the line of duty. Gangbanger,” she added.

  “Wow, intense.” Dre’s eyes were huge.

  “Well, I’ll see you both later.” Cat lurched for the exit. “Please don’t forget to tell Vincent.”

  “I won’t,” Dre said.

  As she walked away, she heard him say to Fidela, “You don’t suppose she’s pregnant, do you?”

  * * *

  In the dining room, Bethany asked to take a look at the ice sculptures and her father accompanied her, much to her obvious annoyance. While the two were examining the shimmering dolphins poised above lacy coral, Vincent turned to Dr. Jones, who was seated on his left. Stephan was occupied, ordering a third bottle of champagne. Captain Kilman had not yet returned.

  “I think Mr. Daugherty may be suffering from a significant medical condition,” Vincent said quietly. “His circulation appears to be compromised. At the very least.”

  The Sea Majesty’s physician gazed at him coolly. “I’m not at liberty to discuss that. Mr. Daugherty and I have a confidential doctor–patient relationship.”

  So I’m right. Vincent picked up the champagne glass at his elbow and took a sip.

  After a beat, the doctor said, “You and your wife are spending a lot of time with his daughter. I will tell you in strictest confidence that he hasn’t shared the severity of his condition with her, and that she may be in for a shock.”

  He’s going to die? Vincent frowned. “I’d assume that the Sea Majesty has a policy about permitting passengers who may require specialized medical intervention.”

  “Please don’t trouble yourself, Dr. Keller.” She took a drink of water. “I misspoke. Nothing will happen on the cruise.”

  I’m not sure she’s being straight with me.

  But there was nothing he could do about it at dinner. He took a sip of champagne; he realized it was Catherine’s glass but drained it anyway. She could have his. Speaking of… He looked around for her. A wave of heat rushed up his chest and fanned over his cheeks.

  Dre came hurrying toward him. “Your bride asked me to tell you that she’s not feeling well. She went to your cabin.”

  Vincent got to his feet. Dre held up his hands. “I’m sure it’s nothing,” the man assured him. “She said she was a little seasick.”

  “I’m not feeling all that great, either,” Vincent remarked.

  Dre knit his brows. “I’d say it was something you ate, but we haven’t eaten anything yet. You’re looking a bit gray. Maybe Dr. Jones should check you both out.”

  Maybe Dr. Jones should stay with Forrest Daugherty, Vincent thought. As Dre turned to alert the physician, Vincent held up a hand. “If we need her, we’ll call for her. I think I just need to lie down.”

  Dre nodded. “Well, I hope you get your sea legs soon.”

  “Thanks.”

  Vincent gave the man a nod and left the dining room. The stout sea breeze refreshed him as he walked up the stairway to their stateroom. Whatever had hit him had disappeared. Hopefully Catherine had recovered as well. But this gave them a perfect excuse to take a night off from Bethany, video games, and The Walking Dead. After he checked on Catherine he’d go back to the dining room and beg off.

  Roberto was standing at the top of the stairs with his back to Vincent, almost as if he were studying their front door. It took Vincent a moment to place him as the man who had first escorted them to the honeymoon suite. He wondered what Roberto was doing there.

  “Did Catherine ring for something?” Vincent asked him.

  Roberto jerked, then turned around and moved his shoulders. “If she did, I’m sure your steward is handling her request, but I’d be more than glad to check on that.” He began to walk away.

  “No, no. It’s fine.” He moved past Roberto and swiped his key card. “Good night.”

  “Goodnight, Dr. Keller.”

  The birdsong trilled as Vincent entered the suite and shut the door behind himself. The foyer was dark; he tiptoed across the room and softly opened the door to their bedroom. There were no lights on, but he could make out Catherine’s form lying on the mattress.

  “Vincent?” she moaned. “The room is spinning.”

  “I wasn’t feeling so hot, either, but I’m better now,” he said. “Maybe we should have laid off the champagne until we had something to eat.”

  She curled toward him as he sat on the edge of the bed. She had taken off her jacket, gown, and bra and lay in nothing but her lacy panties. “I only had two sips of champagne.”

  “True. I finished your glass.” He picked her clothes off the bed and carried them to the bureau. “I’m sorry this night was such a bust.”

  “Yeah, we finally bust out of video game prison and I’m wilting like week-old roses.” She rolled over on her side. “Dre thought you were beating me up. He saw my black eye beneath my makeup.”

  Vincent closed his eyes and shook his head. “He didn’t say a word about it to me.”

  “And he and that singer were practically fondling my jacket. I mean, it is a beautiful jacket, Vincent, and I love it, but it was like they couldn’t stop touching it.”

  “Weird. Listen, I’m going to tell Bethany that we’re not feeling up to company. I’ll be right back.”

  He left Catherine in the stateroom and closed the front door, tilting with the roll of the immense ship in the gathering seas. As he dashed toward the dining room, he caught a whiff of ozone just before the sky burst open and rain poured down, much harder this time. The storm was building. He covered his head with his hand.

  “I think we’re in for a bumpy ride,” Vincent muttered.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  When Tess heard Heather’s voicemail pick up yet again, she hung up the handset and glared at her office’s landline.

  No Heather.

  No call back.

  It wasn’t like her.

  Through the window of her office door she could see the chaos of the squad room; uniforms and plain clothes, everyone seemed to be in motion, but it barely registered in her brain.

  Maybe like JT had said, Heather was off somewhere with that new boyfriend neither of them had met. But every time she had housesat for Cat before and was going to be away from the apartment, she had left word where she was headed and when she thought she’d be back. Heather could be impulsive, and she was always apologetic after she’d leapt the wrong way, but she was never distant or secretive. Dealing with Cat’s little sister was frustrating at times but Tess couldn’t ever stay mad for long. Heather brought out protective, maternal feelings.

  Tess winced, remembering the pee test she still hadn’t taken, then pushed it to the back of her mind.

  Why hadn’t Heather returned her calls?

  She was usually compulsive about that, along with texting and tweeting—a chatty person. Tess checked her cell again. No texts. No tweets. She realized that her attitude had gone from not at all concerned to irritated to more worried by the quarter hour. If something happened to Cat’s sister on her watch she knew she would never for
give herself.

  Tess looked at the piles of paperwork stacked on her desk, glanced over at the wall clock, and heaved a sigh. Nine p.m. She had already put in a thirteen-hour day with lunch—an apple and reheated coffee—at her desk. A captain’s job was never done, and she was on duty twenty-four seven. She decided the paperwork wasn’t going anywhere and could wait until tomorrow.

  Tess took her weapon and badge from the desk drawer, grabbed her coat, purse and Cat’s spare key, and headed out the door. She thought about calling JT back to tell him where she was going, but she didn’t want to hear him tell her she was “just being silly.”

  She drove to VinCat’s building in an unmarked “company car.” As soon as she stepped inside the darkened apartment, a gross, piney odor hit her and made every muscle in her body tense. It reeked like someone had spilled a whole bottle of disinfectant.

  “Heather?” she called as she flicked on the light.

  No answer.

  She immediately drew her weapon, quickly chambered the first round, and dropped the safety.

  “Heather, it’s Tess. Are you okay?” She advanced with the department issue automatic lowered, holding it in a two-handed defensive position that she could switch to gun-aimed and-blazing in a heartbeat.

  When she reached the living room and hit the light switch, Tess froze. She saw the signs of a struggle… and worse. Someone had splashed disinfectant all over the couch, but the darker blotches on the seat cushion and backrest looked like blood. And a lot of it. The sheer size of the stains told her that someone had most certainly died in Cat and Vincent’s living room.

  Oh no, not Heather. Please not Heather.

  But as far as she knew there had been no one else in the apartment since Cat and Vincent left.

  The horror of what might have already happened made her teeth clench and she let out a soft moan through her nose. A homicide so close to home, to someone dear, turned a seasoned murder cop into an instant civilian. Tess started to hyperventilate, but caught herself before she completely melted down.

  Nothing is certain. Not yet. For Pete’s sake, keep it together. Do this by the book.

  Tess squeezed her eyes shut, took five deep, slow breaths, and let her inner cop kick in.

  She moved quickly through the apartment, turning on all the lights, scanning it over the sights of the pistol, checking each room just long enough to verify it was empty. Satisfied that she was alone, she holstered her weapon, took out her Mini Maglite, and walked carefully back to the couch. The intense spotlight revealed two small, closely spaced holes in the seat cushion, pretty much in the center of the stain.

  A double tap. From the hole diameter, a nine milli or .380 auto.

  Tess leaned closer, avoiding touching or standing on anything. She saw a tiny crescent of white bone, the size of a fingernail clipping, clinging to the frayed edge of one of the holes, and down inside it something pale glistened in the bright light.

  It looked like it could be brain matter.

  Head shot.

  There was nothing visible on the floor directly in front of the stain. Holding her breath, Tess knelt down and swept the flashlight under the couch. The beam lit up a scrap of white plastic about half an inch wide, a quarter inch long, and roundly pointed at one end. Tess could see the fine ribbing on the side facing up. She didn’t have to fish it out to know what it was. A piece of zip-tie.

  It had been an execution.

  Oh God, Heather…

  How was she going to tell Cat? What was she going to tell Cat?

  Tess started crying and couldn’t stop. The dam had burst. She jumped up and hurried away from the couch, not wanting to contaminate evidence. She found a tissue in her pocket and sobbed into it. When her shaking finally stopped, she put the tissue away and turned to look at the couch.

  Procedure was crystal clear, but what if what had happened here was beast-related? With Cat gone, there was no one in the division she could trust to keep it under wraps. She had to call it in ASAP and notify CSU, no doubt about that, but first she needed to piece together some of the facts. And she had to hurry.

  As Tess returned to the bedroom, she held the flashlight between her teeth and pulled on a pair of latex gloves. The duvet that she remembered as a gift from Cat’s wedding shower was missing from their bed. She checked the closets and under the bed. It was definitely gone. The obvious conclusion—that it had been removed and used to conceal the body during transport—made Tess shudder.

  Move on. Do the job.

  The lacy edge of something black beneath one of the bed pillows caught her attention. She carefully lifted it by a corner. Vincent and Cat would never have left their underwear jammed under their pillow like that. Not in a million years. When her spotlight passed over the floor something scattered on it twinkled. Then she realized the picture frames on the dresser had lost their glass. She opened the drawers and found the clothes in a jumble. Someone had made a half-hearted effort to straighten the bedroom after it had been tossed.

  Every room in the apartment had been gone through in the same fashion and hurriedly restored to order.

  Tess had a lot of unanswered questions.

  Was it a solo intruder or a team?

  Who are they?

  What were they looking for?

  Did they find it before they left?

  The more disturbing ones came last: Whose brains had been blasted into the couch cushion? Where is Heather?

  Tess walked back to the apartment door and shined her light on it. It had not been forced; the locks and jamb were intact. She swept the light lower and noticed a symmetrical dent in the wood about six inches from the bottom and three inches from the facing edge. Some of the paint was missing and the flakes were on the floor below the wall molding and the thick metal doorstop that stuck out of it. Someone had slammed the door back hard. Like they had shouldered their way in after the locks had been opened. But Heather wouldn’t unlock the door to a stranger.

  Could it have been the new boyfriend? God, they knew nothing about him except that he came from India or Bangladesh and had some kind of elite job as a systems designer or programmer for a big New York firm. Heather didn’t understand what he actually did for them so she couldn’t explain it to Cat.

  In a terrible way, that made sense. Heather had no luck with men, was always getting hurt—but never like this.

  Tess stepped out into the hall, turned off the hall light, then checked the outside of the door. When she aimed the beam of her Maglite at a narrow angle to the surface, it revealed shiny mirror-image smears on the edges of the door and the jamb. Without touching either surface she moved her face into the gap. Whoever had deposited the smears was taller than she was, and they had left behind a cheek print. Not admissible identifying evidence unless DNA could be collected from it, but it helped Tess flesh out a timeline of events.

  Someone—most likely Heather’s boyfriend, but not confirmed—had forced his or her face between door and jamb and held it pressed there hard and long enough to leave a visible trace on both sides. Heather was not strong enough to have held the door partially open with someone larger pushing on the other side. Tess stepped back into the apartment and examined the safety chain. It looked fine, but when she shined her light on the slot that the chain tab fit into and leaned closer she saw the bottom of the slot bulged slightly—it had bent but it had held. A beast would not have been stopped by a little chain. A beast would have torn the door off its hinges and not bothered with zip-ties or a handgun.

  Heather had known who was on the other side, and had unfastened the chain to let that person in. That and the intact door pretty much ruled out a beast-related crime. It was looking more and more like the new boyfriend was involved. That after Heather dropped the chain, he had shouldered the door open and broken into the apartment. The classic prelude to domestic violence.

  Could it really be that simple? That horribly familiar?

  Young female picks the wrong guy?

  After the
crime of passion, had the boyfriend ransacked the place looking to gather up any incriminating evidence? What could Heather have possibly brought with her that would incriminate him? Tess made a note to check Heather’s apartment right after she made her calls. She started with the dispatcher and made the incident report, then phoned the head of CSU directly.

  The third call was going to be the hardest, and Tess knew it would only become more difficult if she didn’t jump in with both feet.

  She took a deep breath and dialed.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  In the Sea Majesty’s enormous laundry room, Number One smiled grimly at the ironies of life. The cop had finally worn the jacket but lifting the chip—if she still even had it—had proved impossible. It was a pity that Two had proven to be so myopic and difficult. Two had been the pickpocket, not One. But now Two was dead, the body wedged in the cabin bathroom. One had to assume that the corpse would be found. Successful assignments did not hinge on luck. It was time to step it up. Time to start the fire.

  The unattended washers and dryers were running full blast. They were checked on the hour. One had twenty minutes to make the magic happen. Aware of the location of every security camera, One kept to the shadows, knocking back and forth against metal and wood as the ship rocked. Carrying a small case of supplies, One entered the room where the dry lint that had been gathered from the dryers was stored until docking at Hilo, where it would be taken off the ship and disposed of.

  Lint was highly flammable.

  The storage area was supposed to be airtight, but One had figured out how to secure several doors so that they would remain open in the roughest of seas—a wise precaution, since the storm was building.

  The lint was kept in plastic bags. A simple twist tie was all that stood between One and the fuel required for the flames. Gloves on. Show time.

  Eighteen minutes.

  Luckily, there were no cameras in this room, and the cameras in the laundry room were easy to disable. No witnesses as One opened the plastic bags and sprinkled the floor of the storage room, the laundry, and the halls with the soft, powdery lint. However, One was armed, and had no hesitation about using the plastic weapon again if someone appeared unexpectedly.