The king grimaced as if he had just repeated a state secret. “Asia must’ve said something.”
“How could she?” I shook my head. “Asia knows nothing about my curse.” Because if she had, my semi-sweet princess would’ve used it against me. Of that, I had no doubt.
“Maybe the wife mentioned it,” the king said with a shrug. “I’m the king. People tell me things all the time. Am I supposed to keep track of every one of them?”
Pretty much. Since this line of questioning wasn’t getting me anywhere, I let the matter drop. It wasn’t like my difficulties with the union were a secret.
Hell, on the day the union relieved me from duties, they placed a two-page (color) ad in the New Never News. The headline read: STUBBY VILLAIN CURSED. CAN YOU GUESS HIS NAME? The newspaper soon retracted the “stubby” adjective. I’m pretty sure it had something to do with my threat to blow up the editorial department. Not that I could. But the point was still the same.
“Never mind that,” I said with a wave at the king. “Is Asia here or not?”
“Not.”
Shit. “Where’d she go?”
“Can’t say, son.” He paused to heft the assault rifle farther up his shoulder. “But if I was you, I’d leave Maledetto before someone else gets hurt.”
“Is that a threat?” A grin curved on my lips. Up until a few weeks ago, I was one of the best villains around, and now, a bloke wearing a G-string threatened to kill me. It put the villainous meaning of life into perspective.
The king shook his head, his beard bobbing like a terrier. “No threat. It’s just that since you came to town three people have died. Don’t think it’s a coincidence. And the sheriff don’t either.”
“Three?” I swallowed heavily.
“Three,” he repeated.
Damn.
At a little after five in the afternoon, I arrived at what used to be Hansel and Missy’s candy-coated house, but now served as exhibit A.
The front door stood open. Pink-uniformed cops lined the gumdrop walkway, flashlights in their manicured hands. Dusk fell around the kingdom. I headed up the sidewalk, unmolested, as long as you didn’t count my earlier encounter with Prince Annoying and his grabby hands. Which I didn’t. In fact, I was doing my best to forget my entire morning, and even some of last night, namely Asia’s hatred and Prince Charming’s rendition of “A Boy Like That” from West Side Story.
I shook my head and focused on the matter at hand. Murder.
In the doorway of the gingerbread house, two florescent lights illuminated the bloodless corpses of Hansel and Missy. Millions of tiny holes dotted their flesh like road rash. But they weren’t killed in an automobile accident.
Nope, they weren’t that lucky.
Something had pecked the poor bastards to death. Blue feathers littered the scene. I sneezed. Death by bluebird. What a way to go.
“You can’t be here,” Bruce, the pointy-eared sheriff, called. He waddled his way over to me, his hands planted on his gun belt.
I acknowledged his statement with a nod, but didn’t make a move to leave. “Any suspects?”
“Suspects?” He laughed. “A whole forest full, but they ain’t talking.” His hand motioned to the huge hole in the roof of the house. My eyes followed his finger. A heavily laden tree branch, littered with birds, perched above the hole. The bluish birds squawked, occasionally dive-bombing the deputies below.
“The bluebirds didn’t act alone,” I said. “Someone put them up to this.” I gestured to the bloodless body of Hansel. Even in death, the bloke looked happy. A smile circled his dirt-crusted lips. I leaned closer. Not dirt. Chocolate. Hansel’s killer used cocoa to lure the bluebirds. A trick fit for a villain.
“He’s right,” said a much-too-perky woman in a pink cheerleading outfit, the words “Maledetto” and “Coroner” emblazoned across her chest. “This is a ... give me an M.”
The surrounding deputies shouted M.
“Give me a U.”
Again they shouted.
“Give me an R.”
“Murder. I get it,” the sheriff yelled. “But how?”
I gazed at the hole in the ceiling and at the two dead bodies. Poor bastards. They never had a chance.
Ms. Cheerleading Coroner bounced over to us, her little blond pigtails bobbing up and down. “We won’t know for sure until the toxicology report comes back, but my guess is the victims,” she scissor-kicked in the direction of the bodies, “were drugged, and then coated in chocolate.”
The sheriff scratched his whiskerless chin. “Drugged? Chocolate? None of this makes sense. Missy would never invite someone in, let alone someone carrying a half-pound of cocoa.” He turned to me. “She’s been leery of strangers ever since the night a couple of Snow White’s dwarfs got drunk and tried to burn her at the stake.”
“A stranger didn’t do this,” I whispered to myself.
My eyes raked over the crime scene, settling on the wineglasses on the coffee table. The lip print on one of the wineglasses matched Missy’s pale pink lips.
A greasy red smear marred the second glass.
A familiar red smear.
My pretty, pretty princess had some explaining to do.
Chapter 24
“Clear the scene,” the sheriff said, motioning to the corpses sprawled on the floor. He pointed to the pigtailed coroner. “Bag ’em and tag ’em.”
Pigtails bounced up and down in agreement.
I held up my hand. “Wait.”
The sheriff and pigtails glanced my way.
“I ... ahh ...” Shit. I needed that wineglass. The thought of Asia behind candy bars terrified me. What if she started batting for the other team? Think, I demanded of my brain. It, of course, refused to comply.
“Sheriff,” I began, my voice breaking mid-sentence, “can you give me a minute?” I motioned to Hansel’s and Missy’s bloated, beak-riddled bodies. Tears welled in my eyes, mostly because I was bending my index finger backward. Farther and farther. When it snapped, I yelped. “Fudge.”
The sheriff’s eyes widened.
“Sorry.” I sniffed and wiped my eyes. “I’m in pain here.”
“I didn’t realize you were close.” The sheriff smiled, slimy enough to make me uncomfortable. My creepiness level increased when he stroked my arm. “There there.” He patted my hand, his fingers lingering a bit too long.
I quickly stepped away, moving closer to the bodies and the damning lipstick-coated wineglass. “I loved him like a brother. B-R-O-T-H-E-R,” I repeated in case the sheriff didn’t get the point.
The sheriff nodded.
“Why!?” I dropped to my knees, my back to the sheriff. “Why did this happen! He was so young! So very young! And ... um ...” I had nothing. Alive, I wasn’t that fond of the guy. Dead, he was even a bigger pain in my ass.
“I know it’s hard,” the sheriff said. “Try to remember the happy times.”
Happy times? I snorted with laughter, which thankfully sounded much like grief. Hansel’s body lay sprawled in front of me, bloodless, sugarcoated, and bloated. His blank eyes stared into mine, as if accusing.
I’d seen that look before. Many times, in fact. Longing filled me. Ah, the good old days. I missed sugarcoating do-gooders and murdering them with a flock of diabetic bluebirds.
I missed being a villain, damn it.
I sighed. Oh well, I had more important princesses to fry.
With a wail, I pounded on the coffee table where the wineglasses sat, evidence of Asia’s crime. Cocoa and dust sputtered to life around me, but the damn wineglass refused to move. I pounded harder. Still nothing.
Fuck it.
I picked up the wineglass stained with red lipstick and threw it across the room. It shattered against the bricks of the fireplace with a loud crash. I instantly felt better.
The sheriff didn’t share my relief, though. Instead, the bastard tackled me, sending us both sprawling across the dead bodies. Just my luck I landed on top of Missy, my face in her over
ly lumpy crotch, which smelled faintly of cheese. I gasped for fresh air, but the sadistic sheriff pressed my face deeper into Missy’s lace-covered junk.
This was both fortunate and unfortunate.
The unfortunate part was fairly obvious. The fortunate part surprised me, though. While getting better acquainted with Missy, my hand brushed her thigh and a tiny scrap of paper stuck to it. I carefully peeled the paper from her hairy thigh and grinned. A clue at last. In the form of a receipt for one bluebird.
Son of a transvestite bitch.
Hansel had known all along who’d purchased Gretel and used her to kill Cinderella. And this receipt proved it.
I squinted at the tiny black signature scrawled on the bottom of the receipt. It looked familiar, loopy and girlish, but the name wasn’t one I recognized. Nigel de Wolfe. A pseudonym for sure or a really bad dwarf porn name. Had Hansel tried to blackmail Cinderella’s killer with this receipt? Was that why he was dead? If so, how was Asia involved? After all, it was her lipstick on the wineglass. At the very least that placed her at the scene.
The sheriff pulled me to my feet and quickly handcuffed my hands behind my back for the second time in as many days. “You are under arrest for obstruction, tampering with evidence, and ... whatever the hell else I can think of.” He shoved me toward the door.
“Wait.” Prince Charming poked his head through the open window. “Bruce,” he said to the sheriff. “RJ didn’t mean any harm. Just let him go.” When Bruce shook his head, Charming added, “Please.”
The sheriff sighed hot and wet against the back of my neck. “All right.” He unhooked the handcuffs and spun me around to face him. “If I catch you interfering with one of my investigations again, I will toss you in a cell for the rest of your villainous days.”
As threats went, it was a pretty good one. Locked up, I’d never solve Cinderella’s murder, or keep Asia from the slammer, let alone see my princess naked for a second time. I doubted the sheriff would allow us adjoining cells. Not that the idea of Asia in handcuffs was a bad one.
The sheriff’s finger stabbed me in the chest, drawing me from my fantasy. “And if I find out you’re behind these killings, I will personally rip out your black heart. With a spork,” he added. Overkill, really, but how often can you slip the word “spork” into a conversation? “Do you understand me?”
I nodded, more to avoid a brutal beating than in agreement. As long as a birding serial killer roamed free, I would damn well interfere. I owed it to my dead ex-wife, the poor clueless Hansel, and the unknown number of victims still to come. Asia’s face flashed through my mind. I wouldn’t let anything happen to her. Victim or killer, she was still my princess. Nothing could change that.
An hour later something did happen to change my mind. It came in the form of a bullet whistling through the air aimed at my heart. I dived to the ground, smashing my face into the dirt. Charming, who stood behind me, landed a few feet away.
“Owwwww!” he said. “I’m dying.”
I glanced over. Hope filled my heart. But my luck hadn’t changed. Charming would live unless a prince could succumb to a hangnail. Admittedly, the fleshy string of skin hanging from his index finger looked painful.
“Awwwwww ... ,” he moaned. “Will this pain never end?”
I grabbed the offending hangnail and smiled.
“Noooooo!!!” Charming pushed at my hands. “Don’t do it.”
I ripped the skin free. It tore away, leaving Charming weeping and curled in the fetal position. Damn, I enjoyed that. My smile increased until I glanced down.
A pool of blood seeped around us.
A lot of blood.
Too much blood for a simple hangnail.
I scanned Charming for additional injuries. Nothing.
Damn.
I peered down at my own body. Blood oozed from a wound in my side, soaking through my last clean T-shirt. The pain started then, burning, stinging, throbbing pain that reminded me much of my wedding night.
As much as I wanted to curl into the fetal position and weep like Prince Idiot, I couldn’t. The reason was hiding a couple of yards away behind a downed pine tree, waiting to kill me. No way was I going out like this, cursed to be nice and lying next to a flaming prince.
I started crawling my way behind an outcropping of pet rocks. Their googlie eyes stared at me with mock judgment. Another shot kicked up the dirt at my feet.
Charming yelped, jumped to his feet, and ran into the forest. I followed, stumbling my way through the trees like a blind mouse. A quick succession of rounds pierced the air around us, but none of the bullets struck true. Surprising if one considered the sheer amount of girlish screeches coming from Prince Idiot. It was much like running for your life with an out-of-tune Pied Piper playing the bagpipes.
I ducked behind a tree and scanned the forest, my breath coming in sharp, painful gasps. The pain in my side increased with each breath. Closing my eyes, I lifted my shirt to assess the damage. A small round hole bubbled up about six inches from my belly button. Relief washed over me. The wound wasn’t deep enough or close enough to any major organs to do much damage. Yeah, it hurt like a wicked witch, but I’d live to play the villain again. If the shooter didn’t get his way, that was.
The enchanted trees swayed in the wind like marionettes on a string. The air smelled of blood and gunpowder, not unpleasant. In fact, it reminded me of my childhood without the embarrassing uncontrolled erections whenever I saw my best mate’s wicked stepmother. In my defense, she was hot, sort of a cross between Snow White and the devil.
If I wanted to get out of the forest alive I needed to act, and soon. Bluebirds were starting to circle. “We can work this out,” I said to the nameless, faceless killer. “You don’t really want to kill me.”
About fifty feet in front of me a branch snapped. I jumped at the sound. Somewhere behind me Charming whimpered. The pump of a shotgun echoed in the air. I cleared my dry throat. “Okay, so maybe you do. But think about it. This is too easy. You need more of a challenge.”
The killer answered with a load of buckshot. The pellets slammed into the trees behind me. Charming screamed. It was now or never. I leapt from my hiding space and ran at full villainous speed toward the would-be assassin. My lungs burned, my side ached, and my eyelids watered from gun smoke, but still I ran. Or rather I limped at a good clip.
I reached the killer’s hiding place expecting to take a round or two. A fitting villainous end, as long as the shooter wasn’t a hero, or twelve. But no bullets punctured my spleen.
For some reason, the shooter held his fire. In a perfect villainous world, I’d chalk it up to my intimidating manner and scary “please, please don’t shoot me” face. Since the kingdom of Maledetto was far from perfect or particularly villainous, I had no clue why I wasn’t lying splattered all over the Enchanted Forest. Honestly, how hard was it to shoot a charging moron, even one as good-looking and witty as myself?
With one last prayer, I dove over a fallen log and into the shooter’s lair. “Aha!” I screamed, ready to tackle the would-be killer. Unfortunately, the only thing I caught was the heel of a glass slipper, right in the forehead.
Chapter 25
I’ve died and gone to hell, I thought upon waking from my footwear-induced nap a few minutes later. Nope. This was worse than hell. I was in hellish hell with a hell-grown cherry on top. I shoved Prince Charming off me and wiped a string of princely drool from my lips. “What the fudge do you think you’re doing?”
“Giving you the kiss of life,” Charming said, frowning. “I took a CPR class with Asia at the annex. They showed us how.”
I spat out a glop of saliva, trying to wash the nasty taste of prince from my mouth. “Don’t ever. Ever. Kiss me again. Even if I’m dead. Got it?”
Charming’s bottom lip quivered. “I was only trying to help.”
I didn’t bother to respond. Instead, I pulled the size-eight glass slipper from my forehead and held it up to the dim light.
O
verhead a bluebird tweeted.
An hour later, still bleeding from the wound in my side as well as the dent in my head, I dizzily shoved the palace doors open and stomped inside. “Darn it, Asia. I said I was sorry. No need to shoot me.”
A ton of brick rained down on my head, sounding much like an avalanche of ... well, bricks against pink shag palace carpeting.
I ducked, avoiding the falling bricks like a true villain. When the brick dust settled, I glanced up, not that surprised to see a woman with red hair standing on a ladder, her face a mask of rage.
The queen frowned down at me, a brick in her lace-gloved hand. “Look at what you’ve done,” she said, tossing the brick at my head. It missed my noggin but smashed into my toe.
“Hey.” I hopped on one foot. “What’d you do that for?”
“Do you know how long it took me to arrange those bricks?” She didn’t give me a chance to answer. “Two hours. The king will be here any minute. And you ruined my ... surprise.”
“Sorry.”
“I’ll say you are,” she said. Her eyes scanned my bloody forehead, clothes, and now-swollen foot. “Do you have any clue what it takes to make a marriage work?”
“Attempted murder?” I took a stab at answering.
“No. To have a good marriage you must sacrifice. That’s why you’ll never win Asia’s favor.”
“Since when is beaning your spouse with a brick a sacrifice?” I laughed.
“Go ahead and laugh,” she huffed, “but one day you’ll regret not heeding my advice.”
I doubted it. Dear Abby the queen wasn’t. So why did she bother to advise me at all? Especially since her sights were set on Prince Rotten as an in-law. Or were they? She did give Cinderella the Devil’s Eye; yet she didn’t bat an eye at her murder. Just whose side was the queen on?
Before I could question her, the front door flew open and the king strolled inside. He stepped over the pile of bricks, nodded at me, and headed toward the living room, pausing long enough to kick the bottom rung of the ladder.
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