Lethal Takeout

by Ehsani, Vered

  Lee shook her head. “Did you see the colour of the minister’s palms? Now I remember what was so strange in CEO Perkins’s office.”

  “Well, that wasn’t what I meant,” Shadow said, his dark face sombre. “Although I agree it sure is strange being at your own funeral, in an intriguing, entertaining kind of way, you know? And I don’t know what the priest’s hands have to do with anything. I was talking about that fellow back there. He’s been watching the funeral like it’s the best show in town. Not that I blame him.”

  We all swivelled to look behind us. A dark form pulled back into the shadows of a forest that bordered the cemetery.

  “Was he wearing…?” I started to ask.

  “Sure was,” Shadow answered. “Not exactly in line with current fashion. Not very tony at all.”

  “What’re you two talking about?” Lee demanded. She didn’t have her glasses on. While the minister’s hands had been close enough for her to see clearly, the trees were probably one big mushy lump of brown with green blobs on top.

  “The cowboy hat,” I said and began floating towards the forest.

  “Wait!” Lee ordered, not caring that the gravediggers were looking at her in a funny way. “We can’t leave yet. We have to pay our last respects. You know, walk by the grave and toss in some dirt or flowers or something.”

  “I’ll take a rain check on that respect,” I called back.

  “And I don’t see how throwing dirt at someone is very respectful,” Shadow said with a dark chuckle.

  Lee and Shadow followed me into the trees, but there was no one around.

  “There he goes!” Shadow pointed towards the retreating form with the cowboy hat. The cowboy was dashing around old, crumbling grave markers before running deeper into the cool, pine scented silence of the forest.

  I willed myself forward. You’re probably wondering why I was so determined to face one of my murderers. Me too. Morbid curiosity, maybe. I could see the cowboy just ahead, racing through the trees, literally through the trees. Some little bell began to sound off in my brain, but bells have to be a lot louder than that to get my attention, so I ignored it and kept going. The cowboy hesitated at a small stream trickling through the forest and I knew I’d catch up.

  “Hang on there,” I said, raising my voice above the murmur of a breeze through the branches above, even though only babies, drunks and other ghosts could hear me. I forgot about that momentarily. “I just want to…”

  The cowboy swivelled slowly around, just as Shadow started shouting something unintelligible. For a moment, I wondered why anyone would be walking around with a dark mask over his face in a cemetery, until I realised it wasn’t a mask.

  The cowboy had no face. It had no features at all, just darkness flowing into more darkness. It started to move towards me, as silent as the shadows it slipped in and out of. Its arms swished and morphed into several tentacles. Its head stretched until it reminded the still functioning part of my brain of a set of skeletal jaws with obscenely large teeth.

  “Don’t touch it! It’s a deathmark and it’s eaten a ghost.” Shadow’s words floated around the trees.

  I continued to stare at the dark silhouette of a mutated cowboy coming ever closer. While a part of me was screaming hysterically to fly away, the rest of me was mesmerised by the approach of my annihilation. It flowed with the lethal grace of a panther, its limbs weaving hypnotic patterns through the air. One of its multi-fingered hands reached out to me.

  A shout made my head snap up, breaking the spell. Shadow raced towards the stream, glaring at the cowboy, just as Lee crashed noisily through the undergrowth, branches snapping and leaves crunching. The deathmark hesitated, swivelled to face Shadow and vanished into the shadows of the trees.

  “Man, that was close,” Shadow said as he reached me. He glanced around, studying the area. “You’re lucky that thing didn’t get a chance.”

  “You told me deathmarks can’t move.”

  Shadow looked at me like I was stupid. “It’s eaten a ghost, so it can move.”

  Lee caught up with us a few seconds later and leaned against a tree, huffing away. “That guy looked like one of those giant cockroach things,” she said in between gasping breaths.

  “What cockroach?” I asked absently. I wondered who’d killed the cowboy to create the deathmark. I wondered if the two living cowboys, my murderers, had done the job, or if someone else had.

  Lee waved a hand in front of her face. “It’s nothing really. I saw these shadow things that reminded me of really big cockroaches, kind of like that cowboy. I saw three at Donut Delight and then another one in CEO Perkins’ office.”

  Shadow’s elegantly shaped eyebrows disappeared into his hairline as he stared slack-jawed at Lee. “You can see deathmarks?”

  “There’s one in the office?” I asked.

  “Ah…” Lee looked back and forth between Shadow and me. “Maybe and yes.”

  “That means…” I started.

  “She’s seriously gifted if she can see ghosts AND deathmarks,” Shadow said.

  “Someone was murdered in the office,” I finished grimly.

  “That too,” Shadow conceded and nodded. “Talk about occupational hazards or what, eh? They should put a warning label at the entrance: ‘Working here might kill you’.”

  “And I’m sure you’re going to explain what you’re yapping about, right?” Lee asked.

  “Sure thing,” he said in a soothing tone, “but let’s start floating back while we yap. After all, we need to finish that funeral. You know, pay our last respects to our dear friend here by throwing dirt at him. God knows that will be the last time he gets respect!” Shadow flung his head back and laughed. “Oh, I crack myself up sometimes.”

  I watched as my two friends – my only two friends – walked by my grave and paid their respects to the body that lay in a box six feet below. I hovered over the deep hole, looking down, reflecting on memories that I hadn’t thought about for a long time, and that I wasn’t planning on thinking about for another long time. All of those memories, all of the struggles, the dreams I hadn’t followed, the nightmares that I had, all of them ended here, in a lonely hole that only a few people knew existed and even fewer cared about.

  And to add insult to injury, I was slowly starting to forget the details of those memories. I was running out of time.

  I was quiet on the trip back. I mean, quieter than usual. Lee kept glancing at me with a worried frown, but each time, I’d give her a reassuring look or comment, while Shadow pretended not to notice and the other passengers on the bus really didn’t notice.

  It was still cool and a fine, misty rain had settled in when we reached Lee’s place. I didn’t join them in the elevator.

  “Cooper?” Lee asked tentatively, her eyebrows bunched up in a line of concern.

  I waved and forced a smile. “Don’t worry about me. Just need some down time. You know. Bit de-energised from the sun and all. I’ll catch you both this evening.”

  I waited until the doors closed and I was sure Shadow wasn’t going to follow me. Then I took to the air and did a version of Superman that was slightly faster than my first attempt. I’d just remembered who one of the other deathmarks at Donut Delight had reminded me of. I knew I eventually would.

  And now, I needed to have a little heart-to-heart chat with a poltergeist.

  Murder, Mayhem & Cowboy Hats

  “Mayhem is my middle name, Mr. Axe Cooper,” Faye purred. “So if you need help in the mayhem-making department, honey, I’d be pleased as punch to help you.”

  “Good to know.”

  I watched as Faye did a pirouette in the middle of the room while singing the lyrics to a hair product advert. She was so off-key that I figured the windows would’ve cracked if there had been any glass left in them. Bob was slouched in the darkest corner he could find, looking like a faded laundry sac or a huge portion of pale Jell-O. DD was nowhere in sight.

  “So,” I casually said, “you were murdered
at the donut shop next to Chan’s, eh? What a coincidence. So was I.”

  Faye froze in mid-zoom. The room became very quiet. After a moment, she stiffly turned to me. “Who told you that?”

  I shrugged while staring out one of the windows. There wasn’t much of a view to enjoy, just another crumbling, concrete building and a narrow strip of cloudy, grey sky dribbling more rain onto the city. “I saw your deathmark there.”

  Bob shifted farther into his corner. Faye floated down until her dainty red slippers hovered right above the white tiles. “I don’t like to talk about it.”

  “Really,” I said conversationally. “I kinda enjoy it. Flashbacks of dying and all. Fond memories of the good old days. While I still remember the memories.”

  Faye glared at me, her hair literally snapping with electricity. One of the few light bulbs left in the ceiling exploded in a tinsel of glass, which was no big loss since the bulb had ceased to work years ago and there was no electricity in the building anyways. “Well, I don’t.”

  “But you hang out there a lot, near where you were… you know.” I leaned closer and whispered dramatically, “Murdered.”

  “That doesn’t mean I like to talk about it.” She shivered delicately and pulled at a blond curl. “Just seeing a cowboy hat makes me want to fade away to nothing. I…”

  “Cowboy hat?” I interrupted.

  Faye rubbed her hands together as if she were suddenly cold. “The last thing I saw before… you know what… was a cowboy hat. Actually, I saw two. Who wears cowboy hats in Vancouver? I mean really? How vulgar and…” She gazed up in the air as if searching for the right word to pluck out. “Unfashionable.”

  “Unfashionable,” I repeated, my mouth turning up slightly into a smirk. “Someone was murdering you, and you thought the hat was unfashionable?”

  “Well, it was,” Faye responded defensively, fists planted on her hips. “In hindsight, that is. Lots and lots of hindsight.”

  “Dear Madame,” Bob said politely, “did you by any chance notice if the vulgar and unfashionable cowboy hat was attached to the dastardly person who killed you?”

  Faye batted her eyelashes, her voice smooth and sweet. “Why, my wobbly Jell-O friend, by some chance, I did notice.” She glared at me, her mouth pouting while she tugged at another thick blond curls. “Oh, you bad… janitor!” She said ‘janitor’ like it was a very nasty swear word. “Now you’ve made me talk about that night. I told you I don’t like talking about it.” She soundlessly stamped a small foot.

  “Gee, I’m so sorry,” I said, my smirk twitching into a smile. “But I was murdered a couple nights ago. I kinda need to find out who did it and start righting wrongs. Whatever that means. Not to mention I’m losing my mind. So yeah, I’m making you talk about your murder.”

  Faye sniffed. “I should hope you feel sorry.” She turned to go.

  “Oh, come on,” I said coaxingly. “Just spit it out. I know you want to.”

  Faye didn’t turn around, but stared at Bob who wisely kept quiet. Or maybe he was sleeping. Hard to tell with him. “Fine,” she said in a tone that clearly indicated it was not fine. “They call themselves ‘The Three Cowboys’. Satisfied?”

  “Huh?”

  She spun around, her cute girlish face not quite so cute with all that glaring and sneering. “The Three Cowboys.”

  “But I thought there’s only two.”

  Faye rolled her eyes and flung her arms skyward. “What does it matter? Two, three, maybe they can’t count well. The point is, that’s who killed me: The Three Cowboys.”

  There was something about the number thing that was picking at me. I hated being picked on or at. There were only two cowboys, but there had been three. I’d been right then: the cowboy deathmark had worked with the other killers at some point, before being murdered. “But why?”

  “Because I was doing some investigations, honey. Remember? I was a journalist. Sort of. Well, I was on my way to being a real journalist.” She waved her arms in the sky, as if outlining a glowing banner with the words ‘real journalist’ imprinted on it, and then clapped her hands together.

  “You mean a paparazzi isn’t a real journalist?” I asked, looking all shocked at the idea while I smothered my smile in a serious frown.

  “I should say not,” Bob almost shouted, but in a very polite way, as if unable to restrain himself, but not wanting to be rude. Either that, or he had just woken up and decided to join the conversation. “Perish the idea.”

  “It’s true,” Faye sighed, but Bob didn’t appear to hear her or he was ignoring her.

  “A paparazzi is to a journalist,” he continued, “as mould-coloured pond scum is to the glowing white swan floating elegantly on the surface.”

  Faye’s eyes sizzled. “Why, thank you, BOB. You’ve made your point crystal clear.”

  “You are most welcome, madam.”

  “So you were investigating…” I said, trying to get Faye’s attention back to the main conversation. “What were you investigating? And why at Donut Delight?”

  Muttering quietly, Faye directed another dagger-filled look at the suddenly silent Bob, and turned towards me. “Actually, I was really focusing on Chan’s. I went to Donut Delight because I had a sugar craving right then.”

  “Is there a problem there?”

  “I should say so,” she gushed. “The donuts are far too delightful and sugary and…”

  “I meant at Chan’s.”

  “Oh. Yes, yes there is. Chan’s not the problem though, just part of the puzzle. I was doing an investigation, a real, journalistic”— she glared back at Bob’s corner— “investigation about a certain law firm.”

  “And that certain law firm…” I said, knowing what the answer would be. “It wouldn’t happen to be Perkins & Co, would it?”

  “Why, you lovely ghoul, it sure would. How’d you know? Well, that doesn’t matter.” She waved me off as she bounced up and down, her red dress fluttering around her. “I was investigating Perkins himself, yes I was.” She nodded proudly.

  “Why?”

  “I started to get a bit suspicious when I saw his hands at a fundraiser.”

  “You attended fundraisers?” Bob asked in a tone more suitable to the question, ‘You’re really a man with dreadlocks pretending to be a little girl?’

  “That’s right,” she responded primly, not looking towards Bob. “I was at the dinner to raise funds for school lunch programmes.”

  Bob quivered a bit. “I was at that one too. Although I didn’t notice you there.”

  “I looked a bit different back then…”

  “Hey,” I interrupted briskly. “Kinda off topic here. Back to the investigation.”

  “Exactly, sweet cake. I was at the fundraiser and I saw Perkins’s hands.” She waited expectantly for the obvious.

  I scratched my head. “What about…”

  “The palms of his hands weren’t orange!” Faye burst out gleefully and waited for me to catch on to the monumental implications.

  I tried.

  I couldn’t.

  She huffed a bit. “Come on, slow coach. Surely you know how famous CEO Perkins is with his idiotic Carrot Juice Diet fad.”

  I thought about it for a moment but came up with nothing. “Nope. I don’t.”

  “Hmmm.” She looked at me and shook her head. “I am mighty disappointed in you, Mr. Axe Cooper. Fine. Listen close. Apart from being a lawyer and a leader in the corridors of power and influence, Perkins is also known for his advocacy of health diets. The latest is this Carrot Juice Diet. He’s got everyone into it. Even the guy who buried me, that cemetery minister…”

  “Priest,” Bob corrected. “A priest buried me.”

  “Maybe a rabbi,” I added. “Lee said something about his hands.”

  “Exactly,” Faye said with wide smile. “Who’s Lee?”

  I waved the question away, and Faye continued. “As anyone knows, if you have a lot of carrots, which people on the Carrot Juice Diet do, the palms of
your hands turn orange.” She nodded her head, waiting.

  “And CEO Perkins’s hands…”

  “Weren’t orange,” she exclaimed, clapping her hands a few times. “They were as white as fresh fallen snow before the dog goes out for a walk.”

  “He was cheating on his diet,” I said.

  “Exactly.”

  “So he cheats on his diet.” I shrugged.

  “You just said that.”

  “So what if he sneaks some real food in?”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, how can you be so dense?” Faye huffed again. “If he was cheating on his diet, I figured that maybe there was other stuff he was cheating on, more important stuff. But first, I needed proof that he was a cheater at something, to really make a sensational, front page story that would rocket me into the world of real journalism.” She stopped, sounding almost out of breath.

  I rubbed my chin, the jagged scar sticking up through the stubble. I wondered if I should laugh now or wait until I was alone. Since I wasn’t finished asking questions, I decided to wait. Besides, there was something about this that reminded me of the piece of paper I’d picked up in Perkins’ office. You know: the paper with the handwritten notes that seemed important, even if I couldn’t remember the details. “And that’s how Chan’s comes into the picture.”

  “Right you are. I noticed that a lot of takeout ends up in Perkins’s office, so…” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “I began poking around there.”

  “I hope Chan’s not involved in something illegal,” I said. “Sure would be a shame to lose a good takeout.”

  “Not that you can enjoy the takeout anymore, sugar.”

  “Yeah, but my friend sure would miss it. What did you find?”

  Faye sighed, her whole body deflating. “Nothing. A big, overweight nothing. I was so miserable that I went to drown my misery in deep fried, sugary donuts. There I was, my bag of happiness in hand, one bite away from bliss, when those Three Cowboys…”

  “All two of them,” I interrupted, wondering if the deathmark had been with them.

  “…murdered me. I never did finish my investigation. There you have it, the whole pathetic story.” Faye sniffed, wiping a non-existent tear off her cheek.