By the time Layla returned to the ballroom, the canapés were not all she was holding. She’d detoured via the little cloakroom the girls had been given to change and store their bags. What she’d collected from hers she was holding flat in her right hand, hidden by the tray. A Beretta nine millimeter, hot most likely. As long as it worked, Layla didn’t care.
A few moments later someone stopped by her elbow and leaned close to examine the contents of the tray.
“Well hello, Cindy.” A man’s voice, a smile curving the sound of it. “And just what you got there, little lady?”
Thad, looking pretty nifty in the tux she’d made him rent. He bent over her tray while she explained the contents, making a big play over choosing between the caviar or the beef. And underneath, his other hand touched hers, and she slipped the Beretta into it.
“Well, thank you, sugar,” he said, taking a canapé with a flourish and slipping the gun inside his jacket with his other hand, like a magician. When the hand came out again, it was holding a snowy handkerchief, which he used to wipe his fingers and dab his mouth.
Layla had made him practise the move until it seemed so natural. Shame this was a one-time show. He would have made such a partner, someone she might just have been able to live her dreams with. If only he hadn’t had that cruel streak. If only he’d touched her heart the way Bobby had.
Poor crippled, blinded Bobby. Poor dead Bobby . . .
Ah well. Too late for regrets. Too late for much of anything, now.
Layla caught Thad’s eye as she made another round and he nodded, almost imperceptibly. She nodded back, the slightest inclination of her head, and turned away. As she did so she bumped deliberately into the arm of a man who’d been recounting some fishing tale and spread his hands broadly to lie about the size of his catch. He caught Layla’s tray and sent it flipping upwards. Layla caught it with the fast reflexes that came from years of waiting crowded tables amid careless diners. She managed to stop the contents crashing to the floor, but most of it ended up down the front of her blouse instead.
“Oh, I am so sorry, sir,” she said immediately, clutching the tray to her chest to prevent further spillage.
“No problem,” the man said, annoyed at having his story interrupted and oblivious to the fact it had been entirely his fault. He checked his own clothing. “No harm done.”
Layla managed to raise a smile and hurried out. Steve caught her halfway.
“What happened, honey?” he demanded. “Not like you to be so clumsy.”
Layla shrugged as best she could, still trying not to shed debris.
“Sorry, boss,” she said. “I’ve got a spare blouse in my bag. I’ll go change.”
“Okay, sweetheart, but make it snappy.” He let her move away a few strides, then called after her, “And if that’s caviar you’re wearing, it’ll come out of your pay, y’hear?”
Layla threw him a chastised glance over her shoulder that didn’t go deep enough to change her eyes, and hurried back to the little cloakroom.
She scraped the gunge off the front of her chest into the nearest trash, took off the blouse and threw that away, too, then rummaged through her bag for a clean one. This one was calculatedly lower cut and more revealing, but she didn’t think Steve would object too hard, even if he caught her wearing it.
She pulled out another skirt, too, even though there was nothing wrong with her old one. This was shorter than the last, showing several inches of long smooth thigh below the hem and, without undue vanity, she knew it would drag male eyes downwards, even as her newly exposed cleavage would drag them up again. With any luck, they’d go cross-eyed trying to look both places at once.
She swapped her false name badge over and took the cheap Makarov nine millimeter and a roll of duct tape out of her bag. She lifted one remarkable leg up onto the wooden bench and ran the duct tape around the top of her thigh, twice, to hold the nine in position, just out of sight. The pistol grip pointed downwards and she knew from hours in front of the mirror that she could yank the gun loose in a second.
She’d bought both pistols from a crooked military surplus dealer down near Miramar. Thad insisted on coming with her for the Beretta, had made a big thing about checking the gun over like he knew what he was doing, sighting along the barrel with one eye closed.
Layla had gone back later for the Makarov. She didn’t have enough money for the two, but she’d been dressed to thrill and she and the dealer had come to an arrangement that hadn’t cost Layla anything at all. Only pride, and she’d been way overdrawn on that account for years.
Now, Layla checked in the cracked mirror that the gun didn’t show beneath her skirt. Her face was even more bland in its pallor and, just for once, she wished she’d been born pretty. Not beautiful, just pretty enough to have been cherished.
The way she’d cherished Bobby. The way he’d cherished her.
She left the locker room and collected a fresh tray from the kitchen. The chefs were under pressure, the activity frantic, but when she walked in on those long dancer’s legs there was a moment of silence that was almost reverent.
“You changed your clothes,” one of the chefs said, mesmerized.
She smiled at him, saw the fog lift a little as the disappointment of her face cut through the haze of lust created by her body.
“I spilled,” she said, collecting a fresh tray. She felt every eye on her as she walked out, smiled when she heard the collective sigh as the door swung closed behind her.
It was a short-lived smile.
Back in the ballroom, it was all she could do not to go marching straight up to Venable, but she knew she had to play it cool. The four bodyguards were too experienced not to spot her sudden surge of guilt and anger. They’d pick her out of the crowd the way a shark cuts out a weakling seal pup. And she couldn’t afford that. Not yet.
Instead, she forced herself to think bland thoughts as she circled the room towards him. Saw out of the corner of her eye Thad casually moving up on the other side. The relief flooded her, sending her limbs almost lax with it. For a second, she’d been afraid he wouldn’t go through with it. That he’d realize what her real plan was, and back out at the last minute.
For the moment, though, Thad must think it was all going according to plan. She stepped up to the Dyers, offered them something from her tray. The secretary still hadn’t left his side, she saw. The girl must be desperate.
Layla took another step, sideways towards Venable, ducking around the cordon of bodyguards. Offered him something from her tray. And this time, as he leaned forwards, so did she, pressing her arms together to accentuate what nature had so generously given her.
She watched Venable’s eyes go glassy, saw the way the eyes of the nearest two bodyguards bulged the same way. There was another just behind her, she knew, and she bent a little further from the waist, knowing she was giving him a prime view of her ass and the back of her newly-exposed thighs. She could almost feel that hot little gaze slavering up the backs of her knees.
Come on, Thad . . .
He came pushing through the crowd nearest to Venable, moving too fast. If he’d been slower, he might have made it. As it was, he was the only guy for twenty feet in any direction who didn’t have his eyes full of Layla’s divine body. Venable’s eyes snapped round at the last moment, jerky, panicking as he realized the rapidly approaching threat. He flailed, sending Layla’s tray crashing to the ground, showering canapés.
The bodyguards were slower off the mark. Thad already had the gun out before two of them grabbed him. Not so much grabbed as piled in on top of him, driving him off his legs and down, using fists and feet to keep him there.
Thad was no easy meat, though. He kept in shape and had come up from the streets, where unfair fights were part of the game. Even on the floor, he lashed out, aiming for knees and shins, hitting more than he was missing. A third bodyguard joined in to keep him down, a leather sap appearing like magic in his hand.
There was that familiar c
rack of skulls. Just like Bobby . . .
Layla winced, but she couldn’t let that distract her now. Her mind strangely cool and calm, Layla stepped in, ignored. The fourth bodyguard had stayed at his post, but Layla was shielded from his view by his own principal, and everyone’s attention was on the fight. Carefully, she reached under her skirt and yanked the Makarov free, unaware of the brief burn as the tape ripped from her thigh.
The safety was already off, the hammer back. The Army surplus guy down in Miramar had thrown in a little instruction as well. Gave him more of a chance to stand up real close behind her as he demonstrated how to hold the unfamiliar gun, how to aim and fire.
She brought the nine up the way he’d shown her, both hands clasped round the pistol grip, starting to take up the pressure on the trigger, she bent her knees and crouched a little, so the recoil wouldn’t send the barrel rising, just in case she had to take a second shot. But, this close, she knew she wouldn’t need one, even if she got the chance.
One thing Layla hadn’t been ready for was the noise. The report was monstrously loud in the high-ceilinged ballroom. And though she thought she’d been prepared, she staggered back and to the side. And the pain. The pain was a gigantic fist around her heart, squeezing until she couldn’t breathe.
She looked up, vision starting to shimmer, and saw Venable was still standing, shocked but apparently unharmed. How had she missed? The bodyguard had come out of his lethargy to throw himself on top of his employer, but there was still an open window. There was still time ...
Layla tried to lift the gun but her arms were leaden. Something hit her, hard, in the centre of her voluptuous chest, but she didn’t see what it was, or who threw it. She frowned, took a step back and her legs folded, and suddenly she was staring up at the chandeliers on the ceiling and she had to hold on to the polished wooden dance floor beneath her hands to stay there. Her vision was starting to blacken at the edges, like burning paper, the sound blurring down.
The last thing she saw was the slim woman she’d taken for a secretary, leaning over her with a wisp of smoke rising from the muzzle of the nine millimeter she was holding.
* * * *
Then the bright lights, and the glitter, all faded to black.
The woman Layla had mistaken for a secretary placed two fingers against the pulse point in the waitress’s throat and felt nothing. She knew better than to touch the body more than she had to now, even to close the dead woman’s eyes.
Cindy, the name tag read, even under the trickle of the blood. She doubted that would match the woman’s driver’s licence.
She rose, sliding the SIG semi-automatic back into the concealed-carry rig on her belt. Two of Venable’s meaty goons wrestled the woman’s accomplice, bellowing, out of the room. She turned to her employer.
“I don’t think you were the target, Mr Dyer, but I couldn’t take the chance,” she said calmly. She jerked her head towards the bodyguards. “If this lot had been halfway capable, I wouldn’t have had to get involved. As it was ...”
Dyer nodded. He still had his arms wrapped round his wife, who was sobbing, and his eyes were sad and tired.
“Thank you,” he said quietly.
The woman shrugged. “It’s my job,” she said.
“Who the hell are you?” It was Venable himself who spoke, elbowing his way out from the protective shield that his remaining bodyguards had belatedly thrown around him.
“This is Charlie Fox,” Dyer answered for her, the faintest smile in his voice. “She’s my personal protection. A little more subtle than your own choice. She’s good, isn’t she?”
Venable stared at him blankly, then at the dead woman, lying crumpled on the polished planks. At the unfired gun that had fallen from her hand.
“You saved my life,” he murmured, his face pale.
Charlie stared back at him. “Yes,” she said, sounding almost regretful. “Whether it was worth saving is quite another point. What had you done to her that she was prepared to kill you for it?”
Venable seemed not to hear. He couldn’t take his eyes off Layla’s body. Something about her was familiar, but he just couldn’t remember her face.
“I don’t know - nothing,” he said, cleared his throat of its hoarseness and tried again. “She’s a nobody. Just a waitress.” He took another look, just to be sure. “Just a woman.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Dyer said, and his eyes were on Charlie Fox. “From where I’m standing, she’s a hell of a woman, wouldn’t you say?”
<
* * * *
THE MYSTERY OF CANUTE VILLA
Martin Edwards
“Why should an innocent and respectable lady of good family and in her late middle years, never touched by a breath of scandal, be haunted by a mysterious stranger whose name is entirely unknown to her?”
The woman in the railway carriage nodded. “You have expressed the problem in a nutshell.”
Her companion tugged at his beard. “It is a tantalizing puzzle, I grant you, my dear Mrs Gaskell.”
As the train rattled round a bend, she said, “I only hope that I have not called you up to Cheshire on a wild goose chase.”
He gave a little bow. “Your summons was so intriguingly phrased, how could any man fail to hasten to your side?”
“Of course,” she said, “I am profoundly grateful to you for having agreed to spare me a little of your precious time. I realize that there are many calls upon it.”
More than you know, dear lady. Charles Dickens suppressed a sigh. It had been his intention to evaporate - as he liked to describe it - from London to spend a few pleasant days with Ellen Ternan. However, as no doubt she had calculated, Mrs Gaskell’s telegram had fascinated him. Within an hour of its receipt, he was on the train heading north to Manchester. He had an additional motive for racing to her side, being determined to seize an opportunity to improve relations between them. Once they had been on first class terms, but ever since their wrangles over the serialization of North and South, she had displayed a stubbornness unbecoming (if not, sadly, uncommon) in any woman, let alone the wife of a provincial clergyman.
He smiled. “Do you remember why I used to call you Scheherezade?”
She blushed. Not, he was sure, because her memory had failed, but rather from that becoming modesty that had entranced him in the early days of their acquaintance.
“You must recall my saying I was sure your powers of narrative can never be exhausted in a single night, but must be good for at least a thousand nights and one. Besides, your message was so teasing that no man with an ounce of curiosity in his blood could possibly resist.”
She permitted herself a smile. “You have not lost your gift for flattery, my dear Mr Dickens.”
“Charles, please.” He gave an impish grin. “Scheherezade.”
As if to cover her embarrassment, she looked out of the window at the fields and copses flying by. “We have reached Mobberley. Soon we shall be arriving.”
He clapped his hands. “I eagerly await my first sight of Cranford! Tell me, meanwhile, more about your friend Mrs Pettigrew.”
“Ah, dear Clarissa. It is difficult for me to think of her by the Major’s name. To me, she will always be Clarissa Woodward or, at a pinch, Mrs Clarissa Drinkwater.”
“You have met her second husband, Major Pettigrew?”
“Only once, at the wedding.”
“You do not care for the Major or his habit of bragging about his service in India?”
“I did not say that.”
“And I did not ask if it were true,” he said briskly. “I asserted it as a fact, inferred from your manner whenever you have mentioned the fellow’s name.”
Elizabeth cast her eyes to the heavens, but managed to suppress a sigh of irritation. “I suppose I can hardly complain if, having been enticed here by the invitation to conduct yourself as a detective, you start to play the part at every conceivable opportunity.”
He laughed. “We have that fascination
for the work of a detective in common, do we not? I recall that splendid little piece you wrote for me on disappearances. Let me say, I am thankful I live in the days of the Detective Police. If I am murdered, or commit bigamy, at any rate my friends will have the comfort of knowing all about it.”
“Your memory is remarkable.”
“So is my inquisitiveness. Why have you not seen fit to inform the local constabulary of Mrs Pettigrew’s distress?”
“For no other reason than that, in her letter, she pleaded with me not to do so.”
“And why, pray, do you think she was so reluctant for the matter not to be investigated?”
Best British Crime 6 - [Anthology] Page 34