“I wouldn’t say ‘want’,” Brooke says. “I mean, I want to still be in bed.”
Jackson glances at the time.
“I like to sleep in,” Brooke explains.
Jackson rolls his eyes. “Right. The double homicide at the Kirkland Motel.”
“There’s nothing lingering around the motel,” Avery says. “We want to take a look at the bodies.”
“Oh? Is that all?” Jackson waves them off. “Well, that’s not going to happen.”
“Why not?”
“Because this is a police department and you’re not cops,” Jackson says. “You remember what happened the last time I took you down to the morgue? I almost lost my damn job. You’re not going down there again.”
“Fine,” Avery says, trying to keep Jackson from going into the red zone. “You said they were accountants?”
Jackson pulls a file off the top of the stack on his desk. “Yeah. Near as we can tell Burton Gentry and Jim Hollway were two misguided accountants who got caught up in a drug deal gone wrong.”
“Accountants?” Brooke repeats. “In a drug deal?”
“It takes all kinds.”
Brooke gives him her best puppy dog eyes. “Please let us see the bodies?”
“Oh, well, since you asked so nicely,” Jackson says. “No. And add a, ‘Hell, no’ for good measure.”
“Their souls could be down there, trapped in their bodies because of some traumatic thingamajig,” Brooke says.
“A traumatic thingamajig?” Jackson repeats.
“It’s a technical term. Official and everything.” Brooke points to her sister. “Just ask her.”
“It’s not an official term,” Avery says.
Jackson raises his hand. “Stop. I’ve heard this spiel one too many times already. First from your father and now from the two of you. You guys couldn’t have gone into something else?”
“Something else wasn’t the family business,” Brooke says.
“Although, I like the idea of opening a candle shop,” Avery says.
“A candle shop?” Jackson asks.
“A boutique candle shop,” Avery clarifies.
“That doesn’t answer the unspoken question,” Jackson says.
“Maybe it shouldn’t have been unspoken, then?” Avery suggestions.
Jackson frowns. “What the hell is a boutique candle shop?” He holds up a hand. “Wait, never mind. I don’t want to know. If I know, then I’m obligated to tell my wife. And then she’s spending all my money and time on boutique candles.”
“I’m sorry this is such a problem for you,” Avery says dryly.
Jackson sighs. “Look, the bodies didn’t do anything. Nobody’s reported anything strange or any weird sensations, feelings, appearances, etc. Those two bodies are dead, dead, dead. The only thing that’s crawling around in them is maggots.”
Brooke shudders. “I hate maggots.”
“I will give you this,” Jackson hands them a piece of paper. “Their home addresses.”
Avery takes the paper and glances at it briefly before folding it up.
“Do I get a thank you?” Jackson asks.
“You did try to ignore us in the hallway,” Avery says.
“Hey, what about Larry Faraco?” Brooke asks.
Jackson looks confused. “Who?”
“Larry Faraco,” Brooke repeats the name.
The detective shakes his head. “I have no idea who that is.”
“And there were only two bodies at the scene?” Avery asks.
“What are you girls getting at?”
“Nothing.”
“It’s about what that manager’s pothead kid saw, isn’t it?” Jackson says, shaking his head. “That’s not a lead.”
“Kid says he saw someone leave the motel,” Avery says. “Sounds like a lead to me.”
“That’s why I’m the cop and you’re the grim reaper. Kid says he saw someone who was missing the back of their head leave the motel,” Jackson corrects her. “I don’t know about you, but I don’t trust the word of a sixteen year old pothead who’s so dumb he’s still smoking the pot when the cops show up to investigate a murder. We have no reliable witness accounts of anyone leaving the motel room.”
“You have descriptions of the people who went in the room?” Avery says.
Jackson shakes his head. “Just the guy who rented the room. And that’s sketchy at best. The manager describes him as tall.”
“And?” Avery prompts.
“Exactly,” Jackson shifts his bulk in his seat. “So don’t go barking up any weird trees. It’s one thing to convince people that some souls need to be wrangled into the afterlife. It’s another to start talking about people coming back from the dead.”
eight
They start with Burton Gentry’s place. He kept a bachelor pad apartment on the west side of town.
Brooke whistles as she looks at the building. “Nice.”
“And you complain we never go anywhere nice,” Avery checks the paper Jackson gave them. “His place is on the third floor. Three-oh-two.”
They take the elevator up, tapping sticks discreetly hidden beneath their jackets.
“You think he’s got any house guests?” Brooke asks as the elevator rises.
“With a name like Burton?” Avery says. “Probably not.”
Brooke shrugs. “I don’t know. It’s kind of a cute name.”
“That’s because you dated a Guster,” Avery says.
Brooke smiles. “Guster was a very handsome man.”
“And that’s about all he was.”
“I don’t ask for much in my men,” Brooke admits. “Looks, skill and, occasionally money.”
“You’re such a simple woman,” Avery says with a hint of sarcasm.
Brooke nods. “I really am.”
The elevator reaches the third floor and they get off. The hallway’s carpeted and the walls are painted in pastels.
“I wonder what it costs to live here?” Brooke says.
“A steady income,” Avery replies, checking the door numbers as they walk down the hallway. “You could live here or give up your shoes.”
“All of them?”
Avery shrugs. “Maybe not all of them, but you certainly couldn’t buy them on a regular basis anymore. Also, the apartment association board might frown on you bringing home sexual deviants so often.”
“Please,” Brooke says. “They’re hardly deviant.”
“Stanley?”
“Stanley’s British,” Brooke says. “The British can’t be deviant.”
“Wasn’t he the one that liked to use the cuffs?”
Brooke shakes her head. “You’re thinking of Phil.
“Phil?”
“Phil,” Brooke reminisces. “Phil was into bondage. Did I ever tell you what our safe word was?”
“Probably,” Avery says. “But over time I blocked it.”
“Dolphin,” Brooke continues. “Our safe word was dolphin.”
“I’m going to regret this,” Avery starts. “But why was it dolphin?”
Brooke shrugs. “The man had a thing for fish.”
“So, he was into bondage and sea life?”
“You can’t have more than one fetish at a time?” Brooke says.
“Usually, they keep it to one.” Avery stops in front of 302.
She knocks gently on the door.
They wait for a few minutes and there’s no answer.
“I suppose there could be somebody asleep in there,” Avery says.
“Maybe you should knock louder,” Brooke suggests.
“And draw attention to ourselves?”
“It’s the middle of the day,” her sister says. “Who’s going to be home at this hour?”
Avery knocks louder on the door.
Still no answer.
Avery tries the handle but it’s locked. She looks at her sister.
“Is this it?” Brooke asks, mock surprise on her face. “It is my time to shine?”
Brooke rolls her eyes and steps up, pulling a small lock pick kit out.
“You know, being able to pick locks isn’t something you should be proud of,” Avery says, checking the hallway.
“Knowing how to do it isn’t illegal,” Brooke says.
“Why else would you know how to do it unless you’re going to use it for something illegal?” Avery says.
“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe a you’re grim reaper who needs to get into buildings to grab wayward souls?” Brooke suggests. There’s a click and the door swings open. She gestures for her sister. “Age before beauty.”
“If you’re what’s considered good looking today, the bar can’t get much lower,” Avery says, stepping inside.
Burton Gentry’s bachelor pad has two bedrooms and is neatly kept.
“Hello? Is there anyone home? Dead or alive?” Brooke calls out loudly.
There’s no response.
“One of these days you’re gonna get an answer,” Avery says. “And it’s going to freak you out.”
“Yeah, I’m gonna freak out because our job is going to be a thousand times easier.”
They poke around the living room.
Brooke picks up a magazine from the coffee table. She shows it to her sister. “The man reads Good Housekeeping. There’s no way this was a bachelor pad.”
Avery shows her the picture she’s found on the bookshelf. “Well, you’re kind of right.”
There were two men in the picture, holding each other in a loving embrace.
Brooke makes a disgusted face and drops the magazine. “Well, I guess that makes sense.”
Avery sets the picture back down. “Yeah? How?”
“The name Burton does sound kind of gay.”
“But Guster doesn’t?”
“Oh, it does,” Brooke agrees. “But there’s a big difference.”
“Yeah?”
“Guster was definitely into women.” Brooke wanders into the kitchen. “You know, we did it at a public restroom right before I broke it off with him. Those family bathrooms are perfect for those kind of connections, if you were ever wondering.”
“I wasn’t, thank you.”
Avery walks down the hallway. She can hear Brooke absently tapping her stick around in the kitchen. She stops at the first room and gently pushes the door open. There’s a guest bed and a dresser, but the room’s devoid of any personal objects. She moves on to the master bedroom.
The first thing she notices is that the master bedroom smells damp.
Avery starts tapping against the wall.
Stray souls like damp places.
She keeps tapping around the room without any results.
Avery peeks into the bathroom. Nothing out of the ordinary.
“This is weird,” she mutters and makes her way back to the living room.
Brooke’s sitting on the couch helping herself to some cookies she found and reading through Good Housekeeping.
“What are you doing?” Avery asks.
“Snack time.”
Avery yanks the box of cookies out of her sister’s lap. “You don’t help yourself to a dead man’s cookies.”
“I don’t think Burton’s going to mind.”
“His other half might.”
“What part of ‘I’m always hungry’ are you having trouble with?” Brooke asks.
“None of it,” Avery replies, placing the cookies back in the kitchen. “I just think you’re fat.”
“Oh, that’s nice.” Brooke brushes the crumbs off of her. “Is it too late for me to develop an eating disorder?”
Avery steps back into the living room. “Does something seem off to you?”
Brooke makes a show of thinking about it for a moment. “Well, my sister just called me fat. Does that count?”
Avery ignores her and pulls the spectral analysis device from her pocket.
“Hey, what are you doing?” Brooke asks.
“I’m trying something new,” Avery says. She flips the switch on the side of the device and nothing happens.
A second later the red light flashes.
“What was red again?”
Avery shuts it off and shoves it back in her pocket. “No souls,” she looks around the living room.
“You think we can trust it? Mr. Suity-McSuit didn’t look very trustworthy.”
Avery rubs her elbow, looking at the dead man’s bookcases. “Something’s not right.”
Brooke waits and she watches her sister stare off absently into space.
“Are you going clarify that?” she finally asks.
Avery shrugs.
“You think they were already here?” Brooke asks.
“Who?”
“Suity-McSuit. Messor & Decessus,” Brooke says. “You think he poached our souls.”
Avery frowns. “Nah, I don’t think so. Something just feels off,” she shakes her head and walks over to the front door.
Brooke starts to something as Avery opens the door, but cuts herself off.
There’s a large man standing in the doorway, blocking their path.
“I don’t think you two are supposed to be here,” he says with a voice that sounds like two stones rubbing together. He punctuates the statement by cracking his rather large knuckles.
Brooke sums it up quite nicely, “Oh, boy.”
nine
The man’s fist swings forward, slamming into Avery’s face. There’s a loud crack and Avery feels like she’s been hit with a concrete block.
Avery flops backwards into Brooke, who catches her.
The man in the doorway is a good foot taller than Brooke and almost wider than the door. He wears a dark suit that’s awkwardly stretched across his thick frame. His head is flat and squat. His body looks like someone took a large piece of concrete and simply chiseled a man out of it.
“Oh, sh-” Brooke’s cut off, as the second fist comes through the doorway and she promptly drops her sister.
The blocky fist still connects and Brooke falls back, stumbling over the chair in the living room.
The big guy grabs Avery, lifting her with one hand wrapped around her neck. “Who the hell are you?” he demands.
Avery’s eyes bulge and her face goes red as the man tightens his grip.
“She can’t answer if she can’t breathe, moron,” Brooke cracks the coffee table across the big man’s back with a grunt. The table splinters into pieces and the big man doesn’t budge.
He looks over her shoulder at Brooke. “You just made number one on my hit list.”
“Oh, joy,” Brooke’s face falls.
The big guy tosses Avery aside. She smacks into the wall and then drops to the ground.
The big guy lumbers after Brooke, his mammoth hands outstretched like lethal claws.
“My, what big hands you have, grandmother,” Brooke quips, backing up.
“You’re pretty mouthy for a dead girl,” he says.
“You have no idea how ironic that statement is,” Brooke says. She grabs at the bookcase and yanks on it.
The bookcase doesn’t budge.
“You have got to be kidding me,” she says.
The big guy’s hand lashes out, striking Brooke and driving her into the bookcase.
The shelves rattle and a couple of the books, the heavier ones, of course, drop on Brooke.
The big guy picks Brooke up by her leg and tosses her across the living room.
Then Avery’s jumping on him from behind, jabbing a handheld taser into the big guy’s neck.
The giant thug howls as 5,000 volts shoot through him. His eyes roll back in his head and he twitches violently enough to knock Avery off of him and into the open front door.
The big guy’s still standing for a moment, swaying ever so slightly, and then drops to the ground.
Brooke groans as she picks herself up. “What the hell was that?
”
“I have no idea,” Avery says, rubbing her throat. Her voice sounds a little hoarse. She holds up the taser and gives her sister a crooked smile. “And you wanted me to get a real gun.”
“I still want you to get a real gun,” Brooke says, propping herself against the sofa. She holds up her left hand. “Bastard broke three of my nails.
Avery kicks at the big guy’s shoes. He doesn’t budge.
“He’s not dead, is he?” Brooke asks.
Avery quickly checks for a pulse. She finds one. “Nah. He’s still with us.”
“You’ve got,” Brooke points to her sister’s face, “blood kind of all over your face.”
“You look like somebody used you as a bat,” Avery replies. She points to the body. “Help me out here.”
“With what?” Brooke shuffles around the sofa.
“I want to see if he’s got any ID on him and I want to do it quickly,” Avery says. “I’d rather there not be a round two.”
With some effort they flip him over. Avery searches through the big guy’s pockets. She finds fifty dollars in cash and a driver’s license for Roy Perkins.
She holds the license up to the big guy’s face. “You think that’s him?”
Brooke leans over. She looks back and forth between the picture and the real thing. “Honestly? I’m not sure. My vision’s a little blurry,” she looks at her sister. “How do you know when you’ve got a concussion?”
Avery pulls out her cellphone and flips it open.
“Hey,” Brooke snatches the phone out of her sister’s hand. “What are you doing?”
“Calling Jackson,” Avery takes her phone back.
“I don’t know about you, but I’d rather not spend the rest of the day giving statements,” Brooke says.
“And I would like to know who this guy is,” Avery replies. “I’m not fond of getting beat up and not knowing why.”
“That’s what the Internet’s for.”
Avery frowns.
“If we spend the day talking to Jackson and whoever else at the station, and you know we will, Suity-McSuit is going to get our dead souls and our bounty,” Brooke says. “How does that sound?”
Avery takes her phone back and flips the phone closed. She gets to her feet. “I’ll make an anonymous call from the road.”
Death & Stilettos Page 5