Death & Stilettos

by Jason Krumbine

  “I didn’t say it was convenient,” Brooke murmurs.

  Avery folds her arms. “Are you poaching?”

  Thane’s taken aback. “Am I what?”

  “Oh, you heard me,” Avery says.

  “No,” Thane replies. “I don’t think I did. Because it sounded like you were accusing me poaching.”

  “Why else would you be here?” Avery asks.

  “Certainly not to poach,” Thane insists.

  “Funny.”

  Thane squints at her. “You don’t seem to be laughing.”

  “Shirley Martinez poaches,” Avery says.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Oh boy,” Brooke mutters.

  “Shirley Martinez,” Avery repeats. “I believe you’re familiar with her, in more ways than one, as I understand.”

  “Wow,” Thane says. “I’m not really sure what’s going on here now. Me and Shirley Martinez?”

  “Are you going to deny it?” Avery asks.

  “I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be denying...”

  Avery looks at her sister for support. Brooke shakes her head. “Oh no.”

  Avery turns back to Thane. “I know that the two of you have been dating.”

  “Oh?”

  “Are you going to deny that?” Avery asks.

  “Yes, I am,” Thane replies. “Shirley and I aren’t dating. We dated, like, a year ago.”

  “A year ago?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “Oh,” Avery says with a nervous swallow.

  Thane strokes his jaw. “I’m confused. Why is this a big deal to you?”

  “It’s not,” Avery insists, forcing an indifferent tone into her voice.

  “Kind of sounds like it is,” Thane says.

  “I’m just concerned with the quality of people you’re socializing with,” Avery replies, shuffling her feet. “Shirley’s been known to poach. I didn’t want that rubbing off onto you.”

  Thane holds up his hands. “Gorgeous, I’m not here to poach.”

  Avery waves a finger at him. “Don’t call me that.”

  Brooke edges past her sister. “You can call me that. In fact, if you should want, you can call me any time.”

  “Down, girl,” Avery says to her sister.

  “Okay,” Thane smiles again. “Why don’t we all calm down.”

  “Oh no,” Avery says, shaking her hand at him. “Wipe that smile off your face.”

  The smile drops from Thane’s face and is replaced with confusion. “Okay, I’m a little lost here. What’s wrong with my smile?”

  “It’s very intoxicating,” Brooke explains. “And Avery finds it especially irresistible.”

  The smile comes back. “Oh, does she?” Thane says, looking Avery in the eyes.

  Avery holds up her hands and breaks eye contact with him. “I have a boyfriend. Please stop this.”

  “Stop what?” Thane asks innocently; still smiling.

  “Thane, I’m warning you,” Avery starts.

  “I don’t understand,” Thane says. “I was just flirting with Brooke a second ago. Am I not allowed to flirt at all now?”

  “Yes,” Avery replies. “That would be preferable. No more flirting. With anyone. For you.” Avery takes a deep calming breath. “If you’re not here to poach, Thane, then why are you here?”

  “I’m confused,” Thane says. “Are you now upset that I’m not here to poach?”

  Brooke walks up to him and whispers, “It’s very complicated with her right now. Your best bet is to just wait Jack out.”

  “I can still hear you,” Avery snaps.

  “Sorry,” Brooke mouths and steps back behind her sister.

  “Thane,” Avery says to him.

  “Avery,” Thane replies, smiling again.

  “Why are you here?”

  He shrugs. “Would you believe I just happened to be in the neighborhood?”

  Avery frowns. “No.”

  Thane does a palms up. “Well, that’s actually the case.” He points to the left. “I was down off of sixty-third picking up a runaway that died in a car accident three weeks ago. I saw your lovely pink car and thought I’d say hi to the most beautiful reaper in the world.”

  Avery just stares at him. “You’re kidding me.”

  Thane shakes his head. “I kid you not.”

  “Just to clarify,” Brooke speaks up. “Which one of us is the most beautiful reaper in the world?”

  “That man,” Avery says, drumming her fingers against the table. “That man.”

  “What a man,” Brooke says.

  “He’s got balls,” Avery continues, either not noticing or not caring that Brooke’s tone is more of awe than frustration.

  Brooke smiles. “I’ll bet he does.”

  They’re at Cafe Carva, sitting at an outdoor table. There’s a half-eaten salad in front of Avery and the remains of a BLT in front of Brooke.

  “What?” Avery asks her sister.

  “What are we talking about?” Brooke asks defensively.

  “We’re talking about how much of an ass Thane is,” Avery says. “That’s what we’re talking about.”

  Brooke tilts her head to the side as she thinks it over. “I don’t know about that.”

  “The nerve of him to check up on us,” Avery continues.

  “I don’t think he was checking up on us,” Brooke says.

  “And Shirley Martinez!”

  Brooke holds up a hand. “Okay, I think we need to clarify something here. Clearly, you’re holding a torch or something for Thane.”

  Avery stares at her sister for a second. “I am not.”

  “You are too.”

  “I am not,” Avery insists.

  “You’re angry at him for dating Shirley Martinez over a year ago,” Brooke points out.

  “Because she’s a horrible influence,” Avery says.

  “He’s not five years old, Av,” Brooke says.

  “That’s funny because he behaves like he’s five years old.”

  “I think you’re confusing yourself with him,” Brooke says. “Why don’t we just skip all the denial and get to the part where you admit you’ve got the hots for the hottest grim reaper ever.”

  Avery frowns. “He’s not that hot.”

  Brooke fans herself. “Oh, yes he is. There aren’t many men I would consider gorgeous, but Thane Grym is definitely one of them.”

  “What he’s doing isn’t fair,” Avery says.

  “What is he doing?” Brooke asks. “Flirting? Charming you? Please, all men should be like him. Thane should hold a class on how to be a charming man.”

  Avery pokes herself in the chest. “I have a boyfriend.”

  Brooke frowns. “I feel like we’re having two different conversations here.”

  “I did not invite his attentions,” Avery continues.

  “You usually don’t.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Exactly what it sounds like,” Brooke says. “You never invite a man’s attention. Usually the guy has to harass you into paying attention to him.”

  “That doesn’t sound very good.”

  “It’s not!”

  “It doesn’t sound very good for the men,” Avery corrects herself. “You’re not painting them in a very good light.”

  “That’s because you push men to a bad place, Avery,” Brooke says, leaning across the table. “You drive them to horrible extremes just to get your attention.”

  “And you think just sitting in their lap is a better method?”

  “A thousand times better,” Brooke says, sitting back. “Men like a woman who’s not aloof.”

  “Well, the problem with that argument is you seem to think that I’m aloof,” Avery says. “But it’s my aloofness that’s attracting men.”

  Brooke stares at her for a second. “I’m confused. How did you turn my words around on me like that?”

  “This is not my fault,” Avery says. “This thing with Thane. I tell him
not to do it.”

  “With your mouth,” Brooke responds. “You’re body language is saying something completely different.”

  “It is not.”

  “It’s saying, ‘Take me, Thane, take me!’” Brooke purred. “That’s what your body is saying every time you’re around him. And frankly, I think you should listen to your body. Give into it. Get it out of your system. Take one ride on the Thane train and then go back to your boring boyfriend. You’ll be better for it.”

  Avery frowns. “This is why I don’t take relationship advice from you.”

  “Look, if you’re not gonna get yourself some of that, I will.”

  Avery points at her sister and says, very seriously, “Do not do that.”

  “Hey, it’s not fair to let a man that good looking go untouched,” Brooke argues.

  “You have Steven the bartender.”

  “For now,” Brooke says. “I told you I’m thinking about moving on and I like the idea of moving onto Thane Grym. I mean, if you’re not going to.”

  Avery pokes at her salad. “I have a boyfriend.”

  “Which makes me wonder why you’re stressing out over Thane,” Brooke says.

  “I have a wonderful boyfriend,” Avery says. “Thane’s like a piece of candy. He might be tasty at first, after eating all that candy all the time; you’re going to get sick.”

  “Is candy a euphemism for his penis?” Brooke asks. “Because I don’t think blowjobs can make you sick.”

  Avery throws her fork down. “Shut up.”

  “What?” Brooke asks. “It’s true. I mean, I suppose you could get lockjaw. I’ve heard of women who have that problem. Not me, though. I don’t have that problem.”

  “Yes, everybody in town knows you have the largest mouth,” Avery says dryly.

  Brooke looks at her. “Av, it’s just not fair. The man is here to satisfy women and if you’re not going to let him satisfy you, I think I should be allowed to step into the ring.”

  “You stay away from him,” Avery says. “That’s for your own good. You don’t know what kind of diseases he caught from Shirley Martinez.”

  “So you’re using your sisterly concern as a cover for your intense jealousy?” Brooke clarifies.

  “Yes,” Avery says. “Now, let’s focus on work. We need to figure out where Brian and Cindy Mason ran off to. Suicides don’t run. They want to die. That’s why they’re suicides.”

  “They get lost,” Brooke points out.

  “They do get lost,” Avery agrees.

  “But you don’t think that’s what happened.”

  “Why was the house a mess?”

  Brooke shrugs. “Because they weren’t very organized?”

  “We need to start somewhere,” Avery says.

  “Probably we should start with dumping Danny the Dead Guy.”

  Avery ignores her sister’s suggestion. “No family in the area.”

  “Are we sure it’s not a paperwork mix up?” Brooke asks. “I mean, its possible Russell’s still a little pissed off at me.”

  “Pissed off enough to send us on a wild goose chase?”

  “I did deflower his nephew,” Brooke reminds her.

  “Good point,” Avery agrees. “But Russell’s too by-the-book. He wouldn’t mess around like this just to get even.”

  Brooke runs a hand through her hair. “I dunno. He’s always seemed kind of a weasely to me.”

  Avery thinks about it for a minute. “Cindy Mason was a teacher.”

  “You think they’re haunting her school?” Brook responded dubiously.

  “Well, her husband was an unemployed writer,” Avery says. “We’ve got to start somewhere.”

  “Yeah, but at her school?” Brooke scrunches her face up. “I mean, what are the odds of a school teacher haunting her own school?”

  “What are the odds of suicides running?” Avery replies.

  A skinny man with a buzz cut and a sharp angular face approaches the sister’s table, grabbing an empty chair from a neighboring table. He dresses a bit like a preppy nerd: pressed jeans, a buttoned up white shirtsleeve and a grey sweater vest. His name is Adam Harris.

  “Sorry I’m late,” he says, sitting down. In some circles, despite lacking any official authorization from the Council of Reapers, Adam’s considered a grim reaper historian. It’s his own personal crusade to bring the grim reaping community into the 21st Century, transcribing the whole of the Reaper Chronicles to a digital format. “Victor Price had some old, and I mean old, Karloff volumes. And they were in mint condition; they also had the missing Carthax pages. I got a history boner just looking at them. And by looking at them, I mean that he opened the trunk he kept them in and let me look at them from a distance of five feet. He was holding on to a piece of reaper history and he kept it in a trunk. A trunk. An old trunk. Covered in dust. You know who’s read the complete Karloff volumes? No one. Only about one in seven reapers gets to read volumes five and six, which are the only complete volumes still around. That’s horrible. This was gold and that old badger just refused to part with them. I offered him twenty thousand dollars and he turned me down.”

  Brooke frowns. “You don’t have twenty thousand dollars.”

  “He didn’t know that,” Adam replies pointedly.

  “Adam,” Avery says patiently.

  He scratches his ear. “You don’t actually care about this.”

  “Not a bit,” Avery says.

  “You would both benefit greatly from have the entire Karloff collection digitized and available at your fingertips,” Adam says.

  Avery holds up her cellphone. “My phone doesn’t even get picture texts, Adam.”

  “You should upgrade.” He pulls out his smartphone. “If you get one of these you can download my new Reaper App.”

  “You just said two words I know nothing about,” Avery replies. “Download and app.”

  Adam sighs. “You know, I’m doing this for the betterment of your community.”

  Brooke reaches over and pinches his cheek. “And we love you for it.”

  Adam pulls up his notes on his smartphone. “You guys wanted to know about Messor & Decessus.”

  “They offered us both staff positions,” Avery says.

  “Yeah, you and everybody else,” Adam say. “The grim reaping firm of Messor & Decessus was founded by James Decessus and Mark Messor in the late seventies as part of the big corporatizing of grim reaping. None of us would actually remember that because we hadn’t been born yet, but it was apparently a very big thing. Only a handful of reaper corporations survived the boom and bust in the nineties and Messor and Decessus was one of them. Originally out of LA, they now have satellite offices in New York City, Dallas and, of course, our little neck of the woods, Century City. And they love to assimilate. In each expansion, the independent reapers in that particular city dropped by almost forty percent. In the case of Dallas, it was fifty percent.”

  “What happened to them?” Brooke asks.

  “They were either given staff positions,” Adam says. “Or they were run out of town.”

  Avery looks at Adam dubiously. “Run out of town?”

  “I found three reapers formerly of New York City that told me they were strongly advised by representatives of Messor & Decessus to find another city for their base of operations, because there wasn’t going to be enough death to go around.”

  “That’s illegal,” Avery says.

  “Yes it is,” Adam agrees. “But when the Council investigated they found no indication of any wrong doing.”

  “They didn’t talk to the same reapers you talked to?”

  “As a matter of fact, no they didn’t,” Adam says.

  “Well, that sounds kind of suspicious,” Brooke says.

  “You would think,” Adam agrees. “But no one on the Council felt that way, mostly because none of the wronged reapers came forward and there was no official record of them.”

  “How did you find them?” Avery asks him.

  �
��This is what I’m talking about when I say that the reaper community needs to get an upgrade,” Adam says. “I’ve got thirty gigabits of data sitting on my servers. That’s not even a tenth of the Reaper Chronicles. Between that data and the fact that the reapers in New York are more pro-email then they are around here,” Adam pulls out a slip of paper. “I have those three names for you. Plus, the address of the one that actually moved here.”

  Avery takes the paper. “One of those reapers is here in Century City?”

  “Yep.”

  “Small world,” Brooke murmurs.

  “And getting smaller every day,” Avery agrees.

  “Near as I can tell,” Adam continues. “Messor & Decessus like to push the envelope. They go right up to the edge, without ever actually crossing the Council. Or at least, you know, they don’t leave any evidence behind that they did. They have a grand total of zero infraction fines and maintain a perfect score of one hundred with the Council. Plus, they offer a killer benefits package.”

  “That part we know about.”

  “Did you know they offer retirement?” Adam asks.

  “No.”

  “Then you also didn’t know that in the last thirty years not a single grim reaper in the employ of Messor and Decessus has actually collected retirement.”

  “No one’s retiring?”

  Adam shrugs. “It certainly looks that way. Although, I have less than ten percent of the Reaper Chronicles available to me and the human resources department at M&D weren’t very forthcoming.”

  Brooke looks at her sister. “Must be a pretty awesome company to work for if no one’s retiring.”

  “Must be,” Avery agrees.

  Adam gets to his feet. “I have to get going. I’m determined to find a way to get those Karloff volumes.”

  “Thanks, Adam,” Avery says. “We’ll mail you a check.”

  “No problem,” Adam replies. “One more thing, though. We have about thirty reapers operating here in Century City. Near as I can tell, M&D offered jobs to about fifteen of them. So, you know, be careful.”

  nine

  Principal Sharon Wards is in her forties with skin covered in freckles and heavy laugh lines etched into her face. Her hair is tied up in a tight bun on the top her head and she’s dressed in a conservative business suit. She regards the Graves sisters with a wary eye.