One Stiletto in the Grave

by Jason Krumbine

  “How the hell did she end up here?”

  “That’s a good question.”

  “Hey, how’d your arm candy thing go last night?” Brooke asks.

  “It was great,” Avery replies. “Delightful wining and dining, right up until the part when James Decessus appeared and started being all creepy-like.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Yeah, apparently he’s a big fan of the hospital,” Avery says. “And stalking. I think he’s a big fan of stalking.”

  “Stalking?”

  “I might be exaggerating,” Avery admits. “Anyway, he wants us to talk to the reapers he’s allegedly screwed over.”

  “That’s weird.

  “Very weird,” Avery agrees. “How’d your night go? Did you get one of your nude male models?”

  “Not exactly,” Brooke says.

  “Did you want to expand on that?”

  Brooke shakes her head. “Nope.”

  Avery just sighs.

  Avery opens the door to the spare room to find Daniel on an old rotary phone. She shakes her head.

  “I have to go,” Daniel says and quickly hangs up.

  “What the hell?” Brooke takes the phone and follows the cord to an outlet on the wall. She yanks the cord out.

  “Daniel,” Avery adopts a cooler demeanor. “We talked about this. You can’t make contact with anyone.”

  “Shelly’s going to get all of my money!” Daniel says.

  “Maybe you should have thought of that before you married her,” Brooke says, standing over him.

  “Who did you call, Daniel?” Avery asks.

  Daniel doesn’t answer.

  “Daniel?” Avery asks more firmly. “Who did you call?”

  Brooke takes the receiver from the phone and smacks it upside the dead man’s head. “Hey, answer the question, moron.”

  “I called Shelly,” he whimpers, staring at the ground.

  “You called Shelly,” Avery shakes her head. “Why the hell did you call Shelly?”

  “I thought that maybe I could scare her away from the money,” Daniel says.

  “You have an interesting method of scaring people away,” Avery says, leaning against the wall.

  Daniel looks at her. “I do?”

  “Yeah, you do,” Brooke says. “Apparently Shelly swung by while we were out.”

  Daniel snaps his head around to Brooke. “She was here?” He looks back at Avery. “I didn’t give her the address. I couldn’t. I don’t even know where I am!”

  “It’s called caller ID,” Avery says. “So calm down.” She sighs. “What did you say to her?”

  Daniel shrugs. “I said that I was a lawyer working on behalf of Kristen Jones. I was calling to let her know that Kristen would be coming by in the next day or so to sign all the appropriate paperwork.”

  Avery groans. “Why would you do that, Daniel?”

  “No, I got this one,” Brooke interrupts. “It’s because he’s an idiot. A dead idiot. Can we please get rid of him now?”

  Daniel jumps to his feet, an alarmed look on his face. “No, please! I just have to see my daughter one more time!”

  Brooke pushes him back down onto the bed. “I don’t know if you’re aware of this but as a dead person, you don’t get a vote.”

  Daniel looks at Avery. “Please,” he pleads.

  Avery sighs. “Daniel, we’re putting our neck on the line here.”

  “And they are very fine looking necks,” Brooke adds.

  “There’s nothing wrong with helping a deceased soul bring some closure to the living,” Avery says, “but it’s kind of against the rules to hang on to a dead soul while we’re doing it.”

  “There’s actually no ‘kind of’ about it, though,” Brooke says. “It’s definitely against the rules.”

  “You rock the boat and people are going to find out you’re here,” Avery says. “People find out you’re here, we’re out our bounty, up crap creek, Shelly gets all your money and you’re going to the afterlife without the chance to say good-bye to your daughter.”

  “I swear,” he pleads. “I’ll behave. I’m sorry. I am so, so sorry.”

  “Who else did you call?” Brooke asks.

  Daniel doesn’t answer right away.

  “Daniel,” Avery warns.

  Daniel runs pale fingers through his thinning hair. “I was talking to Sue when you came in.”

  Brooke looks at her sister. “Who the hell is Sue?”

  Avery shrugs. “Beats me.” She looks at Daniel. “Who’s Sue, Daniel?”

  Daniel chews on his lower lip for a second. “Sue’s my girlfriend.”

  Avery gapes at him. She looks at Brooke and then back at Daniel. “Your girlfriend?”

  “Look, I’m not proud of it,” Daniel starts.

  “Dude, you’re dead,” Brooke cuts in. “Pride is the least of your worries.”

  “Daniel, you told you me that you couldn’t find a woman to even look at you before Shelly,” Avery says.

  Daniel bobs his head up and down. “And that’s true.”

  “Oh?”

  “After I married Shelly,” Daniel explains, “I met Sue. She’s a wonderful woman.”

  “I’m sure she is,” Avery says, rubbing her forehead. “Is it possible your daughter hasn’t talked to you all these years because you’re a man-whore?”

  Brooke nudges the dead man with her elbow. “Don’t worry, that’s not as bad as it sounds.”

  Daniel looks back and forth between the sisters. “I have only ever loved three women.”

  “And, unfortunately, two of those were at the same time?” Avery asks.

  “Ms. Graves,” Daniels starts. “Shelly was...insatiable.”

  Brooke frowns. “I’m confused. This usually isn’t a problem for men.”

  “But she was emotionally distant,” Daniel continues. “I couldn’t connect with her on a basic, emotional level. So, I found Sue.” He pauses. “Sue and I, we connected on a level that I never thought was possible, not even with my first wife.”

  “I can’t believe this,” Avery mutters. “What did you tell her?”

  “I told her I loved her,” Daniel says.

  “You told her who you were?”

  “Of course.”

  Avery rubs her hands up and down her face violently. “Daniel, what part of ‘you’re dead and you can’t communicate with anyone anymore’ did you not understand?”

  “Sue was different,” Daniels says.

  Avery glares at him. “I don’t care if Sue had the power to bring you back to life, you don’t talk to her!”

  “Wow.” Brooke takes a step back from the dead guy. “I know this probably isn’t the best time to say it, but maybe an I-told-you-so is in order? I mean, it wasn’t my idea to leave him unsupervised two nights in a row.”

  Avery shoots a look at her sister. “Don’t start with me.”

  Brooke holds up her hands. “So, not a good time?”

  Avery looks at Daniel. “Did Shelly know about your affair with Sue?”

  “It wasn’t an affair,” Daniel insists. “It was something more than that.”

  “Now’s not really the time to get hung up on details, Daniel,” Avery says.

  Daniel takes a shuddering sigh. “Shelly knew Sue and I were friends.”

  “Friends?”

  “Close friends,” Daniel adds.

  “So maybe her sleeping with the neighbor’s pool boy wasn’t that unexpected?” Avery suggests.

  “What are you saying?”

  Brooke takes this one. “She’s saying that because you’re emotionally involved with another woman, Shelly felt it was probably okay to boink Raul. It’s called revenge sex. I’m very familiar with it.”

  “And you didn’t see it coming?” Avery asks Daniel.

  “No, of course not,” Daniel insists. “As far as I was concerned Shelly and I were happily married.”

  “But not too happily married, amiright?” Brooke nudges him with her elbow aga
in.

  Avery takes a deep breath. “Daniel, I’m going to ask you a question and I want you to be honest. Do you know where your daughter is?”

  Daniel looks like he’s about to burst into tears. “I swear. I have no idea where she is.”

  “You can understand my skepticism,” Avery says, “considering that yesterday you made yourself out to be a heartbroken widower who made a poor choice between his family and his dick.”

  Daniel’s shakes his head violently. “I don’t know where Kristen is!”

  Brooke walks over to Avery, turning her back to Daniel, she whispers, “Av, just tell him she’s dead and let it go.”

  Avery ignores her. “Daniel, how old was Kristen when she left?”

  Daniel sniffs. “She’d just turned twenty.”

  “What were her college plans?”

  “Her what?”

  “College plans, Daniel,” Avery says. “Kristen doesn’t sound like the kind of girl who’d be satisfied making minimum wage at Burger Hut.”

  Daniel wipes at his nose, taking a moment to think about it. “Honestly, I don’t remember. It was a long time ago.”

  “Here’s the thing, Daniel,” Avery says. “You want us to help you and we want to help you-”

  “I don’t want to help,” Brooke cuts in.

  “But you need to help us,” Avery continues.

  Daniel shakes. “I don’t remember. She was interested in architecture, but I don’t recall whether or not she ever made any college plans.”

  “And what did all the other private investigators tell you?” Avery asks.

  “Nothing,” Daniel says. “They said they couldn’t find anything. No credit cards, no bank accounts, no driver’s license. Nothing.”

  “Nothing,” Avery echoes.

  “Well, you know what that sounds like to me,” Brooke starts.

  Avery grabs her sister and drags her back out into the front office.

  “Hey,” Brooke says.

  Avery closes the door behind them. “We’re not telling him his daughter’s dead.”

  “Well, that’s a shame, considering she probably is,” Brooke says.

  “And if you do tell him his daughter’s dead,” Avery says. “I want to be able to tell him what happened.”

  “It’s not really going to matter one way or the other,” Brooke says.

  “Here’s what I want you to do,” Avery continues, handing Brooke the picture of Kristen. “Visit Ricky and see what he can find on Kristin.”

  “Whoa, hold up, why don’t you go visit Ricky?”

  “Because I’m going to look into Brian’s other brother,” Avery replies. “On my way here this morning I swung by the Rusty Nail.”

  “What did you find out?”

  “First, our dead couple wasn’t there,” Avery says. “Second, Brian was a soft spoken artistic type.”

  Brooke pockets the picture. “That doesn’t sound particularly helpful.”

  “It wasn’t,” Avery agrees. “But the bartender remembered that the last time Brian was in there he was with another guy that looked like an older, and considerably more cheerful, version of him.”

  “So not Benny.”

  “Yeah, I’m thinking the other brother.”

  “And we’re just going to leave dead guy here by himself?” Brooke asks.

  “Do you have a better idea?”

  “Yeah, it’s called dropping him off at the Waiting Room and collecting our money.”

  Avery opens the second door in the office. It’s their proper office. There’s a desk and filing cabinets. This was where their father made the magic happen.

  Avery walks around the desk and checks the top drawers. “We can’t take him with us,” she says. “It would attract too much attention.”

  “And leaving him here has worked out so well,” Brooke says from the doorway. “How do we know he’s not going to find another phone in those boxes?”

  Avery pulls out a screwdriver and walks past her sister into the kitchenette. There’s a small phone box next to the circuit breaker. She pops it open and unscrews the two phone wires.

  She looks back at her sister. “Problem solved.”

  “Are you sure you’re not transferring some unresolved Daddy issues here?” Brooke asks. “Because this level of rule breaking is very unlike you.”

  “The man just wants to see his daughter one more time.”

  “The man’s turning into a bit of a sleazebag,” Brooke says. “He’s kind of a weak excuse for a sleazebag, but he’s a sleazebag nonetheless.”

  “Go see Ricky and get back to me,” Avery says, ignoring her.

  “Fine. Whatever.” She holds out her hand.

  Avery looks at the open palm. “What?”

  “The car keys,” Brooke says. “I’m not running your errands and taking public transportation.”

  sixteen

  The bus screeches to a stop and the passengers all sway with the motion. Brooke grumbles to herself as she steps off the bus, thinking up intense and complex ways to make her sister’s life a little more difficult. She walks two blocks from the bus stop until she reaches a nondescript building.

  On the second floor of this nondescript building sits a weedy-looking fellow in a very tiny cubicle. His blond hair is capped off in a sharp widow’s peak. He wears thick glasses and has a hard time looking anyone in the eyes. His name is Ricky Morrison.

  Brooke stands at the entrance to Ricky’s cubicle for almost five minutes, watching the nervous man bounce around in his chair, oblivious to Brooke’s presence. Ricky’s got a pair of headphones on; they’re plugged into an mp3 player off to the side on his desk. Brooke carefully walks into the cubicle and looks over Ricky’s shoulder to read the music player’s screen. It’s Abba.

  Brooke rolls her eyes and drops a hand onto Ricky’s shoulder.

  Ricky lets out a sharp screech, like a bird that’s just been brutally attacked, and pops out of his chair.

  The cubicle immediately stinks of rotting cheese.

  Brooke takes a step back, holding her nose.

  “Ms. Graves,” Ricky says, “I am so sorry,” he sits back down. “You surprised me,” he pauses. “Like you always do.”

  “Yeah.” Brooke’s eyes are getting watery. “I’m gonna have to learn to stop doing that.”

  A clean-cut man with a square jaw pops his head into Ricky’s cubicle. “Everything okay in here, Richard?” he asks, eyeing Brooke.

  “Everything’s fine, sir,” Ricky says, studying the wall of his cubicle. “Ms. Graves here just startled me.”

  The clean-cut man stares at Brooke a second too long, lingering on her chest, which was being given a little extra oomph thanks to a heavily padded bra.

  “Uh-huh,” he says. He looks at Ricky. “Remember, Richard, I need that report from you before five.”

  “No problem, sir,” Ricky says. “I’m almost done with it.”

  The clean-cut man stares at Brooke for another second, committing her body to memory, and then leaves.

  Brooke points after the clean-cut man. “Who was that?”

  “That was Mr. Gill,” Ricky replies, staring at the floor.

  “Mr. Gill?”

  “He’s happily married,” Ricky says.

  “Not too happily would be my guess,” Brooke responds. “Considering the way he just undressed me with his eyes there.”

  Ricky opens his mouth and then closes it.

  Brooke folds her arms. “No, go on, Ricky. Don’t hold back.”

  “Please don’t have sex with my co-workers,” Ricky whispers.

  Brooke smiles and pats him on the cheek. “Aren’t you just adorable?” She pulls out the picture of Kristen. “I need you to find somebody for me.”

  Ricky adjusts his glasses. “Now’s really not a good time, Ms. Graves.”

  “Brooke,” she corrects him.

  “I have a really big report due today,” Ricky finishes.

  Brooke pulls out a hundred dollar bill to go with the pictur
e.

  Ricky fidgets in his chair. “It’s a very important report.”

  Brooke frowns. “This is about as good as it’s going to get. I don’t have any more cash on me.”

  Ricky takes the picture and the money. He spins around back to the computer. “Who are you looking for?”

  “The girl in the photo,” Brooke says.

  “Do you have a name for her?” Ricky taps away at the keyboard. “I’m not sure if you’re aware of this, but facial recognition isn’t something I can afford on my salary.”

  “Kristen Jones,” Brooke says. “And when did you get the attitude?”

  Ricky stiffens and hunches over his keyboard. “I’ve been seeing a life coach,” he mumbles.

  “A life coach?” Brooke repeats. “For real? I didn’t know those things actually existed.”

  “Why wouldn’t they?” Ricky asks.

  Brooke shrugs. “I don’t know. I just thought they were something you only found in the movies or bad TV shows. You know, like prostitutes with hearts of gold.”

  Ricky doesn’t say anything. Instead he focuses on the different screens he has open on his computer.

  After a minute, Brooke asks, “What exactly does your life coach do?”

  Ricky stops typing and half turns around. “I’d really rather not talk about it,” he says, staring at the floor.

  Brooke angles her head so that she’s in Ricky’s field of vision. “Really?”

  Ricky turns back to the computer. “It’s not that big of a deal.”

  Brooke thinks about it for a minute. “Is this life coach of yours a woman?”

  “I’d rather not say,” Ricky’s voice squeaks a bit. His cheeks flush with color.

  Brooke smiles. “Okay. Now we’re on familiar ground. Tell me about this female life coach that you’ve got your eye on, Ricky.”

  Ricky clears his throat. “There are thirty-six Kristen Jones’ in Century City,” he says quickly and effectively changing the subject.

  “Really?” Brooke looks over her shoulder.

  “Actually,” Ricky right clicks. “There are over sixty different women with that name here, but I disqualified any of the ones that seemed outside the age range of the girl in the picture.”

  “I suppose I should have told you if the picture was really old,” Brooke says.

  Ricky looks at her, concerned. “Is the picture outdated?”